A Final Goodbye…

A little late, but this is dedicated to my alma mater, TAPMI 🙂

 

A great journey, spanning two long years

Brought us many a joy, with a few tears..

What started as a dull and lousy day,

Has now ended in a real grand way.

Friends we made, along the steep path

Difficult it is now, for us to stay apart..

All those lectures we tried listening to

We will now miss (Oh yes! It’s true. 🙂 )

Love, heart-break and madness in bits

Did leave us all in really high ‘spirits’!

We part from here, letting bygones be,

Bidding a final goodbye to Life @ TAPMI… 🙂

TAPMI soars high!

I came across this video recently, and was really tempted to post this on my blog and on my facebook wall! So here goes 😀 …

New Day, New Life… Part 2 – EPISODE MANIA!

EPISODE 2010

“Hippppieeees, HIPPIES!”

“PIRATES, PIRATES, PIRATES!”

“Hum Hain WHITE WHITE WHITE!”

“MAFIA, MAFIA, MAFIA!”

…these were the phrases we heard all day for almost a week in the canteen, prior to 13th July. The seniors were wearing shades of Blue, Red, White, and Black, and chanting slogans feverishly! They seemed to be on a mission, out there to prove a point. Come July 13th, and we all became a part of this extravaganza…EPISODE MANIA had taken over, and we brought back magic from the Realms of Time…

EPISODE is an annual intra-collegiate fest held at TAPMI, to serve the purpose of senior-junior bonding, and to inculcate the quality of teamwork among the new batch. This year, we were divided into 4 different teams, namely:
• Hippies (Team Blue)
• Pirates (Team Red)
• 4-D (Team White)
• Mafia (Team Black)

One day before Episode kicked off, the seniors from the respective teams put up their inaugural skits, which was liked by all. This was immediately followed by allocating each of us into one of the 4 teams. I had a liking for the colour Red, so was very happy when I came to know that I was a part of the Pirate team!

The new PIRATES!

The first day of Episode had some of the literary events like Wordsworth (Poetry Recitation) and Kurukshetra (Debate competition). But the major event for the day was the Poster making competition, which involved all the junior members of each team, with the seniors pitching in regularly. This was the event that helped all of us really break the ice, as we got to talk to a lot of people and the spirit of working as a collective unit came to the fore!

The PIRATES making the poster

The following days saw a lot of events, some of them being the Fashion Show, Street-Play, Dance, Ad-Zap, Blogging Competition, Creative Writing, Exchange and HR Fora (2 personality-based events). All teams began pushing themselves up the points table, but team PIRATES somehow seemed to be lagging behind. There were only two big events with big points left on the last two days- Dream Theme and Valedictory, and one good day could seal it for any of the 4 teams…

During the Fashion Show dress rehearsals

It was then that the lead PIRATES decided to take a Risk… They put a LOTTERY on the Dream Theme, which was a singing competition where the entire song has to be composed by the group members, and the song should be sung by the entire group. Putting a lottery meant that if we won the event, we would get double the points awarded for it, and losing would mean we forfeit half of all the points that we have gained so far… so we decided to go for it, and put in all our passion and Enthusiasm behind our very own TAPMI Theme song…

And voila! We WON the LOTTERY! The first team in the history of TAPMI to have won a lottery! And what’s more, we jumped from 4th place straight to 2nd place!

Pirates’ Lottery-Winning Theme Song!

But things turned around during the Valedictory function. Team 4-D also put a lottery on the ultimate show-down, and thanks to some brilliant performances, deservedly won it, thus becoming the Champions of Episode 2010 🙂 ….

Whoever was the winner of the Fest, it was the spirit of TAPMI that shone at the end of the day. Looking forward to being a part of EPISODE MANIA all over again! 🙂

Senie Pirates!

Junie Pirates!

Samundar Ke Hain Raja Hum, Bajaa Denge Sabka Baaja Hum!

New Day, New Life… Part 1

TAPMI

This post is special to me in many ways….

