Now that’s what I call Farewell

Friday was a busy day. My overall attendance in my courses allowed me to skip the classes in the morning. As a result I took the liberty of starting my day rather late. The evening and night was promising as there were 2 events planned. First there was the Farewell from our department and then there was the Farewell from the hostel (called ‘Kheech’ which means ‘pull’ as in ‘leg pulling’).

All those concerned were fairly excited about both the events. The first one was to include dinner and cake while the second one was to have snacks and drinks. But after the events, I realized that they were just add-ons.

The Department Farewell provided an opportunity for our entire class to unite, probably the last one. Though it started a little late, as usual, sometime in between I felt that it should never end. Almost all the department students from the 2002 batch were present as well as many from the 2003 batch (the ones who organized) and other juniors. The initial delay was mainly due to people not making the effort to reach in time and to some extent the organizers wanting a little more time. I and my group flocked the back row of the room in which the farewell was being held, maintaining the tradition of being the backbenchers.

The students were not that willing to part from their own groups initially and so when they saw that there was tome until the event began, started their usual conversations and what ever they do in their groups. I felt that the entire motive is being lost for this is nothing new and we do not need a special event for this. The organizers may have realized that the crowd may be getting a little restless and so the program started with one of our batchmates singing a song. The entire room went silent and flashes from all kinds of cameras were seen.

However, after that the stage was open for anyone who wished to show his/her talents. Back, in our group we were planning to do our own thing with some songs. Though two guys were called on stage they rather passed the onus on the audience and rightly so. So some suggestion was required for a song, the whole batch can sing in chorus. I seized that opportunity and forwarded the song we had been planning to sing in our group, namely ‘Jhuma Chumma’.

The song was sung and half but only by half the class as the other half was busy laughing at the choice of the song as well as the lyrics. The song was followed by prize distribution which I give a damn to (I have not even heard of the events) and a small speech from one of the professors for which I cannot be more unconcerned.

Backstage the first yearites were busy preparing a skit and a dance performance. These brought about the energy in the party. Meanwhile, we were joined by two other professors who also gave their speeches. While the first one talked in a traditional fashion about ‘… this is also a time of introspection …’, the second one was telling us about what not be in 10 years from now, namely a professor. The latter was desperately looking for some words to say to us but he did manage to come up with ‘… The fun part is over and now there would be many problems you would have to face in your future life, first of them being Hair Loss … ’. The audience had their best laugh in a while as jokes and sarcasms kept poring in.

Finally, there were the titles given to each outgoing student. Most of them were more than appropriate and it was a nice way of telling what image the entire batch has of a person. This was followed by the cake cutting ceremony by one of the faculty (as there was a chance of a fight between the students). The cake satiated the hunger of people’s clothes more than anything else. This may be a way to remember the farewell and also the dress you wore. The dinner was also quite satisfying, even though made available after some half an hour.

Overall, it was out and out fun. I regretted not being part of the farewell last year as an organizer. One thing which I also saw was the students are so much terrified by the professors that, they get scared even by the thought of the professors being offended in any way. So, there was none of the Professor bashing as one could expect from such a farewell. The other farewell was also fun but may be in some other post.

What is your profile?

I talked about the creator of Orkut in the last post. Well, I did not venture to find if he had a profile on Orkut. One of my friends Mr CB (who I supposed must have read the post and as always went on to think that extra) took the pain and found his profile. Here is the profile of Orkut Buyukkokten. For the people who had wanted to know the person with the highest number of scraps, there is something to rejoice. At the time of writing of this post, the number had reached 356096.

However, keeping the name of the site the same as that of the person, may actually get confusing. Like in his first testimonial, somebody has written that “I love Orkut!”. Now which Orkut is he trying to mention – the person or the site. If it is the latter then I identify with his feelings. But if it is the former, than he would like to go alone. Some people have argued that this is a fake profile. Well on the face of it, there does not seem to be such a probability but there is always a possibility. Also, many people have asking him, via scraps, questions about Orkut – the site. I saw a scrap asking him who has the maximum number of friends on Orkut. Come on people give him a break (whoever it be, the real Orkut or someone in disguise). I am sure that you might be wondering that I have nothing to do and am whiling my time in such activities. But I assure you that it did not take much time.

