Life in Mumbai Lifeline

What is the fastest way of inculcating the habit of 'not giving up easily'? Readers may have their own opinions but I can bet my bottom dollar that it has to be the experience of traveling in the lifeline of Mumbai, the local train during office hours on weekdays along the traffic (towards Churchgate in the morning and towards Borivalli in the evening) in 2nd class compartment. More than 350 people stuffed into a compartment of capacity say 100. At times, it takes more than 5 minutes to go to the gate on the other side of the train. Having said so, it is not difficult to understand the logic behind the second statement of this post. :D
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Not only that, you also learn several other important attributes like ‘fight to survive', 'struggle', ' make your own way'...and the list goes on and on. Recently yours truly also had the experience of traveling in such a 'learning environment' daily. Fortunately, yours truly is a fast learner and gets accustomed to new things very soon :P
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On weekdays, even the first class compartment offers you little solace. No doubt, there is always lesser crowd in it. But the two most important advantages are:

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1. The probability of finding your wallet at its suitable place is more as compared to 2nd class compartment and

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2. At the end of your journey, your olfactory system feels lesser burden.
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And take it from me- the last advantage is the biggest of them all. :P
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But then this is only one side of the coin. Locals in Mumbai are not only cheap; they also save a lot of time. If you need to travel say 50 kms, local may save up to say 2 hours on any working day. Also, locals seldom get delayed by more than 5 minutes.
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In a city like Mumbai, where nothing comes easy and where it takes hell lot of struggle for most of the people to keep the wolf at door, traveling in local is almost a necessity. To people like me, it not only gives a chance to witness different colors of life (and appreciate God for such a wonderful life I have been blessed with) but also a confidence to deal with not so good situations with a smile on my face. :)

Everyone was looking around!

Some facts about IIT JEE - 2004 Mathematics Paper :

Duration of paper : 120 minutes
Total number of questions : 20
Maximum marks : 60 ( 10x2 + 10x4)
Cut-off : Less than or equal to 09. ( IITs don't release cut-offs. However I came across a guy who scored 9 marks in mathematics paper and still made it through)

It was one of the most gruelling papers in the history of IIT JEE. Needless to say that candidates were tormented all through the paper.

A friend of mine, Animesh was one of the fortunate few who cleared JEE 2004.
This is what he said about the Mathematics paper of JEE 2004 and his secret of success.

"I looked at the first question for a long time. And after a Herculean effort, I solved it but my gut feeling told me that the answer was not correct."
"I looked at the second question. I couldn't do it."
"I tried the third one. It tore through my gray cells without producing any useful result."
"The familiar story repeated itself in the fourth question."
"Then I looked at the 20th question. Forget about solving, I couldn't understand the question either."
"19th question. And I thought to myself if I had seen anything remotely related to it ever before!"
"I was petrified. I turned the pages of 40 page question paper cum answer booklet back and forth, trying my level best to find one question I could dare to solve. There wasn't any!!!"
"Then I closed my eyes and thought that JEE-2004 was over for me."
"But what happened next, diffused all the tension out of my mind."

"I looked around the examination hall. Everyone was looking around!"
"And I smiled to myself - the game was on."

Their comments, My reactions

Whenever I write a new post, I usually take Orkut's help to make people read it. And I expect people to comment on it, criticize it and at times appreciate it as well. But then it seldom happens as you plan it to be. Some innocent people don't understand that they are supposed to comment on the blog and not in the forum messages. Also many a times people don't even comment when they are supposed to. But I find those people much better than the ones whose comments are something like this:

1. Hey you write very well. Keep posting.

You fool! It was the photograph that I wanted you to comment on. And whatever I wrote in that post was about the place where I took that photograph, the camera I used etc.

2. Man, I have already commented on this post of yours. But this deserves another comment. Nice post! Keep blogging.

You lazy ass! There are 15 other posts on my blog. When the hell did I say that you have to comment on the same post?

3. What a blog! Excellent man. Keep blogging. :)

When you commented last time on some other post, your comment was : Excellent man. What a blog! Very nice. Keep blogging :)

If you were in front of me, I would have made sure that you don't remain capable of putting that :) ever again at the end of your comments. :X

4. That was good inspiring post.

I never doubted your intellectual incapability. Forget about the post itself, had you read even the labels for that post, you would have understood that it was intended to be a humorous post and not an inspiring one. :X

PS: Genuine comments and criticisms are always welcome :)

IITian for you

Look at the pic here...it is of the answer sheet for mid term examination. The total marks for the exam were 25. The guy didn't know even the name of the subject and still scored 24 marks... ain't it incredible? :P :D ;P :)

The so called 'Cool Gals'

Mid semester break just got over. But very few fellas have returned so far.
But thanks to my short attendance in elective course, I had to be back on time. And since there was no one to talk to and it was utterly boring to be alone, I logged onto my Orkut account and started visiting the profiles of gals with ‘cool’ profile pics.
The stuff in their profiles is very entertaining. I find ‘about me’ and ‘ideal match’ sections to be the most hilarious ones. And here is what some of those ‘cool gals’ had mentioned in these two sections in their respective profiles.

