Le farewell

Cowardice: Dying in place of someone you love so that you won’t feel the pain when you are gone. -CeG <oBelIX>

GG UG3. Thanks. -CeG <oBelIX>

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away ….

I do not know why I typed that. Anyway, I have been having very weird epiphanies. My dreams at night are unlike any at IIIT.  The epiphanies part is probably highlighted by the first quote. The dreams I will describe later – I guess I will need the canvas of an entire post to paint the picture.

This post has been a long time coming. Forgive my laziness but life was just too good to bother. I did read blogroll though. And thanks to Turbo for the FP (IIITLANBrowser) plugin – I got an A in LP and Cog Sci – yahoo.

UG3 did a good job with the farewell. It started on time – or as near as it can get in IIIT . I still don’t know why the photographer did such a botch job of the photos. It really escapes my mind as to how those rather irregularly regular clouds got there. I was rather disappointed that Prof. Kamal was not there. I guess he must have had some rather important work. Anyway, there were three speeches. Pinki went first – a highly watered down placement’s speech. Extremely concise, accurate and politically correct. Raja spoilt the whole IIIT-hyphen-H joke :grr:.

Mangla was next – and his speech said all that needed to be said. Without mincing words .

Kritika (I am taking a wild guess here) introduced me with waay too many accolades. I’d promised to put my speech here. but I do not have a soft copy with me I will post all that I can remember of giving the speech.

Good Evening. blah blah yada. IV IV.  Yada blah blah. We rock. Blah Yada Blah. Insomnia. Blah Blah Blah. Aziz. Blah Blah Booshibhai Booshibhai. Blah Blah. DF. Blah Blah Blah. Gaming. Yada Yada Yada. DC. Yada Yada Blah. Thank you.

Anyway, from what I’ve heard, people liked the speech. Obviously this means that the people who did not like the speech aka the majority is not telling me this. Don’t be afraid – I really can’t do anything to you. However, I did mean what I said and it’d be nice if there is a DF, a strong gaming community etc still in IIIT when we have our yearly alumni meet or whatever.

The food was okay – but frankly very few fourth years were looking forward to the food. The informals – which a few of us were afraid would be rather boring – totally kicked ass. I laughed my ass off when Tipo had to answer his questions.

Joy: Why do you act funny in front of girls? 
Tipo: Arre, kya karein, kuch kuch hota hai.

At that time, Tipo had everyone laughing – probably was feeling pretty confident. However, then came the sucker punch.

Joy: Why do you act the same way when in front of Aziz?
Tipo: <mumbles> <stumbles> <acts funny> <bulbs> <looks despairingly> What to do, kuch kuch hota hai. Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad.

Also, congratulations to Shamanth and T3 for ____________. Congratulations to Sriram for Fatte-pur-Sikri. And it was sad we could not have Manish answering the “Why he is called Pinki?” question – he had a bad stomach.

After all this, we went for the final treat. Anand had been incharge – he did botch it up by underestimating how *hungry* we would all be.  Tipo, vishnu, sid were too tentative – probably it was the looming train journey ahead – they did not want to eat too much. Manish was periodically clutching his stomach and making grunting noises – much unlike a pregnant woman. Anand, Monga and I tried to finish whatever little was left. Even Peesu came up two floors looking for food – Pissinary Portal Player Peesu – I cannot believe that. Saala, kitna khaayega. The bit after that rocked – was a lot of fun.

By noon, all of us had left. Some on the batch trip, a few went home and beyond, and a couple stayed back to finish a little bit of work.

————————————-

PS: Life good.

PS1: Manish USC.

PS2: Tipo Georgia Tech

PS3: ManU v AC Milan – hoping to catch a replay …

advertisements

free old game downloads

powered by performancing firefox

ARP Exams

BC is beyond any damn rules. -Zess

Sitting in the last bench, I had good times with him in the first year in the English class. -T. Prashant about Anirudh Mani in a testimonial.

So, as usual, it is up to me to write some random stuff for people to read during the exams. I think I’ve already gone into why there should be extra blogging during exams.

The last exams in the fourth year are kind of different. There is no pressure. FYI I had two exams – DC (PCO) and OR. Data Compression is a course that does a PCO too much justice. The paper was perfection. I saw the first two questions and was like, “woo-hoo, I pass“. Apparently the results were announced on that day itself which must be a IIIT record.

Then there is OR. Which is not hard. Not easy but not hard. Especially since the will to pwn courses and get 10’s is gone. I’d be happy with anything that is a pass. I like fuzzy logic. It’s quite nice. Rather interesting.

The weirder thing is me being awake so early before an exam. So far, I would sleep late, struggle to wake up in the morning and go in a sullen mood. Perhaps its the morning sun shining straight into my eye or the everyday wake up at 0700 for driving, but this time it’s not even been a minor inconvinience.

The rest of this post is random paragraphs for passing atleast another 10 minutes.

Vishnu, Monga and Sid just arrived. Vishnu greeted me with a traditional “Frustoo“. Siddarth seems very glad that there is idli in the mess. Personally, I really don’t like idli’s. I used to like idlis. But now I just go *bleaah*. Dosas are much better. Of course you should have good sambar. Unlike the sambar that was made yesterday. Sweet. That sucked. Then of course, I ate dosa in the canteen at night. Sambar sucked.