But I am not sure why someone would like to make a fake profile. I see that it may be a source of entertainment for a while. But after sometime it would get boring. One profile I definitely believe to be fake, is that of Swami Ramdev. Just the look of the page tells you so.

I will leave you with another flick from Sholay.

TECHNOLOGY SHOLAY

Amitabh: Mausi ladka "Infy" (no offence meant) mein kaam karta hai...

Mausi: Hai raam...

Amitabh: Aajkal allocated bhi hai...

Mausi: To kya kabhi unallocated (i.e. bench pe) bhi

rahta hai????

Amitabh: Ab C rating waalon ka allocation itni asaani

se kahaan hota hai mausi...

Mausi: To kya C rating bhi aati hai uski????

Amitabh: PL se ladaai karne ke baad A ya uske upar ki

rating to nahin na milti hai mausi...

Mausi: To kya ladaaku bhi hai????

Amitabh: Ab onsite jaane ko na mile to ho jaati hai

kabhi-kabhi anban...

Mausi: To kya onsite bhi nahin gayaa aaj tak????

Amitabh: Ab civil engineers ka Visa itni jaldi kahaan

lagta hai mausi...

Mausi: To kya ladka civil engineer hai???? Engineering

kaun se college se kiya hai????

Amitabh: Bas uska pataa lagte hi hum aapko khabar kar

denge!!!!!

Amitabh: To kya main rishta pakka samjhun mausi??

Mausi: Bhale hi hamaari ladki call center waale se

shaadi kar le, par Infy waale se kabhi nahin

karegi.......

Sholay (Software Engineer Remix)

After some initial euphoria in the placement season, I have been made to come face to face with reality. Though God was kind enough to convert my first interview into an offer, what followed was nothing much to write home to. Some off campus opportunities came my way but I was not able to go ahead of the initial rounds. Recent example is that of ML. On the other hand performance at all the IIM were far below average. My relatives are starting to say that it has been long since they heard any of my new success. They say that they have become a little accustomed to listening these.

The tussle which goes on between Google and its competitors sometimes has its toll on the consumers. Take for example, Orkut. I know that the service has been named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. But for me it stands for Orkut Really Keeps Us in Touch. I have talked about it previously, but the “gains” are increasing day by day.

My settings on orkut say that all my scrap alerts and friend alerts should reach on my Yahoo account. Most of the time it does but sometimes instead of reaching the Inbox, it is found in the Bulk folder. I doubted if Yahoo intentionally does such a thing. I know that Yahoo is too big a company to get involved in such kinds of petty activities but you never know.

Also, recently I found this on an Orkut Help page.

“Some users have reported that they're not receiving messages in their Hotmail inboxes. If your friends are not getting their invitations and they use Hotmail, you may want to try sending it to an alternate email address.”

The Orkut people say that the work is in progress to fix this bug. But may be they are the ones who implanted the bug in the first place.

Enough of the speculations. Now this is for those who loves Sholay and remembers its each and every dialogue.

Gabbar sends Kaalia and two others to Ramgad to collect the loot-maar software he had ordered.

They reach Ramgad and start shouting: "Abe O thakur! Kahan hai woh loot-maar software? Last date to kab ka nikal gaya".

Thakur [with anger]: "Chillao mat! jaakar Gabbar se kah do ki Thakur Software walon ne paagal kutton ke liye software banana bund kar diya hai."

Kaalia: "Bahoot garmi dikha rahe ho thakur? Koi naye programmers hire kiye hain kya?"

Thakur: "Nazar uttha ke dekh, Kaalia, tere sar par powerbuilder chal raha hai."

Kaalia looks up and sees Viru (Dharmendra) working on a PC on one Water tank and

Jay (Amitabh) on another, using a laptop.

