Since it has been over a month since I wrote something, you might be wondering what happened to me. I assure you, all is well with me. So why this long hiatus, you ask me. Have I developed an aversion to my keyboard (which is mightier than your pen and your sword)? Have I run out of things to talk about? Have I decided to not share any more of my profound wisdom with you guys? Or worse still, is it that a long forgotten foe, having raised his ugly head, has finished me off, after making me reveal my GMail password so that the despicable fiend can be online under my guise and write nice status messages? Worry not, for none of those has happened. I do admit that I have been at a loss for words. Literally. So many things to talk about and time and again when I tried to weave a nice post around that, I found myself unable to do it, and I have spent the last month-and-a-half being locked up inside a cocoon of wordless ideas, not willing to come out, not able to write. But all that is history now, and I am back at my keyboard doing what I do best (no, I am not going to write code now).

Like all good K serials, let me do a quick recap of what has happened so far. June came and went, so now it has been more than an year since good old JC unleashed its ‘07 graduates on the poor unsuspecting world.  Also came and went the twelfth of July, and with that I completed one full year at AllGo.  Lots of things have changed between then and now, but I don’t really feel like ranting about that right now. Let’s just say I have learnt a lot of new things, technical and otherwise, and leave it at that.

Now that that is out of the way, I still have this annoying question of what exactly to write about to salvage my nosediving hits. Maybe I can write about “Ten things I like” or “Ten things I dislike” or “Ten movies you should avoid like the plague” or something like that. But I seriously don’t think I can compile ten things of anything, so that’s out of question. Maybe I can write about how much I hate it when people use SMS lingo, but there is really nothing much to write about, other than what I just mentioned. Nope. None of those. I’ll just make this a frivolous post. So presenting a review(?) of the four movies I watched last week (actually I saw five, but everyone has seen Mungaru Male, so what’s the point?). Read and be amazed.

1. First up, a Telugu movie called Happy Days. Was waiting for a long time to watch this one, and I finally got a DVD print of that. The movie starts off pretty well, invoking nostalgia of those glorious college days. The first half is decent enough, inspite of those overdone ragging bits and that ridiculous cricket match. It is the second half that disappoints. What could have been an unforgettable movie about college days and friendship, turns out to be a familiar tale with four different love stories, fights and happy (or sad, depending on the person in question) endings. Still, the movie does have some memorable scenes, has an amazing music score and manages to keep you entertained. 2.5/5.

2. Then, there’s Bommarillu, another Telugu movie. Put in a nice script, throw in some comedy, have your actors give fine performances, and most importantly, include Genelia in the cast and what do you get? An out-and-out entertainer, that’s what! It has been a long time since I have enjoyed a movie so much. This one gets a 3.5/5 .

3. Jaane Tu.. Ya Jaane Na: Another Genelia movie. Saw it last weekend at Sathyam Cinemas in Chennai. Decent movie, you can watch it once. Nice story and good acting, with lots of laughter thrown in, you’re sure to come out of the theatre happy that for once your movie ticket has not been a bad investment. I give it 3/5.

4. Memento: When I was trying to choose a good movie from my collection, I remembered Vivek mentioning this one. And it doesn’t disappoint. Memento probably has the most unusual narrative I’ve ever seen. The hero has short-term memory loss, so he can’t remember anything more than two minutes ago. So how does the director decide to tell this story? Backwards, of course! It’s like a conventional movie split into a dozen pieces and all those pieces are shown in the reverse order. You’ll really need to use your brains to keep track of the story, so this one is recommended only if you are open to giving your brain some serious exercise. For sheer innovative film-making, I give it 4/5.

So that’s it. I feel my fingers deserve a little break right now, and for that matter, so do your eyes. I’ll be back.

PS: This is the first post of mine which doesn’t have a single link. A result of wanting to keep the post free of those annoying underlined words that jump up at odd moments. And lazyness on my part.

It was one of the last times I took my bike to college. And it was different. The environment seemed strangely alien. It was crazy. I had always belonged there, haven’t I? And yet, this time it was not the same. What was wrong with me?

I parked my vehicle near MCV and headed towards the office to collect my marks card. As luck would have it, the office was closed that day. As I walked back, I glanced at the entrance to the IS department, where we used to have our EC lab. And for a moment I felt I was back in third semester and surely, I would find Pradeep and Uma and the rest of the A3 batch inside, complaining how pointless the whole lab was. That’s when it hit me. I was an outsider; a pass-out; an alumnus. Just some dude who used to be a student there, finished his engineering and got a job.