I just reread the bit on fuzzy logic. And I realized that I do miss (just a little bit) studying. Proper studying – listening in classes – like the first year. If I had that kind of motivation I would have taken CG, ANN and also Quantum Physics. A touch disappointed. But then for some inexplicable reason I’d rather play than study. Hoo-Hum.

There is a fauj (Ashish, Some junior and Saaketh) charging down my wing. Their feet scraping the floor. Their eyes glued to the OR notes in their hands. They are going to Inam I guess. Inam and Manish are perhaps the corner stones of OR, LP and ALP. BTW: Whoever checks OR and LP papers gimme an A .

powered by performancing firefox

Opera and PS

An opinion cannot be proved wrong in the absolute. -CeG <oBelIX>

I will make this short and sweet. Opera rocks. Uses only 50MB of RAM for 15 tabs. Firefox goes up to 180MB. On a PC with 256 MB RAM thats too much RAM usage.

Opera is quite fast. Browsing with only the keyboard is a charm.

It lacks extensions tho – Had to goto firefox to compose this mail. Have to yet check out the mail software in opera.

—————————

PS: Tipo got into UFL

PS1: My last ever IIIT exam in 13 hours

PS2: I like Fuzzy Logic

PS3: Should read OR instead of studying Fuzzy Logic

PS4: All bloggers should post

PS5: Lol @ aziz

PS6: DF Fun. Lot of people online nowadays – Sanchit, Zess, Fuzzy, Atwal, Wooster, Me, Apoc, Grawl and ORB

PS7: 25 v 25 CS – I wanna Play

PS8: People are playing monopoly

PS9: Who has scotland yard

powered by performancing firefox

All you need to know about applying outside …

Do not write GRE on the 19th of September. It is a cursed day. -CeG <oBelIX>

***********DISCLAIMER************
The author of this post did not get any admits at all. He may have committed fundamental errors while applying. If you do not get in it is not my fault. Please contact the great ones – Amit Goyal, Gautam Singh etc for better advice
*********************************

I have been planning to write this post for a long time. However, I have never been vella enough to write it. Anyway, the title is rather misleading. All you need to know should be found out from Gautam Singh aka Fauji aka Fuzzy who lives in OBH 2. This post does not cover the crucial question Should I even do all this? Do I even want to go abroad? You got to figure that out for yourself.

There are the following things.

1. The GRE exam
2. The TOEFL exam
3. The Letters of Recommendation
4. The SOP
5. The universities itself
6. Contacting professors.

Okay, so lets get started. The GRE exam pattern I believe has changed. Anyway, IMHO the ideal time to write GRE is June-July. Thataway you will be done with it early enough. Also, you would have time to write it again. As far as I have heard, the GRe score does not really matter as much. Its the SOP and the letters that count more.

TOEFL is a waste of time. It is a very easy exam. You don’t even need to study for it. Just do ONE sample paper before the exam and go.Give your TOEFL exam ASAP. Do not delay. This is one of the mistakes I made (THanks to T. Prashant).

Letters of Recommendation are one of the key components of your application. Get them from faculty members who know you well. One could be from your honours advisor. That will be the main one. If you have not done many projects in IIIT then do a few. Its best to get letters from faculty you have worked under. If you have not worked under many, do a project either in the 6th or the 7th sem. Also, doing TA ships helps. I will NOT list out who are the best faculty to get recos from. Send me a mail, or better still send it to GS. Remember, profs may tend to be very lazy while writing / uploading your recos. Make sure you tell them enough in advance.

The SOP – is a statement of purpose, kind of like an essay that describes why you want to go to that university. Do a lot of BS in it. Highlight all your accomplishments in a way that make you seem ideal for research. If you were a TA, or a batch topper or a deptt topper mention that. Get the people in your batch with fundoo english to edit your SOP. (People like Anirudh Mani, Arun Balakrishnan, Anand V).

The most crucial point is to decide the universities itself. No matter what your guide says, or how good your academic standing in the institute is, do not apply only in the top 10 – top 20 universities. That is just pure dumbness. Sadly, IIIT is not exactly a well known institute and that we rank very low abroad. People from even DCE can manage admits into MIT, we cant. In fact the best we have done (AFAIK) is Stanford and CMU (CMU was on Prof. Raj Reddy’s reco). IMHO, unless you have an EXCEPTIONAL academic record and recos from atleast one American prof (or excellent recos from the director or the ex-dean) do not consider applying to univs in the top 10. You would just end up wasting a lot of money (money equivakent to atleast 9000 paani-pooris).

What you have to do is find professors who are working on areas of your interest. Go to the website of universities, and look at the research areas of all professors in the comp. sci deptt. If any of them have research interests similar to yours then send them a mail like:

——————————————-
Respected Sir,

I am so and so in my final year from IIIT. I am interested in working on [describe core area here].

Describe who you worked under.

