Well I have decided to cool my heels in bangalorethis weekend.Bangalore seems to be my weekend holiday destination.Chennai's heat and Power cuts seem to have got the better of me.I will be put up at my friend prasanna's place at yelahanka.Its quite some time since i went there.I feel damn guilty of spending close to a 1000 bucks every other week scooting to bangalore,but what to do........there are some pleasures which are well worth the money.

Cognizant seems to have forgotten that they selected a candidate called kartik kannan, but to be honest I am least bothered when cognizant calls me for the interview as I am waiting with unabated breath to work at Infy.

In my circle of friends only 3 remain who are yet to get themselves a job......and I guess in a week that shall be decided.Prasanna might attend the TCS re exam in bangalore this week or the next..........sid has his interview tommorow at TCS and kishore has gone to allahabad for selection in the indian army.Just hoping I get a posting in bangalore,along with Umesh in hexaware and santosh in wipro ........all at electronics city........should be quite a trio.....(Achut..enjoy mysore da.........)

NIGHTMARE : If i needed one word to decribe this , it would be my TCS interview yesterday.I have never had such a worse interview.It was my height of incompetency....and that sure put me off for the rest of the day..

I am planning to go for a short outing some time this weekend ...as I am getting really bored sleeping at home.My mind batteries are really dead.Whaetever energy was left....was used by the TCS test and so I guess it's time to recharge my batteries ......

IT's RAINING OFFERS'


Today at around 6 in the morning I got up only to find a heavy downpour,I pitied the guys who were to take the TCS walk-in test today...sighed and went back to bed only to woken up rather rudely by the noise of the telephone.It was my friend Kishore on the call,who called up to ask whether i would be coming over to write the test today....and seeing the rain ...stop at I decided that I might as well go , give it a shot ...as there was no current at home and I was swaeting pretty badly...so i quickly had a shower and packed off at 8 from my place to reach there to find a 2 hr long queue.

Finally I managed to get a slot at 6 30 in the evening,betwen which i found time to peruse through Khushwanth singh's latest offerings at Odyssey,meet a girl named kritheka whom i only knew on the telephonic world and of course through the telephone.It was nice meeting her and I dicovered quite a nice hangout in T nagar that's light on the purse...Ram's Milky world.....Then i scooted off to my chitti's place in St.Thomas mount ,watched KOI MIL GAYA with my cousin sister and dozed for a while before which i was reminded that I had a test to attend at TCS.

I rushed in my bike to anna university,and found that the test was slightly delayed ,met up with a lot of my classmates who had attended the walk-in.I gave the test and gave myself no chances to qualify , but when the results were announced at 9 40 pm , I was suprised to find my name on the list.

Anyways I still have to attend the tech interview tommorow at their vadapalni office.Wow i can actually relax and go there in a cool mood with no tension due to the backup's i have in the form of CTS and INFY. But it was a great day .........when things happened...............

I am now a great beliver in the maxim........JAB BHAGWAN DETA HAIN TO CHAPPAR PHAD KE DETA HAIN.

IT's a little hard to belive that i ave exhausted the kishore collection in Music world and I really cant buy any more of the kishore-lata-asha combo's as it would mean more of repetition's and redundancy.Life as of now is really boring as half the day the current ain't there at home and to compound my misery is our very own CHENNAI'S SCORCHING HEAT.

I might be spending this evening most probably with achut and umesh (who's got a 16.5 k job @Hexaware ) . Life just seems to be chugging on...........and i seem to have lost all that competitive edge i had in quants and verbal......so i guess i wouldn't be going to write TCS's walk in tommorow at Anna University.

Bangalore 's got the edge over Chennai in the IT field simply bcoz of the weather conditions and the prescence of large IT majors. I had just been there and felt that this was one huge factor in influencing the mind of people.The pleasant weather kept me in high spirits and never for a moment did my bangalore trip seem boring. But as soon as the train hit chennai....The hot sun and the 35+ temperature had the better of me ....

I am back to doing what i best do in chennai,sleep,sleep and sleep more. Oh...I do prepare for an exam called the CAT in between..but seriously......the weatherand the high humidity here has a big impact in keeping me indoors. Even though many people talk highly about chennai and it's culture , ultimately what takes precedence is how comfortable the city is for living.....

