My GATE Score Came out today, and it seems I totally fluked out!! As I had mentioned in my earlier post (Gateway to Success) I'd attended the exam with an only preparation of Badminton practice till 12 am and Warcraft Gaming till 3 am, but apparently luck doesnt care about odds..
Score is some 576... that gives me an AIR of 191, or 98.75 percentile.. atleast my doors to higher education are now open.. Might try a hand at jumping into the prestigious IISc, or perhaps an IIT MTech ?
Welcome to Cochin. Queen of the Arabian Sea. One of the fastest developing cities in Asia. Apparently in the last few years, there has been a real boom of development in Kochi, and it is still continuing now, promising to bring Kochi on par with with any other metro in India.
Where it started?
Well I'm not too sure but some factors include the coming up of the Cochin International Airport in Nedumbassery around 8 years ago, which proved to be a monster killing for development activities in the area. The Vallarpadam container terminal was a sure push to trade. Cochin Port as such is a really busy place and trade was already booming here, maybe the strategic location was influential too. Infopark in Kakkanad was another one of the earlier victories for Kochi.
On the tourism side, GCDA has gradually taken up
steps to meet the developing Metro cultural demands of Cochin. The Marine Drive is a sureshot timepass destination for visitors to the place, and GCDA has done quite some work on beautification of this very scenic area. Bay Pride Mall, Penta Menaka and the other shopping complexes in the area greatly complement the tourism scene as small-scale shopping destinations. Jewellery and fashion industry is competing in making outlets, with 2 really large outlets by Alukkas and Jayalakshmi coming up in the Marine drive- MG Road area.
Now some of the biggest development activities in Cochin are sure to convert it's face competely. 
The Lulu Shopping world in Kalamassery to come up in about 1-2 years covers several acres and has 8 Billion IN Rupees pouring into it and covers over 16 acres of land! It even includes an amusement park and a 5 star hotel! Housing projects and apartments all over Cochin are in fierce competition, with the Choice Paradise 40 storey apartment coming up in Thripunithura area promising to be the largest in South India when finished. Others include Aquacity in Aluva,Grand Mall, MetroOneMall, Kayaloram, Mir Emerald Towers, Oceanus Maple, Trinity Crown, Trinity Crest, Orchid meadows,Star Lagoon,Technopolis,Swapnil Regency and lots more(all thanks to Monster for the info and the pics).
Why we are not prepared..
1. Do we have the road infrastructure for this? Frankly speaking i think not.. even on a peaceful Sunday night at 11 pm the roads from Ekm South to Aluva may be held in traffic block for hours.The highway is full of bottlenecks and i dont know how Kochi roads can meet the demand of metro traffic. The Private Bus operators, ofcourse, still drive like they own the road, and this really creates enough traffic problems on the road.
2. Our Waste Disposal SUCKS!!!! The old joke goes, 
and still continues, that if u can smell the stink you have definitely reached Kochi. Demands for a proper disposal system have fallen on deaf ears. Not to forget the bad gutter system, that is definite to overflow in proper rainy conditions.
3. Are we Cochinites development minded enough? I say the culture is yet to adapt itself to embrace a metro lifestyle.
4. We have no night life at all. Life comes to standstill after 10 pm or so. Well, more or less :-).
5.Lots more tourist destinations,amusement parks,scenic locations and walkthroughs needed for people to make their Kochi trip worthwhile. After all, dude, how many times can u go to Veegaland?
Needless to say, its time for us Kochiites to come together and bring the Metro to Cochin.
Four years of life in an engineering college with less than a 10% sex ratio, and with virtually no female population to dedicate roses to, what do poor souls like us do on Valentines day?
Clearly, no other option..
Feb 10th : Another normal day in engineering student life. The day for my GATE exam, one of those life-turning, career-deciding all-important situations in life. GATE (I can only guess it means graduate ability test examination or something better) is literally the gateway to higher studies (Masters) in India's premier colleges, like IISc or IITs.
So what does a core branch-loving electrical engineer student like myself, whose ambition in engineering life is to make use of his earned engineering skills to develop his country's electrical power sector do? 
Excuse me, but did anyone say "Prepare for GATE..." ? Take a look at that small book on the right, and you will know why not.
