pic problem solved forever!

FINALLY i got rid of that phone with a VGA camera and got one which has a 2 megapixel one with flash. So, i'll never need to crib again about te flagging picture quality of this blog.
Promise you many interesting pics from now.

YES!+

Well, i have been itching to tell everybody about the YES!+ course i had attended at college in April.

these were the most blithe and joyous 7 days of my life... 7 days of this course and you can feel the change inside you... I've suddenly become more active, responsible and thoughtful about my actions. I have become more aware of my own self, what i am and what i want to be. It has improved my focus and concentration in studies and yes, it has reduced my tendency to be irritable. I may control my mind (to an extent). I've certainly become more calm and thoughtful and try to give my best shot to everything i do and i am no longer a football of others opinions; i take my own decisions after hearing the advice of others. The most significant change i felt in me is that i have now become much much much more free with strangers and got rid of my stage fright and fear of being in a precarious situation and i don't care a damn about what the world may think - in short i have lost most of my inhibitions and fears(especially after the YES!+ upgrade course- those people who have done it would know). And there is someone i would like to thank from the bottom of my heart for this: Shavina didi-my Art of Living teacher. This course will not change your life, it will give you an opportunity to change your own life by yourself - it is up to you. i recommend this to everybody who has and imperfections in their life, who knows, you may shed it...

Jai Gurudev!

fresh start, new blog

THIS IS TO INFORM ALL READERS OF MY BLOG THAT THE TECHNICAL ADVICE AND OTHER RANDOM STUFF HAS NOW BEEN SHIFTED TO MY NEW BLOG AND THIS BLOG WILL HOST ONLY PURE ARTICLES WRITTEN BY ME. FOR ALL TECHNICAL ADVICE, MOVIE BOOK AND GAME REVIEWS AND FUN STUFF PLEASE VIST http://abir-tech.blogspot.com/ .
PS: It seems like a trend with everyone getting second or third blogs;)

Exams over!!!

Finally my end sem exams are over and it's time to have some activity in this blog...
it's been a hectic year and i'm looking forward to the summer holidays!

pic problem solved

regular readers of my blog would know how much i am peeved by the low quality pictures that my cellphone (with a vga camera) takes.
i found out the reason: the culprit was not the camera, but the cheap-bought-over-the-counter-chinese-made-low-quality cellphone cover.
so...... when i remove the back cover and take the same pic, you can see the difference in clarity....maybe it wasn't that bad at all!

SCENERY IN FRONT OF MY HOSTEL ROOM:
WITH COVER ON:





NOW THE SAME SCENE WITHOUT THE COVER:
VOILA! PROBLEM SOLVED!!! so after this, i promise you all better pics from my cell.

another view of the same scene:isn't the view fabulous!



deepak at the sheet metal shop making a can(on the day of the workshop exam)

Life in summer holidays...

well, my exams finished on 21st may and i've been getting bored since then. we get a 70-75 days long summer hols at DCE(this is my first experience of the two and a half months long hols)
trust me, it gets boring coz u miss college, miss ur friends, don't miss ur professors(ya, we miss them at college LOL!)
i don't want to join any computer course(java, etc) coz i think they are of no use to a mechanical engineer....i don't like summer jobs coz i don't want to follow any schedule during hols(i mean which job allows you to sleep twelve hours a day!)
so.......i'm left with no other option so i'm having to wile away my time aimlessly(defination of getting bored)
in short: I'M GETTING BORED!!!
by the way i am learning to drive and now-a-days my friends are getting free so hopefully i'll not be as bored as i was getting.
i'll be adding some more tech advice later, till then, bye!

fest week: ENGI FEST '07

ENGI FEST '07 WAS absolutely rocking!!!!!!!! had the time of my life!

STAR NIGHT:
BOMBAY ROCKERS- they rocked DCE, released songs from a new album they are going to release soon.

can't recognise them????? blame it all on my phone which has a damn-low-quality VGA camera. well this is a better pic from my friend aanchal's blog




it all started on Sunday at the hasya kavi sammelan which was a total laugh riot! we loved every bit of it.
the JAM sessions started on thursday and culminated in the Mega JAM on Sunday.
WELL to keep it short, ENGI FEST ROCKED!!!!
this one goes out to all the people who didn't attend it:- this was the best engi ever, really well behaved and decent crowd, much much better organised than moksha starnight(they only had the event till 10pm after which they had an 'incident' and they had to stop the JAM)
and it simply rocked. so if you missed it, SORRY! YOU ARE THE LOSER!
well, i'll leave you with some more pics(ya, from the same old camera) about my college in fest time......




this pic was taken while i was putting up that MEGA poster


O.A.T.