Cool Gal 1 : Ideal match – An IIM graduate.
Why don’t you marry an ATM?

Cool gal 2 : About me – I am fun loving gal. Rest you can know after going thru my testes.
Just don't wanna go through your eeehhhh...What I know already about you has killed every bit of reason and desire to know anything more about you!

Cool Gal 3: About me - hey i m too talkative. i'll eat yr head.
Others haven’t left any.

Cool Gal 4: Ideal match: ummmm.. ma doggie n me!.. lolz.. i don wanna pair maself wid guys atleast 4 timebeing!..
Ahan...so confident of yourself? Ask a few guys too...May be after reading this joke of yours, even they would prefer a b**** over you!

Cool Gal 5 :Ideal match - A P J Abdul Kalam, ha ha ha, aur koi naam sujha nahi.
Apne Vajpayeeji ko kaise bhool gayi aap? Vo bhi kuware hi hain. Ha ha ha

Cool gal 6 : About me - i'm a good looking guy, simple natur,music lover,good in studies.....aur kya bataun.
Vaise bhi iske baad ab batane ko kuch bach bhi nahi sakta.

Cool Gal 7 : About me- my self is kanika & i think that is enough for me...wat abt u.

Ideal match - me & him.

Had you mentioned the name of the guy, I would have written entire post on him. Even you would have been spared :P

In my bedroom you will find: offcource me ...that's it....& nothin to show on orkut .its pesonal.
When did they ask to ‘show’ anything ‘pesonal’ ?

Well some 'hot guys' are also fast catching up with the cool gals. This one is from the profile of a hot guy from IIT.

Ideal Match - JIGAR hona chahiye usme....
That is why the outsiders say that IITians are different. :D :D :D

PS: The names mentioned in the post are changed ones.

Tryst with Destiny

Many people have asked me about my experience during my job interview…so it is for those all who wish to know my experiences…those who are not interested can stop reading right here.

The fateful day was 26^th December, 2007. The results of written test were out much before than I expected. I thought that the interviews for Tata Steel would be over before interviews for this particular company could start. But it was not so. I was enjoying music in my room and just then I got a call from Gautam Midha (thanks bacche!!!) that I had to be present at Jai Krishna Guest House within 10 minutes and that my name was first in the interview list. (What a start!!!)

I expected some 3-4 hour time for the interviews to start. I didn’t have even a copy of my resume that I submitted online for this particular company. So I had to take the copy of my resume that I had prepared for some other company earlier.

But I knew about this old trick of placement people of putting people under pressure so that the people reach the venue 20 minutes before the Interview panel itself. Poor placement people…they don’t have any other way.

But one thing that we all have to admit is that placement guys did a wonderful job all through…and are still doing it. I congratulate the entire placement team for the successful placements so far. Without all those night-outs by you guys our placement would have been awful.

Coming to the interview preparation, I had neither revised the SURA project nor the training…and I knew it from the beginning itself that if they go into the intricacies of project, I would be in trouble. On my way to interview venue, I just glanced at the resume…I had mentioned Economics as one of my subjects of interest. Fish!!! I had read economics a long time before…and was doubtful about many a thing. There was some uncertainty in my mind and I closed my resume and tried to calm down myself.

Anyways, I reached the venue some 20 minutes after I received the call. And 10 minutes later, I was sitting in front of the panel itself.

The panel had four people. Two of them were young people…around 28 years old, I guess. I shall denote them by Y1 and Y2. Then there was a man in mid thirties who asked lot of technical stuff during the interview. I shall denote him by T1. And the last gentleman was the senior most of them. I’ll denote him by S1.

Yours truly would be denoted by Moi.

There was some fear in my mind…and as a result I made the first mistake while greeting Y1…It was 2 pm at that time and I greeted him ‘Good Morning’… fish!!! What a start!!!

Fortunately Y1 did not notice it. (Lady Luck was probably on my side that day:) ) I shook hands with all of them. They asked me to sit. S1 asked for my resume. I again tried to calm down my mind.

Y1: Go through your background in brief.

Moi: Pardon (Wow…must say…a dream start!!! :( )

Y1 repeated the question.

