The American Dream !!!

Howdy,

Life in America. When we are in India we have a whole different opinion about the US. Needless to mention the picture is totally different out here. For example a long lost friend suddenly finds out that you are in "The States". You get a message from him.

"Hey dude...heard u in US now....Must b having fun. How r the girls? Did your accent change?
When are you coming back? ...." and it goes on and on.

Life in US is Good....Bad....and sometimes Ugly. Good in way that you live your own life. You get the feeling of "responsibility". You have Roadtrips ;) which are fun. (I Love driving). You have Air Conditioning everywhere you go.(Not bragging about US.) Education system is a lot better (Grad School). You interact people of all kinds, people from various countries. I feel this is the Best Part. Personally I hardly get to interact with Americans. Especially in Grad school you will have a very less % of Americans.

Coming to the Bad part. People forget that here you have to cook your own food, wash your own dishes, vacuum your apartment(which I never do), wash your own clothes, do groceries etc. Now how in the world do people manage to do so I never understood. You miss Good Home Made Food. Yes, you have Indian Restaurants, but you dont want to spend much money there. You miss family.

Sometimes it even gets Ugly ! Worst thing about US is the Medical Cost. Say you have some medical problem. Unlike at home there is no one to take care of you here. Other than the problems you can think of, one biggest problem is, cost of medication. Yes you have insurance which covers most of the Bills. But insurance does not cover everything. You do some medical tests and later you find out that you get a bill of an obscene amount of say 5000$. Even if insurance covers 80%, you would still have to shell out 1000$ !

Everyone in US is busy. If you are not busy in the US then I dont know what to tell you. Long story short, you are here for a reason, which is very significant compared to the small problems you face here. This thought helps you move forward. There are times when you feel sick of your life, but there are also times when you have so much fun in a day that you could have spread it over a month. Doing research is a very boring job, if you dont know what you are doing. Sometimes...when you really understand it, it gets exciting for a very short period of time.

I am running out of time now. Summer Semester going on. Most of my time goes into Research work. Life is very routine and boring , especially in Summer .

Long Time No C ~!!!

Howdy,

I suddenly remember that there existed something known as a BLOG, and that I too have one. So here I am back in action( this time not by popular demand though). I am not that good at writing, so do not expect to be "moved" by my blog. It will just give you one thing.... BULL SHIT. As I always believed....Dont give them Shit...Give them BULL SHIT.

Life has taken a Roller coster ride since the last time I blogged. Then I dint know what was gonna happen....where i wud land up...what wud I be doing. Now the questions are answred. Just to give you a recap of the events that HIT my life.

"Happiness"....That is all I wanted. "Happiness" ...That is all I have got.

CAT,XAT,FMS,IIFT and whatever other MBA Exams, all given.
2 Calls: SCHHRD, NITIE.
The Rest is History and Geography.

Infosys: "Not another IT Coolie." was my answer.


So I land in The AggieLand. Yes, This is what Texas A&M University@College Station is called and we are called "The Aggies". Passionate about FootBall....not Soccer....but American FootBall. Had been to one of the Games against Missouri and had loads of fun. One thing you will notice here is almost everyone wears only one colour....Maroon. Thats Fashion for AggieLand. The place is like a Village in USA. Nothing to do here....except playing Cricket during the weekends. The Campus is Huge. We have awesome Recreation Centre(which I hardly use). The Most Beautiful building here is Jack E Brown Building of Chemical Engg. I am Proud of it. :D



Coming to studies....I finally end up into Comical Engg...errr Kam-Akal Engg....eerrr Chemical Engg. In a few years I will become on Poor Humble Doctor (PhD in case u dint know...now dont raise your euebrows). First Semester has ended (Got decent Grades) and the second one has started. I am a Research Assistant....and Research is at a Starting Stage. My advisor Dr.Tahir Cagin is from Turkey. Pretty cool person.

So all in all...Life is Good and Busy !!!
For now....C U Later....Allegator !!!

AU - The End !!!

Finally the exams are over. The busy-times are now gone. It’s strange about Engineers. Or better I say its one quality we have…well most of us have. Some insane persons do work like a Dog. But others like me somehow manage to get the whole subject just in a matter of some hours. In the middle of the semester you try and open your books, try and read a page and you never understand what the thing is all about. Then you just throw that book in some corner and somehow you assure yourself that there is still lot of time for the exams to come. One final day you are sipping a cup of coffee and you get to hear that exams are round the corner. You almost spill your coffee. 10 days to go. You decide that at least now you are going to wake up and start studying. Now you first of all have to search for a syllabus paper. You try your best everywhere but you never find one. No one has it, and the person who has it never tells you the secret. Then you realise that you dont even have a text book, so you borrow from someone and xeroxofy them. Finally the most important work, that of getting some previous years' koschan papers. Same case here also. No one wants to give. They have for sure but this you only find out just before the exams when you see them in their hands. Somehow you get lucky and have some koschan papers then begin the analysis. You go mad looking at them because you have no idea what it is all about. May be some Greek or Latin it is and you throw it off.