• Firstly, it is my 50th Post 🙂 …took some time to reach this milestone 😎
• Secondly, July 13th marked a year since I entered the portals of Infosys. Although I am not a part of Infy anymore, I felt good to relive those memories of July again.
• Thirdly, its my first post after coming to TAPMI 🙂 … had been wanting to write since a long time now, but was held up by many other ‘constraints’ 😀

I reached TAPMI on the evening of June 30th, very apprehensive about where my life was headed. Staying away from home for a long time again was what I had been preparing myself for, but it looked a bigger challenge after stepping into the campus. My roomie had not yet arrived, so I has the whole room to myself for a day 🙂 …

We were called for a meeting by the seniors at 9.30 PM, immediately after dinner, as they wanted to brief us about the important rules in college. We were also divided into groups and told to perform certain events for a cultural show that was to be held 2 days later, immediately after the formal induction program. I had mentioned Dramatics as my area of interest, so I became a part of a random group of 9 people, most of whom later went on to be my closest friends in college 🙂

The 9 of us decided to sit in one of our rooms and brainstorm on the idea for the play… After a lot of thought, we got an initial draft ready which we discussed with our senie in-charge during the ‘interactive’ session in the senies’ hostel block 😀 (I guess the whole aim of this was to make us understand that there is nothing called day and night at TAPMI!). It was 2 am when we decided to call it a day, since most of us were tired after a long journey from our respective places. We decided to meet after the induction program tomorrow to start practising for the skit.

On the first day of the induction, we had to collect the schedule for the 2-week orientation and get our photos clicked for the college ID. The induction program was just like how a formal function would be. We had chief guests from different domains speaking to us about the importance of management education. We also had people from KMC coming over and talking about the Medicare facilities that we can avail, and certain important health aspects that we should take care of while in Manipal.

After the program got over, our team met to start practising. We had prepared a funny theme of a B school admitting famous people during the recession times, and we kept improvising on it as more people pitched in… My roomie Ajit had also arrived by then, and he fitted into the play at the last moment. There were 3 skits scheduled in the half hour slot, and ours looked the sloppiest during the rehearsals… but what actually happened during the actual show was beyond our imagination…. 🙂

Here’s the video of our final skit during the cultural show!

The cultural show also exhibited the musical and dancing skills of the new batch, and was an instant hit with the senies and the faculty alike! But immediately after the show, one of the lecturers gave us a very ‘pleasant’ surprise! We were told that we have an IT quiz in 1 hour, and as was the case, none of us were prepared for it…. but that’s how life is – Things come unexpected, and we have to learn how to deal with them 🙂

The next part of the series will come up soon, in my 51st post 😀 … lots to write about, but now I have a case to read!

T.A.P.M.I !

Well, I have been facing a writer’s block for quite sometime now… So finally, I decided to post something about my experience during the selection process of the B-school I’ll be joining in a few days from now… TAPMI 😎

After a long delay due to the technically hampered series of CAT 2009, I was happy that I ended up with a more than decent 96 percentile. I had attended interviews of K J Somaiya and IMT Ghaziabad before the TAPMI interview. The first one was bad, and the second was more than decent. So I felt some kind of momentum flowing as I went for my crucial interview @ TAPMI.

My admission process was scheduled to begin at 8.30 AM on 19th April 2010, at TAPMI’s new Campus in Bangalore. And what made it more interesting was the fact that I reached 40 minutes late at the venue! A couple of professors were discussing whether to allow me for the 8.30 AM slot or shift me to the 11.30 AM slot, but eventually, I was told to go to the exam hall right away, where the Case Analysis had just begun.

The Case Analysis was introduced for the first time in TAPMI’s selection process. Here, we were given a case and told to provide a reasonable solution for the same. The case was about an agency that serviced cabs in a city, and how they could make the cab drivers come by themselves to report defects in cabs before the customers do so, in order to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction. Since I was a ‘little’ late, I was given some extra time to finish my analysis 😀

After the Case Analysis, the interviews began. There were 2 rounds of interviews : the first one was a normal interview with a panel of two asking questions along with an Extempore, and the second was the director’s interview. I was in Panel 4 and mine was the third name, so I was relieved that I don’t have to wait for long before my interview.
My panel consisted of a lady, who seemed to be Konkani as well, and a gentleman, both of whom seemed to be faculty from the institute. For clarity sake, I’ll refer to the lady as L, the man as M, and myself as Me.

M : So Nikhil, what does your father do?

Me: He has his business in Peenya that was established almost 30 years ago.

M : So why do you want to do MBA when you have a perfect platform for yourself?! Your dad would not have done an MBA when he started right?