So I woke up on the 10th morning, deciding whether or not to write. It would be an adventure, the bolder part of me said. It'll be complete murder, the scaredy cat part insisted. Finally the part that won was fear of momma's scoldings..: "What are you doing when youre' supposed to be writing a career changing exam..Why did u not prepare.. 900 Rupees gone waste.. What has college done to you.. blah blah blah..". So, washed n dressed up, I got into our jeep with as much resentment as my fellow GATE-attempters Naren and AK. I recalled the previous night, when I had, inspite of my staunch decision to do nothing but nerd off for the exam, played Badminton till my bones started creaking at 11 pm. Then Computer Games (Dota, specifically) till around 3 am. Then went around asking anyone who was awake to wish me luck, cos that was the only thing I would have for the exam.
And then this strange confidence crept into my mind.. the confidence of somebody who has nothing to lose..4-1 negative marking scheme, 85 qs in 3 hours, i decided upon all gods that i was going to leave GATE to luck and attempt every single question on a guess-atleast basis.
The center was Guruvayurappan college- a very beautiful place, really
. I have put some of the pics here. It was worth coming here for a tour trip if not an exam. The scenery would provide enough timepass during the exam. Since we had nothing to do but burn an hour, we had breakfast in the canteen, then proceeded to our halls.
Three hours later : Satisfaction pours out all over me. The GATE paper looked like it was meant to be done unprepared. Any minute of preparation over it would have been a loss. I had attempted all except 2 questions in the paper, needless to say consisting of n number of guesses (n generally tends to infinity for some unexplained rule in engineering), ie 83/85 qs. The paper tested only concepts, which luckily the 'efficient' Electrical Dept had succeeded in drilling into us.
Hence that satisfaction of a guy who has gained something for nothing.
Mathematically put,
Efficiency = output/input = k/0 = infinity.
The rest of the day was celebration. going around the scenic place taking photos, finding new shortuts to get to the road and getting lost, taking photos with the largest on-campus statue in India (in Guruvayurappan college)- its that poor girl you see on the right reading a book (hopefully not Gate)in candlelight
. We reached back in time to catch the match (I was getting uncontrollably worried about it during the exam)- and as if in reply to our mood, India made wonders beating Australia by 5 wickets.
Lets hope luck still believes in second chances. Or else who cares, it was just another enjoyable day of college life...
My deepest apologies to those poor souls whose photos i have used here without permission...I am sure to get a GPL for this one!...
And the prize goes to....
Warning : Publicity content included
A long time ago in the ages of the Pentium 1s and 2s, the Deva and the Asura clans would fight their Counterstrike clan wars in order to decide the fate of the world. The Devas always had the upper hand, what with Indra and his speciality Vajrayudha-47 gun and Vishnu once in a while picking off headshots with his Sudarshana Scout Rifle. So things went fine for a while, and the gaming world was happy.
It was during this time that in the month of Tula (July) there was a Devasura clan war in Swarga. The Devas were all pumped up and rearing to use their secret Agni grenade tactics. But as soon as the first match started off, BAM BAM BAM, all headshots, and the 3 million Devas went dead on the floor. The Asuras had scored their first CS match victory in yugas!
The Devas were surprised. The second match started soon, and this time they decided to Flash Bang the enemy with Surya (The sun), but no longer had a second passed, than BANG BANG and 'Terrorists Win..', the Devas had lost again.
Needless to say, The Devas lost the Swarga clan war none to 20.
The Devas, as usual, ran to their mentor and star gamer Vishnu for his Sudarshan Scout Rifle. However Vishnu, who was enjoying a quiet moment with his consort on his Snake-bed, was in no mood for a game:
Devas: "Oh Vishnu, greatest of gamers, the Asuras have defeated us at the clan war at Swarga.. they were too fast for us to see.. none of our tactics went through, and we could'nt score even one kill..Even Shiva on his Bull-pup Nandi could do nothing..Please salvage our pride and use your weapon to help us.."
Vishnu: "Learn to fight for yourselves, you @#%^s. Why the Naraka (hell) do you think you lost the war?"
The Devas look puzzled
Vishnu: "The Asuras use pitiable 486 processors, yet they beat your latest P4 dual cores. They use memory sticks for memory while you people have all the RAM you want. Yet you lost. Why?