Sports complex in the distance(this pic was also taken while i was putting up that MEGA poster)





CHOREO competition(sorry, you can't make out anything in this pic)

ROCK NIGHT

fest week: INNOVA '07

INNOVA '07 :- the annual technical fest of Delhi College of Engineering of the mechanical and civil departments.
And it was a grand success! lots of participation from other colleges, no big 'incidents' or goof ups(except panorama.....)
what a week! 19th to 25th of feb. from early feb, we (the first year 'volunteers') were busy working for it.
and i say 'volunteers' because some seniors of third year production rounded up our class like a herd of classes and stuffed us in a classroom and TOLD us that we are INNOVA's VOLUNTEERS.
Catch the irony of the situation: we were TOLD that we are volunteers.
but i did want to help organise the fest(seriously) so i had no problem but most of my class was so apprehensive that they didn't turn up to work for innova ever.
in fact i was most probably the ONLY guy from production engg first year who worked seriously for it. others should have worked, it would only have gotten easier for everybody.
description of work:
there were three areas where u had to work
1 . Corporate drive: it's basically all about wooing companies to invest their hard-earned money in this fest. i tried and tried , talked to 7 companies but all the companies took too long to respond so i couldn't manage it too well.

2 . Publicity: This is about going to other colleges and sticking the low-quality posters of innova there (in which all dates were wrong) in strategic places where students read it.
all costs are supposed to be paid for by the innova council(i haven't got my dues yet....be warned- you will have to pay in the end.....it's all about false promises)
i went to 7 different colleges.

3 . Infrastructure: This is the major work in which we had to work from morning to late in the night(upto 3am or more). this includes everything that will make the fest possible right from taking permissions from faculty and Head-of-departments for booking rooms, sticking a colossal number of posters in the college in a myriad of types and colours in every possible nook and cranny of the college, to setting up the MEGA 55foot by 35 foot poster(pic below....), etc
THE MEGA POSTER OF INNOVA(I and 5 others put it here in the OAT)

THE SCENE IN THE OAT AT ROBOTICA
(notice the poster in the background.....and just imagine, we put it right next to the troika poster which read "nothing is bigger than this"-and our poster was double the size of their poster!!!!!!)

a few of the memorable events:

ROBOTICA: Basically robot wars, with a twist. you had to knock the box over at the opponent's corner or disable their robot or shove it in the pit or just simply DESTROY IT.
lots of teams and robots participated(our class' team had one too! pics below.....it won the most innovative weapon award. poor guys didn't get a single rupee in prize money of 12000...)
in the end it boiled down to controversy and debate between participants and judges and slowly the situation was going out of control-a team from DCE had raised a doubt about the dimensions of the bot from NSIT after the DCE bot had been defeated by the nsit bot in the semifinals.
and that too by 5mm. 5 mm! how small is that! then all DCE teams decided to walkout. the the third years managed to convince the team placed second to continue. they continued and won! dce victorious in the end.

'MAGNETO' defeating opponents.
(forgive the low quality pics in this article-my VGA camera phone is the culprit)


SPECTRUM was the quizzing event, ATELIER was the CAD designing event(nearly organised single handedly by me).
PANORAMA was the student industry interface, and it was at best, a disaster.
the cheif guest and guests from the industry were invited at 9 am. the guests came at about 9:30. the students came at 10:30-11. a guest was so pissed off, he left and i presume he won't come ever again to innova. it was so embarrassing for everybody. the 'lucky' draw was fixed, as the third years(council members and event heads) were the only ones who got lucky.
anyway this event concluded a very hectic and tiring but an awesome fun filled week.
OVERALL INNOVA 2007 WAS A GRAND SUCCESS AND I'M LOOKING FORWARD FOR BEING A PART OF IT NEXT YEAR.

my return journey from singapore

now, about my return journey from singapore......
this deserves a separate blog entry!