Kaalia Starts Laughing and says: "Ha ha... thakur ne freshers ko liya hai ye log Programming karenge? In ko to DOS commands bhi nahin aate."

Veeru shouts: "Chup-chaap chala ja kutte. Hum log consultants hain, Kuch bhi kar sakte hain."

Jay hits his keyboard, then says: "jaao kaalia, Gabbar se kahna ki uska server down ho gaya."

AT GABBAR'S DEN...

Gabbar: "Kitne bugs the?"
Kaalia: "Do sarkaar."

Gabbar: "Wo do! Aur tum teen. Phir bhi fix nahi kar sake? Kya soch key aaye ho? Gabbar bahoot khush hoga? Naya assignment dega ...aur increment bhi? Iski saza milegi... barobar milegi."

[Snatches an X terminal from Sambaa]. "Kitne sessions hain is machine mein?"

Sambaa: "Chhey sarkaar."

Gabbar: "Session chhey aur programmer teen. Bahoot naainsaafi hai." [logout - logout - logout]. "Haan ab theek hai... ab tera kya hoga" Kaalia?"

Kaalia: "Sarkaar, maine aapka code likha tha."

Gabbar: "To ab documentation kar!

plz suggest a title..........

Last few posts have been about fairly serious issues, thanks to our major contributor Mr. AA. But still I would not underestimate the sense of humour of any of our contributors. Mr. KS & Mr. AA are capable of being at their sarcastic best when it comes to tickling the funny bone.

Speaking of kind of senses of humour that different people possess, I recall my conversation with our batchmate Mr. RG about the following state of our batch. According to him 90% of our batch possesses a very much wierd sense of humour ( might just be that it is wierd for us because we fall into the rest 10% but I sincerely believe otherwise). After a bit of discussion we reached the conclusion that it is the chill janta of his hostel(Ara) and mine(Shiva) that actually get along very well together than as compared to the rest of the batchmates because of this reason only.

This "alliance"( I don't know why I am coming up with this poltu season vocab ) of our 2 hostels has taken a new turn with us getting together to play Cricket in the evenings. About that, we do manage to have a Shiva vs Ara match everytime we play.

I am also thinking of putting up the on field news(as a post) from the matches that we play( with or without Ara ) and on the performances of the players. For the introduction of each individual player, wait for the next post.....

.... Note: This post is a result of sheer boredom resulting from waiting for simulation results in the Lab.
So if u find it much ado about nothing........
......
.....
...... i'm "SORRY" courtesy F.r.i.e.n.d.s. Season 9 TOW Emma cries :D

How to adopt a baby from China

If you have a Google account, you can sign in before searching for anything and Google will keep track of what you are searching and somehow modify the results according to your history of searches. Also, your personalized Google homepage has a lot of options to select from. You can look at the day’s weather or look at all the headlines or maybe look for where a movie is being screened.

One interesting feature is the ‘How-to of the Day’. Google takes it from the WikiHow site. As the name suggests it is a wiki site and so anyone can edit it. So you can search from previous ‘How to’, request for a ‘How to’ and even start a new ‘How to’. However, to start a new ‘How to’, you need to fill in a whole lot of things so that your audience is satisfied with your description. The things you need to fill include:

1. Title
2. Summary (An overview of the task that pulls the reader in More Info)
3. Steps (The main section giving step by step instructions explaining how to do it)
4. Tips
5. Warnings

One interesting ‘How to’ was ‘How to adopt a baby from China’. Why did this ‘How to’ spring up in the first place. Adding to that it occupied the top slot in the list of Featured Articles. Is it that people have started viewing China as the manufacturing hub of people, apart from other things they are using which are ‘Made in China’? Or may be people realize that, since China has the largest population, it also offers the best choice. The page also shows the photograph of a Chinese child with the caption ‘Perhaps your newest family member’. I think if that child belongs to a family, and the family is not willing to let someone adopt the child, they should sue whoever included the photo.