Moi: Blah Blah…

Y2: What factors do you take into consideration while choosing a company for yourself?

Moi: I would like to work in a company that gives me sufficient opportunities to learn and grow, an organization where elements like integrity are inherent in the work culture…

T1 (cutting me short): How do you find about the integrity of the organization?

Moi: I get some idea about it through general perception and…

T1: (cutting me short again) So you don’t like to find out the truth and go with the general perception?

Moi: Sir, I said that I get some idea that way but that is not all. I try to contact some people who are already working in that company and ask them about it because every company would boast itself in its presentation and on its website.

T1:(agreeing) Very true. So what did you find about us?

Moi: I know some of my seniors working in this company and blah blah!!

Y2: What do you understand about the business function we are hiring you for and what would be your role?

Moi: Explained.

S1: You have written that you can do programming in C/C++. How comfortable are you with programming?

Moi: I am very comfortable (For God’s sake…don’t ask me anything!!!).

S1: What is the difference between C and C++?

Moi: (felt a little comfortable) Told them.

S1: Where do we find the use of C++ beneficial over C?

Moi: Told.

S1: And where do we find the use of C beneficial over C++?

Moi: Thought for a moment and told them that I din’t know. (Bullshit!!!…I had even programmed microcontroller…)

Y2: You did internship in Portugal and from your resume I see that its description is full of jargon…considering me to be a non-technical person, explain me your internship project and your role in it.

Moi: I worked on FPGA which is a semiconductor device…

T1 (cutting me short): Which semiconductor do we use in FPGA?

Moi: Silicon.

T1: Suppose I ask you to build a computer on Mars…how will you do that?

Moi: (where did that come from???) Sir, I will look for silicon on Mars :P

(Man, it was meant to be a joke…he took it otherwise)

T1: Mars does not have silicon. What will you do now?

Moi: (still confident of my wits, I said, smiling) I will use Germanium.

T1: Why germanium?

Moi: Blurted out something about similarity in characteristics of Silicon and Germanium (Man, I didn’t even remember which characteristics were they).

T1: Will germanium work on Mars?

Moi: (Now I seriously started regretting my decision to crack a joke there) Yes sir.

T2: Do you know that the temp of Mars is less than -75 degrees? How will it work?

Moi: Why won’t it work?

T1: What do you know about the effect of temperature on electrical conductivity of semiconductor?

Moi: (Read it in 1^st year and didn’t even look at that topic ever since) Blurted out some crap about energy band and energy gap. Also said something about the atomic theory and how the electrons come out of their orbits on supplying heat.

T1: What effect does increasing the temperature of a metal have on its electrical conductivity?

Moi: It would increase (shit!!! What the hell did I say? But I wanted to project myself as a confident person so didn’t back out)

T1: How?

Moi: Sir, the same concept…heating a metal would provide electron with extra energy and it will come out of its orbital.

T1: So what if I decrease the temperature of a metal?

Moi: Its conductivity would decrease.

T1: And what happens in case of semiconductors?

Moi: Its conductivity will also decrease.

T1: But Viraj, you were saying that germanium would work at -75 degree on Mars. How will it do so when it can’t even conduct? You are contradicting yourself.

Moi: (plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz come back to earth :( )

Sir, it will still conduct though to a very small extent. But it would.

T1: I don’t understand.

Moi: ( :(:(:( ) Then explained them the entire thing once again. But T1 was still unhappy with my explanation.

T1: What other materials can I use if I don’t have even germanium available on Mars?

Moi: (I thought of saying that I would bring a computer from earth…also Mars is closer to Earth these days. So bringing a computer from earth would be cheaper :P …but I was afraid to crack another joke…so started thinking…)

Y2: Probably you will have to look into the periodic table.

Moi: (with this welcome respite…) yes sir. I will have to.

Y2: So you were explaining your internship. Continue.

Moi: Sir, I worked on FPGA which is a semiconductor device and allows reconfiguration. The aim of the project was to design a multi-serial protocol IP core for 3 serial protocols namely…

Y2: (cutting me short) Viraj, I asked you that I don’t understand all that technical jargon. Explain me in simpler terms.

Moi: May I assume that you understand Boolean algebra?

Y2: Yes, yes. I know that much. And what is FPGA? Is it some hardware or software?

Moi: explained it well.

(I consider myself lucky in the sense that they didn’t ask anything about the technical aspect of the internship. I was not well prepared with that. In between Y2 asked for simplification of a few more technical terms but then I explained it well and Y2 seemed to be satisfied with my explanation :) :) :) )

Meanwhile Y1 was carefully reading my resume and was also observing my body language.

