INCREDIBLE INDIANS

Expectations

2011-03-05T12:55:00.004+05:30

Expectations. The root cause of sadness. Question: Should we have expectations?

Let us discuss a situation. My situation. I didn't expect anything from my CAT. But I managed to score a pretty good score. I was extremely happy. After that, I expected a number of IIM Calls and didn't get them. I was irritated and sad with that situation. So, expectations let to irritation and sadness right? May be yes. I am certain a low CAT score would not have affected me because I never expected anything from the test.

You want your friends to behave in a certain manner. When they do not live up to that certain behavior then it affects you. Or me at least. A fight with some random person on the street will leave you angry for 10 mins and you will forget it. Imagine the same with your family. Does it not spoil your mood? Yes, of course it does. That is because you expect certain things from your family members.

Just continuing the above example, and my initial question. Should we have expectations? I guess yes. You just need to draw a line where your expectations turn into things that will affect you the most. It is justified that you expect your parents to pamper you, to be with you when you need them the most. It is justified that you expect your friends to be supportive of you. But then care should be taken that the lack of living up to those expectations does not leave you sad and disheartened.

I am not saying that expectation is the only cause of sadness. There can be many others too. Expectations just form a major chunk of them. If every one of us follows the saying as below, I don't think we will ever be sad because of expectations:

आपना काम कर, फल की चिंता ना कर

But one needs a great will power to follow the above saying. It is almost next to impossible to follow. It is this that we need to achieve. Drive out the expectations from our mind. I will end by saying:

Live the present, think about the future but don't expect anything from the future.

Things I did in TWENTY10

2010-11-29T15:08:00.006+05:30

This post is a reply/update to 'Things to be done in TWENTY10!'

What I had planned and what happened. I will copy paste the part I had planned from the original post and then follow it up with what I actually did.

January: Attend the 'Industrial Visit' and hopefully, I won't actually have a poem like 'The Contrive' to write like I had last time around.

Attended the 'Industrial Visit' and it was way more fun with 7-8 of us hanging together all the time. We were like the outcast people but we certainly enjoyed it. And I can write a lot more than a poem like 'The Contrive' (The Contrive is a poem I had written after my 1st IV. You can find it on my blog itself) on what all happened on the IV. I can, but I wont. Too embarrassing.

February: Organise 'SPACE 2010 - Revolutionise the way you see'. I hope it turns out to be the best festivals that the BE's have seen in their 4 years of engineering.

Sem 5 result expected.

Organised SPACE and was told by the BE's that it was indeed one of the best festivals they have seen in our college. I take them by their word, I am not complaining. Sem 5 results were declared and I had passed. :-)

March: My sisters wedding. Help out my family with the preparation. Rishkul and Suresh were very happy that my parents invited them for the wedding. Foodie rascals! Are only interested in food that is going to be served.

If not in February, results will certainly be out in this month.

I didn't get to eat much during the reception. :-(

April: Journal submissions and viva preparations. Yeah, again the same old shit. :-(

As I said, same old shit.

May: College ends, vivas start and mid May come the dreadful Sem 6 written exams. :-(

I said no, dreadful.

June: Exams continue and end mid June. After that enjoy.

Oh yeah, I would have had to decide between GATE, GRE, Placements and/or CAT by this time. :-( Some one help. :-(

Ok, here it goes. If i decide I'm going to take GRE, study for GRE. Same goes for whichever exam I decide to take.

I decided, I have no interest in MS studies. Skipped GRE. Had decided to start studying for CAT. Never happened.

July: Enjoy the vacation and pretty much do the same I do by the end of June. Study for higher education entrance examinations.

Oh yes, I forgot, college reopens.

Also, will know by now if I have internship in the final year or screw myself with new subjects in Sem 8. :-(

Will the placement process start? :-/

College reopened. Didn't study for CAT. Learnt, we have no internship and normal 2 semesters of college. Yes, screw myself with new subjects. Also, placement process did start with we being informed that L&T is scheduled to visit in first week of August.

August: If I decide to take GRE, take it now.

Will have to decide my final year BE project.

Will the placement process start? :-/

No GRE. Final Year Project: GPS Based Vehicle Tracking System. Also, placement process started. I was placed in L&T. Serious, I didnt prepare either for the aptitude test or the interview. Luck, it is called.

September: My mothers birthday on the first day of this month. Will celebrate. :D

And yeah, good GRE score means I would start with the application process.

Also, study for CAT. Timepass, you see.

Work on BE project.