Moving further, an article about the B.Tech project of my friends, Mr. NJ and Mr. SS came in the Delhi edition of the newspaper, Hindustan Times on Thursday. It was about a surveillance system they are developing. It was kind of an achievement which was to be followed by their interview on NDTV. We all waited switching between the many NDTV channels. However the interview was not aired on Thursday but is expected to air sometime on Friday or Saturday.

I read the article in the newspaper and was quite happy at the prospects of getting a treat. Mr. NJ had also mentioned my name to the journalists but somehow it did not appear in the article. He had mentioned about me being the source of his inspiration, and how it was because of my moral support that he was able to come to this point. The journalists took his honesty for modesty. Everyone here knew how my mentorship was behind all this, and so were lamenting. Also, it should be kind of embarrassing for the people of the hostel of Mr. NJ. These people had given the Best B.Tech project award to someone else last week. The candidates for the award were those who had voted for them in the hostel elections some days before.

Contact me

A lot of things are going on these days. Firstly there is the confusion regarding my future career path. The comments would show the varied opinions. Secondly, my final semester is going for completion – no need to mention the lack of effort required for that. Also, I have been trying along with one of my friends to prepare some images for the promotion and proliferation of Myself Speaking™. We are trying to persuade some well known personalities to be the brand ambassadors. The talks are in progress and in the near future you would definitely something to look forward to.

Regarding IIMs, one pleasant surprise was that I have also been selected for IIMI (IIM Indore). Initially the IIMI site was not ready to speak out but after some high stress torture using Date of Birth manipulations as the weapon, it had to confess. Though I do not plan to go to IIMI, given that I have two better offers, but it was psychological win. Now my score was 2/6. The only surprise was IIMC and the irony was that it consisted of my best performance among all IIMs.

Moving further, the only revolution which has come in the last say, 50 years is that of communication. We are moving towards an age where the distance between people has decreased tremendously, atleast technologically. There have been rapid advancement and almost daily we come across new technologies being innovated and adopted to bring it to everyone’s doorstep.

Everyone has experienced it. For example, during school time we were not that much exposed to internet etc. So, after school, I had no contact with my school friends. Many of them had moved, do not know where, either for studies or because their families had to relocate. Once in IIT, I had tried to search for them through the web but to no use.

Then an initiative was taken with the Names Database. It was an idea which was required and had great usage. It planned to bring users of the web together so that anybody on the net can find anyone else and contact him. However, it did not take off. The reasons I believe are the cumbersome tasks which a registered user has to go through before he is able to search for other people. A user had to provide some 24 distinct email ids. These email ids should be such that they do not belong to people who have already registered. Now, 24 is a big number. So, after some time, users lost interest.

However, the objectives have been achieved with the coming up of various social networking sites. So, recently I managed to catch up with almost all my friends using one such social networking site. They were surprised (I hope pleasantly) as was I. Not that I was able to chalk out many serious plans or perform concrete tasks with them but the fact that we were electronically in contact brought back a sense of association.

However, the number of social networking groups has increased to an unmanageable number. Every person cannot keep track of all of them. So, what is required is that one finds a group on which most of his friends are present and not go on registering for every run of the mill networking group.

Down to the dogs

The state of IIT Delhi hostels has gone from bad to pathetic these days. As if the prevalent mess “food” was not touching the seabed in terms of their quality, a new way to make it go even deeper has been introduced. Machines which would be making part of the main course (The main course is the only course served). And the products of these machines are definitely taking the popularity of the food to rock bottom levels. Meanwhile, the butlers are happy – though not very much visible – as it would mean less work.

But this is nothing if you read below. There is no provision for internet access at the hostels. The students have been barred from using proxies for fast internet access. The connection speed these days is so slow that before going for our food at the mess, we open a page on the net so that when we return, atleast half the page would have been loaded.

It all started when the people from the Computer Science department started noticing, that there has been much use by the students of the privilege of proxy. The usage had lead to deterioration of the speed of net access for everyone. So, the administrators felt why everyone (read faculty) should suffer. Let the culprits (read students) bear the burden. So, they barred anyone from using proxies.

