Saturday, December 31, 2011

Waiting

I used to walk by you side,
when you were so lonely,
I used to hold tight your hand,
when it was so scary

What happened between us,
that now your so scared,
what changed in us,
that you dont care

I miss your smile,
I miss you breath,
I miss your lies,
I miss your jokes

Times have gone by,
you haven't shown up,
I keep waiting,
you keep fading


Tour in College Life

                 Everyone likes going no tours with friends and family. It's always the best time we spend with them. Every college and school takes the students on a tour atleast once every year. During school life there was a time when every class had a tour but when it was our turn , they changed the setup to tours only on odd years like 5th,7th,9th and 11th standards. Still it was fun, the best being the last tour we went. But in my college things were much worse. Our seniors had pretty amazing excursions to different places, but when it came to us, it so became that tour kind of got banned. Like what the hell?? No tour in four years of college life?? It was such a disappointment, we had a strike and got suspended for it aswell. Then there was a parent-teacher meeting where the cunning management spoke like its too dangerous and risky and stuff like that. Some parents fell for it while some others were on our side. Are they forgetting that they too had gone on excursions during their college life?? And they want us to sacrifice it on what grounds?? Nothing is ever going to be perfect, mistakes need to be made and then corrected than not to take the action at all , its like cutting off a tree cause it will shed its leaves on your porch.

       Three years passed, no tour at all for us , everyone was always against us. It so happened that we got a break this year, in our seventh semester, a week long holiday due to the Pooja holidays. The college was never going to allow us an excursion so the students planned it out. We asked all the teachers if anyone of them could accompany us but none was willing to, and the only one who could come, couldn't come cause of fixture issues. People started backing out from the tour. I was determined to go anyway, whether the number of people was 10 to 40. Then we managed to get in three parents to accompany us, which got back some of those who stepped out. And thus we went on our much hyped and much awaited tour.


                             It was best ever series of days I ever had during my college life, and I am sure that all those who came on that excursion feel the same. Those were definitely the best days of my life. The best and most important part was that, it was when we actually started bonding with lots of others in our own class.  This is what a tour means to the lives of college students. So much fun and above that it brings everyone together. Too bad we all got closer only at the end of our second last sem and our last sem is almost over with regular classes being merely a month or two. This tour made us who we are today, united everyone in our class. We can never express how much the people who backed out of the tour due their silly reasons missed out. Too bad their ego let them down this time. They just missed the time of their lives. Those moments will be ever cherished in my heart. Never ever felt I would miss anything in my college life , but now have to rewrite that, will miss the last and final year the most. Will miss my friends and the awesome times spent with them. If this tour was one year before, the class would have been so much different. Wish we have one more tour before we are done with this last sem , unfortunately there aint much time left for that now. 

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Music : Present or Past Era ?

     

                  This picture was the main reason why I even thought about this topic. Is it really true that music has been degrading over the years rather than going from strength to strength. Now anyone goes around making some music videos and then just posts it on Youtube or Facebook and it spreads on and people get famous. Isn't it a bit too shocking if everyone does that. I have heard this Rebecca Black song only once till now and right now since I don't even remember how it sounded like, I am going to listen to it one more time. Seeing 15 million hits on youtube gives me the freaks. What is actually happening to all these people.

          First it was Justin Beiber, to tell the truth I heard "Baby" for the first time on a weird site and hearing the voice I felt it was a girl singing it, and since I wasn't so much aware of it I never realized it till I saw the music video. Of course there are lots of fans for him and he has got talent.

           The other main reason for me to think on this subject is that Dad doesn't like most of the English songs I listen to but he used to have awesome collections of english songs on the 70's , 80's . Disks of Pink Floyd , Deep Purple and much more. It seems that was the era of pure rock songs, what is rock now is a mere shadow of what rock used to be back then. maybe thats why the singers and bands of that era can never be compared to anyone of this generation. I may not be able to enjoy all of the songs of the past but there are some really awesome songs that I love so much like "Shoot to Thrill", "Sweet child 'o  Mine" , "Smoke on the water" ,and more. What happens now days in mostly music thats integrated with technology. Too much modulations unlike the raw and pure spirit of music in the previous era. Respect for them for what they were, what they still are , and what they will always be : Legends.

               So what would be your take on the previous era and the present era of musicians and bands. Come to think of it , the fear I have right now is seeing the next generation play instruments on their iPhones, iPads or Android devices. Now the world is in a smartphone after all and almost all future enhancements are smartphone oriented. Lets just wait and see what the future holds.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

My First Job

        Job, the one thing 6 out of 10 students aim for when after completing their graduation courses. When I used to hear job at the time I joined my Engineering course, I never had any hope of getting any job when I passed out of college. Infact I never wanted to do Engineering in the first place. Was always interested in animation and believed working in a field of interest will be most enjoyable. Well anyway now that I've joined it by force or by lack or resistance I had to pass out somehow. So kept studying the way I could or how i wanted to, and so time passed. 


