Vignesh called me on the 27th, Deepavali day and in the afternoon we decided that we’ll be leaving for Karkala the same night to attend the conference. We got the tickets booked online and we were lucky enough to get seats for the return journey too, considering the rush due to Deepavali and the weekend, etc. But we were unlucky that we got sleeper berths in the last row of the bus. The journey was the worst part of the whole trip. Ghat section + Bad roads + Last Seats proved to be a deadly combination and we found it difficult to hold on to our seats most of the time! The return journey was even more horrible as there were no racks to keep our luggage too.

We over-slept and found ourselves in Manipal and when we asked the driver, he said we had already crossed Karkala, from where we should have taken another bus to Nitte. He told us to get down at Udupi and take a different bus. We took a bus to BeLmaNNu and from there another one to Nitte. NMIM was a great host, providing us with good food and nice rooms in their  guest house. The hospitality was incomparable to anything I’ve seen in any other college so far. One of the volunteer students also got his car to pick us from the bus stop to take us to the guest house!

There were a few talks and a few hands-on sessions on packaging and localization. I was new to Debian. I only knew that Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian. We got a nice introduction to Debian, its philosophy and how we can contribute to the Debian project. We enjoyed the technical talks and it was nice to interact with Jonas Smedegaard on a lot of topics including a small hack that Vignesh, Chandan and I developed in a night’s time without internet (but with some help from Debayan on phone)! We got a lot of direction on how to take it forward and make it a great utility and we also got help on some of the libraries we could use. I got to meet a lot of other debian contributors including Praveen. We had a great time with Sandesh, Shashikiran and Karthic Rao. There was a Diwali celebration in NMIM IT on Friday evening which we all attended. On Saturday morning, we visited the Bahubali Jain Temple in Karkala and after we were back, attended more talks.

On Sunday morning, Vignesh, Karthic, Sandesh, Chandan and I took off in the morning. We visited Udupi Sri Krishna Mutt, went to Vignesh’s house and then left for Mangalore. Vignesh took us to an ice-cream joint called Pabba’s and from there we went to Sultanbatheri, KudloLi temple and Venkateshwara temple. Our return bus was from Lalbagh and we reached Bangalore in a single piece on Monday morning.

A lot of things to write about

But not a clue where to start.

Here I am, starting my journey with my pen

It could be a long one or it could end right here.

When I start to ink things down,

Many a thought gush into my mind.

I hear one loud clear voice from within that says

“Do you know enough to write?”

Then I go back and think to myself

Do I publish it or move it to trash?

Once I’ve made up my mind I say,

Let me give it a try.

For there are wiser people

And those who know how to write

But everybody has their own views

About this game called Life.

Surprised I surely am,

glancing at the above lines.

And now laziness creeps in and makes me say

“That’s all for now folks, Let’s call it a day, Good night.”

Well, speaking of revival, I think the first thing that comes to my mind is changing this boring theme. Off to do that right away!

But a very common thing is that people have that hangover of the class for a long time after it has ended. That is good sometimes, but a few people tend to overdo it and try to apply some theory to everything, which can get annoying. It doesn’t matter if the class is really boring or if we have not understood a single thing in the class, but we never give up using the terms thrown at us in the class, which can be either due to excitement, anger, frustration or elation, but ultimately we make a person who has not attended it feel like they have missed something.

I was really surprised when even after a really hard-to-sit Finance and Accounting class people were discussing about credit, debit, assets and liabilities. The buzz words in IIITB have been changing with semester, time and subject. I remember the most talked ones at some point of time were IEEE 754, Finite Precision, Brooks’ Law, etc and have now given way to terms like Strategy, Planning, Credit, Debit, etc.

But our all time favourites have been (ask anyone from our batch) Circular Fallacy, Throwing the Book, Conformance Fallacy, etc which have been etched in all our brains and hearts right in our prep sem and will last for ever!

[Clearing my throat]

My dear Har-meet
What you did was not neat
Don’t be high on this feat
The next time you and RUthappa meet
You are dead meat
You have aroused the poet within me, thanks Harmeet err.. Dead Meat

[Applause]
[Applause]

Thank you. Thank you very much.

[Bowing]

Second one:

Pollard “The Dude”:

You should have proved

To your team rude

That though you are so crude

Had you been the prelude

To the other dude

Your team wouldn’t have been so nude

Just to conclude

You are the real Dude

I have never understood why people pay millions of dollars to buy some piece of canvas scribbled with something that nobody understands and may be the guy who scribbled it (called “The Artist”) also doesn’t!

Yes, I am talking about Abstract Art.

I have not been able to make any meaning out of any of those paintings till now (You can call me “shallow” for this, but I don’t mind ). May be that I cannot understand things at such high levels of abstraction. Each time I see one of them, I always think: “I can do better than that!”. And I see those paintings being sold at unimaginable prices, after a lot of bidding by some uber-rich people of the world. I can make a living by just selling one of them! So, here’s my attempt at it:

Any buyers??

