When I was in kindergarten, my ambition was to become television newsreader. To be more specific, an English newsreader. So I fought for days with my mom and she changed my school. (This is what I say, though she says she was going to change my school anyway.) As I grew up, my ambitions changed, but I had always been fascinated by news and newsreaders. Not any more. I can't bear watching news now- after the advent of those 24-hour news channels. Anything and everything becomes news-even the twists and turns in the stories of some obscure serials in some channels no one watches. I feel terribly sorry for the yesteryear newsreaders - what will their grandchildren think of them when they tell those little kids that they were newsreaders?
I watch the idiot box now only for watching trailers and film songs. I would rather go and suicide than watch one of those dumb parades of designer sari wearing women talking like high priestesses of Indian culture. Those should be banned. It is really degrading. Malayalam serials are no better. I stopped watching even comedies when I was in sixth standard.
Gone are the good old days of Surabhi, Turning Point, Tehtikaat, Byomkesh Bakshi, Anjuman, Farmaan, Aashiyaana, Alif Laila, Lekin Woh Sach Tha, Tarang, Chandrakaantha, Pambaram, Pakida Pakida Pambaram, O. Henry Kathakal, the cartoons in the evenings and Sunday mornings....
Those were the best days of my life...........................................................................
Tuesday 23 December 2008
A dog's world is this!
The controversy that the Kerala Chief Minister created after that tasteless statement involving dogs has finally died down, but people haven't lost their fascination with dogs in this state. Now there is a real issue - whether street dogs should be euthanized or not.
Just like any other issue, this one too has resulted in polarisation of Malayalis into two camps opposed to each other - one for it and one against it. The issue is no laughing matter, however. Street dogs are causing about a dozen accidents every week by jumping in front of running vehicles. A young lady and her child lost their lives due to one such accident last week and this has resulted in stronger calls to the City Corporations to do something about the dogs.
I am no great dog-lover. Those who are used to getting into cars as soon as they get out of their homes may not understand this, but I have to walk a good deal to the nearest bus stop to get a bus. And the path I walk is infested with dogs. These dogs do follow people sometimes. I usually carry a stone in my hand - for my safety. It is as if we were at war. I don't want to die of rabies. 'Rabies infected dog bites another person in the city' is another typical item in newspapers now.
I wouldn't like my photo to come under that particular headline.
I know that the Corporation is helpless - once it starts euthanizing the animals, animal-rights activists come to the fore, get court orders to stop them from doing their work.
What we need is a solution that is acceptable to both parties - something like animal shelters where stray animals are kept. They can be even given for adoption from such shelters to interested persons.
p.s. My college, once upon a time had more dogs than students. When I was studying in third semester, the Corporation vehicles came and started carrying off dogs somewhere. But even they couldn't catch them all. These dogs and we, the students share the same campus. These dogs are absolutely harmless; they don't bother us. My friends sometimes feed the little puppies.
When any student complains that he is living a dog's life, I remark, silently in my mind, "No buddy, they are definitely better off".
Just like any other issue, this one too has resulted in polarisation of Malayalis into two camps opposed to each other - one for it and one against it. The issue is no laughing matter, however. Street dogs are causing about a dozen accidents every week by jumping in front of running vehicles. A young lady and her child lost their lives due to one such accident last week and this has resulted in stronger calls to the City Corporations to do something about the dogs.
I am no great dog-lover. Those who are used to getting into cars as soon as they get out of their homes may not understand this, but I have to walk a good deal to the nearest bus stop to get a bus. And the path I walk is infested with dogs. These dogs do follow people sometimes. I usually carry a stone in my hand - for my safety. It is as if we were at war. I don't want to die of rabies. 'Rabies infected dog bites another person in the city' is another typical item in newspapers now.
I wouldn't like my photo to come under that particular headline.
I know that the Corporation is helpless - once it starts euthanizing the animals, animal-rights activists come to the fore, get court orders to stop them from doing their work.
