Some things about the Year of 2008…

Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Blogging, FIITJEE Pinnacle, General, Humour, I think therefore I watch, It's My Life, New Delhi, Photography, Quizzing, School Life, Shutterbugs

An ordeal at FIITJEE
My class XI was coming to end in the first quarter of the year. Here at FIITJEE, you have these regular seasons migrations where the longest ones can be from the first batch to the fourth (i.e. the last one!) and even the other way round. You endure a horrible final exam to top which you have a judgment day in the form of a two-day reshuffle test. Twelve hours of serious butt-burning to make it to a decent batch only to go through the very same process a few weeks from there!
Torture for sure. I could count around 3-4 people quitting FITTJEE and doing class XII in their hometown. Many lost hopes on JEE preparation to get into something else feasible. Although I could see many who weren’t very serious earlier now burning with an ambition to clear the JEE. Its a strange place, or perhaps an eco-system to say the least.

Granny’s Death
It was the 19th of April, a fateful day when destiny decided to take my Granny to an eternal tour of the heavens… Well, that’s what the all members family told each other to console themselves. She had a paralysis attack a few weeks before that. Too bad she wasn’t even in the state to interact with her children and grand children before leaving. I really wouldn’t wish a death of that kind to anyone.
Anyway, she was finally free of the ordeal she went through several years past that. Really sad about the part that I never got to know her well and spend enough time with her. I really learnt that every human relationship is very short lived. There can be human or destiny (a term that is forbidden to be used by atheists/rationalists) related reasons causing anything to finally end. Take whatever you can out from any healthy relationship you have. You really wouldn’t want the wicked taste of regret lingering in your mouth long after that’s done!

Class XII and its after-effects

Both me and my blog got promoted to Class XII. Uma on the other hand got out of it all. Ask her today and she would say those days were from another lifetime altogether! Firstly I would love to clear a myth first. I DON’T study for 42 hrs in a day! It is just that I am prohibited from using the computer regularly and I am too lethargic (read: afraid!) to revolt and ask for my rights… But then I really plan to start everything off with a bang once this is done!
Kept swinging between the top-two batches of FIITJEE. Ego and pride related problems kept coming back again in resonance to where I lie…
Saw so many of my seniors in a position where I would never like to be in taking some of the hardest decisions in life. The fear in me just climbing up now. This is a stage where I better stop questioning and pondering the fairness of all systems here in India. I know I am a part of it and the wisest thing to do is, do well in it when you can.
I started paying more attention in class since then and it started paying me off well, I hope!

Uma Leaving Delhi

She is one person who circumvented all of this šhìt just by deciding in time that this is really not what she wants from life. And well, she is having quite a heck of a one in Bengaluru today. As a reminder, she is doing Communication Design (also known as Fashion Communication) over there at NIFT’s B’lore campus. It is purely her lethargy to not post about her happenings there… I have given up coaxing her to write posts. I tried everything infact… From motivating her by showing some really awesome chick-lit blogs, frequently adding some really good female blogs to the blog-roll, and even taking her to the Pan-Delhi Geek Meet, where a person from IBNMS recognized her from her blog.
I am seriously looking for some new methods now. Perhaps I will climb up the top of the Statesman House someday and do the Sholay thing there. Perhaps that should help! :(

A few Competitions
The very first event of the year was the Tata Crucible Campus Edition in New Delhi. GQ attended that with me in the middle of his bored exams. Attended just a handful of events this year. First up was the Columban Open Quiz, by Quizcraft. Heard that a good number of the questions in the semi’s were from Mahaquizzer archives. (I knew I should have gone through GQ’s archives!) Overall, the quality and organization wasn’t as impressive as it was earlier. Came out of the semi’s of the COQ for the second time in my life.
Next up was a/an (insert-a-suitable-derogatory-term-here) event in DPS Mathura Road called as The Warp. I need to brush up vocabulary a bit to come back with the right adjectives to describe it. No comments till then. I discovered that staying away from Quizzing and reading Digg/Slashdot/Ars Technica had taken a toll over my quizzing capacities. My recollection abilities had gone to the loo on the day of Warp. The feeling of – “The answer is right there in a distant corner of my brain. Its just ain’t freaking coming out!!” is the most frustrating thing a quizzing enthusiast can ever experience! I started reading out a little bit of those sites for the next big quiz. The only thing I am happy about for attending Warp is the fact that I made a truly good friend there…