Me : Told my reasons.

L : Why did your marks go down in 3rd year in engineering?

Me : Told my reasons.

L : So what lessons did you learn? And how will you manage if you face similar problems during your MBA? As you know, it is a very rigorous course.

Me : Told how I came out of the problem I was facing and gave the example of my training in Infy which was also very rigorous.

M : What is your definition of a true friend?

Me : Told.

M : What are your hobbies?

Me : Told.

L : Oh so you are a blogger and you are writing a story?! What is it about?

Me : I’m writing a story about a software engineer’s experience as a trainee in Infy, Mysore

L : Oh that’s great! So did this story come out because you are a natural writer, or because you wanted a vent for your feelings?

Me : It was a bit of both.

M : Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

Me : Gave a detailed plan of what I see myself doing right after finishing my MBA.

L : That’s good! Ok, tell me something about Object-oriented programming. I’m not an engineer, so explain in layman’s terms.

Me : Most of my answers during college vivas were like a layman talking, so I did decently here 😀

L : Okay, can you tell me some of the features of Object-Oriented programming?

Me : Told whatever I could remember. (I had realized by now that she actually came from an engineering background, or she would never have asked me about the features of OOP 🙂 )

M : Okay, please pick a chit from here. This will be your topic for the Extempore.

Me : My topic was “Not keeping a check on one’s employees will result in a loss of money”. I was given a minute to think about the topic, and after that, I started speaking. I talked about how getting a right system in place will result in bringing a check on many manipulations that go unnoticed, no matter whether it is a small-scale industry, or a big multi-national.

L : Okay, we are done. You can wait outside for the director’s interview. All the best! 🙂

I was given a CD about TAPMI and told to wait for almost an hour for the director’s interview. The interview was a very general one, with the director asking me where I’m working, what my dad is doing, and whether I’ll take up the 60 extra seats under PGDM if they do not get AICTE Approval and have to be started under Manipal University.

Overall, the entire process took around 2.5 hours.

And after another long wait, I got my final confirmation on 11th May, 2010! I was among the Top 120 selected for the PGDM course at TAPMI 🙂 . My first convert in 2 long seasons, and a big one at that! 😎

July 1st is the day when I’ll get to go back to my native, on a long journey of 2 years, filled with a lot of excitement and hard work!

Status for this season

After a very long and hard-fought season, this is how my current position stands:

Exams Given :

CAT
JMET
SNAP
XAT
FMS
NMAT

Call/ Conversion Status :

SCMHRD – Rejected

K J Somaiya – Rejected

IMT Ghaziabad/Nagpur – Waitlisted

TAPMI – Waitlisted

BIM Trichy – Waitlisted

WE School – Results yet to be declared

Hope to convert one of the waitlisted calls. Otherwise, it is time to start preparing for season 2010-11 😦

Final sem memories Part 2 – Farewell!

We were given an official farewell by our college on 15th May 2009, which ended up being more of a photoshoot for us. Our department farewell was held on 29th May, a day I’ll never forget, thanks to our juniors 🙂 ….Much of what I wanted to post about our farewell has already been described by Bhavana, so I’ll stick to my version of the experience, and also my Farewell Speech 😀

Bye Bye ISE 🙂

It began with a sumptous lunch, probably our last in college…..This was followed by the formal events which included princi and HOD’s talk and distribution of various certificates for excellence in academic and extra-curricular activities. 4 of us (a guy and a girl from each section) went on stage to talk about our experiences in college, and specially in the department. I was the first to speak, and here’s my speech 🙂

My farewell speech

“3 years ago, when I got my branch change from Instrumentation to Information Science, I used to sit in class and ask myself WHY I took this step??! WHY I left the small pool which had all my dear friends and came to this huge ocean where I did not know anyone?? I had actually lost my way to my new class on the very first day, and told myself – NICK, if this is how your first day has gone, imagine how the next THREE YEARS will be! Will I make any friends here?? Will I find good project partners in final year?? Will I even SURVIVE till the end??!!!

I know, all this sounds very filmy, but this is exactly how I felt back then…..But as they say, whatever happens, happens for the good. Right from Stacks, Circular Queues and Friend Functions upto Inspections, Walkthroughs and Handovers, it has been a WONDERFUL experience 🙂 ! The kind of support and co-operation I got from all the faculty members at every stage has helped me a long way in becoming what I am today. I would like to thank each and every member of the teaching and the non-teaching staff for their extended help.