What we need is a solution that is acceptable to both parties - something like animal shelters where stray animals are kept. They can be even given for adoption from such shelters to interested persons.
p.s. My college, once upon a time had more dogs than students. When I was studying in third semester, the Corporation vehicles came and started carrying off dogs somewhere. But even they couldn't catch them all. These dogs and we, the students share the same campus. These dogs are absolutely harmless; they don't bother us. My friends sometimes feed the little puppies.
When any student complains that he is living a dog's life, I remark, silently in my mind, "No buddy, they are definitely better off".
Saturday 20 December 2008
Destined to do it at the last moment.
From the day I was born, I have made a reputation of completing things only at the last minute. As an example, I was born at 11:55 p.m. on August 3rd. I wouldn't get out, so the doc had to give mom an injection. (Family folklore)
I have almost never submitted an exam application before the last date. This drives my parents crazy! Especially mom, who has a habit of doing things early.
But yesterday was the worst! I reached the examination hall at 9:35 while the exam had started at 9:30. I had forgotten to take my hall ticket.
To be quite honest, I couldn't study anything at all for information theory and coding. It relies heavily on linear algebra, we knew nothing about it and since I almost had an attendance shortage for the subject this semester, you can guess my condition. So, at 8:30, I left the house, feeling dejected. I was not sure whether I would pass the exam. I rate the subject to be the third worst I have ever studied, after engineering graphics and power electronics.
I boarded the college bus. (This is a good sign, I thought. Usually, I never get the college bus.) I even got a seat to sit! (hint: happens very rarely, because mine is the last stop.) When the bus almost reached the college, I had an urge to check whether I had taken my hall ticket.
I found that-I had not taken it! It was 8:50 already. Mom would have left the house at 8:35; so there was no point in calling her. I checked my bag. Whoops! I had forgotten to take the key of the house. So there was no point in returning back.
If you forget the hall ticket and still have to write the exam, you have to get a letter from your Staff Advisor and get it signed by your HoD. I found that both of them had not reached the college. So I called my Staff Advisor on the phone. Surprise! She did not take the call.
Now I had just one option left - call mom, ask her to return so that I could take my hall ticket. I called mom, and asked: 'Well, mom, can you do me a favour?'................
I hired an auto from the auto stand near the college. It was 9:03 already. We had two small traffic blocks on our way. To cut a long story short, I reached home at 9:17. (God alone knows how the driver did it, for he seemed so slow. But then, at such times, any driver would seem slow.) Mom had hired a taxi to get back. I took my hall ticket, said a quick 'thanks' to my mom, and ran back to the auto.
While returning, I was feeling grateful to the auto driver but he crushed my gratitude under his feet by getting into a petrol pump at 9:24. I had no time to waste. So I paid him his money and hired another auto. I was sure I would be late. But the new driver seemed to be practising exclusively for Formula 1. So I reached the college at 9:30. Meanwhile, one of my classmates called and told me that my exam room was in our department. So I ran to the department. When I reached there, two of my classmates told me that there had been a slight misunderstanding; we were to write the exam somewhere else. So we climbed to the second floor of the main building ( I do not know which dumb fellow had proposed this dumb idea of putting the seating arrangement in the second floor! Can't they put it in the ground floor, for God's sake?) We learnt that we were to go to the Mech Department. So ran again to the Mech block. The invigilator was a bit angry, but I didn't mind.
The question paper was specifically designed to intimidate the students, I suppose. I found it very tough, but then, I had not prepared properly.
I believe I will get through. I learnt one thing, however - never forget your Hall ticket. Or at least, don't forget your keys.
I have almost never submitted an exam application before the last date. This drives my parents crazy! Especially mom, who has a habit of doing things early.
But yesterday was the worst! I reached the examination hall at 9:35 while the exam had started at 9:30. I had forgotten to take my hall ticket.
