Fireball

I’m leaving to Delhi tonight & I’m also having my cycles tommorrow.
Lots of brain-blowing surprises.

Will blog later.

I spent my last weekend in Srirangam, in mama’s house. After a long time, I went to the Srirangam Temple. I went there at around 7:30PM with my uncle. Around 100 people were there in the queue, but fortunately the queue moved very fast. After darshan, as I was walking through the walkway, I recalled the last time I came there. It was one year back.My first year NSS(National Service Scheme) camp. It was an excellent trip. We came here to clean the thousand-pillared Mandapam here. I felt it worth-while to recall my previous trip

Flashback(consider yourself facing a rotating mosquito coil for effects)

I think it was during our second semester, I was the A-Section Class Captain for NSS(Just Namesake) while Karthi was his class Captain(G-Section) and Krishna was the Vice President. Sundaramoorthy was the Assistant Class captain of B-Section.Vignesh was also in NSS

It was scheduled to go to Srirangam Temple and clean the premises on a weekend,and we left on one sunday. Day-Scholars planned to come there directly. After our break(In Agate Hostel), we got in the NITT Bus. I was in the last seat. I don’t actually remember whether Karthik was there or not, `coz he had bunked a lots of NSS classes. Vignesh & Sundar were in the front(Along with girls). I was trying to tolerate Tirunelveli-Anand’s mokkai. He was terrible. I was told that Vignesh’s Friend(i) was sitting near Sundar and that created much of rage among guys(Come-on, thats common!)

Later we reached there at around 8:30. We were asked to clean a large mandapam. It was huge. The entire area was divided section-wise. I was along with my class guys. I thought, just ordering them will do the job, in turn I had to initialize the job. We started sweeping. Vignesh,Sundar(& Co.) were sweeping on the other side of the mandapam. Sundar was in high enthu.Poor guy, the rest of his batch was looking at him and he did the job with a great interest. I thought Vignesh wouldn’t sweep as it was a matter of prestige, surprisingly, he got the sweep from his …… and started sweeping.

Half of my batch took rest. We took turns in sweeping & washing the floor. Krishna was in real enthu. He started taking up jobs himself.

After finishing the job, we went to have Darshanam. It was a long queue, being weekend. We saw Lord Ranganathar & we were tired when we came out of the queue.

After a while, everybody got tired and we went to the Annadhanam place in the temple. The food was pretty good. Rice,rasam & curry.

After the food, we went back to the bus, found our seats & were on the way back we discovered that two people were missing. It was Gokul and his friend. The left the slippers in the bus and were searching for us. Since it was too far, they came alone and we made our way back.

When the bus reached Agate, all guys got down while Vignesh and Sundar were still in the bus along with the girls. Again everybody’s(not exactly) face became red-hot. They were actually going to Shopping Centre near Girls’ Hostel, which we didn’t know at that time.

It was an enjoyable trip. Besides we had many other NSS trips & camps.

• We had been to a village near Thuvakudi(I forgot the name) for giving notices for the eye-checking camp.
• We had an eye-checking camp where none of the villagers turned up and we had our eyes checked.
• We went to conduct events for school students in the same village near Thuvakudi, where Parijat was in the Juice committee singing songs(Kam-chor!)
• Krishna dug a well for the same village(No,He didn’t do it all alone)
• We had a blood donation camp where I wanted to donate blood but I couldn’t.(That is another funny story)
• We cleaned the campus by removing all plastic wastes.

At the end, we had obtained grades. Krishna got an S(10) while me,karthi,vignesh got an A(9) and unfortunately the sundaramoorthy, who had 100% attendance and was the one who worked really hard, got a B(8)!

(Though this article is totally non-interesting, the envy two years back looks funny now, thats why I decided to blog it)

Brought to you by pratibha75, quizling and teemus.

Which states in India have you been to?

Hoping to visit more!

Finally, Its done and we made it.Meet Linux 2005 was a course, different from all the other courses conducted by Glug-T.