You people, in your greed for winning, were ready to use the pitiable OS provided to you by Kubera (God of wealth): Lindows. And blinded by your hunger for power you bought it time and time again, not caring for how slow it was or how many bugs it had. You stuck to your old ways of running to me for debugging or pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete. No more shall this happen. Its time you discovered a new way, a new OS."
Devas: "But oh Lord Vishnu what OS can be greater than Kuberasoft Lindows? And how do we get it? Even our software division manager Brihaspati has no clue.."
Vishnu: "There is one, created by the greatest software engineer of all: Linux. Learn it, install it, and you will see your counterstrike perform a million times faster than before. Then it will be killing spree for the counter terrorists (aka Devas).. "
Devas: "Linux? Duh.. We have no clue..What the hell (ahem.. excuse me).. what in the heavens is that ? How do we study about this oh lord.."
Vishnu: "Well theres an easy way, and a hard way. Hard way: Go to the mountain of Mandara, carry it and put it in the ocean of Paalazhi, Bring the snake Vasuki from the snake world, coil him around the mountain, churn the mountain and get your new Linux tutorial guide..."
(The Devas are puzzled and understandably baffled)
Devas: "Er.. and the easy way..?"
Vishnu: "Yes, the easy way.. I was coming to that. In Makar (March), there will be an event called FOSSMeet '08.. It'll be in the south of Bhaarat in a place called NIT. Go there, and you shall receive all the tutorials you need about Linux and Open source. Then only will you be freed of your sins. Its all about freedom and sharing, after all. And yes, there are good earthly girls to be seen too..."
Its that time of the year again.. See you all at FOSSMeet 2008!.. Please visit the link http://www.fossmeet.in/nitc
To know more about FOSS, see my previous blog on FOSS..
Okay.. I'm back into blogging after a looooooooong time, and since i'm desperate to write anything at all.. here goes.. and theres a disclaimer..
Disclaimer : This post is not meant to entertain.. no PJ is meant to entertain.. it is meant to irritate people..Hence, Read at your own risk..
PJ = Poor Joke : also called Chali in Malayalam lingo : A remark/sentence misleadingly called a joke that has such low humour content, practically no standard, and no point at all, so that it tends to irritate more people rather than it entertains.
By definition, PJs can be of any type, but the most common type of PJ is done using duplicate meanings in language. I find English language most suitable- its such a shitty language that every word has atleast 2 unrelated meanings to them. Hence an easy algorithm for a standard chali maker goes as follows :
1. The Chali-Maker (henceforth, called CM) hears a sentence made in any language. eg : "The person reading this has absolutely no shit to do"
2. He scans his brain for any other alternate meanings to every word in the sentence. eg : Shit : has a real meaning that i'd rather not elaborate.
3. Find this word's opposite or any other related word, and make a sentence using this(any arbit shit (no pun) will do). eg : CM : "I bet you he has some peeing to do, though"
Rolling on the floor laughing, arent we...
I know how you must feel now.. that was a standard (i mean, no standard) no-class PJ, the type that you'd want to kill people for. But believe me, PJing is a mental exercise in itself : a lot of lateral thinking involved. And for the CM, its such a satisfying feeling (btw if you have'nt figured out yet, i am one of 'them' u know)
Another phenomena can be observed when more than one CMs get together : PJ bouncing : a process by which a PJ attracts another PJ (bounces) and this process can continue almost infinitely. for eg :
Normal Person : "I have no idea what this blog is about.. "
CM1 : "But you must be having an AirTel on what its about.. "
CM2 : "You can have your Water tell you about that too.."
CM3 : "Water is public property, it cant be his.."
CM4 : "Why cant it be private or protected property"(If you know your basic C++, you may not have missed that one)
CM5 : "Protected property? Protected by whom."
(By now, the normal person must be really pissed off, and makes an attempt to stop this onslaught on human common sense)
Normal Person : "Can you people stop saying PJs please"
CM6 : "But we never said 'PJs please' "
CM7 : "Wait, you just said it now.."
CM6 : "I never said 'it' either.." etc etc etc
Seriously, you should realize how much thinking goes into making a chali.. that why its so satisfying to the Chali-maker, despite the fact that Chali making is bad for (the CM's) health. Realize that and the you will start appreciating all those PJ bombs dropping around you..you can hear their BANG BANG sounds don't you.. well well i better get going..
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