To be quite honest, I couldn't study anything at all for information theory and coding. It relies heavily on linear algebra, we knew nothing about it and since I almost had an attendance shortage for the subject this semester, you can guess my condition. So, at 8:30, I left the house, feeling dejected. I was not sure whether I would pass the exam. I rate the subject to be the third worst I have ever studied, after engineering graphics and power electronics.
I boarded the college bus. (This is a good sign, I thought. Usually, I never get the college bus.) I even got a seat to sit! (hint: happens very rarely, because mine is the last stop.) When the bus almost reached the college, I had an urge to check whether I had taken my hall ticket.
I found that-I had not taken it! It was 8:50 already. Mom would have left the house at 8:35; so there was no point in calling her. I checked my bag. Whoops! I had forgotten to take the key of the house. So there was no point in returning back.
If you forget the hall ticket and still have to write the exam, you have to get a letter from your Staff Advisor and get it signed by your HoD. I found that both of them had not reached the college. So I called my Staff Advisor on the phone. Surprise! She did not take the call.
Now I had just one option left - call mom, ask her to return so that I could take my hall ticket. I called mom, and asked: 'Well, mom, can you do me a favour?'................
I hired an auto from the auto stand near the college. It was 9:03 already. We had two small traffic blocks on our way. To cut a long story short, I reached home at 9:17. (God alone knows how the driver did it, for he seemed so slow. But then, at such times, any driver would seem slow.) Mom had hired a taxi to get back. I took my hall ticket, said a quick 'thanks' to my mom, and ran back to the auto.
While returning, I was feeling grateful to the auto driver but he crushed my gratitude under his feet by getting into a petrol pump at 9:24. I had no time to waste. So I paid him his money and hired another auto. I was sure I would be late. But the new driver seemed to be practising exclusively for Formula 1. So I reached the college at 9:30. Meanwhile, one of my classmates called and told me that my exam room was in our department. So I ran to the department. When I reached there, two of my classmates told me that there had been a slight misunderstanding; we were to write the exam somewhere else. So we climbed to the second floor of the main building ( I do not know which dumb fellow had proposed this dumb idea of putting the seating arrangement in the second floor! Can't they put it in the ground floor, for God's sake?) We learnt that we were to go to the Mech Department. So ran again to the Mech block. The invigilator was a bit angry, but I didn't mind.
The question paper was specifically designed to intimidate the students, I suppose. I found it very tough, but then, I had not prepared properly.
I believe I will get through. I learnt one thing, however - never forget your Hall ticket. Or at least, don't forget your keys.
Wednesday 17 December 2008
Very Large Scale Relief
I took my VLSI exam today. In one of the biggest upsets in the history of Kerala University, the question paper did not have a single question out of syllabus!
To help you appreciate the implications of this, let me present the following facts:
-We have about eight books fro studying VLSI. Raabey and Uyemura are the textbooks prescribed by the University. Other six are for reference.
-Usually, the questions are NEVER from the textbooks.
-We had four exams for VLSI till now under the current scheme. These exams had questions worth 15, 22, 37 and 42 marks respectively from the portions out of syllabus.
-We have a joke that University puts these question papers to help students pass the exam. (Free marks are awarded for out of syllabus questions.)
-In spite of all the effort that the University takes, pass percentage is abysmally low. Abysmally as in 'abysmally deep in Mariana Trench'
So our VLSI exam was dubbed: 'a wednesday: Kerala University version' after the Bollywood movie about terror attacks.
We generally expect our question papers to consist only of the question we do not have an answer to. So we get the usual refrain you get after exams is: "Vicharicha athrayum moshamaayilla" (It wasn't as bad as I expected). But VLSI has a reputation in the department of depressing even the worst pessimists.
So every one's reaction on seeing the paper," Oh my Goooood! I don't believe this! A paper with questions FROM the syllabus."