Will the placement process start? :-/

Celebrated mothers birthday, forgot how. Didn't appear for GRE, so no application process. Didn't study for CAT either. Lmao @ working on BE project.

October: Ohhhh, here comes journal completion, submission and viva preparation again. Engineering, I tell you! :-(

Prepare to take the CAT. (GRE or no GRE)

Work on BE project.

Will the placement process start? :-/

Journal completion - Check; Submission - Check; Viva Preparation - LMAO

CAT - Didn't study

BE Project - Didn't work on it

Placement - Done

November: Vivas, Practicals!

And yeah, CAT! (Again, GRE or no GRE)

Celebrate dad's birthday!

Will the placement process start? :-/

Vivas only. No practicals in BE. :D Worst vivas I have ever faced. My confusing arose from the fact that after securing a job in 'electronics', I was asked by two external if I was really worthy of being an engineer.

CAT - Was a good experience.

Didn't quite celebrate dad's birthday.

A month more to go. I should say I have been happy with my year so far. Wait, a month long exam to go? Will I say the same on 27th December at 1.30 pm when I walk out of my examination hall? Only time will tell.

Will leave you with a graph I made. Works for all Mumbai University engineering students.

Format, should we?

2010-11-16T18:33:00.003+05:30

Lets start with a off topic. PL's are the time when blogging activity is on its high. You get a lot of material worth reading, you get a lot of ideas to write. On a typical PL evening, at 1834 hours, I have a weird thought.

What if we had a 'format' button in life? Just like our PC. Lets get our analogy right here.

Hardware - Physical features like height, weight, looks. Intelligence which can be compared to motherboard, so that remains the same.

Operating System: Here, we have a complex structure. What should we include and what we should not? Lets say a engineering student will include engineering traits. Lets just say, all traits. The operating system decides how well our hardware works, or how badly it works. Hardware and Software compliment each other. Well, actually everything is dependent on each other. No part of our body, or no part of our PC can function on its own. So yeah, operating system will include your behaviour, your positives and negatives, your susceptibility in certain areas whereas your strong points in certain others. (If I had been a computer student, I would have drawn an analogy between Windows Vista or Linux)

Data: They are the set of people you mingle with. We shall include applications that we run on our operating system in here. Teachers and Parents, can take the place of antivirus. Slow down the system, but eventually help us. Friends, can take the place of an explorer. Can be used for good as well as bad things (google.com and some porn website). Some friends are harmless. (facebook.com) And, then you have a host of other applications. Too much of an analogy to draw.

So, the question here is, should we or should we not have an option of formatting our life? Even when we format, we can always keep raw data, reinstall an application and use the data again. Our Hardware always remains same, we can just increase certain specifications, by adding add-on devices.

If you think closely, you always change applications in life. It is an ongoing process. You change your job. An application gets boring after a certain time, while some other application becomes interesting. An application just goes corrupt. You sometimes cannot access a data because it has been affected by virus. The point here is, we change applications, but do we change the operating system? We always add service packs to our operating system, but never change it altogether. Why?

Anyway, is it in our interest to do it?

(Please excuse me for haphazard discussion of points)

Aur Mujhe Kya Laga

2010-11-05T08:10:00.001+05:30

My first impression of Sardar Patel Institute of Technology.

The day I got admission, 11.30 am to be precise, RD asked me to attend lectures after lunch. I didn't agree.

The next day, my first lecture was Mathematics and the professor for the same was Nida ma'am. I didn't like her in the first lecture, couldn't hear her voice. I was obviously sitting on the last bench even in my first lecture. Well, all that 'not liking' changed. She was the best professor in FE.

OK , now to my post. Mujhe mere class mates ke baare mai eekdum start mai kya laga :-

Rishkul: I felt your name was spelt Hrishkul. And yeah, I even felt the only thing that has carried you so far is studies. You sat on the first bench and all na. Then you became a part of Guitar Workshop and my Yahoo Messenger contacts.

Siddharth: I felt you were a Bihari. Thank your surname for the perception. Somewhere within me there is 1% Raj Thackarey minus the violence. Someone had told me that you had taken part in Boogie Woogie! LOL! ROFL! :P Also felt you must be one of those 'Yo' guys! The typical townie kinds. :P

Suresh: Everyone says you have a great voice when they first meet you. I didn't feel like that. Sorry, but still don't feel like that. :P Never had much of an opinion about you, but you started answering all Nida ma'am's questions in the first lecture. Also, Bhavsar's lecture! Wasn't good!

Apurva: The girl with lots and lots of attitude problem. :P It changed. I know you have no such 'attitude problem'.