Days go by. One day to go for the exam and now the sweat on your forehead tells the whole story. Tomorrow exam and you don’t even know the syllabus. Now all the things one by one fall into place. Syllabus, question papers and most importantly books and materials. All are with you and now somehow you get yourself to try and struggle hard. It becomes little easier if you have some company. Easier not to study I mean. You start studying; going at a rate that you always feel, is slower than you friend’s. The only thought that is in your mind is that, everyone else is studying except you. As the sun goes down the intensity increases. Somehow your level of concentration shoots up. Supernatural phenomena that can never be explained I think. In a matter of just some hours you complete studying all the chapters and understand all the concepts and are ready to spit all the crap on the paper next day.

Finally you manage to do a decent job in the exam. Now the headache is transferred to the person who corrects your paper. He is so privileged to see new theories being developed in the very paper he is correcting. I guess he should also be given some pills along with the paper. This is the story that repeats itself every semester for every True Engineering Student. At least this is what has been happening with me every semester.

Now all the exams are over.

Time to party.

Good NiTie

I had NITIE GD/PI on 9^th.

1^st of all I should congratulate NITIE for good hostel facilities. Had a pretty good time.

The only thing I was lacking was luck. My group was the 2^nd last for the day. Reported in the auditorium at 8 am in the morning. There was some presentation about NITIE. Then the groups were sent for GD/PI one by one. My turn came at around 6:30 in the evening. GD topic was “Is ‘Automation’ desirable in a labor intense Industry”. GD was pretty cool. Everyone chipped in with good points. Then there was another long wait for the interview.

Panel: 2gentlemen and 2 gentlewoman .

S=Sir

M=Mam

I=Moi.

And here it goes,

S: So Sandeep, I give u 3 minutes. Tell me something bout urself.

I: Muhhaaahhaa…..Blah Blah Blah.

S: hmmm….Sandeep…I see ur %ages here….85…..95…85….so u seem to be very good in studies. We hava course ISEM. U being a chemical engineer it will suit u also since it is on environment and all. Why don’t u go for that.

I: Sir, I am interested in the IM course and I want to do that…blah blah…

S: Suppose we have no seats of that course and we giv u choice of taking up the ISEM course what wud u say?

I: Sir, I am interested in the IM course and I am not interested in the envi one bcoz ….

M1: No no Sandeep, what he is asking is if given a choice will u take that or not.

I: No mam, I wont.

S1: (I think here he decides to fire me now) what is this DRDO (or something like that I guess)….do u know.

I: sorry sir, I do not know.

S1: There was a course on instrumentation, what did u study in that.

I: (where the hell did he get this from I hardly remember) Still Told them…

S1: Ok … so how do u control the temperature of a boiler?
I: Explained but he wasn’t satisfied I guess….

S1:yes yes but how exactly do u do it…?

I: Explained him more ….

S1:Sandeep there was news 2 days back. It seems some person was carrying some 2 bottles of chemicals in the flight and there was a chaos bcoz of that. Can u tell me bout it?

I: sorry sir I haven’t followed that news.

M1: Hehehe so u do not follow newspaper is it?

I: I do mam, but I haven’t seen this news.

S1: ok. It was some chemical it seems. And if u open that bottle some gas comes out it seems. So can u tell what that is?

I: (I had no idea how I cud tell) No sir I do not know.

S1: Take a guess….

I: ( I donno y but I thot he mite lead me to Bhopal gas tragedy so tried my luck) Methyl Isocyanite ….

M1: ( starts laughing and rest join her….) Everyone will die if its MIC.

I: Yes mam they will ( but they don’t seem to listen). Oh u mean the bottle opened and nothing happened to anyone.

M1: Yeah nothing happened to anyone.

I: ( Then y dint he ask clearly that it happened this way…) ok mam.The I don’t know what that is.

M1: So u had done a project in Coromandel fertilizers?

I: ( Why the hell did I write about it just to fill some place!!! ) No mam, it was a five day visit.

M1: Oh so u dint do any project as such. ok so tell me….( and she grilled me for sometime on that)

I: (poor me…tried to do my best).

S1: Sandeep why don’t u go for job for a year or 2 and then do an MBA? That wud be better na…u will have some experience.

I: Sir as u know NITIE has a summer intern of 2 months and in addition to that it has a 4 months proj in industry in final year. This will give me hands on exp of the industry and will be a perfect launch pad for me. Also NITIE being in Mumbai also has a lot of interaction with various persons of industry so that will also help me gain a lot of practical knowledge…etc.