we left singapore on 31st of December at 11:30 am to reach Kuala Lumpur airport by 12:30.
we had a four hour wait for the connecting flight from KL to Delhi.
so, we somehow passed time in the airport, boarded a TRAIN(!!!!) to the second terminal.
and boarded the flight MH 190 to Delhi. we were supposed to reach Delhi at 9:30 pm[IST]
so we were in the plane, waiting for it to land till 11:30 pm. we were not being able to land at Delhi airport due to intense fog over Delhi. now, finally the pilot said that we cannot land at Delhi and before fuel runs out, we must land at Kolkata. so we landed at kolkata international airport at 12:30 am(yeah, that's right, we had our new year celebration on flight travelling at 725 kmph at 39000 feet above sea level.). now we were waiting to get down at the airport. but that wasn't to be. we were kept INSIDE THE PLANE with no food, no water, no information, no sleep and two hundred angry passengers for SIX HOURS!
at 6:30 am the customs officials woke up, took our passports and shifted us to a hotel.
At the hotel , the flight kept getting delayed for some reason or the other.
and we could take off next morning. so, we were on our way to Delhi once more.
on reaching there, we were enlightened with the disturbing information that delhi airport had no landing slots left. so as you can see, this ordeal wasn't over for us yet. now, we were on our way to MUMBAI! we had to wait a further three hours in mumbai before finally touching down at Delhi airport 50 hours later than our scheduled time of arrival.
i sincerely wish that no one else goes through this ordeal again. please make sure you don't book air tickets near to new year's eve.

my singapore trip

WELL, THIS IS ABOUT MY SINGAPORE TRIP EARLIER THIS YEAR




LITTLE INDIA

THE WORLD'S HIGHEST MANMADE WATERFALL
A MACAW AT THE JURONG BIRD PARK
SINGAPORE RIVER CRUISE
SINGAPORE RIVER
ME, AND SOME MACAWS IN THE BACKGROUND







now about my trip................


well it all started on 27th December 2007
we[me, mom, dad and bro] boarded the late night flight to Malaysia ( MH 191)
and after a sleepless and tiring flight ( if u people go there, go on business class! ), we reached kuala lumpur international airport[KLIA] at 6:00 am (Singapore and Malaysia local time)
and what an airport! no wonder it's got the distinction of the world's most beautiful airport!
and then, i encountered a travellator for the first time. it's basically an escalator but it's for walking on ground rather than climbing a floor. believe me, KLIA is so big that it's nearly impossible to walk without the travellators.
after a half hour wait, we boarded the flight to Singapore. This flight took 50 minutes.
now we landed at chan'gi airport, Singapore.
now the wait was for our baggage to come........but there was no sign of it!!!!
lost in transit it seemed to be!
we lodged a complaint and proceeded towards our hotel. we got a pre-paid taxi to hotel 81[a stupid budget hotel we had to book because of no availability of rooms on that day]
my first impression of Singapore was it's roads - they are great!

well by now we were hungry. damn hungry.
and the hotel was just a lodging hotel, no food at hotel.
so we needed to search for street food. And you couldn't enter any hotel of cafe because of the signboards that read: "we specialize in rabbits" or something like "delicious frog organ soup available here"........
YUCK!
at last we spotted an indian shop. we got one "masala kosai" each. which is their version of masala dosa. that was at about 70 rupees per plate.
one eats just about anything when u haven't eaten for seven hours........
then we went back and i slept like a rock till noon.
the heavens were pouring when i woke up.
then we went to orchard street, that's like a upmarket mall with any designer label on earth.
we weren't in a mood to buy anything, especially because our baggage hadn't returned yet.
then we had lunch at mc donald's(relief after what we had on the street earlier....)
there was a palika style underground market there. we didn't dare to buy any electronic goods there because of the fear of being cheated.
after returning to the hotel, we found that our baggage had returned.
that ended the first day at Singapore.
next day we shifted to a much better hotel, hotel clarmont on serangoon road, little india, singapore.
it's all about location. it's directly opposite to the GIANT shopping mall, MUSTAFA'S
it's the best shop in singapore for shopping for electronic goods especially. we bought our digital camera from here.
Then we went to SENTOSA island by the mrt(mass rapid transit) or the singapore metro.
this is an island MADE for tourists.despite of the high ticket price ($50) people flock to this island everyday.
the main attractions there(according to my scale of preference) are:

1. Underwater world - this is something worth experiencing. you are basically in a huge tank with fishes swimming all around you and you are in a transparent tube. so you have a feeling of being underwater.

2. Cable car ride - This is how you can reach sentosa from the mainland. This shows you a panoramic view of singapore.

3. Dolphin lagoon and musical fountain. - we went to dolphin lagoon only, it has shows every evening where you get to watch the antics of the pink dolphins. the jump, dance, swing, do everything you never imagined they could do.

4. Cinemania - this is the ultimate adventure you can have sitting in a chair. hold on to your seats it's going to be a rough ride!

