MAMOOL- is the name of the game !!

yesterday , while I was on my way to Sify, from Guindy station on my bike , a van was speeding ahead of me and I let him go , but all of a sudden the van driver probably wanted to disprove newton's laws by wanting to have a deceleration from 5o km /hr to 0 in a sec ( in other words he applied the brakes) . I was behind him driving at probably 30-35 km /hr . As the van applied it's brakes , I saw it and tried to slow down ,, but it was too late and my vehicle's mudgard slammed into his bumper, with the result being that my mettalic mudguard was bent ( resembling a rough sine wave !!!) and my headlights were shattered to pieces , but thank god i still was in one piece.

the police called aside the van driver and murmured something to him and much to my chagrin the van driver was allowed to go scott free and the police called me aside and told me that i just had to wait for some time ..... ???? why ???

coz they wanted to file a case of overspeed limit against me !!! I was shocked and i told the police guy "saaar , naa ponadhu 30 -35 thaan saar, yenna yen pudikareenga " .

on being told this the police guy , made me walk a little bit and proceeded to show me a road sign which said 30 km was the speed limit and since I myself had said that i was going at 30-35 , he said that was proof enough to book a case against me , which would be heard in the court the very evening ...................................................

damn !!! . then after some time , he said "take the vehicle and start it" and the that big oversized pumpkin sat on my bike behind me and asked me to drop him in some place . he all of a sudden got off my bike in some non-descript corner , where he asked ho much money do i have in my purse . ahhhhhhhhh........ I realized the guy meant business.

I bargained from 1500 to 750 to 450 -300 , and finally shelled out 3 new 100 rupee notes , but the guy's concience probably pricked him and he returned a note to me .

I still couldnt fathom why I was being charged money , when the fault actually lay with the van driver , but in Chennai one musn't complain regd this , other wise rubbing these frustrated policemen on the wrong side would have much greater repurcussions.(especially after hearing my TIME friend Kaustuban's earlier nightmare on the road , a couple of months back.)

oooooooooh

aaaaaaaaaah


oooouch

just home after an accident with the bike , the bike's front portion is all screwed up , but me still in one piece.. more on it later

yesterday i happened to go to SSN college of engineering off Old Mahabalipuram road to participate in their ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION dept sym titled ORBITCE 03 . the symp was pretty good , with some decent competition .

well the best part being I won 3000 rs along with prasanna for presenting a paper there. I am just itching to spend the money for buying books, eating and so many other things.................

what was remarkable abt this paper presentation was i , like in earlier times showed no signs of being covetous nor was i cowering when i came across better presentations. so went with a very coy profile and at last won it in style.

I seem to have assumed an avuncular approach to life , as i see that these days i dont get excited or jump up at the mention of a symposium . so my credo of maintaining a coy profile worked for the first time .

our presentation was very simple with just a powerpoint presentation and a couple of pictures of the exp in the presentation. i thought that we were going to be derided by the participants there , but much to our chagrin we were awarded the first prize .

yesterday i happened to go to SSN college of engineering off Old Mahabalipuram road to participate in their ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION dept sym titled ORBITCE 03 . the symp was pretty good , with some decent competition .

well the best part being I won 3000 rs along with prasanna for presenting a paper there. I am just itching to spend the money for buying books, eating and so many other things.................

what was remarkable abt this paper presentation was i , like in earlier times showed no signs of being covetous nor was i cowering when i came across better presentations. so went with a very coy profile and at last won it in style.

I seem to have assumed an avuncular approach to life , as i see that these days i dont get excited or jump up at the mention of a symposium . so my credo of maintaining a coy profile worked for the first time .

our presentation was very simple with just a powerpoint presentation and a couple of pictures of the exp in the presentation. i thought that we were going to be derided by the participants there , but much to our chagrin we were awarded the first prize .

these days , i have joined the weekday batch for CAT which runs 5 days a week , which though is tiring , but atleast one attends the classes a little fresher than on weekends

I guess i shall call up Time and inform them reg my decision to swap batches , coz on sundays after the mock cats , i feel the need to sit down at home and analyse the paper rather than going to the classes with a jaded mind.
secondly saturdays being fully working , i cant avoid missing the 4 30 session , so i guess the weekday option sounds a lot better .


life for now , is moving at really a frentic pace with me clinging on to any dam,n word that i
come across coz my GRE and TOEFL are nearing and I have just started my preparation for it in a more serious mannner.

hmmmmmmm...............all the effort of getting out of college, having a tiff with HOD , all went in vain as the scheduled person at SIFY was really busy and couldnt schedule an appointnment.
i guess i'd have to make it some time next week , after the records,print outs and damn tests are over.