The aftermath has been pretty disastrous. We have no way to check our mails. So, our mail accounts which never had more than 2 unread messages at a time has grown so long, that we have to visit pages after pages to see the list of unread messages. Many students like myself who are not fond of visiting laboratories, now have to succumb. We had avoided these visits, in our entire stay at IIT, even in difficult times of assignments. But the net access trick finally bowed us out.

But the laboratory scene is not quite romantic either. These laboratories, which once saw an outflow of students only at times of project presentations and assignment demonstration, have lately been filled. Well, ‘filled’ is rather understating. There is no room at all. The usual inmates of the laboratories are still present. But these days they are quite annoyed, for they have started experiencing competition and in a field they are not accustomed to face one.

For every computer, there are atleast two people waiting to pounce on it if given an opportunity (or sometimes waiting to create such an opportunity). Even with this in the background, the person using the computer is “busy” on stuff which is purely meant for leisure. So, he may be doing some “work” on Orkut. He would be looking at photos of his friend or of some”body” he would like to make his friend. He would be writing and reading messages, which if not read for another year, would not affect anyone’s life.

The two Ls

IIM results are out and I guessed it right.

I had talked about my performance and the results have been very much different atleast relatively. So, the results are

IIMA – No
IIMB – No
IIMC – No
IIML – Yes.

IIMK and IIMI results are not out but I am damn concerned. What I now have to select is from the Ls. So, it would either be L (as in IIML) or L (as in Lehman Brothers).

Yes, I am disappointed at not clearing into one of the top 3 IIMs. I expected to crack atleast one. But then God has his own way. In the first place, no one had expected me to clear the first phase of the selection process but then God had his plans. So, though I am sad but I know that someone is in charge and I believe he has the best intentions for me. As Amitabh Bachchan has said,

“What happens as per your wish is good, but things which does not happen as above is more than good”

Though in the coming few weeks there would be much discussion about the pros and cons of the two Ls, at present I think Lehman should be the way to go. Any suggestions?

Conspiracy or Conspiracy theory

With every major event, people assign more than one conspiracy theories. Sometimes the evidences given for these theories are so compelling that one is bound to think along those directions. The evidences and doubts raised have the entire responsibility of taking the conspiracy theory to a conspiracy.

A famous conspiracy theory is about the possibility that we have still not landed on the moon and it was just an effort by NASA to show its space supremacy and that the world audience was actually bluffed. The BBC documentary ‘Did we land on the moon?’ has been widely watched and according to some estimates 25% of the US population believes in the conspiracy theory. However, a much smaller proportion of the rest of the world’s population has a similar belief.

Saddam Hussein has been captured by the US army. I believe he had intentionally made himself available to the US army. I am not trying to initiate another theory – many are already going around. But a look at his lifestyle and actions before and after the capture might seem indicative.

Saddam had lived a life of luxury before the US set its eyes on Iraq. He had been doing anything and everything he liked. But after the US invasion, he had to flee. He could not sustain his old methods of life – he may have had the money to do so. So, when he saw that there was no use of fighting with the US and that nothing much would go his way from that point on, he decided to give up.

But surrendering would go against his very nature and also the respect of the few men he still enjoyed would have been quashed. So, it was better to change the means as long as the same ends are achieved. He leaked information about himself and was caught in a scenario where everybody would believe that he was indeed trying to hide.

And after getting captured he knew that he cannot be directly given any sentence but a formal court proceeding would be mandatory. The same thing happened. After some initial delay, various charges were levied against him and he was to defend those in a court.

In the court, Saddam does whatever he wants. He tells the lawyers, judges that the court and they themselves do not have the authority to prosecute him. He calls on his Allah and criticizes everyone from US to UK to the court itself. Saddam wants always to be in the news. So, he knows that his hunger strike would be flashed in every arm of the media across the globe. By talking in the court, he can take his voice to those people with whom he could not have made any contact if he had not been caught.