5. Palawan beach - this is the southernmost point of continental asia. really small beach but you'll have a good time there!

the rest, we didn't have the time to experience.
did some shopping in the evening.
Next day, we took the city tour. we saw the merlion(the symbol of singapore), cruised though the singapore river, and the rest was boring.
in the evening, we went to the Jurong bird park. that's where the images you saw earlier were taken.
some photos: MACAWS PLAYING BASKETBALL!!!!

1000 FLAMINGOS!
PENGUINS.................

about the return journey, i'll write later.

BIGGEST HORROR OF A DCEITE : DCE ADMINISTRATION BLOCK

BIGGEST HORROR OF A DCEITE ,
yes you read it right. DCE administration block.
not even the teachers, not even exams, it's the admin block.
the first time i entered this despised building was during my registration at college.
And immediately i knew this is not one of dce's better features.....
It's hot and stuffy basement with no space to move, it's so cramped.
horror:
Then, came the day when we had to fill our forms for midterm admit cards.
i can assure you, there can't be a worse experience than that. there were about 300 people in a space meant for 80-100. it was a sea of human bodies crammed into a sardine box.
getting in there, in that chaos was tough enough, getting the form was like impossible.
i somehow managed to barge in, the crowd pushed me towards the counter and, after taking the form, pushed me out. automatic. besides getting a few bruises(it's a war zone down there, believe me!) i was fine. it was even tougher for the girls. a few brave souls tried and got the forms, others asked their friends to do the needful. submitting was not a very big deal coz the crowd had thinned down then. but the people who tried to submit earlier, were in trouble. my roommate(and a friend from childhood till college) submitted the form and had trouble getting out, his bag went somewhere, he went in another direction. he found himself tugging at a bag belonging to someone else!! then he kicked someone hard!(hell knows who) and got out somehow.
this experience is reflected in my friend's blog too.http://divitamathur.blogspot.com/
Government employees.......
One of the worst experiences i had was when i went to collect my end semester admit card.
first i had to go to the second floor to biotech head's office. there was a chaprasi inside who told me that he wasn't in his office. i went back to my hostel and came 15 mins later. i went to his office again only to be told that all admit cards had been given and there were no left. i was told to go to some person's office in first floor. he told me to go to some person in second floor. he was too busy, he made me wait 10 mins more. after all that, he told me to go to the basement.
at this point in time i was feeling like tearing my own hair or tearing anyone else's in sight.
i had my Engineering Drawing exam that day.
anyway i went to the basement only to be told tha tmy admit card was in the hostel itself.
so my torture wasn't over. i went back to my hostel. they told me that i did not pay some dues. this is funny because i paid all my bills in time. then he checked the list and told me : "sorry, koi galti ho gayi hogi, aapne toh bill de diya hai(sorry, there is a mistake on our side, you did pay your bill) " lucky for him, the man was bald.
so these are two examples of the torture i faced in my first semester. hell knows what's in store in the seven semesters to come.........but i can bet that it won't be pleasant at all.

My time at T.I.E.T.

i want to tell you about the one month of my life i spent at Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology.
right bang in middle of patiala, punjab lies the college we lovingly used to call thapar central jail.
a senior gave me direction to go to thapar in this manner: "nabha road pe pehle patiala central jail milega, usse seedha jaaega toh thapar central jail milega".
so why the comparison to a jail???
because it's not what a college is meant to be like.
Strictly regimental in discipline and you feel like running away from there.
Boys hostel had timings! no entry/exit from 10pm to 6 am.
teachers used to take REGULAR classes. no free periods. none at all.
no mass bunks, no fun at all, you had to keep 75% attendance or you're gone!.
just keep on studying. we used to study more than we did at school.
college timings were like 8 am to 5 pm. that is, if you don't have any extra class.
it was soo tough on anyone. you get up at 6 am, wait in line in hostel bathrooms. go to mess at 7. gulp down your food and hurry.
and yes the teachers were very particular about time. 5 mins late and OUT. GET OUT.
the college was like two kilometres away from the hostel and we had to walk twenty five minutes everytime just to reach the classroom.
that too at 7:30 in the morning!
the weather was humid and stuffy but relatively cooler than Delhi at least!
hostel was EXCELLENT.
it was clean with big rooms. toilets were clean. sometimes.
mess food was good to say the least.
no wonder parents love this college!
journeys took a lot out of you. if you take the bus route, there were three buses to gurgaon everyday. you were lucky to get the haryana roadways buses because they travelled fast on the highway. if you get a punjab roadways bus, you are definately doomed.
they stop at every imaginable bus adda, they are slow, rattly and poorly maintained.
and the crowd inside was like YUCK!
haryana roadways take 7 to 7 and a half hours from gurgaon to patiala or vice versa
and punjab roadways take 9 to 10 hours for the same route.
by train it was better.
you had to go to ambala first and then catch a shatabdi which takes four hours to reach delhi.
or you could take the intercity express from patiala itself which took 7 hours .
ragging was prohibited at TIET. Maybe that's why i was ragged five times.
most of the students there were stereotype GHISSUS (DU language for people who study too much and do little else) and there was a tinge of regionalism(punjab vs delhi type)
made some great friends there, we were each others support in a fight to survive the onslaught of teachers. miss you guys!

