Last day at IITB

I leave IITB in about 3 hours. And I have a lot of people to thank :)

• The mess workers for keeping us well fed throughout. Though a few may complain about food, I feel that I've had the best food of my life here.
• The house keeping staff, especially at H12, have been excellent. I can't imagine how things would be without them. 
• The office staff who have been so kind and helpful. They have been so patient and such a great help during our final stages. I find it in stark contrast to the office staff at RVCE - ask 3 questions and you are shouted at.
• DC++ hub owners - thank you for the unlimited supply of entertainment.
• The man at the H12 printer shop for providing low cost, good quality prints; and also for the nice chats every time I visited him
• The excellent faculty who made us stretch our limits in every course.
• My guide, for giving me good grades and finally letting me go :)
• The government of India for setting up such wonderful institutions. I wish them success with all the new IITs.
• All my friends who made my life here so colourful.

I will surely miss my friends, the ambiance, the food, the fun, the freedom, the courses and everything. But I'm certainly not coming back for a PhD.

So long.
Prashanth

Happy :)

A few nice things happened in the last 24 hours, and I'm reaaaallly happy about them.

Last night, my parents called to tell me that they received my Oracle offer letter (finally!). Today, I came to know that they've pushed my joining date by a week (exactly what I wanted :) ).

My thesis defense is over (Y!). Both the internal and external examiners hinted that they have given me good marks (\m/) . And the external examiner bought me a pack of biscuits (Hide and Seek, my favourite!) and gave his blessings(!!!) when I went to see him off.

Only 15 days of IITB left!!!

Downtime@IITB

Officially, my first rant on blog

The last 3-4 days felt like we had gone back a decade in time.

To start things off, it was 12.20 at night when boom - the power went out. And it is so humid all the time here, it is impossible to sleep without the fan. All we could do was queue up laptops and watch movies till the power came back at 5 in the morning, using notepads to fan ourselves dry. (God help the people who were refactoring their code at 12.20)

Then, 2 days ago, a construction worker at one of the million construction sites in the campus had this bright idea of chopping the campus' optic fibre backbone. Result - no network for 2 whole days! With project presentations coming up soon, I must say, great timing.

Yesterday was supposed to be a no water day. But thankfully, we did not feel the pinch.

One crazy night

This was the night when my juniors showed their love, my namesake got GPLs, I got wet twice in an hour, stole the draught of stinking hell, chased, got chased and got baptized.

So here is the story.

Prologue: Prashant Borole is one of my classmates here at IITB. Prashant and I have more things in common than just the name. His birthday is on 5th of April and mine on 6th. He stays in room 214 and I in 215. We were both TAs for the Software Lab course which is mandatory for all MTech first years. And all the first years remember him for the sed assignment he gave one day, which made them spend 1 whole day on just 1 problem, and there were 8.

Scene 1: The curious case of the redirected GPLs
It was 11.55pm on the 5th of April. I heard noises. When I came out of my room and looked, there were about 20 first years and quite a few of my classmates. My classmates usually spare me from the GPLs because I have a reputation of being a "Non-Kamina", but the first years couldn't be trusted! But to my surprise, all of them moved to room 214, pulled out Prashant and delivered well aimed GPLs. I was thinking they got the wrong guy until they wished me a happy birthday!
Phew! That was close!

Scene 2: The bath
After the regular cake-cutting, I went to the bathroom to clean up my face  and hair. As soon as I came out, Ajitav emptied a bucket of cold water on my head. Grrrrr.....That wasn't there in the birthday protocol!

Scene 3: The great escape
As per the birthday protocol followed by us, the birthday boy gives a treat in the night canteen, and after that, The Draught of Stinking Hell(DOSH) is poured on his head. DOSH is brewed by putting bits and pieces of food in a cold drink bottle and shaking it well. Saurabh took up the initiative this time and ordered Slice (it's more for the bottle than for the juice). As the food arrived, people started contributing to it. As far as I know, the following ingredients went into the bottle - mango juice, slice, chips, dosa, chutney, ketchup, noodles, lemon juice, rose milk, chickoo juice, omlette and rice. It looked ugly and disgusting.