Iraq is on the verge of civil war or as some would argue in the middle of it. Every day atleast 5 to 6 bombs explode and atleast 20 to 25 people die. Who are behind these bombings? Aren’t these the same people who had earlier been under Saddam and been doing his ‘work’? Saddam directs them and they act accordingly.

Finally, recently an Iraqi lady’s blog has won various literary prizes.
She had started her first post as

“A little bit about myself: I'm female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. That's all you need to know. It's all that matters these days anyway.”

A Cleansing Service

I was away for the extended weekend at my aunt’s place. One news which I got was that there had been a marriage proposal for me. I had mentioned about my eligibility but to get a proposal is flattering. The news had been concealed from me by all my relatives and my parents for they were worried that I might go out of control. But finally I got the news and accompanying was a lot of leg pulling by my cousin brothers and sisters.

I do realize that the proposal is not for me but for the B.Tech degree in Computer Science which I am hopefully completing this May. With this degree what you require is just a decent face and then a proposal would follow from any family. Obviously the family should satisfy two conditions, namely, there should be a girl of marriageable age in the family and that the family knows the value of the degree.

Enough of marriage talks. My uncle – whom I visited - has bought a new laptop. The laptop is mainly for the use of my younger cousins. Though it had the good old Microsoft Windows as the operating system, the browser was something that I was surprised of. It had both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Considering that no one in their family is very tech savvy, I consider it a major achievement for Firefox. Also, though my cousins did not know of all the advantages of Firefox, yet that was their choice for the web.

When I returned to my home, a cleansing spree was awaiting. The cleansing spree was more of removing unwanted materials from the house including books, clothes etc. which were taking up a lot of space. No one remembered when these were used last, if ever. All the members of the family were thinking of newer and newer areas which could be covered in the house for removal of older and unused materials.

After that, came the hunt for people who could actually make use of these products. People do not want to throw all the things. They like to give it to “less fortunate” ones even if the first thing that the latter do is to throw the things. The latter cannot say ‘no’ to the former, or rather the former do not like to hear a ‘no’ from the latter. So, the above procedure works for everyone.

For things like old books, magazines etc, you need persons professionally employed to handle these things. I am talking about the guy who takes your newspapers and pays you by the kilo. The day being Sunday, we had not much of a problem finding such a person. However, he cleared only the paper stuff from the house. Other things like cloth etc were still awaiting their new fate.

I am a firm believer in such kind of activities of cleaning houses of things which are not required. But people do not tend to involve me in these activities for sometimes I get various anxious at such kind of events. I am of the view that if an item has not been used for say, 5 years and is only probable to be used once in a blue moon, then it belongs to the category of things which need to be shown the door. The duration may change depending on the item.

Finally, an integrated service which helps in these activities in homes would be not a bad idea. The unwanted things which need to be thrown out and which people find difficult to part with are almost the same – old magazines, plethora of books for which a separate book is required for indexing, old clothes, small electronic items etc etc. What the people fail to realize is that these days it is preferred to buy new items instead of re-engineering old ones. The integrated service needs to be given some authority when it enters a home. The service should also consist of buying of all these materials at reasonable prices so that they could be disposed off then and there and the materials do not end up staying in the houses to be found again in another such cleansing spree after two years.

Oiling the Markets

I received various complaints, especially from fellow IITians, regarding my mentioning IIT Delhi as the 4^th best of the IITs. This came rather as a shock to me. I thought that it was kind of well known. However, now I know that it is not and I welcome arguments from people who so not believe this. I think people would agree that IIT Bombay and IIT Kanpur are better though some may have problems with the claimed superiority of IIT Chennai.

We all have heard of the rise of the Indian stock exchanges which is refraining from stopping atleast in the near future. The BSE Sensex has crossed the Dow Jones which like a benchmark index in the US. Another important statistic not very well publicized is that the m-cap of the entire BSE 500 index pole-vaulted from Rs 15,79,802 crore as on March 31 2005 to Rs 26,56,913 crore in March 2006. At the same time, India’s GDP, which was at Rs 23,93,671 crore at factor cost for 2004-2005 is estimated to grow to Rs 25,87,558 crore assuming an 8.1% GDP growth rate for 2005-06. Considering the above figures the m-cap (BSE 500) to GDP ratio, too, has improved from 0.65 to 1.02.