I went home on Friday night and could see that the main road (Vatal Nagraj Road) adjoining our street was being repaired and it was almost done. The next day, the work was completed and the roads looked awesome and it felt really good to drive on them. After all, the roads were being repaired for the first time after 5-6 years!

Come Monday, and I leave for college early in the morning around 7.30 and I already find some people digging the sides of the road. When I went up to them asked what they were digging for, they said there was a problem with the telephone cables and they are laying new ones.

I couldn’t stop but calculate the life-time of the new road and I found that it was a whopping 2 days! And the amount of money that would have got wasted for these 2 days is overwhelmingly high. I did not want to think about the wastage of resources, time and money any more as I do a lot of it myself. I just thought how it could have been avoided. Had the two concerned authorities worked with some co-ordination, the life-time of the new road would have been at least 5-6 years instead of just 2 days. That is a 10,000% increase in the life-time (yes, if you don’t believe it, go and calculate) and the money spent on it would have been totally worth it. And the communication cost between the two companies would have been negligible. After all, it all gets down to the tax-payers, why do we have to care?

2 States is about a love story which starts at IIM A, between two people from different and contrasting states, Punjab and Tamil Nadu. The author contrasts the two states in each and every walk of life, the customs followed and even very small things which shows how observant he is and the great care that he has taken to mention tiny details. It is about how it is not enough if a girl and a boy love each other in India, to get married.

The author mentions his motive behind writing the book, which is very novel. He asks the very basic question – why do people in India consider the state ahead of the country? His dream is to see an India where there is no discrimination and pre-conceived and wrong notions between people of different states.

The book is best described by this part of the synopsis:

“In India, there are a few more steps:

Boy loves Girl. Girl loves Boy.
Girl’s family has to love boy. Boy’s family has to love girl.
Girl’s Family has to love Boy’s Family. Boy’s family has to love girl’s family.
Girl and Boy still love each other. They get married.”

This is best described in the scene when Krish is with Ananya’s family in a restaurant in Chennai and he proposes to not only Ananya, but the whole family for which he gets not one, but 4 rings! And they pick a ring each one by one. This is also the most hilarious scene in my opinion.

For those who are wondering whether to read this book or not, after the author’s third book “The 3 Mistakes of My Life”, which I have not read by the way, my suggestion is: go ahead and read it.

Then  one fine day came an interview call letter when I was sitting at home, wondering what to do next. My interview at IISc was just 1 week away. When the letter came and I got to know that I would get the Travel Allowance for the interview, I decided that I will attend the interview. It was on 6th July. I had booked a ticket in SETC from Bangalore, directly to Kalpakam. I had not booked the return ticket as they had mentioned that we may have to stay back for an extra day if we are called for the medical test and I had to meet a few of my friends and seniors in Chennai. I left home at around 8pm on 5th, Sunday. I caught the bus from Shantinagar bus stand at 9.30 and reached Kalpakam at 5.30 AM in the morning.

I did not know the name of the stop and I asked the conductor to tell me which stop was nearest to the guest house, but he never told me anything as I could not speak Tamil, apparently. Then I got down at the last stop, and took an auto all the way back. While I was traveling in the auto, I could see the sea beach which is inside the campus itself. The place is really beautiful, the campus is green and really well maintained. I just liked the place for its cool breeze, its beach, calm and pollution-less environment. I even made up my mind that if I got through in the interview, I would definitely work for DAE, there’s nothing like working for such institutions and serve India in that way.

I reached the guest house, had to wait for a half an hour as nobody had arrived at the reception. I met one more candidate who was from Kurnool and he had arrived some 1 hour ago. After the receptionist came, we were given two adjacent rooms in the officers Hostel just next to the guest house and were told to be ready for the interview by 8.30 am. Then we took some time to get ready, had breakfast in the mess, and started studying a bit (final moment preparations always work for me).

Then we went for the interview at 8.30 and saw that people had already turned up. There were around 60 of them. We were given a few form to fill and then we were given an interview sheet which had our serial no in the panel where we were giving our interview. Mine was CSE panel and the serial no was 7. There were around 20 people each from ECE, Mech, and a few other branches. But only CS had just 8 candidates on that day. So I started thinking that the chances are quite good. As I was 7th, I was expecting my turn to come by lunch time.

Then started the wait. The CSE panel interviewed each candidate for upto 1 hour! I was thinking whether I had the content to speak for 1 hour. It was 12.30 and we were asked to go for lunch and collect the TA from a room in the guest house itself. I came back again at 1.30 and started waiting again. I had met the person who had serial no 6 in CS panel. He was called at 3, and I was ready for my turn next. I was called at 4 and was told to wait outside the room till the panel called me inside. I was expecting the call at any moment, but again I just kept on waiting and finally my turn came at 4.30. I was almost sure that he was through. And yes, he definitely was as the clerk went and gave him the medical slip to appear for the medical test and he was immediately taken the medical unit!