But the person at sify was really kind enough to offer me a project in a totally challenging environment, given the fact that it was on a subject that i liked -Cryptography(i've even presented a paper on that ) . my other classmates have also got their projects in other IT companies but half of them ,i heard are going to be doing the coding only at home .

life at college is real hell , with some trouble creators, posing unwanted trouble.
well all i can do is just put up a counter here and say ......................* * * days to get out of college .

DIVORCE -BETWEEN STOMACH AND TOUNGE


i had my barium test yesterday and the reports said that i probably have some worms in my stomach and there is no sign of some thing called "acute appendicitis" as said by the previous doctor (my goodness !! what all they say to make money !) .

secondly there seems to be a long list of NO's to the follwing food items

1 bhelpuri,panipuri and assorted chaats
2 colas and related stuff
3 no more spicy tandoor items , no punjabi dhaba
4 only idly and dosai , with sandwiches
5 no pickles, curry ...........................

life cant be worse than this , as my tounge and stomach decided to divorce !!!

today i finally managed to clinch my final sem project at Sify in their safescrypt division , and by and large the HR people dont seem to encourage grps of 2 or three and prefer to take only the guy who comes thru reference . I guess thatz why achut and joshi had to miss an oppurtunity to do it along with me .

fine, i have no qualms of doing it alone , coz the challenges are greater and working in a corporate environment should do me a world of good .

tommorow its party time at music academy , with landmark quiz 03 . so hope to fine tune my quizzing frequency to quizzing mirchi @music academy wave (a-la FM wave )

i have my Barium test today which will confirm whether I need to go for an appendicitis operation or not. I hope not , coz i cant afford to bunk college anymore than what i have done this sem . secondly i also have an appointment at sify today in the evening .

Achut called up last night and suprisingly he started coaxing me to come to the symposium (usually it's the other way round)at SVCE, today and tommorow , but i guess going on thursday woud mark our first symp this sem , but again my attendance is slowly slipping below 75 , so thatz some cause for concern .

I finally booked my seat for the Landmark quiz to be held in chennai this independence day . it's just a litlle suprising as to how i got a confirmed seating accomadation as in the previous years , i booked around the same date and only got waitlisted seats . looks like there is a downward surge towards quizzing in Chennai .

Regarding the appendicitis scare that i received two days back , my father just crosschecked with another doctor showing him my previous reports and much to my suprise the doctor told that it was tough to conclude from these tests that i had to undergo an appendicitis operation. a so called -barium test had to be conducted to confirm the state of my stomach . so i still donno whether or not i am going to have an operation or not .

Today , our TIME institute director's address on selecting and choosing the various B schools , was very good and his little focus on AIMCATS being indicators to one's actual ranks was satisfying to the point that i can say that with a little more hardwork i may climb into national reckoning , vying with others for the top 10-15 b schools . not that my national rankings are so good , but atleast i find that out of every 100 guys , i am above 75 guys (percentile funda) , that gives me a good boost to work harder and longer at my table especially with reasoning and quants .

Today was a real hectic day for me , considering that i had to leave home at 8 30 am to reach my test centre by 9 05 am and had to quickly slip in 4 idlis ( the damn diet that i have to be becoz of a bad stomach) and reach the centre by 9 15. then from 10 to 12 I had entered in to a shading competition (oh ! by the way it's also called the CAT) . after the test i had to leave from adyar to T.nagar in this sweltering heat, and to add fuel to fire was to follow kaustuban's route to t nagar. preethy and I dumbly followed him thru his circutious route and both of us were going at the same speed , also had some problems catching up with kaustuban , who was blazing past us .

the seminar on institute selection got over and i had to shutlle back to adyar for my 4-8 pm classes , between which the call of hunger was unbearable ,so i had stop at sangeetha's at adyar and have a couple of idli's ,and after attending my classes in indices,calendars and cubes I just came back home now and saw my Mock CAT 4 scores. well as far as ranking is concerned i might still hold on to the "A" grade institution rankings , but my accuracy needs some fine tuning .


phew !!! it was a long day and i guess i wont take long to hit the sack !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

today in college i expected a lull in sales of colas , after the CSE pesticides funda revalation, but much to my chagrin i found the canteen swelling with guys ordering every damn drink from coke.......... to mountain dew. well i too was a party to that.