in the end it was worth it because now i knew how to live alone, how to reserve rail tickets and endure 300 km journeys. it made me more mature and capable of handling myself.
COMPARISON between DCE and TIET in terms of student life only.
in DCE, timings are 9 to 4.
no hostel timings.
near to home.
hostel not too bad.
mess food similar to thapar.
people don't study except when exams are on your head(that too next day!).
mass bunks galore!
no problem of attendance.
when teacher comes, we don't come, when we go , teachers don't come(Balance, you know....)
teachers don't teach(this creates a problem in the exams but we manage)
in the end i am happy that i changed college.

BUT MAKE NO MISTAKE, T.I.E.T. is an EXCELLENT college and i would recommend anyone who is thinking of joining a nit to join thapar instead. you'll make a much better engineer and placements are good as well.
Abir

About me, my journey to college

hi everybody
i just wanted to share my experience regarding the various entrance examinations
preparation for competitive exams started right after class 10th boards finished
May 2003: i joined an institution called FIITJEE(What a waste of time!)
i was placed in the first batch along with some of the brightest students i have known.
There lied the problem. these child prodigies answered almost any question asked in class and we(the stragglers) were left gasping for breath...
then came the first phase test. i used to hate physics and the physics teacher(subodh kumar better known as S.B.K.) made thing worse.
what sbk used to do is he used to teach only the students who could answer in class and ignored all others.(my fellow friends at fiitjee would confirm) and so i fared miserably in physics(got 12/60)
but then my maths teacher Ashish khare was a genius. real genius. i used to love maths
and i got 59/60 in that test:-):-)
after that it was a downward spiral. i improved in physics and chemistry later, but deteriorated in maths(thanks to my going to 8th batch after reshuffling)
December 2005:board exams preparation. i was told to forget iit and study for boards
. so i did.
IITJEE exam was just nine days after my last board exam. the paper seemed easy and i did about 120 marks worth correct. the cutoff was 82. i got somewhere near 80. WHY? i don't know.
maybe while marking there was an error.....
i got good enough ranks in AIEEE and BITSAT but didn't go for it.
in DCE-CEE i got 1500 rank. it was time to drop a year.
i joined Brilliant Tutorials and in the entrance exam for it got 90% scholarship(nearly)
i was determined to get into a good college this year. i studied hard, really.
and this was echoed in the module tests(my percentiles would hover above 95 in nearly every exam) and i topped Delhi twice(99.99 percentile) and managed to fare well in fiitjee test series as well.(90+ percentile) there was no stopping me.
but then the pattern for iitjee had changed and we did not know what to expect. iit exam as usual went great. i cleared the cutoffs handsomely except the physics cutoff. so, NOT SELECTED.
DAMN! i couldn't have studied harder. i knew that. i gave it my almighty best shot.
anyways i got a good rank i A.I.E.E.E. and joined Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology with mechanical.
it's an excellent college. i still miss that college.
later in the second counselling i got admitted into Delhi College of Engineering(DCE) with environmental engineering.
in the third and final councelling i was upgraded to polymer sciences(i filled poly above civil)
Production engineering finished just one rank above me. and i was about to leave my seat when someone said that next day there will be a new list coming.
i didn't want to take a chance with thapar's strict attendance rules and i went back to patiala by the midnight Volvo bus.
next day started as usual. Last class of the day: Solid mechanics tutorial. Vijay kumar jadon the teacher. i hated this subject and hated this teacher. 10 minutes into the class my cell beeps and my brother's message comes:- "Congratulations, you have got production engg. come back tonight by train."
YAHOOO!
and just imagine what a torture it was to go through the remaining 50 minutes of the class.
Abir

first post

This is the first post of this blog
this blog is a combination of advice and my own random thoughts