Finally, some light in my life’s Cave of Good Hope with Code Wars 2008. I have had some good luck at Code Wars. My very first trophy in computer-related fest was at Code Wars 2006. I also contributed to my school getting an Overall Runners-Up trophy in 2007. This time, although I wasn’t so lucky, as just two people including me represented my school there. I felt really happy about the fact that I could win both the quiz and crossword, which was actually a quality creation from 6by9media, a proper-noun that GQ uses to corporatize himself and show other organizations like these to suck ášš! I knew I had to do better for what was just in the pipeline after that… the holy grail of IT Quizzing… The TCS IT Wiz.
Yes, I attended it. The standards (of the finals!) had plummeted down to hëll. Holy six rounds on the buzzer where they ask you somewhat retarded questions in a special round called – “(co)Lateral Thinking”. I actually made it to the finals up on the stage and was entirely tanked up there mostly because of my reflexes. I knew I could have done way better. I knew many of the answers that people with faster reflexes (read: higher confidence on their recollection abilities) and not necessarily better quizzing abilities answered. I also saw that there exist many amazingly talented blokes around in Delhi who never attend any big inter-school IT event just lurking there to shock us self-proclaimed veterans in this field. Anyway, came back with stuff roughly worth five thousand bucks and a heart full of regret…
It was the last big quiz of my school life. Never have I really gone ahead and won something big in any huge quiz. Be it the BQC, India’s Child Genius, ESPN, or anything. Back there in Hyderabad, I failed to gain enough exposure. Here in Delhi, I felt I was too late to start it up again in Class X/XI. Anyway, I have mulled over just about enough about it. I have decided that I will do better in it as I get into the “healthier” quizzing circuit at college. Wish me luck for that.
I missed Exun, Access, Matrix, HT Inquizitive, and many other promising events due to FIITJEE and its horribly scheduled examination dates. I feel bad at times that I lost touch with so many things I was once better at by just not doing it more often. I hope to correct all these as go to college.

A few events/concerts

Attended this really nice event called as BarCamp in October held at Dogra Hall, IIT-D. This event was to a very large extent focused on Entrepreneurship. This is was one career aspect that I regarded to risky or too time consuming to ever try out. After hearing some amazing demonstrations from brilliant start-ups of people who were actually successful employees in big corporations at one time, my vision of my prospective future has broadened. Really felt so nice that people who have actually achieved so much in life are just so humble and down-to-earth as they talk about themselves to a crowd that was mostly student filled, many of which were either gap-year or college level kids. Nice to see that the “bhavana” of passion and self-interest still exists in many students from the so-called top colleges of India. With people from amazing places like Headstart.in and many other networks from Start-Ups to get into the loop, this phenomena has become a rather exciting place to venture into. Events like these give a direct connection to ambitious individuals, to moneybags who need such people to companies that need special services to newbies like me to get an idea to dream/ponder about, to say success for those who are really worthy. Heard some amazing stories there, met some really worthy people there. Honestly looking for more of those events.
The World Is Just Awesome!

Somewhere in July I attended an event called SoundWaves 2008, a concert organized by the students of the Parikrama School of Music, one of which happened to be a good friend of mine, Chitrank. I was opportunistic enough to grab a pass to attend this event at Kamani auditorium, near India Gate. It was a beautiful show put on by the students whose age group ranged from four to forty two. They covered some tracks, especially Metallica’s One brilliantly. There were some really young kids performing beautifully there. I even got a sneak peek into the green room where the performers were getting all set for the big show. Had a wonderful evening there.
I then attended a splendid concert at Siri Fort Auditorium here by Parikrama and Indian Ocean coming under a movement called I AM INDIA, a Mail Today socio-political initiative. I got free passes for it off the Internet and boy was it a brilliant show or what! I will surely put up a few recordings and a few low quality videos that I took from a friend’s phone up the blog. Many tracks performed there were unreleased ones. We were probably the first to hear few of Indian Ocean’s and Parikrama’s songs. Will surely write up something about it in the next post. Lots to say. Stay fed till then…