I had prepared for only two subjects: OS and Automata. We had got to know that the panel was asking the candidates for 5 subjects! I was asked to write down 5 of my favourite subjects. I put down the 2 subjects and asked them if its really necessary to write the names of 3 more subjects as I had not prepared for them at all. They were prompting the names of a few subjects, but I went on and wrote DBMS, C++ and Data structures.  I answered the OS and Automata questions confidently and the rest, I tried hard to recollect and blabbered something.

Finally, it was an hour long interview and I was waiting for their decision in the lobby. They took more time than they usually took. I thought that I had created a lot of confusion in their minds, and so they were having a long discussion to decide if was to be selected or not. Finally, the next candidate was called and I knew that I was not through. I went back to room, kept the file, changed to casuals and was off to the beach, alone! It was a great evening, the sea waves had started reaching their heights, I could see a few boys playing volleyball and was told that a considerable part of the beach went under water after the Tsunami. I made a few more friends in the beach who had given their interviews as well. We all roamed around in the campus for a while and went for dinner. One of them was from Dharwad and we made plans of going to Mahabalipuram and then to Chennai as he had his train from there and I had planned to go there to see my senior from college, who is working at Wipro, Chennai.

I woke up at 6 in the morning, got ready and woke up Harsha and Santosh. We had planned to leave by 7, but we left at 7.30, returned the keys to our rooms and paid the bill, which was Rs. 40 per day and went to the bus stop. We caught a bus to Mahabalipuram (which the locals call by the name

Mamallapuram), reached there by 9 and went to the Shore Temple first, with all our luggage. That was the worst part of the trip, we had to carry our luggage all around the place in Mahabalipuram as there was no cloak room and none of the shopkeepers were ready to keep our luggage for a while, which is understandable! The shore temple, which has been struck by cyclone and reconstructed is a small structure by the carvings on the pillars are great. And its proximity to the sea and the peaceful environment there really made it hard for us to leave, we were just sitting there enjoying the breeze and the serenity of the place. We then hired an auto rikshaw and went to the 5 Rathas, inspected the structures there and returned to the bus stop. We had breakfast there and wondering what to do next. As they both had to go to the railway station in Chennai and I had to go to my senior’s (Rajendra) place, we decided to split and I took the bus to Adyar, where my senior lives. I reached at around 1 and asked Rajendra for directions. I reached his house and a sleepy Manish (Rajendra’s roommate who was working in the night shift in IBM) welcomed me and showed the way to kitchen, where lunch was ready and went back to sleep. I had lunch, watched TV for some time, read the newspaper and slept.

After two hours of sleep, I woke up and saw that Manish was getting ready for a cup of chai, I accompanied him, we talked about IT companies, engineering colleges, working abroad and what not and came back. Rajendra arrived at 5.30 and I was happy to see him after 1 year. His other roommates arrived and we were talking for some time. Then, Rajendra had planned for dinner in a restaurant in some IT park (I don’t even remember its name). So, Rajendra, Manish and I left and caught a bus to that place. Manish then took another bus to office. We bought dinner from Mc D. The place is  similar to Transit (Forum), Bangalore. My bus was at 11.30 pm. We were done with dinner by 9. But the bus stand (CMBT) was too far from that place, so I had to leave early. Rajendra came to the bus stop to see me off. Then he took a bus back to his residence. I reached CMBT by 10.30 and still had 1 hour for my bus. CMBT is a big bus stand, I had never seen a bigger bus stand than that and its really well maintained considering the amount of traffic (of buses and people). The bus arrived at 11, I got in and dozed off. It was a Rajahamsa, and felt really comfortable (much more than the SETC bus that I took to go to Kalpakkam). When I opened my eyes, I was at K R Puram bridge and was feeling cold (it happens when you reach Bangalore).

The 3-day trip was great as I got the chance to meet a lot of people, see a lot of places and ofcourse, I gave an hour long interview, which has been the longest and the most technical natured interview that I have ever given!

When I came home, as there is no proxy server here, I removed the proxy settings at all the places I could remember of: (1) In system->preferences->network proxy, (2) system->administration->synaptic package manager, (3) /etc/apt/apt.conf, (4) .bashrc, etc.

But apt-get and synaptic were not working. I searched a lot for the solution and all the results mentioned the above things only. Then I came across this wonderful blog: http://burakdd.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/removing-proxy-server-from-ubuntu-9-04/  and I learnt about this command:

unset http_proxy

which did the trick for me! Now, as I blog, the apt-get update is under progress

I thought that this has to be documented, so here I am!