But Bangalore after making it's great IT moves in attracting many heads of IT corporations recently had a faux paus....in the form of the partial ban on non-kannada movies,simply bcoz their industry is incapable of producing hits....This is unpalatable to any avid movie watcher.

So...the newly opened PVR cinemas at the FORUM in koramangala will remain empty at least for 6 months to come. By the way THE FORUM in Koramanagala is a smaller, but hip version of our spencer plaza...and houses the best of bangalorean chicks on the menu.Try it out , if u r vetti ...like me.It has a great atmosphere inside.....with large screen TV's especially in a restaurant called TRANSIT where i recently met up with 2 of my chennai based friends Joshy and Preeti.

E L A T I O N R E L O A D E D
.........................................................................


I just got a mail from Infosys technologies confirming my job there as a software engineer .

this is how the letter went .....


Dear Kartik

We refer to your application and the subsequent tests and interviews you have had with us. We are pleased to inform you that we have decided to make you an offer of employment as Software Engineer in Infosys.The details of your date of joining, location of training, and terms and conditions of the offer are currently being finalized.

The signed hard copy of the offer letter with the terms and conditions will be sent to you once the decision on the aforementioned details has been taken. This could be anytime in the next three months.

Kindly consider this as an official communication from our end.We look forward to having you on board.

as of now i am in bangalore , have come here to meet joshy , a friend ofmine in infy ...to ask him details about the training , the atmosphere at INFY and of course some info about the accomadation here.....

LAZING AROUND .......................

life is chugging on its own pace .......and when i decided to give it a mild acceleration yesterday.......seemingly brakes are being applied to stop the accelaration.when u want something desparate to happen , and u know that , the thing u wish to happen can change ur approach to life ...........and some people unknowingly tend to change that......then it causes dissapointment of a high degree... and that in turn makes u find out ways to reach ur goal........

well i am still searching for ways to get to my goal.....even as my ways are being squahed upon one by one, for the lack of clarity in them.........

It seems damn vague a post.........I realise that.........and so do u .........but the amount of hidden inner meaning that lies here is symbolises the saying "KNOWN IS A DROP, UNKNOWN IS A OCEAN........" as i lie fretting my luck............378 kms away........

I must say that SPB's voice perfectly fits into MOHAMED RAFI ....as i found out the other day at the music academy.I was totally lost in his melodious numbers from the "GUIDE" ,"JUNGLEE" etc etc........that i didn't even notice that fruity packets were being given away to the audience...(I obviously missed it ). I had been to the Music academy to attend the 7th Gollapudi srinivas awards function for movie direction. It was open to all , for attending the music concert........so i decided to spend some time cooling myself in the AC there and also listening to the melliflous tunes of MOHAMED RAFI RELOADED................

My bike seems to have been celebrating diwali a little too early......as it started to explode whenever i started the bike. Only later after enquiries from a Petrol buink did i realise that the bike had come close to ceasing , bcoz oil had not been poured for roughly half a month.

Prasanna seems to be really serious about hsi job hunt , which was guaged by the way he was preparing for the CTS test today. I hardly seem interested in preparing for CTS as i am hoping INFY will send across a mail from its side soon enough.

FROM KOOT ROAD TO HOSUR ROAD


Well KOOT road is ...(with no gravel......only mud and stones ) adjacent to my place madipakkam ,which I have to traverse daily to connect to the outer world ..(chennai is where the outer world begins :-) ). This brief article talks about how a solitary email changed the way i think and can possibly make my future (to be decided in 2 weeks.....stil waiting .... ).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX : koot road is in madipakkam (Chennai )
Hosur road is in bangalore (That's where INFOSYS city is located)
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Rewind a year back.............At approximately this time last year , our placement department head Mr Suresh had announced that a girl from our college of the 2003 of the IT dept(Radha rangaswamy) had made it thru INFOSYS and said it took months of hardwork and preparation to get there for her. I was listening to what he said with .......my eyes partially closed as i never belived a company like INFOSYS would actually be my destination , not even in my wildest dreams ........but today that line of thinking has changed, and this change has been only in the last 15 days.