S1: Who told u all that……?

I: (WHAT?) Sir, I have read it in the brochure and also in the presentation this morning.

S1: Hmmm….ok. So tell me what is this CH, CH2 and all these things.

I: Sir these are hydrocarbons. Hydrogen and carbon are bonded …blah blah

S1: Ok. So how many H can C take?

I: Sir, C has 4 electrons in its outermost orbit and hence it can combine with 4 H atoms.

S1: OK. Thank You Sandeep.

I: (why this abrupt end?) Thank You mam, sirs.

Mmmuhaaahhhahaha…..Why does this happen to me? 20 mins tech..

TATA DADA !!!

So what did you think of the Title of this post?
Yes, these kind of words would be uttered by small babies.
But the whole of India (yes u can say world actually…) is chanting these words now. Now u see what I am talking about? The “Dada” himself. Saurav Ganguly.This has become a topic of discussion in our day to day life. You have “Dada Fans” but the opponents out number them way to easily.

I have one point to make. I HATE Saurav Ganguly. Wait...dont start hating me now.If u do i dont care also right...so listen to what i hafta say.
Noone would have had any problem with Saurav Ganguly ever if it was just the case of not being in form....even if its pretty long time!!! The problem was his Attitude.Yes u heard that right.I know people like Dada for his Attitude...remember Flintoff's case. Ahhh..."we love this Naya Kaptaan" we said. We just loved that dint we? But i am not talking about that "Captaincy" wala stuff. Forget for a while bout captaincy.Even if that was the question I would still say Dravid.But coming back to the point. I am talking about the "fact" which is that Saurav Ganguly always thought that he was a "Prince", who doesnt need to work hard.He always thought that his place in the Team cannot be questioned by anyone.In fact he never ever "thought" about this. He thought He was God. He never focussed on the fitness part of himself. Neither did he think that he had a resposibility called "Batting" other than being a Captain. If Sachin or for that matter anyone would have been in a pathetic form..he would hav had support. Because a plyer like Sachin is respected because the way he is. Ganguly is not prepared to work hard. Its again his attitude towards the Game. Whenever he wishes he doesnt play(pitch wala matter). He just doesn what "HE" wants. That is the thing that was not liked by anyone including myself. I am Glad that Greg Chappel is present to help out the Indian Team. Common sense is the only thing that is required to be applied. He just does that. He keeps things simple.
"choose the Team, and then the Captain.".
That makes sense. The Basic things always do make sense.Its only that we never care to think about the basics. This is where the combination of "Dravid and Chappel" becomes Strong. Both are almost made of same principles. Both give immense importance to "discipline" ,"following the basics" and "hardwork. Which always lacks in indian time. This has no place for "chalta hai" kind of people, yeah Dada. Also the young talend has come out all guns blazing.That has further diminished the chances of Sourav coming back.

Whatever happens. Whether sourav comes back strongly or otherwise i think the only thing every indian would desire is that Indians do well. We would be happy to see the killer instinct in our Team and the "never say die" attitude.
Remember the importance of "ATTITUDE"..no? Then try this....

Taking A=1,B=2,....Z=26. Add up all the letters of "ATTITUDE".
So u see what i meant?

Life is a Game.

"Where will I be after six months?"

This is a thought that has been scaring the hell out of me day in and day out. Life is a Game and you have to play it well. There are days when you make centuries and there are also days when you are out for a Duck. For me the latter always seems to be the case. After the CAT debacle the other exams also have not been any different. XAT was a Bouncer.The pitch for FMS was like those in Pakistan....lots of runs up for grabs but only the ones with strikerates like Dhoni and Afridi can benefit.In short...my hopes of joining a good BSchool this year is fading away. Unlike the Indian team and more like "Dada" I havent been in good form". There was only a "cameo" in GRE which wasnt bad actually.But still there is "No Reply" from any of the US Universities. I was lucky enough to wake up from sleep and attend the Infosys ka thing. Kuch bhi nahi hua to Infy haina. I just hope I land up in a place where I am Happy. That is all I want...."Happiness".

Re:Solution.

Hello People,

Happy New Year to all you people. Hope all had a Rocking time partying. Well…this is the time when everyone keeps bugging everyone about the so-called “New Year Resolution”. Now do you need a New Year to make a Resolution? First of all what is a Resolution…. a sort of promise made to oneself, that too for a good reason. So to take a good decision do you have to wait for a new year to start? I do not understand this funda. If I want to do something good then I will to take that decision to do it as soon as possible rather than waiting for Dec 31^st night and blah blahing about it.

But, some things don’t change. So at least what people can do is in addition to the “New Year Resolution” also make it a point make a resolution it as and when required to stop all the bad and lazy habits.

Btw…Whats ur New year Resolution ehh?

Cheers.