Movies and TV Shows

Let me speak about the movie The Dark Knight first…
I have been following quite a few series of Batman related comics and graphic novels at some time or the other. I actually am into this superhero fiction thing. When I made my first email account in class VI, I called it spidey2808(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)in. Kind of silly I know, but then I really have a thing for maturely written superhero graphic novels. Marvel lately came up with a decent amount of those. DC used to do a good job with the special edition Detective Comics novels. But then the Christopher Nolan’s flick was a class apart. For people who aren’t really too much fond of the superhero world, The Dark Knight isn’t anything like what they might have seen before. It stands at a much higher class than movies like Die Hard Series, or the Mission Impossible Series any day. For once, it looked like a beautiful story of human beings more than anything else with just one of the characters wearing fancy pants. I know all of you must have read many reviews, where the movie was criticized for the heck of it or some people who question the scientific authenticity of many events in the movie. From a truck tipping over a wire, to a surveillance system created using Gotham City’s cellphone users. What I appreciated in the movie was the real maturity in the storyline, unlike dumb Spidey or Superman flicks, where the movie is all about action, here it was a riveting tale of mind games, casted brilliantly by Ledger. Joker’s psychopathic tilt as showed brilliantly in every aspect whether it is his laugh, his expressions (in voice) or the way he gives three entirely different origins on himself. Batman was more of a supporting cast here. But well, they didn’t really try and stick to the comic book storyline though, which I least regret. To my knowledge, there is no Rachel Dawes in Batman history. Plus, differences in Two-Face origin. The entire city was a part of an awesome play. I loved the way they actually created an entire city in CG (while probably using parts of existing cities) for the movie. Although I think I would regret Katie Holmes not being there in the movie, but then Maggie Gyllenhaal (Do check her out in Stranger Than Fiction though!) did a fabulous job too.
I think I will end this here… :D

Started following Ultimate Discovery. Every night at 9 on Discovery Channel. Each and every episode of each and every show is awesome. Most notables must be Man vs. Wild and Future Weapons. Also following Smash Lab and Food Lover’s Guide to the Planet. This became a part of my daily schedule since November.

Holidaying at Lakshadweep
Had a really long and eventful holiday at Lakshadweep and Kerala. T’was a ten day trip in which 6 days were in LD and the rest in Kerala and Kanyakumari. Came back with 7.71Gb worth photographs. Mishraji’s camera took a battering. Over 2,200 pictures and videos. Many of them would surely become your wallpapers once I put them up! Anyway, just showing a teaser here… (Trust me, the rest of the pictures are several times better. No boasting!)

Anyway, hope you all had an amazing year too. Hoping to see recollections from your side too. Wish me luck and stay fed! :D

Read more | Comments (16) | February 2nd, 2009

‘Twas my B’Day and Life’s just on @the Pinnacle…

Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Birdwatching, Blogging, College, FIITJEE Pinnacle, General, It's My Life, Linux, Photography, Quizzing, School Life, Shutterbugs, Technology

Sorry to intercept your flow of feeds from several blogs around cyberspace with this distantly familiar web page with a forgotten author(s), but well, my blog did miss attention from people everywhere including me. And so did I. Loads of things happened since June, when I last made any kind of an update, (not referring to the blogroll) on the blog. Anyway, its nearly 2 months since then, with a few sharable events.

You people must have read this previously on the blog that Uma is not between us anymore. She left this place on the 24th of July. Anyway, things have been fun there as per what I hear from her these days. I am quite sure things must be very different in an all new place where someone has to get used to not having those family pampers in all it’s bounty amongst many other things. After all, it is kind of impossible to fit eighteen years worth of an eventful lifetime in three suitcases and one tiny little skull! (This line is by Uma herself!) And it isn’t everyday that your bestest friend in the whole world leaves to another place and sudden change in how often you speak or the detail in which you tell things just doesn’t feel right. There is immense nostalgia for so many things in her head for now. Just wish her good luck. She is finally studying what she wanted to, something very few people realize in time. You people MIGHT hear more from her once she gets her PC there.

Yes, I turned seventeen last Thursday, the 28th of August. Not particularly eventful, except that I almost had my hips and my back broken. Had dinner at Chopstix, an amazing place near Siri Fort Auditorium. More on that later, but then nothing really worth too much mention. Coming to gifts, my parents decided not to buy me anything that could engage me, like for instance books, or new hardware for the PC, etc. I didn’t turn up at Matrix-Ecomm 2008, @ MSM as these days I am more serious about getting into IIT and doing well with my subjects than I ever was before.

Yes, I now am a proud owner of a month old Pomeranian puppy whose name is still in the beta testing stages. It’s biscuit brown in color and is really small, soft and cuddly. It feels like a lovely toy. When it first entered the house, I thought of naming it on people whom I really consider as dogs, but then eventually I fell in love with it so much that, now I don’t want it to remind me of dogs anymore! It learnt barking just a week ago. Anyway, a few pictures should be enough to have all of you green here…

Suggest me some cute and catchy names please… And, before I forget, its a GUY!