Until july 18th I never thought cracking INFY was so easy , when my erstwhile benchmate and friend Achut got thru it with panache and he said all one needed was common sense and the right attitude to crack INFY .well that statement did make me belive that I too could get thru INFY incase i got a call to write a test (that was the biggest question ). but the night of July 27th changed all that....when i received an email from INFOSYS TECHNOLOGIES... That was when I decided it was now or never for me, as I am not too strong in the technical programming domain (cant use that as an excuse anymore ) and Infy was the only company whose testing procedures didn't involve an ounce of technical in them and that was much to my liking.

But again , things again dont come easy and if they do , they dont last long ............the maxim proved true .......as i had to literally struggle with preparing for Infy as my mind had become rusted by sleeping 10-12 hrs a day. Initially the first few days of preparation with the Books authored by Sakunthala devi and George summers was a nightmare as it took me ages to get an answer to a question , leave alone understanding the question and then the solution ! !
But the concept of preparing with like minded friends who also had the test on the same day as me proved a boon for me as together one realised that .........we were all in the same boat......and other than aptitude , one needed loads of confidence,common sense and a thorough revision of previous papers. The previous papers ........as always were taken from CHETANA groups , thanks to some generous test takers who had the prescence of mind to note the questions they had.....even though their english grammar took a serious beating......and it took us hours to decipher what they meant.

On the day of the exam(august 8th ), I had mentally prepared myself to the fact that I would be attending my interview at Infosys on AUG 9 , and not be joining Polaris at navalur. This positive feeling and a sense of desperation to get Infy made my 60 minutes at the test ........my road to destiny..........and I was happy that I could keep pressure to a minimal extent and could solve maximum problems accurately.

But in this road to success and destiny along with the good news there does tend to be the bad news that tends to seep in . Even though I had qualified , a couple of my close friend with whom I had prepared didn't get through .......and the fact of waiting another 9 months for the next Infy test probably was hard to digest for my friends, and i could sense the dissapointment writ on their faces as I had been through several such situations writing so many tests in this 4 month period and flunking them.

The infy interview the next day at the sholinga nallur campus went off very well. It was more of a conversation where I had to sell myself and tell them .....why INFY needed a guy like me...? I spoke about my hobbies , which to the HR ladies sounded a touch unconventional (Blogging,collecting cricketing stats,trekking and event management )..........I came out of the interview room a much satisfied person...........but still the final decision lies in the HR's hands whether she would like to recruit me to work for INFOSYS TECHNOLOGIES. generally it is said among people that if one is shortlisted from the written test for INFOSYS , then the HR interview is just a formality and the rejection rate is very low.............so I hope to qualify.........( I AM NOT JUMPING THE GUN...)

To actually know whether I did qualify for INFOSYS in their final list , just watch this space.
If i do qualify ...........It would mean that the journey from KOOT ROAD TO HOSUR ROAD would just fruition and would mark the end of a lovely journey (preparing for the exam,writing the test....etc) and the beginning of a life defining one .

Well finally comes the T H A N K S G I V I N G A W A R D S

My walkman (for staying with me and supporting me)

Achut (who helped me solve ... questions of past Infy papers )

sid,umesh,santosh and hari (who solved together, as well as wrote the exam along with me ).

KIRUBA (for introducing me to a unconventional hobby called BLOGGING ).

kishore,prasanna,devraj,joshy and ...vel-techies........for giving me various strategies to go about the exam

and a certain X ..... ( what are clocks and watches for anyway ? )
bye
kartik kannan, (kartik.kannan@gmail.com)
www.katchucrap.blogspot.com

GREAT WEEKEND

It was absolutely amazing feeling when i qualified the Infy writen test prelims. Today was my interview......and it went off well. 99 % i should get thru .......and should recieve my offer letter in a week or 2 .
as of now ........i am listening to bryan adam's CLOUD NO 9 and am feeling the same ! ! !

I have my infy test tommorow and incase i get selected( in the rarest probabilities) i might have to forgo my Polaris offer, but the road would be open to attend other entrance tests of various other companies like CTS and TCS.................HEXAWARE....etc etc....and of course not be bonded for 10k : - ) (thats my salary at Polaris)

Infy looks too tough to crack as the problems are mind boggling in george summers. I have decied not to lose sleep over these problems on the day b4 the exam. Tommorow will eventually decide where I go for work ...........more to say, it's like a high pressure semifinal ...INDIA(me) VS AUSTRALIA(Infy ) .......