Being the Cultural and Literary Co-Ordinator of vo’ISE ( An acronym for Voice Of Information Science and Engineering) was something that really helped me develop my personality. Be it the Call for vo’ISE logo, or organizing the first ever TALENT SHOW and even hosting it, or developing the e-Newsletter website, each and every experience has been like a practical lesson that I got to learn; and all this could not have been possible without all my dear friends, each one of you sitting out there. All the fun we had helping each other during lab internals, the UNO games that we enjoyed so much during our “free-time”, the gola marathon in C-squared (our new canteen!), all the nonsense comments on each others’ status messages on Facebook, AND the great roller-coaster ride called P.R.O.J.E.C.T, everything will be imprinted in my memory for a long time to come………..

I also take this opportunity to thank all my juniors, especially the 6th sem juniors, because I feel they have been the sweetest batch I have come across. Hope your farewell is TEN TIMES as grand as ours is today, because you truly deserve it! All the best in all your endeavours in life!

I would like to conclude with my NIKKIMAN’s Thought For The Day, which is “Farewells are not something to be particularly sad about; its only when you move to a new place, will you meet new people, make new friends, have new experiences, make new mistakes, and learn new lessons!”
ALL THE BEST everyone. Have a nice evening. THANK YOU! “

After the farewell speeches, 4 more friends of mine gave away the mementos to all our teachers 🙂 ….this was followed by the juniors giving us our mementos, which included a notebook with our class photo on the cover page, and a cd which had a very touching video, and all the testimonials that we wrote for each other 🙂 ………

Memento given by our sweet juniors 🙂

There were some more events, like the Mr. and Ms. ISE show, which was awesome fun to watch! One more set of fun awards followed, for people who had proven to be different from the rest in some way or the other….there were awards for the most talkative person, the stylish diva award, the Roadies survivor award, the Kit-Kit award, the late-comer award, and so on…..each person had to give an acceptance speech, in reply to the great two-liners that were dedicated to them by the hosts 😀 . I was awarded the LINE-MAN AWARD for my funny One-Liners, although I feel I could have got it for being a great flirt as well 😛 …..

My award....hee hee 🙂

After all these events, it was finally time for the seniors to hit the floor for the last time…..Chance pe dance was the name of the game for sometime 😀 ….

We also got our INFO-ROCKERS Sweatshirt immediately after the function. This shirt was very special to me, because I got to be part of the designing team and it was my one-liner that was printed on it 🙂 …The GOOGLE that you see below is made up of all our names 8)

Give a man the code, and he’ll use it for a day. Teach him how to code, and he’ll be in the LOOP forever!!

The design on the back of the sweatshirt

To end what has been a pretty long post, I would like to say that the last 4 years hav been an invaluable experience for me. I can’t imagine the number of friends I made in this mini-city called M.S.R.I.T, and now, I’ll be leaving many of them, hoping to see them as happy and as cheerful as they are now 🙂 …..Sayonara M.S.R.I.T …..will miss you for sure 🙂

Final sem memories Part 1 – Class Trip

I have been wanting to return for quite sometime now, but somehow, things kept coming in the way. Firstly, I’m very excited to announce that Arpit has awarded me the “Versatile Blogger” award 🙂 ….its a great honour to get this award for a blog thats only 39 posts young…Thanks a lot Arpit 🙂

In a few days from now, I’ll be done with engineering. There are a lot of memories that I’ll take with me from college, many of them from my final semester. I thought of sharing a few of those memories here, starting with our ‘oh-so-secretive’ class trip to Belur, Kemmanagundi and Udupi 😀 …

It was on the 4th of April that we started off from Polar Bear, on what was our first (and only one so far!) overnight class trip. Everyone gathered by 10 P.M, and we were on our way to our first destination – Belur…and if you thought that a night journey was very dull, you were badly mistaken. There was not a single moment of boredom, what with music and dance, people laughing and enjoying, and waking up those who were trying to sleep for sometime 😆 ….amidst all this fun and frolic, we reached Belur at around 3 in the morning, after a brief halt at Chennarayapatna.