All the time, I was trying to think of ways to escape. All I wanted to do was get rid of the bottle. So, after my friends were done with the food and were leisurely trying to envision my fate, I grabbed the bottle, ran to the sink and poured out the sticky, smelly DOSH in the sink :) :) And by the time Saurabh caught up with me, I had managed to empty 90% of the bottle :)

Scene 4: The baptizing
After the escape, I was talking to a few of my friends outside the canteen. This was my biggest mistake of the night. Saurabh had somehow managed to brew up the DOSH again! I ran as soon as I saw him. But Adil was quicker and caught me and Saurabh happily emptied the DOSH on my head :| Now that the damage was done, the best I could do was run after Saurabh and dirty his shirt.

As I write, my hair still smells of cake. And I'm glad it smells of cake rather than DOSH. And thank god Saurabh wasn't able to brew it up to its usual concentration!

Things I miss at home

It's been around 5 days since I've been at home, and I have already begun to miss a few things

• I can no longer download 90MB in 40s
• DC++, it's been such a long time since I stress tested the media player
• Gym, I feel ssssssooooooooo lazy
• Damn these regular powercuts, I had forgotten all about them
• Hostel food
• The noise free ambience of IITB
• Borrol and Kashyap's "discussions" over food
  

Panther again!

Got this in mail today. I really don't want my parents to read this!

C I R C U L A R


Sub : Sighting of Panther in the campus


Residents of the campus may recall previous circulars issued on the subject cited above. Panthers were seen at various places in the campus during the last few days. All out efforts are being made to ensure that the panther is trapped/chased away from the campus by the Forest Authorities. Special patrols are being deployed everyday to patrol the most vulnerable areas where the panther is being sighted frequently in jeep and motorcycles equipped with high power search lights and fire crackers.
Campus residents are requested to inform any suspicion about presence of leopard on the telephone numbers given below:


Main Building Security Control
Intercom no.: ****, **** & ****




For the purpose of precautionary measures, the campus residents are requested to observe the following:-
1)Not to provoke the animal by stone throwing or attempting to hit it with anything.


2)Not to take photograph, nor should the animal be followed or make provocative gestures.


3)If the cubs are sighted, do not indulge in any provocation whatsoever, as the panther accompanying the cubs can be highly dangerous.


4)Not to allow small children unaccompanied by adults to move around during night.


5)Not to sleep outside and, doors and windows should be secured.


6)Lonely and dark stretches of roads should not be used during night.


7)When dogs bark or run frantically at night, it may be taken as warning of panther’s presence nearby.


8)Panther is afraid of lights and cracker bursts. Hence, it is advisable to carry a torch and flick it around while moving at night.


9)In case of a pet dog, it should be kept indoors at night.


The Institute has approached the authorities concerned to remove/scare away the panthers. This section will be bursting crackers during nights. Hence do not panic on hearing sounds of crackers.

Intelligent IITians

About IIT profs and exams

In my last post, I said that I would post something about SVN clients. Since it's pretty boring, I'll do that some other time :)

Now, coming to the topic, there are different kinds of exams...the general idea is that nothing from the allowed material comes in the exams.

• Closed book: Nothing allowed. The easiest kind of exam.
  
• Open notes: The most common type of exam. We are allowed to take our notes, print outs of slides and a few research papers.
• Cheat sheet: 1 or 2 A4 size sheets are allowed. Contents must be handwritten. The number of sides that can be used is pre-specified.
• Open book: The toughest. You can take any book (any number of books) you want.

There are some other more interesting types. One prof actually had the first 15 minutes of the exam as "discussion time". One is allowed to discuss the answers with the others in the first 15 minutes. But sadly, people discovered that 15 minutes were not enough to understand any of the questions.

Another prof usually doesn't have a time limit on the exam. People come to the exam hall, think....think....think, write whatever they can figure out, and leave when they are too tired to think any more, or just get hungry. And there is a certain prof who said, "Leave the exam hall in <=2 Hours, get 3 bonus marks!"

There are some profs who give "unrelated questions" like "Do you think Obama will be a better president than Bush?", just so that students can take a break from thinking, and relax. These questions, of course, do not carry any marks.

Though weird, the good thing about all these exams is that it's "marks for thought", rather than "marks for how well you can mug or how much you can write".

April fooled!

Last week, Prof. Om Damani announced our next assignment. We had to implement statistical machine translation, that too with exams just 15 days away. Given that he took almost around 4 classes (that's about 6 hours) to give the overview of the procedure, we simply had no clue how we would manage it.