Describe your first project in the area

Describe your BTP

Describe what projects under him you are interested in

Describe your academic achivements – like you are a batch topper, dean’s list holder and what not

Put a concluding paragraph: I would be grateful to you if you could indicate if my profile suits the needs of your current/future projects and if I have a chance to be a part of the MAS group at Stanford.

Sincerely,
your name
——————————————-

Do NOT hesitate in sending a mail like this. Send it to bloody damn everyone. Very few will reply. However, if someone replies with an affirmative thing you should definately apply to that university. However, it does not necessarily mean that you would get in there. Many people have applied (me being one of them) after getting excellent replies from faculty members at univerisites and then gotten rejects.

Also, you will have to courier transcripts etc to the universities. Make sure you send them to the correct address. Get transcripts well in advance because there can be stupid delays.

There is a huge luck factor involved in going abroad.

Best of Luck re …

powered by performancing firefox

Ciao

The awesomeness of a play is directly proportional to the randomness of the dialogues. -SKP

We are going to go very soon. Damn, I cannot believe how much I will miss this place. Attended the last class yesterday. I thought it would be something special. It however was not. It was rather boring as usual. Anyway, I really don’t want to go. I also don’t want to post the rather senti stuff. I am actually posting this to get into the mood for writing the farewell speech. Yes, you heard right, I am giving the farewell speech. Currently, the 1000 word limit I set for myself seems rather far away.

I need a plan to kick start the process ….

———————————-

PS: Screw the USA. To all FBI agents who read this and think I am a terrorist, I am going to make your job easier for you – My real name is T. Prashant. I live in OBH 296.

PS1: Monga making my already boiling hot room really really boiling hot by making maggi.

PS2: Yes, this means you Monga. Get the **** out. Don’t heat up my room.

PS3: Monga does not understand the process of writing testimonials.

PS4: Monga thinks that is a long philosophical discussion for a later time.
 

powered by performancing firefox

Test

iiit123

powered by performancing firefox

Of Amalgam / Splash

UG4 Rocks. -CeG <oBelIX>

Its time to define a tradition. In the four year’s that I have been at IIIT, every time there has been an inter-batch play type of thing – ug4 has outclassed and outperformed everyone. In first year there was amalgam and the then ug4 did the most brilliant play ever. Our immediate seniors – SKP’s batch – did an excellent play – featuring god and Gaurav Jain. This year too, the ug4 play was definitely the best.

In this year’s play, a big huge chunk of ug4 was involved. We must first acknowledge the contribution of a certain Nandakishore.

Our very own “creative” director – Pradeep Yaarlagadda - did an excellent job. Actually, all he did was select music and decide the general direction of the play. Then he told everyone else: Write your own lines. This of course is the dumbest thing ever – I have never heard of a screenplay being co-authored by so many.

Then there was T3. For those of you who do not know who T3 is: he was the big fat one next to the very thin VBH Kalyan. He had excellent improvisation – most of the dialogue between VBH and him was unscripted.

What did Halley do you may say? Well, first of all, he acted with emotion. Then, he adapted to the utter randomness inflicted by T3 on stage. Keeping balance, esp with T3 adding, deleting whole chunks of dialogue is rather hard I presume.

Oh, I almost forgot about Wooster. He supplied the narration and the bits of funny in it. The jab at PKV was hilarious.

There was Grawl. He came to reharsal at 6:30. With no script. He created dialogues on demand. He imitated the ex-dean on demand. He made lot of fun of Aziz.

There was Abdul Aziz. He who came in costume. He who delivered near perfect hyderabadi. He who will always be remembered as the messcom who almost managed to introduce hot kingfisher air-hostesses in the mess.

There was Krishna-Aditya (my apologies – I have never ever spelled out your name).  The perfect showman. Dancer. OA’shwara in the play .

There was Gaali Govindam (N. Sri Harsha). His name itself was so funny. How he managed to keep a straight face during his narration I will never know. The dialogues with Aitha were really really good – Damn the stupid Mike.

There was K Sri Harsha. Who acted only in Telegu. And I have no idea what he said (.

There was VVHB. Jo Dhoni jaise Daaauuuudtaaa tha. Jisne “Fully Connected” Campus banvaya.

There was Khantri (Srinivasan S). He was like – If this was a real election we will win. Lets do it. IV don’t be nervous. Don’t screw it up. I want to win this.

There was IV. Who was feeling very very hot in Manish Jain’s silk Kurta.

There was SMDI (S. Md. Inam). Who made everyone laugh when he ridiculed the opposition on stage with his dances . He also IMHO had the funniest dialogues on stage.

We must also not forget to acknowledge the assistance of a Saikiran B. He was utilized as a prop and an item during the play.

Also, music director Srinivas P. Who was able to screw up the easiest job of double clicking to play the music .

Also, Also, creative directors: P. Amar, KKPK, Manto, Gaurav Raj, HSA (harminder),  Sriram A, MPJ, Hariveer, Ramji S and many others (esp those who were at Yaar’s room).

One of the major disappointments was that Manish P Jain refused to act. Also, the speakers sucked.

Anyhoo, the batch play was a hell of a lot of fun. It was great entertainment. Hope you enjoyed it …

powered by performancing firefox