                       Like in every engineering college we also had to do a main project in our last year or more precisely in the last semester. The design had to be submitted at the end of the seventh semester. Actually I was pretty clueless as to what we would do this time around cause we screwed up our mini project and the marks awarded to us were the lowest of all groups. We were both shocked and enraged, cause we did our project ourselves and we got so low marks and those who brought projects from outside and submitted got way better marks. So much for the "do it yourself" motto. Many groups remained unchanged while mine had a small change, one member got swapped, thats how you can put it. This time the idea was his. He came up with the idea of doing a project for iPhone, his ideas were sleek, we added a few minor add-ons of our own to it. Then we set out to find a place where we will get aid to put our ideas into form. We went to lots of places, but no luck. Finally we found a few places, they all claimed stuff. But due to financial reasons we chose the place where we had to pay the least, even that was quite a huge sum of money. It was in Technopark, over here this is our IT city, its the one place in Trivandrum where you feel you aint in Trivandrum, thats how the campus is. But the problem was that we couldn't put our ideas into action. They told if you want to do it you can , but they will take it as a client project, even without all the features. So we dropped the idea and chose one of their live projects, so it would be easier for them to help us with our project. But the shock that came in the coming weeks was when iOS 5 was released. Siri came with almost every feature we were planning to implement and even more advanced than we could imagine. We all felt like our idea was stolen, wel in any case they may have been working on it for some time.


                   So we started going there and started learning the basics of how to program in Xcode. Since we were in the last year and it was that time when companies start recruiting final year students. Since our college is in some kind of rural area, not many companies come there for campus recruitment. One by one friends in other colleges were getting placed. Then one fine day, our marketing manager told us that there are vacancies and they are looking for freshers and if we knew anyone, we should let them know about the vacancy in the company. My friend grabbed the hook, instead of the pass outs he told them that we are interested. And he never let go of the hook and finally convinced him to arrange an interview for us. Those two days were the funniest days, infact none would have given us a job in that condition. All of us forgot to take a resume , plus my dressing was too damn informal, sneakers included. The aptitude test went fine, though my program was pretty messed up. Then the interview, couldn't get funnier. It was the project manager, but we knew him as we were students there for some time. Couldn't answer most of the questions, yet we were selected, next was the HR interview. We were pretty scared about it but the scenario that awaited us was different. The MD just told some conditions that we should follow and right away gave us the job. We were so darn thrilled, the joy had no bounds. I got a job, my first job , and that too in Technopark. We students at that time in our seventh semester got ourselves a job and had to join on the 1st of December 2011. Thus now I have a job and I am still in my last semester of college. Feels pretty awesome to have a job when you pass out and more importantly a good long work experience by the time all results are out and cleared.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Scariest Day of Life

It was Onam again, Onam is a South Indian Festival, well specifically celebrated by Keralites all over the world. It is the one time of the year when dad takes a vacation by closing our shop for a few days usually 3 to 5 days, and then we all go visit some place outside our city. This year was no different, but we had no proper plan as to where we were going this time around. So we set out hoping to go to Bangalore after stopping by at Coimbatore. But for some reason the plan changed and we skipped going to Coimbatore. The usual road to Coimbatore was a real messed up one, you know what Indian roads are famous for, potholes all over the road . And since our car was a Skoda Octavia RS, which is low slung and if not driven carefully will hit underneath when driving over the potholes dad was hesitant to go that route. Someone had recently told him about the Express Highway claiming its a good road. So he decided to go that way. So we went down South to Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu where the Express Highway starts and joined the road. The road was like paradise, for me it was like the roads I've seen in movies, wide open roads with no speed limitations.
The road was almost empty and wide enough to unleash the beast within our tuned up machine. Our car was customized to churn out 300bhp at Pete's. Just that there never was any road good enough for the beast to unleash its power, now the playground was wide open. Dad stepped on it when the road was clear with long stretches visible. The roaring sound of the engine was a pure fantasy to listen to. At times he used to slow down the car and then jam on the gas and the car would pounce like a wild cat. He managed to top 170km/h and never tried to overdo. Anyway this was quite higher than the 140km/hr done with the 2000 model Honda City Vtec which we owned once. Later on I was given the wheel, this was the first time i was driving the car after the latest tune up. The car was super responsive, super quick to accelerate as well as to slow down. Dad told me to keep it around 60km/hr but well the road was too good for me to resist, so I topped 120km/hr and most of the time kept driving constantly at 100km/hr. 