Well, we got this email from him today.

Was it April 1st when I announced it  :)
Sorry to disappoint you, but no assignment 6.
- Om

I've never ever felt this good after being fooled!

munnabhai@cse.iitb.ac.in

Life at IITB surely rocks, and so does our department :)



Starring Adil as Munna Bhai, and Sree Shankar as Circuit.

My first 0

I got my first ever 0 in AI mid sem exams. Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya had a wry smile on as he distributed the answerbooks, as if to say "Welcome to IIT". I managed a BB in the subject :-)

Janmashtami

Janmashtami

For the first time, I saw Janmashtami being celebrated the "Marathi" way. It was awesome fun watching :-) My friend Sree Shankar, one of the guys in the photo above(click to view more), has described the entire experience really well in his blog. Here is an extract (reproduced here with permission)

It was decided that 8 people will form the base, 4 on top of them and then a 3rd guy on top of us to break the matki. As all of were discussing of how to go about it, suddenly a bucket of water fell on us...."abee saale bhen**** teri maa ki..." shouts came out from the group...For me this water business was unexpected and I was totally drenched...

I was at the base (fat people are not allowed to climb others shoulders and break others hands :D). There were 8 of us. The water kept falling on us from the 2nd and 3rd floor....and the swearings kept coming out...The 2nd layer started forming. Everyone was shouting "Alareeeeee govindaaaaaaa"...The moment a guy got on to my shoulders I was like "O man this guy weighs a ton"...but the spirit of alare govinda kept all of us going....in between the guys on the top floor started pouring hot water...the swearing too got hotter....the water was soo hot that the cry of "alare govinda" was replaced by "aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh $#&#@#%$"...we could even see smoke rising from the ground once the water touched the floor...

But we still kept on going...The 2nd layer was formed. (the guy above me seemed to have a special ability to increase his weight every second)...The last guy started climbing...by this time the "pyramid" already started shaking :D...suddenly..."dim dim dim...." before I knew what happened my shoulder suddenly felt light...then only I saw it...the 2nd layer and 3rd layers were now on the "ground floor"...one on top of the other...one guys head was inside the pile on the ground and his 2 legs jutting out...everyone started laughing out soo much...the ground had turned so much muddy with water that we were all covered in mud...

This went on like this for some 4-5 times,climbing and falling, before we successfully broke the pot. Cries of joy exploded out and it was all round celebrations. People were kicking mud on each other..photos taken...as for me it was such a good time...never in the recent past could I remember myself to be covered in so much mud and still enjoying...This was followed by tug of war. All in all it was such a gr8 day..one of my most memorable.

Life at IIT Bombay

Yes guys, it's been a long time since I blogged. I mainly attribute it to the deluge of assignments that I've been given.

Lots of you have been asking me - "How's life at IITB?", hence this post.

Before I came to IITB, I had imagined that it'd have green-carpet lawns, neatly pruned hedges and aesthetic looking trees etc. It's not so. IITB is wild. It has huge trees, with climbers covering the trunks, going all the way up to the branches, and then hanging down like ropes. It has money plants with leaves as big as banana leaves (I'm not exaggerating), parrots, mynas, pigeons, cranes, sea gulls and many other kinds of birds that I don't recognize.

IITB is flanked on the left by a green hill, and on the right by a lake. Near the hill is a national park (from which a panther had wandered into the campus a few years ago).

Moving from the wildlife to the hostels, most of the hostels look as if they may crumble any moment. But looks can be deceiving ;) The hostels are built to stand the Mumbai rains. Even during heavy rains that we saw in the last month, none of the rooms got even a drop of water inside, and no water logging anywhere. Every hostel consists of about six 3-storeyed buildings, and one can go from any building to any other building without getting wet. The rooms are good and comfy, bathrooms are beautiful too ;) We get hot water even at midnight! There are washing machines to do the laundry, a billiards table, TT table, carroms and a gym (all this within the hostel). We also get a dozen different newspapers everyday. Food is great most of the time(yeah, honest!)

I'll talk about the lessons some other day. That's it for now :)

15th July, 2008

After months of day dreaming, weeks of planning and days of packing, the day that I've been looking forward to with a mixture of excitement and dread has finally arrived. I leave to Mumbai today. The days ahead promise plenty of freedom, learning and realization.....a whole new experience......