Had a really fun meet at Yo! China with Abhishek, Roshan, Ayush, and Uma before Uma left Delhi. The meet was ornamented with PJs and fun talks followed with window shopping at Om Book Shop.

I used Gutsy(7.10) previously, and upgrading wasn’t really hard and it isn’t as bad as some people claim it to be. Heck, I have even heard of Linux enthusiasts migrating to Windows Vista after using it! On the contrary, it is zippier and the experience really isn’t very different from what I used before. The bug fixes and performance tweaks and other minor changes make it a release with nothing much to be excited about, but then you wouldn’t regret an upgrade. With better hardware support, I finally got my ancient HP 1100 printer working with Ubuntu.

  1. The Dark Knight – Awesome! A review is scheduled soon. Take my word, it isn’t your normal superhero flick.
  2. 21 - “Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!” An amazing watch again. really brilliant camera work and direction. The girl was good too. MIT is reason enough for many to watch it.
  3. The Man from the Earth – An unconventional movie which is nothing more than a gripping discussion between university professors. Simply brilliant. I wish I could write this movie a review.
  4. Sicko – Micheal Moore. Period.
  5. Disney’s Mulan – If you liked Pocahontas, you should find this one okay.
  6. Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dam – Had seen it long time ago, but saw it once more and I still find it just as good.
  7. Pulp Fiction – I guess I would be the only person on the planet to hate it. Before you hurl curses and other vegetables on my taste in movies, just know that I really love South Park, Friends and even Simpsons. I just hated this movie. Even with the subtitles!
  8. Goodbye Lenin - Another recommendation by Uma, just like many others in this list. Was fun.
  9. Stranger than Fiction – Fabulous. Really witty and engaging. Suttle yet a powerful comic storyline. Amazing direction! This was Roshan’s recommendation.
  10. Following - Christopher Nolan zindabad!
  11. Sarkar Raj – Copied storyline or not, the movie is a refreshing watch. Brilliant camera work. Wonderful dialogues!
  12. Khuda Ke Liye - Angering plot. Makes you wonder – just how many problems could you put on one family? It might frustrate you a lot. But nice music scores, especially those in the background. Good camera work and filled with appealing/pleasing colors.

Would love to go on in this list, but there are other events to cover.

Or perhaps a get-together that Uma, Roshan and I had planned in JNU with our cameras. Had a fun time laughing, throwing lame PJs, bickering, birdwatching, trailing in the woods, getting caught in the rain, eating canteen food, and even watching a movie in the end. Will dedicate a post on this. ‘Twas a memorable time spent there.

Went with an all new team consisting of two ex-DPS Damanjodi students and Sourabh from the previous team. Reached the semis, and were tanked out after that. Wasn’t really good as I heard that many questions were rip offs from other quizzing events. Too bad I couldn’t take advantage of the situation. Was kind of boring this time. I don’t think I would dedicate a post on it now.

Our JEE syllabus is almost complete now. really gearing up for 2-2.5 months of review sessions. Solving the entire 25 year IIT-JEE archive end to end making sure that everything is crystal clear. CBSE based exams are bugging in the middle of all this and to my surprise (read: shock!) it isn’t seeming as easy as swatting a fly this time. Nonetheless, the situation seems to be in control, but then I do need to take a long term Sanyaas or a penance to the sins committed against IIT-JEE prep last year. This year, I plan to waste very little of my time in the least no. of competitive events. Delhi students need not start celebrating yet, as I might surprise you! :P

Tons of changes at school. Will write a lot about it too. Also, upgraded to Wordpress 2.6…

For now, please don’t unsubscribe to the feeds or don’t get rid of my blog’s link yet. I would keep it active for a very long time for now.

Read more | Comments (5) | August 31st, 2008

Another RANT: The Story of Indian Students

Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Education, FIITJEE Pinnacle, Headshot, School Life

Really, the present happenings across my (older) peers’ lives sends jolts of electricity making all hair on my rise up, and has all the hairless parts goosebumped! In another few months, fate would get me close to something like this. It really makes me uncomfortable looking at people whom I thought were of the deserving kind in a helpless state. Really, Indian Education system makes beggars out of the brightest minds in the country.