There was this one incident when we were almost at Bangalore, somewhere just before Hosur, there was this Indica taxi , which I had overtaken once, but it went ahead when I let the speed fall. I was approaching a downhill slope, so i let go of the accelerator to save fuel. But unfortunately the car was gaining speed. We were on the left track, the Indica on the right track, and we were gaining on it. There was a truck in front of me, I was confused whether to jam the brakes or to overtake the Indica and go. But by then i reached too close to the truck and I decided to cut across and go, put the indicator and jammed the pedal , maybe it was too close to the Indica, but I went pulled ahead of it in no time. But then in some time that taxi driver overtook us swearing something. I was left confused if I did something wrong, so kept the speeds low then on.

After two days we were coming back, when this incident took place, it was breath taking. Dad was driving at a constant speed so as to not burn fuel away. There was a truck and a motorcycle up ahead. They were slower so dad was going to overtake them anyway. Just when he was pulling across the truck , the biker cut across with no signs. Our car running at 100km/hr. He was done for. Then dad saw the gap, which was left for making U-turns, he switched tracks, and jammed the brakes, we went past them and stopped facing oncoming traffic. Luckily there wasn't much traffic so we stopped. All of us shocked to the core. Best part was that the biker went by us staring at us,through the oncoming lane as if nothing ever happened. He didn't even realize that he was lucky to be alive. It was a real shocker and thank God nothing happened to anyone.

I just have one thing to say, people please follow traffic rules, they are for your own safety not for others or the Government. If you see someone who doesn't follow the rules, that doesn't give you the right to follow their lead to your own death. 


Saturday, December 10, 2011

Slavery behind veils

             




            It so happened that after a tiring night shift at work, I woke up at around 2pm, then had some food and played the rest of the game and then decided to check out what all happened on Facebook. Was just browsing through news feeds and saw a post by one of my school buds, saying "I dont abuse through statuses but this one deserves", I let it go and then after some time somehow it came in front of me again. As I had nothing great to do, thought of checking it out to see what it really was.

             







                            Read the content of this link : http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html .


         Seriously this is a share, really need people to read this and realize the truth. It might take quite a bit of your time, do take your time to read it out. I never thought or expected slavery to exist in this 21st century world, and of all places in one of the richest countries in the world. And i really need to share this cause i know people with the same dreams, wishing and hoping their dreams come true if they go there :  Dubai of all places is hell hidden under the veil of luxury,fame,riches and fortune. I remember friends saying "I want to go to Dubai when I am older", and so on. What the world sees is a place where the richest people in the world live, even I wished i could be there as i used to be fascinated by the Exotics and Imports they showcased. Most of the worlds best supercars can be found there and that too lots of them. Money,power and a dictator what could be worse than living life as a forced slave with no hope. Plain daylight cheating supported by the Police who are supposed to be for the people: it seems they are there for the money, money and money. Even those who suffered once and are now enjoying a happy life dont seem to care for the suffering people,knowing how hard it is for them.Money is power,a ruler supported by greedy corrupt officials.




                           In this 21st century where robots are taking over humans in doing most of the work, where most human work can be substituted by a machine, who would ever want to live a life like that?
A life where you are denied your basic human rights, where your given less value than a pet, treated so miserably that you would just wish it rather ended than drag on like this.
Will the families of the people be knowing this bitter truth? The families living in the homeland maybe under the assumption that all is well and life is heaven over there. When you get a job abroad and if its Dubai, you and your family will be thrilled and those lowlife agents offering the poor people jobs promising huge salaries , giving dreams of a life of a prince. All people who go there may not suffer so , depends on the jobs they are in , but if its labour  then you are done for. This is the life that awaits you. I just have a question , what do people do with all this money?? You cant take it with you in your grave when you die anyway.


          

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Save Mullaperiyar

So the people have managed to put up some resistance , to put an ultimate act to bring the Government to their sense so that they act before its too late. This is for the people and by the people and of the people. 
If you can be a part of it please do, cause its for your state, your people. 

And the reason for Tamil Nadu not accepting the state of Mullaperiyar Dam seems to be this Kallanai Dam. It definitely is the oldest dam in the world but what will happen if it collapses? Whats the damage it can cause at maximum??  





And those people are comparing a dam which reserves no water with a dam that is supporting 10 TMC of water to one thats barely having any water. 

Besides if that Kallanai dam had so much water why would Tamil Nadu be depending on water from Mullaperiyar dam? Both Governments should come to terms, because it concerns both states, but more importantly Kerala. Half of Kerala will be washed away at this rate , the damage can only get worse. Please 
try to understand the seriousness of the problem rather than babbling nonsense. Its millions  of lives you are playing with. Share and spread awareness , people ought not be looking down upon this matter as some kind of political war between politicians or some kind of drama.

Read more....