After taking rest for about three hours, we headed towards Kemmanagundi, where we were to trek up to Z point. It took 2 hours to reach the base, after which we trekked for almost 8 kms….on the way, we saw a small park with statues of Ram and Sita, followed by a stream which became a popular photography zone 😛 …(and where I had an awesome fall 😐 ) …we split up into many small groups depending on our speed of walking, and our group went slightly ahead of the others. We were guided till the peak by a smart doggie, which seemed to know every nook and corner of the place. The sight from the top was breath-taking, offering a captivating arial view of the distant Shola grasslands in the undulated Western ghats. It was almost like we had reached the top of the world! 🙂

All of us on the way to Z-point

View from the top

After lunch, we headed to Shanti falls, which was supposed to be very close to the base. Quaint and untouched, Shanti Falls is quite a favourite with travellers to Kemmanagundi. Access to the falls was possible only through jeeps, which looked like they belonged to a museum! After what seemed like ages of travelling on agonizingly bumpy roads, we reached the falls. We had to cross 3 slippery streams to actually get there….but in the end, it was worth it!!! Shanti Falls, gently and beautifully blended with the surroundings, is a small, yet breath-taking fall, with an inimitable power of making one feel relaxed and removed from the bustle of daily city life. I had not expected any falls to have so much water in the middle of summer! And icy cold water too! We played in the water for sometime. A little more time in the water and we would have become ice-cubes! 😀

Shanti Falls

Another bumpy 1-hour drive in the ancient jeeps, and we were back to our bus. It was around 8 PM when we finally started on our way back to Belur. A Kannada movie starring Golden-Star Ganesh was being played in the bus, but I (and everyone else for that matter!) was too tired to do anything but sleep! We reached our hotel at 11.30, and had dinner on the terrace at midnight. Some of us went for a stroll upto the famous Belur temple after that, which was just a few metres away from where we were put up.

The next day began as early as 6 again, and we headed out towards Udupi. The journey through the ghats was refreshing to say the least! An hour’s delay meant that we reached Malpe beach only by 3.30 in the afternoon, going via Manipal and Udupi….from there, we boarded a ferry to St. Mary’s island, which is about 5 kms away from the shore. I was very excited about going to the island because, inspite of this place being so close to my native, I’d never been there before! Once on the island, all of us eagerly plunged into the sea…the warm sea water was a stark difference from the falls we had experienced about 24 hours ago 😀 ….but was as much fun nevertheless!

St. Mary's Island

We still had a little time to explore another coast of the island, before catching the last ferry back to Malpe. We stayed on for some more time at Malpe beach, more so to see the sun go down on a beautiful day…..we took some time to freshen up in a hotel in Udupi, and post dinner, were on our way back to good ol’ Bangalore! 🙂 ….

Truly, this is one trip I’ll remember all my life. Although it lasted for just a little more than 2 days, the memories associated with it are countless ……………… 🙂 ….I’m hoping and praying that we get to go for one more trip after our exams!

S.R.S = Software Requirement Specification? 🙂

What Next?

I’m back!!! 8) Well, the new year has been quite eventful so far….a semester exam on the very first day, CAT results, a couple of not-so-good management entrance exams, and Infy Training….My CAT results have put me in a sticky position ( I got 94 percentile btw!) , coz I’m not able to decide whether to continue with my admission process, or give myself more time to sharpen my skills and attempt again next year. Anyway, I’ve applied to a few good B-schools now; will cross the bridge when I come to it 🙂 ….

Infosys training has been good fun so far though…atleast there is something useful to do than to rot at home 😛 …we’ll be having a test on the 19th of next month, and that might decide who joins the company when, or who gets chucked out first! 😀

I got to watch a few movies too…..GHAJINI rocked!!! 🙂 ..Slumdog Millionaire was brilliant……and Dasvidaniya was really meaningful….I loved all 3 of them 🙂

Lastly, Nikkiman’s Philosophical Thought for the day :-
The earth is round and it is rotating. Therefore, even if you stay stationary, you’ll be going around with someone or the other, and at a pretty high speed. So all you singles out there, DON’T feel too bad! 😀 😛 😆

Nikhil’s Law Of Exponential Interests

This is how my status has changed over the last three and a half years of engineering. It won’t be long before the curve touches the X-axis

Niki's Exponential Curve