Caution: You might see this post the same way you usually see rants on most other Indian blogs, especially on those run by students who are going through the toughest examinations in the world… Or you might see it as another perspective, another unique opinion, or perhaps something a degree lesser than a consolation to all those who have gone crazy in ranting so vehemently not just on their blogs, but in those phone calls better used as ventilators, those conversations which could more or less be addressed as punches on a rice sack or maybe those moments spent in Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt…

Here it goes…
Thinking in depth about everything, education in India lacks the 3 big M(s)… Money, Mindset and Modernisation. These things are barely enough to bring out just a few hundred successful professionals each year with a potential of several million. lack of money is a big problem in itself. Lack of money means so many things… lack of good colleges, lack of sufficient infrastructure in those colleges, or even lack of good teaching faculty in the colleges. The few institutes which DO get money don’t stand up anywhere when compared to the international institutes. Honestly speaking, it is just the maddening admission intake ratio or you might say the filtering process with the least porous membrane that gets nothing but the best inside. Maybe it is the general intellect of the students which gets IITs in the top 100 ranks of the world.
How does this effect India? Due to the lack of quality institutes, the success or the money making tendency of students is concentrated in just a few camps. Because opportunities are so few, and everyone in the populous of a billion odd people have big dreams, especially most literate ones, attachment towards studies is totally lost. Actually, studying is something someone OUGHT to do in order to earn enough to meet the family standards, which disproportionately grows with the country’s average income. The result – desperation,hunger and a famine like state with people craving for drops of those few seats which can mean the difference between owning a 100cc bike and luxury car in India.
There is this trend in India that makes money vending machines to placed in just certain fields. Like for instance, this particular hour has the management guys making the most out of the lot. A few years ago, it was the rapidly growing software engineering industry (which are mostly test centers or menial job sites for the world’s largest software MNCs) that got maximum professionals. All this leads to narrowing down what a student might want to do. Now everyone I know wants to go for the management side after the COMPULSORY engineering course. After all, everyone worries about FUD. With an Engg. degree in hand, he is ready to mint quite a bit, just in case management, which requires any damned degree as a pre-requisite doesn’t work out. The slightly under-exposed or the innocent sort speak what they have in mind… “It would give me better placement!”. The smarter ones, who know people or critics like me are around, fake or artificially create interest towards management. In reality, it is that very interest that the Indian students have lost. Money can actually buy everything, even interest. If a child confesses that he is not interested in Engg., the family and the brigade of relatives have him hypnotized into being interested in that subject.
The Wanderer
Really, I know so many people, even upcoming software engg., who don’t have a crumb of interest towards their subject finally ending up as professionals for Indian counter-parts of well-known corporations really complacent about getting a job that pays them a tenth of a million rupees. People fail to realize that it might be a lot when seen in Indian standards, but then it is cheap labour for companies like MS, which would get those drudging jobs else where at a higher rate. Indians have lost choice, taste and the will to opt for what they really desire. Socio-economic conditions keep true interests confined inside, and the worst part being that the student never even realizes that he inside a fake world world which he didn’t actually desired to design. He has a fake illusion of happiness and satisfaction which finally removes feelings like – “Am I going to do this for the next 30 years of my life?” nurturing similar mentality in the next generation as well. The children of the so-called big professionals in India grow up to be in a similar race for trophie made up of anti-matter called success. Its a vicious loop that has to be stopped, and it is not really impossible to accomplish that.
Solutions can be many -
*Availability of greater number of universities
*Larger allocation of budget for higher education
*Competence amongst Indian colleges to go ahead of others in the world
*More diverse corporations basing themselves in India
*Corporations giving out large scale projects amidst Indian minds which are more than capable to create things, provided aptitude is generated at an early age

Aptitude comes during high school, when the student dreams. Dreams can be closer to reality than anyone might think. Dreaming, pondering is an activity that can lead students to dig and know more about what they might be doing in the future. Here, immature kids at the age of 18, who know just a little more than the placement opportunities in different fields decide what they could be doing for the next 42 years of their life. Coming to think about it, how much does an average student know about what exactly happens in in any stream of engineering that he might enroll himself in? How does he know that he is interested in it? Actually, Indians don’t need to know that. It’s almost like choosing what pays the most here. Finally, what you get to see here is brainy kids turning into menially productive mugpots, in time-lapse cinematography. And frankly speaking, I really don’t enjoy any bit of that show…

Read more | Comments (26) | June 7th, 2008

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