It was not just about your friends not being there or missing them. It was about the whole “being a student” experience, if you know what I mean. It was about attending classes (CS guys might wonder when we ever did that, but I mean the few we did attend). It was about getting text books photocopied two days before the internals, complaining about the unfair portions and then coming to write them completely unprepared. It was about plotting mass bunks. About begging for question banks. And paying huge overdue to the library for a book you never cared to read. Standing in long queues to pay your examination fees. Whiling away your time in the labs and then searching for a decent lab manual to bail you out. Complaining about college policies. Breaking them (remember the ridiculous VTU mobile ban?). Arguing with your lecturer that the ludicrous answer you wrote in the test was right. And convincing him. More mass bunks. Class trips. Playing table tennis. Studying for your exams. The anxious wait for the results. The vacation. Meeting your friends on the first day back. Buying the syllabus copy. Checking out the new subjects. Checking out the timetable to see who will handle what. The CR election. The inaugurals. Jayciana. Technologix. Cyberia. Tuxedo. The contests. The tech talks. The prizes. The juice parlour. The canteen. The steps. The parking lot. The administrative block. The audi. The nescafe. The stationary. The co-ops. The placement cell. The temple. The benches. The fountain. All of it. It was about “the feeling”. Of being a JCite.

I just wanted to be back there. And experience all that once again. The whole four years. Just one more time…

Now where did I keep that time machine?

My last weekend was unusual in a way. I had been to Mysore to renew my bike’s insurance and bring it here to Bangalore. And as planned, we rode it all the way to Bangalore, the ‘we’ referring to me and Akash Shetty. The journey was a wonderful experience; riding on the Mysore – Bangalore highway was an absolute joy. My Glamour was tested to its limits, often going beyond 80 kmph and crossing 100 a couple of times. It was the first time I had been on my bike for so long, and even though it took a good part of an hour to find the way to my place once we entered the city, I enjoyed it thoroughly nevertheless.

So with my bike transported to Bangalore, the last of my possessions in Mysore has now been shifted. This, if not anything else, marks the end of a very significant part of my life, a part which saw me going to college, being offered a job, graduating and in the process, growing up in a whole new way to be the person I am now. Also ends with it my most wonderful six years in Mysore – six years which had me tasting success more frequently than any other time of my life. Time flies and how! It seems like only yesterday that I arrived in Mysore freshly out of high school and now here I am, a graduate with my own source of income! Talk about life on fast-forward!

Hours before I was supposed to leave, as I rode on my bike on the streets of Mysore, I could not stop the voice in my head which kept repeating that life as I knew it was over. And as we sped across the outskirts of the city towards Bangalore, I knew I would never again ride my Glamour in the streets of Mysore; never again would I experience the joy of visiting obscure places around with my friends; never again would I shift to second gear and turn to enter my college gate; there was a strange feeling of sadness in me, almost a sense of bereavement…

Anyone who knows me well also knows that I am one of the biggest customers for VTU’s revaluation. In fact, according to my secret sources, more than half of VTU’s profits can be traced back to a certain Prasanna Pandit. To be precise, VTU has received one revaluation form from me without fail ever since my fourth semester. So now that I no longer get to wait for my results twice any more, I thought I would calculate how much I have gained from the whole thing. From the 10 subjects I had applied for revaluation throughout my engineering, I see I have gained 9 + 0 + 27 + 42 + 7 = 85 marks, which leads to an increase of 1.27% in my aggregate. Not bad at all. Admittedly, I have been luckier than most people when it comes to the R-word.

I know I run the risk of being called a big-headed marks-crazy freak, but I simply couldn’t stop myself from writing this post. Revaluation results are out, and I got a modest seven marks more in Advanced Computer Architecture. I have long since forgotten how much I really expected from that subject. So now that the final scores are in (I definitely don’t plan to apply for challenge revaluation), here’s how I stand : The extra seven marks mean that my eighth semester percentage goes up by a decent 1.1% taking it to 81.44%. My aggregate of all the semesters rises by 0.2% which means I finish my engineering with 81.61%. Of course, that also means I top the 2003-2007 batch of Computer Science at SJCE, which at one point I had thought was only possible in my wildest dreams.

As for the revaluation this time, I know a lot of people think it was a precious waste of time and money for a small change in the numbers (I had cleared the subject after all), but for me it was four hundred ten rupees well spent!