So, now the money involved in the stock markets of India is greater the GDP of the country. I do not know what to infer, but as a layman I feel that the markets are atleast a little overvalued. The Price to Earnings ratio of the markets is also around 20, not a good sign at all.

Continuing with economics, these days the entire economics of a country vests on one commodity. Yes, you guessed it right, it is oil. A good place to get started on this topic would be my friend's post. The prices of oil are increasing everyday. There was a time when the prices would hover around 28$ a barrel of oil (1 barrel of oil = approx 159 litres). Now, it has not gone below 60$ for quite some time and even manages to touch 70$ once in a while.

Previously the production of oil by the major oil producing countries was conditioned in a way to keep the prices stable. These days the conditioning (read, cutting of production) is done so that the prices only go in one direction (read, up). Everyone has realized not only the importance of this commodity which is set to become more important than even water but also that it is depleting at a rate where we may have to do without it maybe tomorrow.

Though the common man is feeling the pinch with the ever escalating prices of petrol, diesel and kerosene and with the accompanying increase in the prices of all products; the pinch would be the greatest once the commodity is no longer available. Recently, I was in our car with my cousin brother on my way to a pool joint and half way down the car refused to move even a bit. Thankfully, we were not very far from our house; But that may not be the case when we utilize the last drop of the commodity assigned in our quota.

The Four Factor

My previous post received a lot of attention with people thinking that I was actually going for marriage. I want to make it clear that though there are no proposals as of now, I am definitely open to them. Also, I have promised my friends that I would be the first one to get married from our group. So for fulfilling that promise I am of the view that it is high time and I should start looking for someone.

Further, various IIMs have increased their fees. Now that is certainly bad news for me and other IIM aspirants. But there is hope since IIML has not increased it yet but is being speculated to follow suit before June. Though at this point of time, I am not sure if I would like to go to IIML but you never know. IIML being the 4th best IIM actually increases its chances of having me as a student. Why is this so?

Consider this. In Maharashtra, after the secondary examination (X standard), we have to take admission in a junior college for the higher secondary examination (XII standard). After my secondary examination results, I was so confident that I purchased the forms of only the top 3 colleges for admission. Only when my father insisted, I purchased the form for the 4th best college thinking of it as a waste of money and effort. Guess what; I ended up in the 4th best college since other colleges did not offer to me Computers as a vocational subject (which I wanted to take) given my ‘low’ percentage.

After that, I prepared for IIT-JEE and secured a decent rank. But the rank was not good enough for getting a seat in the Computer Science stream at what most would argue are the top 3 IITs. So, I had to be satisfied with the 4th best IIT i.e. IIT Delhi (Though various surveys have shown IIT Delhi to be the best, I and other IITians would tell you the real rankings).

Given this, I think IIML may be the one. I hope the 4 factor is not repeated but then I would have liked to hope the same before.

Now for some things, I doubt you would hear/read anywhere else on the web. Firstly, do you know the highest rated movie at the Internet Movie Database? It is Gunda. At the time of writing of this post, the rating was 9.9/10. Some time back it was a perfect 10/10 but some unscrupulous (or rather scrupulous) elements did not like that.

People preparing for IIT entrance examination would know of FIITJEE, which is a coaching centre with branches all round the country. However, what they would not know is that the mock tests’ papers, which are taken by the coaching centre, are actually not checked by teachers of the coaching centre. These could be checked by anybody. The coaching centre gives some money per paper checked and so various IITians try to redeem the benefits. But then we have a concept called greed. So, people try to check these papers as fast as possible so that maximum amount of papers (and hence maximum amount of money) can be checked in the smallest amount of time. At that time they do not think of the aspirants who have given these mock tests and are hoping to get a good measure of their performance with the help of the marks in these tests.