Don’t do that. Let me take the other half. Your voice is too feeble.

Said Parijat. But I wanted to do that by myself. I wanted to have an exposure.Slides were ready,tutorial package was also ready. I took a bottle of water along with a pack of LaTeX reference cards to the User Lab and announced that the lab was reserved for Glug-T. Soon most of them left. 5:00 PM. People arrived, and the lab was getting filled up. Though I had talked before, this time, I’m going to talk for 2:00 Hours. I gulped.

Then things started turning down unexpectedly. People didn’t close their sessions(VNC sessions) last time. People were having problems in logging in. We had to login in our accounts, but that didn’t work. Server was taking more load than what it was expected to. Half of them weren’t logged in. 5:35PM.

Letting the rest of work to my friends, I started. The scheme was that, first the theory session, then the hands-on session. I had a chit which described what I had to do. People were looking at me. Theory went on well. Then came the hands-on session. People had to copy the readymade codes to their own script and they tried executing it again. Whoa! most of them didn’t work! My confidence level and Voice was going down exponentially.I tried my best to make them understand for the next 2:00 hours.

People tried including images in the LaTeX document. Didn’t work! I was sure that this was the worst class ever in this course. Its over. Nothing can be restored. I was sure that I’m doomed. My friends are going to screw me for this rubbish piece of talk.

Finally the first session was over at around 8:00PM. Parijat told he’ll start with the theory while I can have dinner. Me and Abhay went to snacky. I was not happy. People are going to screw me, I thought. After food, I came back to the lab. Parijat was taking the basics. I asked him whether I can replace him,

“Your voice is dead, have rest.” said Parijat.

I urged again, and he told “Ok” . I started, with a bit confidence more than the last session. People were looking at me.Seniors Vikram(Mechanical Topper) & Biswadeep(ECE Topper) were listening to me. When I was having dinner, the server was restarted. So people logged into their accounts.

When the hands-on session started, I was clear this time, my voice properly in phase. People started working in phase, which increased my enthusiasm. I wanted them to tell more. 7:45PM. I was nearing the mathematics part. I showed them the slide of how to write equations in LaTeX. That was section was not in hands-on session. Seeing their enthusiasm, I asked,
“Do you want to try out this eulers equation?”
I was sure that they’ll deny. Surprisingly, I got to see lots of nods in the crowd! I was enthralled. They started writing down the equation and they got it perfectly in the document. Finally the talk was over.

I was contented and enthralled. My mind told me that I was successful this time. Vijo,Shivendra,Abhay congratulated me for the talk.
“Good Show” Said Vijo

It was a treat for my ears.

Meet Linux was a hit. Feedback said that.

Abhay’s Talk on the First Day

We told them what is GNU and what is Free Software.
It was a great experience.

I spent my weekend with my cousin Allagappan(Yes, he too is Allagappan) in Madurai. Its more than a year I had been to Madurai. I reached friday night and saturday morning we went to his college-KLN College of Engineering,Madurai. The college was 10km from his residence. We left at around 10:00AM. Primeminister was coming to inaugrate Sethusamudram Project, a new vision for Tamils. But the worst part was the security features arranged in Madurai.

Though we weren’t checked in between for licences and Papers,
we saw poor constables standing in the roads even at 11:00AM eventhough the traffic restriction is from 2:00PM. We saw them on the way to the college.

We saw the college and all the facilities. College is really good. Neatly maintained. Score-boards say that Anna University syllabuses are really tough(Thank God! I’m not in AU)
When we came back around 1:45PM, these guys were still standing in the 40^oC heat waiting for PM! Poor guys. They had to be there in their uniform(Shoes,tucked in shirts!) in that heat.

My favourites in Madurai are Jigardanda and Meenakshi Amman Temple. And I didn’t miss both!
Jigardanda is heavenly delicacy. I have just heard that it is made of sea-weeds,ice-cream+milk.

Our Course starts tommorrow. The Big Day for me!