MORE ON THE STOMACH ACHE
well after the 7 hrs that i spent in a pvt hospital in adyar , it seems i have developed appendicitis and a bloody operation running to 3 days is to be done. well with my current atendance percentage one just hopes that i am able to steer clear of the magical number of 75 .
the operation may be any time next week.

I AM AT HOME
my stomach has started giving problems and it's nearly 6-7 months since this is happening regularly , so i am bunking college to check what's up with my stomach .
so that means that i cant go to sairam engineering college tommorow for their symposium on friday and saturday . well when it comes to tradeoffs i dont like the feling losing an option , but thatz life and since this wud be my 12th leave this sem , i better be on guard with regard to my attendance which is sure to hit an all time low between the 2nd and 4th week in september , due to my GRE and TOEFL exams .

the city that never sleeps

yesterday i was waiting in central station for about 3-4 hrs tp pick me dad up from the station. I decided with so much of time in hand , i should have a good look at central station and it's adjoining areas . I was wandering from the higginbothams books stall to the end of the station traversing the platforms numbered from 2 to 6 . i found that this surely is a city in itself that is swarmed by people at all times of the day , with each person lost in his own small world of thoughts .

There are some cool fellas (like me) who do a last minute gallop towards the moving train , some sporting heavy baggage accesories , some group of children waving back to the parents on the eve of some trip of theirs, anxious parents sending of their son for higher studies, some people who while waiting for their train to bustle in, spend their time getting engrossed in worldy affairs all in the form of a magazine, some army JAVAN'S brushing general knowledge digest's to get selected in the government exams , some Iyer mami fuming that the sambhar or rasam from saravana bhavan didnt have the same taste as her culinary expertise , some old couple who didnt find a place to wait laying the bedsheet on the floor of the waiting room,coolies who rush upto u demading that u better give them the luggage !!, hundreds of people linded up in some hope that their waitlisted ticket is going to be reserved , some couples who are on their honeymoon and ..................... the list wud just go on ......... and on .............. .

It is indeed amazing to see that the gamut of life present here . I it was as if i was undergoing a course in seeing the time machine of the human being from being a kid to being a 70 something grandparent. seeing such viccisitudes of life certainly got me thinking as to pen down my experience tu all u people . I just got a feel of the frenetic city life and got a first hand access to see the various emotions and joy (encapsulated like a cricket highlights package) that go into making a train journey and i certainly had a visit down memory lane after my brief sojourn at Chennai central .

Seriously, however dirty Indian railway's may maintain itself , i guess my love for travelling in trains (with some one to talk to also!!) and making friends , wud never be eroded, by any level of modernisation.I would rate it a much better hangout than Ispahani centre and Spencers plaza . I like India for whatever it has , and accept it in it's present form , simply because i have a wanderlust for travelling and it's rubbed off in me writing this little piece.

If any of u have such interests in train journeys or anything that captures emotions or a fine xperience , pls do mail me at katchu21@gotmail.com , kartik_kannan@rediffmail.com

college these days is fun and it is on these days one has to cash it on these days , by coming to college and getting ur attendance. again we had a seminar in the morning , on certain management issues in the industry , which i felt was preety good, but the guys at college spoilt it by clapping the speaker ( or rather packing him off ) .