Kirti: Nerd, padhaku! Well, still the same. :P But we managed to change you for the good. You are now less of a nerd and padhaku. :P

Shilpa: You were the first girl I had seen abusing. Seriously. Hindi gaalis are a big no-no for others. And where have you forgotten your 'F%^$ing B$£"!$%d'? Woh Hostel gaali's of AHLL and PHLL are boring. Seriously. :P

Then I woudn't like to name the person here but I felt he must be like the super intelligent kinds. Knows almost everything. Sorry, knows everything. Come Second Year and all that perception changed. :P ETRX 2011 batch, keep guessing who the person is.

Some people I had no firsts: Saransh, Prasad, Husain, Kaushik and many others.

PS: This post was written way back in March and I am posting it now.

Fun with names

2010-06-21T14:15:00.005+05:30

Part 1 was here.

Part 2 is here

Q: You want to express your disappointment to Shraddha Shah. How do you do it?

A: Shraddha Shya.

Q: Kirti just stepped on poo. How do you express this?

A: Kirt-eeeee

Q: You want Rishkul to rush for a meeting. How do you ask him to?

A: Kulkarni Rush-kul

Q: How do you tell everyone that Suresh Bomisetti is the boss?

A: Suresh Bommi-seth-hi

Q: How do you tell Adhitya Iyer to do come with you first and then carry on with his work?

A: Adhi-(t)-ya Iyer

Q: How do you tell Pratap Kaul to open a tap?

A: Pra-TAP Khol

Q: How do you respond to some disgusting thing that Shilpa has done?

A: Sheeeee-lpa

Q: How do you ask Siddharth Deekshit to look at something??

A: See-dat Deekshit?

Any resembelence to any character, living or dead is purely intentional.

We Indians.

2010-06-20T12:07:00.006+05:30

Finally! After a draught of posts for the past 3 months, something like the water situation in India, back with a post. With few tweaks to the blog layout and design, it looks a little more presentable.

I had a status update on facebook and that made me write this article. No, this is not at all about cricket vs football. It is about why we Indians, are the way we are.

Almost every one has heard of a joke on us Indians, the crab one. Crabs from 3 countries in a container with an open lid. In the case of other 2 countries, all crabs help each other and get out of the container while in the case of Indian crabs, all crabs pull down the crab who is trying to escape the container. Yeah, that is exactly how we are. What made me realise this is Ishaan Kaul's comment which read

i don't hate cricket but i hate what its done to other sports in india..which deserve the same if not more recognition and honour.

Why do you want to bring a sport (or lets say hate a sport), which is at the top down to get recognition for other sports. Or to put it simply, why do you need to bring something at the top which is flourishing well to mediocre levels for the sake of equality.

We have issues where we discuss CEO salaries and the need to put a 'cap' on it. By bringing down CEO salaries, is the company going to distribute that money to the poor masses in India or is the MNC (in most of the cases) going to keep the money with itself in foreign bank accounts to give excess salaries to CEO's there. It is obviously going to be the latter. In our case, it would help much more if we discuss on how to solve the problems like unemployment, draught, farmer suicides which are inter related. Bringing down CEO salary ain't going to help you farmer to have his daily bread (or roti and rice in our case).

Ok, back to sports. Sport ends up giving you the best examples. People have a problem with Sachin Tendulkar earning 180 crores in 3 years from sponsorships. Or, BCCI making as much money as they are. It is not BCCI's responsibility to help other sports. It is the government who has to take care, not BCCI. Harsha Bhogle rightly said, 'Trying to help other sports at the cost of cricket is what I don't like'. I completely agree. And what is your problem if Sachin Tendulkar is getting what he deserves. If you have a problem, work as hard as he has and then earn equal amount of money.

We have problems with Mukesh Ambanis 600 crore house. Why not try and have 10 such houses in India. I agree 600 crores house is a waste of money but he is building it with his own money. Did he ask the government to sponsor it? We should be proud of the fact that as an Indian, a fellow Indian is prospering. And if you have so many issues with it, why not first work hard and earn (or ask your father to do that for u) 600 crores and then give it out to charity.

The point here is, trying to bring down the person or thing at the top to create equality will never help a country. Instead, why not try to get the people or things at the bottom of the pyramid to raise their levels and standards to compete with the ones at the top of the pyramid? We want everything lying on our bed. We don't want to work hard. Instead we want people who work hard to stop working hard. This is not going to help.