Bigger upset to follow: All questions were either taught in class or given as assignments. This, my friends in EC department at CET will tell you, is a logical and theoretical impossibility. It cannot happen in any subject and never, never in VLSI. Someone was doing a Terry Pratchet - creating an Impossibility Drive.
May the Uncertainty Principle of Kerala University live long!!!
People were singing, "Pappu paas ho gaya" in the exam hall. Everyone was all smiles.
Needless to say, we all wrote well. After the exams, Neetha hugged me. I just wished I had brought sweets to distribute.
I shouldn't be so happy. After all, I have Information Theory and Coding on Friday.
To help you appreciate the implications of this, let me present the following facts:
-We have about eight books fro studying VLSI. Raabey and Uyemura are the textbooks prescribed by the University. Other six are for reference.
-Usually, the questions are NEVER from the textbooks.
-We had four exams for VLSI till now under the current scheme. These exams had questions worth 15, 22, 37 and 42 marks respectively from the portions out of syllabus.
-We have a joke that University puts these question papers to help students pass the exam. (Free marks are awarded for out of syllabus questions.)
-In spite of all the effort that the University takes, pass percentage is abysmally low. Abysmally as in 'abysmally deep in Mariana Trench'
So our VLSI exam was dubbed: 'a wednesday: Kerala University version' after the Bollywood movie about terror attacks.
We generally expect our question papers to consist only of the question we do not have an answer to. So we get the usual refrain you get after exams is: "Vicharicha athrayum moshamaayilla" (It wasn't as bad as I expected). But VLSI has a reputation in the department of depressing even the worst pessimists.
So every one's reaction on seeing the paper," Oh my Goooood! I don't believe this! A paper with questions FROM the syllabus."
Bigger upset to follow: All questions were either taught in class or given as assignments. This, my friends in EC department at CET will tell you, is a logical and theoretical impossibility. It cannot happen in any subject and never, never in VLSI. Someone was doing a Terry Pratchet - creating an Impossibility Drive.
May the Uncertainty Principle of Kerala University live long!!!
People were singing, "Pappu paas ho gaya" in the exam hall. Everyone was all smiles.
Needless to say, we all wrote well. After the exams, Neetha hugged me. I just wished I had brought sweets to distribute.
I shouldn't be so happy. After all, I have Information Theory and Coding on Friday.
Saturday 13 December 2008
It is in the air
Come December and it is in the air. Not Christmas, but the dreaded University examination season. I can say that I have never celebrated a Christmas or a New Year without the fear of exams in the near future since I have joined the college. I have missed all my cousins' weddings in the past three years and most of their engagement ceremonies. This University has got something against me. Wven if there are no exams on a day I want to celebrate, it postpones the exams to that particular date so that I may give the celebrations a miss.
By the time I complete my fourth year, I would have written about 150-200 tests. I am tired of telling everyone that I have got exams every time they call me. Now thet take it for granted that I will be having exams. So no one bothers to invite me, I guess.
The problem with having so many exams is that you start to lose your motivation to study if the marks you score do not have a direct relationship with the effort you put in. And my University is quite notorious for that.
I have been having my lab internal exams for the past two days. I was scheduled to have it yesterday at 9 in the morning. I decided to wake up at four and study for it. The lab was foe Assembly Language Programming and I hadn't written an ALP on my own till date. When my alarm rang, I just switched it off and went to sleep again. I woke up at 7:15 a.m and started studying. By 9, when I reached the college, I had gone through the programs I had written in my record.
The exam started at 9:30 a.m. My question was to arrange an array of ten random numbers in ascending order using Bubble Sort. An easy program, compared to the ones I dreaded. I drew the flowchart, wrote the code and started coding. To the horror of my horrors, I found that the '+' sign in my keyboard wouldn't work. That meant that half my code was pure waste. I would need more registers if '+' didn't work. "Mere saath hi hamesha aisa kyun hotha hai?", I thought as I glanced around at the happy faces coding their microprocessors.