It is for this very precise reason that these days i dont take much interest in bringing any guest speaker to the college . I am prtesently blogging from the dishnet terminal at chennai central as i have to wait here for another hour or so , to pick up my father .

today i had a wonderful train journey from avadi to central along with a guy called b.karthik , who happens to be my classmate. there are numerous guys like him in our college who are getting freed from the clutches of a monotonous life before college ( only padips and tv) . he was recounting how he now likes to go and buy clothes for himself , as his clothes were earlier bought by his parents . he said that only in final year now , did he get to know what dress sense meant (after the ban of the uniform ) .

it's always fun , when u talk with friends on a long train journey , and he told me the info that our class was getting geared up for a tour to cochin and munaar in Kerala . I earlier had a lovely experience attending the partnership summit in hyderabad with my friends and of course that visit to amrita .

college as usual was kuthoo today with the first half spent in the cool confines of the computer lab , where the internet connection on my computer kept getting disconnected , and connected and ............ till i gave up !! . the second half was no sooner begun by sampath sir, we were asked to assemble in the auditorium for some function ( some senior going to australia- so bon voyage function) .

got some respite from the cat groups , that most of the guys attempt the questions on the CAT , only those that are familiar. i just wondered , how many guys could solve complex problems in just half a minute !!!!

There comes some point in life which may be called the "INFLEXION POINT" at a time when changes are rapid and newer techniques for success are called for .Life beyond the inflexion point may be either 10 times more rewarding or 10 times worse the current state. people who accept that times are changed and they need to reinvent themselves generally sail past the problematic "inflexion point " and the other's struggle to keep afloat , start to straggle and soon become a part of history . I thought this could just be a theory applicable to only companies , but realized that the student comunity offers more challenges while competing at that level .

well take for instance the CAT exam , every time I take a mock CAT I realize that my methods of solving a problem or practicing vocabulary are obselete by IIM standards ! ! ! and the national wise ranking would seem to suggest that my straggle is worth a serious look . It is during these times of tumult one has to keep courage and slowly but steadily reinvent strategies that are used in solving problems . at the end of the day , the guy who has succeeded , probably showed a little more grit in hanging there for a longer time with failures and raising the bar when it mattered .

One discovers all these thoughts only after a severe self reprimand when one sits down to do a logical analysyis of where the activities in life are taking him . All thats been said above is not by me , but my other half( not the better one ! ! !) my concience .

I find that currently i may hardly be a force to reckon with when it comes to tackling the combo of THE FAMOUS 6 (QUANTS,DS,DI,RC,VOCABS,LR ), but i've gotta go and sharpen my axe before i can slay the demon called CAT ! ! !

PS: till such time i slay the CAT , i have to get past the two smaller demons (but costlier by 1200 % than the CAT) , called the GRE and the TOEFL enroute to the CAT.


any of u people who are down and out preparing for these entrance exams , can share their current state of affairs with me and on this sobby article .

till then
KARTIK KANNAN
www.katchucrap.blogspot.com

it's sometime since i blogged . life currently is on a high reading many articles and being on the cat groups on yahoo , keep u awake like a hot rod on the arse .

my stomach keps me giving problems day in and day out , i donno why all of a sudden it's grumbling.

just booked for the TOEFL exam on the 11th of september .

well i seem to be jumping topics like hell , showing my desultory nature

err............ i am starting to blabber , lemme blog later

I am going mad at college , all due to some arseholes like BM( try and guess ) . Once college (BE) is over and i've got my certificates , I'l make it a point to thrash him black and blue .

There is absolutely no atmosphere at college and hanging out a 80% dumb crowd makes life even more sick . there are only few guys whom i can call decent enough to mingle with .

any more posts , and i will sound like " I am washing my dirty linen " on cyberspace

just as my friends ashish and kishore do i 've decided to jot down my experiences in hunting for a project .
It All started at ISG , where they do not offer student projects and the same at some unknown company . We are writing a test in a company at nungambakkam(name with held due to intense project competition !!!!) and today we landed up at tidel park.

last week 6 of my classmates(without me ) went to tidel only to be chucked out at the entrance itself , today we managed to improve by crossing one hurdle . that being the entrance . unless and until u know somebody inside , life is hell at tidel coz , each company has it's own security mechanism and see's guys like us , unwanted elements.

one cant even go into the lift as one has to clear a security zone ,which can be crossed only if u happen to have the company's swipe card and access card. lucliky we managed to go into sify , who asked us to come on friday .

but the only thing that went off well was our (myself,achut and joshi) lunch at the food court centre in pizza corner outlet at tidel , ground floor . we had a cheese pizza each and that kept our hopes alive of getting a project here. all the companies are ready to give a project as long u dont expect them to give u a place and computers to do it on.
their motto seems to be :DO WHAT U WANNA DO WITH OUR NAME ON IT (at home obviously), BUT GIVE UP ON THE IDEA OF DOING IT HERE.