This is my own personal opinion and I am sorry that I have generalised people in the category. Not all Indians are like the ones I have mentioned above. But there are a few and they are hampering our growth. My views are based on what I generally see on news channels (panelists) or read in papers. They may or may not be factual. Finally, people (panelists) who sit in news studios are the one who take the decisions, no? Or they certainly effect the minds of many others.

BEING MIND F****D AND NOW

2010-02-28T10:02:00.002+05:30

Firstly, I want to thank everyone even remotely related to SPACE. SPACE 2010 was my life for the past 1 month.

A week before the festival, SPACE 2010 was nowhere. We neither had the sound guys nor the logistics guys in place. We hadn't finalised on our pro-nite. We had our differences and it was a big thing on my mind. Sunday, 21st February 2010 was one of the worst days of my life. It was more to do with the helpless situation that we were in more than anything else. Finances were no where to be seen. There were huge costs. It would have again been a recession hit SPACE. Sunday night, I was not interested in how good SPACE was going to be. I just wanted SPACE to be done, good or bad. I wanted things around me sorted out. Ask Suresh and Shilpa and they will tell you what I was going through. I can't actually say 'what I was going through' but it should be said 'what we were going through' . Things were just not working out. Now I know why. It was because of lack of finances. It was frustration. Plain frustration.

Then Monday happened.

We got a cheque of a huge amount. And then things started to look fine. Not just fine, they started to look good. We fixed our sound guy and our logistics guy. We fixed on out band. Publicity for Faridkot began. We even started receiving cheques of small-small amounts. Our budget started to look good. We knew we could have a good SPACE. There was no ego now. There were no differences now. It looked all good. People were working in their department. Work was on full swing. And I didn't really know when I was standing with SPACE Committee at the inauguration ceremony. It was all so fast.

There are so many things I have learnt organising SPACE. Most importantly, how to keep 20 people together, towards one common goal. There are bound to be ifs, buts and raise voices. That's a part of any entire organisation. You cannot avoid it. There will be times when you feel you don't belong but you got to ignore it and wait for the bright sunny day. You need to soothe everyone's egos. There were a number of people who told me you need to be firm with people. 'TU GS HAI'- this is what I was told. But I don't think I can be authoritative with people. That is probably the reason I didn't have a tiff with anyone. Yes I raise my voice a few times (but I know it was frustration). With me its not even 'raat gayi baat gayi.' It's just 'waqt gaya, baat gayi'. People said if 4 people come to me and tell me something, I easily listen to it. That's not the case. No one knew what was going through my mind except Shilpa and Suresh. Eventually, I let majority take a decision. I didn't really want to hurt any of 21 member committee. Just because I am the GS, I didn't want me to ruin hard work of the other 20 members. Eventually, I did what I felt was right, even if I took time taking the decision.

A blog update after a long time. I had decided I at least need to have one article on SPACE. Here it is.

From what I hear, SPACE 2010 was good, I assume it was good. If someone comes to me and tells me 'Your SPACE sucked', I wouldn't really mind. I would take it as my fault. I apologised for the 'Prayag Fiasco' even tough we organisers were not to be blamed. Faridkot was good. Visual Impact was good.

All is well that ends well. :-)

The only event for which I was present the entire time was STAND UP COMEDIANS and ohhhh, they rocked. Thanx Anna for getting them to our college.

Hopefully, I would now have time (to think what to write) to update my blog henceforth.

Things to be done in TWENTY10!

2010-01-02T16:48:00.003+05:30

Firstly, wish you all a happy new year. I have sooooo many things to be done this year. I have no choice, do I???

January: Attend the 'Industrial Visit' and hopefully, I won't actually have a poem like 'The Contrive' to write like I had last time around.

February: Organise 'SPACE 2010 - Revolutionise the way you see'. I hope it turns out to be the best festivals that the BE's have seen in their 4 years of engineering.

Sem 5 result expected.

If not in February, results will certainly be out in this month.

April: Journal submissions and viva preparations. Yeah, again the same old shit. :-(

May: College ends, vivas start and mid May come the dreadful Sem 6 written exams. :-(

June: Exams continue and end mid June. After that enjoy.

Oh yeah, I would have had to decide between GATE, GRE, Placements and/or CAT by this time. :-( Some one help. :-(

Ok, here it goes. If i decide I'm going to take GRE, study for GRE. Same goes for whichever exam I decide to take.

July: Enjoy the vacation and pretty much do the same I do by the end of June. Study for higher education entrance examinations.

Oh yes, I forgot, college reopens.

Also, will know by now if I have internship in the final year or screw myself with new subjects in Sem 8. :-(