I remembered our HoD's words: 'As an engineer, you are supposed to make things work - by hook or by crook. People outside will not listen to your technical difficulties. What they want is the final product.'
That 'hook or crook' sentence has been my greatest inspirational motto at the college. Till date, thankfully, I have had to use only hook. But this keyboard was tempting me to be a crook. I thought, "What if I just rearrange the numbers in ascending order and report the output?" I had about five minutes to rewrite the complete code and execute it.
However, fortunately, since my mom brought me up to be honest at my life in general and the exams in particular, I decided to do it the right way.
My thought process went like this: So I need more registers. That means I will have to use pointer registers as general registers. That means I can't do it with 8 bit numbers. I have to upgrade to 16 bit...." In three minutes I wrote down a brand new program, entered it as fast as I could and checked the output. It worked! I called ma'am and showed her the output. She asked me to check for another set of numbers. I did that and joyfully walked out of the lab.
Later I came to know that the machines had some problem with the '+' sign. It functioned wrongly when it saw the '+' sign. So all the students who had used [SI+2] observed the phenomenon of their code changing into something else when they ran the program. They couldn't figure out what was wrong. I was lucky that my '+' sign didn't work.
Moral of the story: Whatever happens, happens for good. And honesty is still the best policy when taking exams. (Courtesy: Mom's sayings)
By the time I complete my fourth year, I would have written about 150-200 tests. I am tired of telling everyone that I have got exams every time they call me. Now thet take it for granted that I will be having exams. So no one bothers to invite me, I guess.
The problem with having so many exams is that you start to lose your motivation to study if the marks you score do not have a direct relationship with the effort you put in. And my University is quite notorious for that.
I have been having my lab internal exams for the past two days. I was scheduled to have it yesterday at 9 in the morning. I decided to wake up at four and study for it. The lab was foe Assembly Language Programming and I hadn't written an ALP on my own till date. When my alarm rang, I just switched it off and went to sleep again. I woke up at 7:15 a.m and started studying. By 9, when I reached the college, I had gone through the programs I had written in my record.
The exam started at 9:30 a.m. My question was to arrange an array of ten random numbers in ascending order using Bubble Sort. An easy program, compared to the ones I dreaded. I drew the flowchart, wrote the code and started coding. To the horror of my horrors, I found that the '+' sign in my keyboard wouldn't work. That meant that half my code was pure waste. I would need more registers if '+' didn't work. "Mere saath hi hamesha aisa kyun hotha hai?", I thought as I glanced around at the happy faces coding their microprocessors.
I remembered our HoD's words: 'As an engineer, you are supposed to make things work - by hook or by crook. People outside will not listen to your technical difficulties. What they want is the final product.'
That 'hook or crook' sentence has been my greatest inspirational motto at the college. Till date, thankfully, I have had to use only hook. But this keyboard was tempting me to be a crook. I thought, "What if I just rearrange the numbers in ascending order and report the output?" I had about five minutes to rewrite the complete code and execute it.
However, fortunately, since my mom brought me up to be honest at my life in general and the exams in particular, I decided to do it the right way.
My thought process went like this: So I need more registers. That means I will have to use pointer registers as general registers. That means I can't do it with 8 bit numbers. I have to upgrade to 16 bit...." In three minutes I wrote down a brand new program, entered it as fast as I could and checked the output. It worked! I called ma'am and showed her the output. She asked me to check for another set of numbers. I did that and joyfully walked out of the lab.
Later I came to know that the machines had some problem with the '+' sign. It functioned wrongly when it saw the '+' sign. So all the students who had used [SI+2] observed the phenomenon of their code changing into something else when they ran the program. They couldn't figure out what was wrong. I was lucky that my '+' sign didn't work.
Moral of the story: Whatever happens, happens for good. And honesty is still the best policy when taking exams. (Courtesy: Mom's sayings)
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