Well , beggars are nor choosers and i guess , we've gotta be happy with whatever we get . lemme hope every thing goes well on friday .

finally the list of 10 is complete for the delhi trip and now everything depends on the P&P dept to sort out the money we guys have to pay for the marketing summit that we are scheduled to attend in Delhi on the 20th and 21st of august 03 . The only advantage of being in the college that I am is I have untramelled access to any of the CII events across the country and that is really cool .

the next two weeks are going to be all the more tiring as I have to hunt for companies for my project and the next 14 days we have our assmnt tests and mid sem exams ........ and most importantly that is precisely the gap i have to complete my quants portions for my mock CAT on aug 3 ...... That is some hectic work ..

i am currently immersing myself in this deluge of words from Economic times, Times of India and of course the 15th edition of Barron's GRE .

I find that my english which was stagnant for some time , is now facing an exponential increase in usage as well as knowing the meaning .... but it's gotta take some time to reach CAT level (probably a couple of more weeks) .

In college , we have to submit a mini project scheduled all too suddenly to be done in a month , other than the main project , and it is just getting a bit too cramped . but i guess i know my prorities , i am just gonna do the documentation and concentrate on my GRE/CAT preparation and leave the coding part to my fellow GRE candidates of my group Kishore and Achut coz they are more competent than me when it comes to the nitty gritties of the tech world

just feeling a little low as i see the competition for CAT , getting bigger and bigger. i've just gotta go at my own pace and see where i stand rather than rush with things . Our Chairman came and addressed us , saying that we dont do the events professionaly , as expected by the mngmnt . He said we should cll top level biz IT honchos for seminars and stuff rather than some local guy . It was nice to hear that at least some one in VT was talking like this , but given the current state of people working under them , I shudder to think this is gonna take a long homecoming .

Kareena kappor's latest quote went like this " I have only 2 friends, one is god and the other is Sooraj barjatya( the maker of MPKDH) . I cant help thinking in a similar vein as i keep fretting over something called a CAT exam on my blog. CAT seems to be my best friend and biggest enemy ( mock cat 1 !!!!) . A few days of sustained hardwork , i guess would drive away the CAT blues. (easier said than done) .


These days I am feeling empty at college , as no tech symposium posters are on the notice board . I am waiting for some respite from the drudgery of school ... err.... College.

Life is really moving at a frentic pace , thanx to the email revolution and the Bschool revolution as day by day , i keep seeing the voluminous mail i get from the CAT groups saying 3 hrs a day study , is not enough !!!( one struglles to make 2 hrs a day here) . I notice 1 thing for sure, this competition is either going to elavate me to the zenith of something called success or I may have to take to alms !!!!! in front of some "PERIYA KOIL".having only CAT in mind is a sure risk , as the nature of these Bschools admission is unpredictable , so i've been thinking abt a back up as my GRE EXAM( strictly only as a back up ) .

so waiting for life to unfold it's uncertainty's in the months to come ,but one thing is for sure , these moths of slogging is surely going to help me and i must conclude with a positive bent of mind , that I will make efforts to lock horns with the CAT and take it head on

phew!!! this is just where life begins for me . I am just getting 2 know the competition that is there for CAT , and belive me it's mind boggling. I still belive that I can make it to the grades of top b schools , by consistent hard( or smart) work . Just 1 mock cat is over and that pin prick is enough to get me going . I am blogging from Avadi , as i had some xerox work left and xerox works 66.67 % cheaper here than in the city .

I had my MOCK CAT on sunday and found that I was "mocked"by the CAT. attended college after bunking 3 days . well these guys in college( egg jam cell ) made me write the test paper 5 times forcefully bcoz i happened to miss the test yesterday.

thankfully tommorow is a holiday ,and that leaves me some time to get working on CAT.