S1: You have mentioned that Economics is one of your areas of interest.

Moi: ( :( :( :( ) Yes sir. (I tried to sound confident)

S1 asked me something…I could not understand the question either.

S1: OK. Leave it. Tell me about price elasticity of demand.

Moi: ( :) :):) Probably knew only this thing in entire Economics course) Explained very well. I gave examples too. Also explained cross-elasticity of demand, Giffen goods, conspicuous consumption etc.

S1 seemed to be very pleased. In fact he was smiling as well.

Moi: (:D :D :P :) )

Y1: But there is one basic assumption that you are missing here. What is that?

Moi: (thought for a moment) Sir, the demand for any product depends on a number of factors…

Y1: (cutting me short) No, tell me the basic assumption involved.

Moi: (Thinking…)

Y1: OK. Leave it.

Moi: Sir, but I would like to know. Please tell me the assumption you are talking about.

Y1: That we assume that factors other than price remain constant while describing the price elasticity.

Moi: (Shocked…) Sir, this is precisely what I was coming to!!!

Y1: (smiling) OK.

T1: So your B.Tech project is on speech recognition. What is different in your project than the existing systems?

Moi: Explained.

T1: Are you sure that no such system already exists?

Moi: Not in my knowledge.

T1: What is the average efficiency of the existing systems?

Moi: (actually confused but tried to sound confident) 70%

T1: What efficiency are you trying to achieve?

Moi: (How could I comment when we had not even started? So thought that I should say a figure more than 70 so that I could say that we have improved upon the efficiency.) 80%

T1: When so many existing systems can achieve only 70%, how will you implement all those innovations that you mentioned and still improve efficiency to 80%? Is this merely a wishful thinking or do you know of any algorithms to implement it?

Moi: Tried to deviate him from the topic and told him about the hardware implementation. And explained it well.

Y2: Yes, OK. You have increased the data base, but we are asking you about the efficiency.

Moi: (All efforts in vain!!! :(:(:( In electrical engineering, the 7^th semester is as hectic as hell. CAT and GRE preparation takes its toll too. The results also indicate the sad story. People who never scored less than 7 scored 5 point something…8 pointers scored 6 point something and so on. Generally we all start BTP in 8^th semester itself. And now he was asking about the project itself. I could have told him the entire idea of the project, its applications etc…but by talking about the efficiency, he was asking about the actual progress so far :(:(:( And I knew it for sure that had I said something, his next question would have been…How are you so sure about the efficiency? Have you tested it? I was caught badly in their trap this time)

Moi: Sir, we complete the project over 2 semesters. We will implement our idea through both software and hardware. And we are working in a team of three. My other partners are looking after software implementation part.

Y2: Did they not tell you anything about software part?

Moi: No sir, I was concentrating on hardware part.

Y2: OK. But ask your partners about it too.

Moi: Yes sir.

Y1: Your resume seems to be full of technical stuff while we have come to hire people for consultancy work…

Moi: (Knew it well that I had screwed the interview and this made me fearless and so I cut him short and said…) what else do you expect in my resume considering that I belong to a technical institute?

Y1: No it’s OK. But I expected you to customize your résumé’s contents according to the company.

Moi: Sir, once we submit our resumes, we can’t change the contents…we can only change the priority order of extra-curricular activities and areas of interest.

Y1: OK. Do you want to say something?

Moi: Expressed my interest in their (and now mine too :-) ) company and told them about how am I suitable for it.

T1: One last question. What is your dream company?

Moi: Again started with my fatte ( for people outside iitr, fatte is a lingo here and generally accepted definition of fatte is – “the truth of life” :P)… sir any company which…

T1: (again cutting me short) No, but everyone has one dream company. What is yours?

Moi: It was ITC.

T1: was???

Moi: Yes sir…it came here on 4^th day itself.

T1: OK.

Y2: Any preferences for location?

Moi: I would prefer Mumbai, but any other location would also do.

S1: Will you be available for next one hour on this mobile number that you have given us?

Moi: Yes sir.

Moi: Will there be a second interview?

S1:(You idiot!!! let us find out whether you clear even this interview or not) May be.

S1: Appearing for any other company today?

Moi: (At this point there came a thought in my mind that he might be interested in selecting me) yes sir, GE.

S1: But it is late in the night.

Moi: Yes sir.

S1: Thank you very much for your interest. You may go now. Please send the next person in.

Moi: It was a pleasure meeting you sir. Again shook hands with all of them and came out.

As I came out, I noticed beads of sweat on my temple. But it was not because of interview itself. Actually it was becoming unbearable in coat.

Others waiting eagerly for me outside told me that grilling went on for more than 30 minutes.