How i wish i could release all my pressure my being here and not writing the test : -)

When one is sitting empty at home , time just flies... and i am just in the process of discovering that. As of now I seem to sleep more and ...........of course at times .....just thumb through some puzzle book to keep my mind and brains working at minmum efficiency..

DD seems to be playing KATI PATANG , the RAJESH KHANNA and ASHA PAREKH starrer of the 1980's in instalments from 11 pm to 12 am......and that surely is one heck of a movie i wouldnt want to miss.

P U Z Z L E D AND S T U M P E D .........

Those are the words to describe my state of affairs......I am literally drowning myself in solving puzzles from shakuntala devi and george summers for my Infosys test this sunday.... It's hard to solve and remember 600 odd puzzles .....which get converted to 10 on D day......so the probability of me getting 10 questions from these books is a rough is 600 C 10 ..(combinations...?)

I am literally fed up with the so called job hunt (more of a touring holiday ) that i have done for the past few months......I guess it's nearing an end.......and this sunday-monday should decide the fate of this job hunting story. I am no EKTA KAPOOR to prolong this misery .....till eternity...

I have received my call letter from Polaris and I am slated to join there on the 9th of august(just hope, my INFY interview....incase i qualify, dosent clash............).......

F R I E N D S H I P D A Y -

---what the heck is it all about............? each one giving an email .to others in a message that's CC'ed to every damn bum on the list ...heh heh........thats what every one seems to be doing without understanding the asset of friendship and what it actually means to them. U MEAN A LOT TO ME .......THATS WHY THIS ARTICLE

Hey i dont intend using this as a platform to say "hi guys , i still exist " but more so as a means of renewing our friendship and remembering the good'ol days when we friends spent time together....
Friendship is something that starts suddenly and unassumingly and is like a ship that never sinks,even in the mightiest of sea's of trouble. Many waves come in the form of petty fights,disagreements....etc etc ....but friendship is like the solitary ship that still carries on amidst the waves of trouble.These waves of trouble contain lots of relationship ruining moments ...and a strong frienndship lies in seeing the larger goal of "bonded for life" rather than reacting aversely in the heat of the moment bound by an ego.

Friendship as sung by the erstwhile hindi actor rajesh khanna goes like this .
try playing this song"deeye jalte hain" from the hindi movie "namak haram"

"badi mushkil se magar ,duniya me dost milte hain"
jab jis waqt kisi ka , yaar juda hota hain
kuch naa pucho , yaaron dil ka , haal bura hota hain
dil pe yaadon ke jaise , teer chalte hain"

"jaan bhi maange,yaar tho dede , na naaraz na karna "
"daulat or javani , ek din kho jaati hain
sach kehta hoon , sari duniya dushman ho jati hain
umr bhar,dost lekin,saat chalte hain..........."

which translates to ............

It is with great difficulty that one finds friends. whenever a friend of yours is going away from you, the condition of the heart, my friend is something that one cant bear. the memories of the realtionship which one shared with the friend stings me like an arrow .
For my friend, I can do anything ,to the extent of giving my life for them.
wealth,love and youth even though attracts.......eventually fades away ....and life becomes so bad to the extent to which , the whole world tends to become your enemy , as they eyed ur money and looks , not u ...........alas.........but my friend.................friends ........FRIENDS stay with u to support u throughout ur life......helping u overcome obstacles and staying close to u......irespective of whether u have a cheque book or not ! ! !
So friends, This mail as said before is to renew our friendship .......analyse how close we were,are and will be ...........it was great fun being with u , all these days.......and i truly cherish the moments we've spent together under the moonlight or sunlight (esp if ur from chennai ! ! !) ...

U happen to be in the elite friends circle of me,myself and ur's truly.........kartik kannan and so consider urself special in receiving this heartfelt mail.......(typed in the evening........missing india bat.........typing this mail for u lovely people ......that's how far my friendship can go :-) )
so ppl...........try and make an ardent effort to keep the lamp of friendship burning till Mr yama decides to come and take us via his placement program..............
bye
kartik kannan
YOUR FRIEND FOR LIFE ............

PS: if u did sob or felt emotional reading this mail..........please do send me a reply .I'l take it as a compliment to enrich our friendship further
love u
kartik kannan
www.katchucrap.blogspot.com / kartik.kannan@gmail.com)