The voice within.

Oops! Almost 11 months since my last post. Old-timers, my apologies for the delay. You see, I was busy saving the world from the scourge of the evil and all. So couldn't update much here. :D And newcomers, please don't take this to be an yearly blog. :$

So before I get back to where I had stopped previously, I need to make a special disclaimer for the posts rolling out starting now.

<<< Disclaimer: After 3rd semester, I was pretty much lost. I had no idea what was happening around me and I almost always never understood anything. So, if there is any reference to any topic/event that you find/think/know are not right, please consider them as fictitious (I shall take that as a compliment :P) and continue reading. If I am right on any particular topic/event, then.. Well yeah.. I know I am right! :D >>>

So third semester had come and gone. All that was left was the large bunch of faces saddened by the way the semester exams had treated them. A few faces that were surprised at their own performance and a few who had done well by studying as though it was a matter of life and death made up the rest of the batch. A brief post-mortem of my marks-card indicated that my-story writing skills had paid off in E&EM but the valuator of Electronic Circuits was not interested in my vivid description of BJTs. :D

Anyways, those results were just to give a taste of what was in store for the coming semesters. Read on and you'll know what I meant.

Engineering Mathematics IV was taken up by Mr.Double Meaning Sir. I was attending his classes for the first time, so I was not aware as to why he was called so. Although, I had it all figured out by the end of his first class. As they say, some people just can't get enough of some things. :P So while M-4 was confusing as it is, his double meaning explanations didn't help either. And also, there was this instance where I almost got slapped (read it again. Almost! Almost!) from this Sir. It so happened that we were waiting for a lecture from "He-who-wrote-books-and-never-took-classes" (who took Field Theory for us) and he was as usual 15 minutes late (whenever he showed up for the class). The classroom was probably the last room in the long passage opposite VLSI Lab (First Floor). The class had two doors, and as usual, me, Pammya and Sarvya were sitting in the last row of the block nearest to the door. Back then, I had this reputation of getting classes cancelled every now and then by talking to lecturers for reasons like "Gotta study for IAs", "Too many assignments to complete", etc etc. So, taking this also as one such opportunity, I decided to venture out to the staff room yet again to seek permission from a senior lecturer to get the class dispersed. By then, the noise from our class had reached a 100 Decibels and had begun to disturb the neighboring classes. Mr.Double Meaning was teaching in a classroom opposite ours all this while, and had just entered our class the front door to yell at us when he saw me sneaking out along the edge of the wall. In the next 3 seconds, a big palm had swung in the air by 180 degrees, and my head had ducked just in time (Yeah! Keanu Reeves, learn learn. :P) to save my left cheek from getting the Congress symbol printed on it. Rightly, there was a collective "Oooooooh!!" from the class at that scene, post which I had to explain the reason for the noise as well as my sneaking out to Mr.Double Meaning. Even then, Aadat se majboor Mr.Double Meaning laid a white rectangular seal on my black pant using the duster and walked away grinning end to end revealing his crooked front tooth.

  

Field Theory was one messed up subject. I still don't quite get the reason for including it in our syllabus. The only use it has been to me of, is that I got 300 bucks for free from "He-who-wrote-books-and-never-took-classes". You see, there was this challenge that he had thrown at all of us, saying that anyone who scores 25 in the first IA of Field Theory would be awarded 500 bucks. I ended up scoring 23, but he was kind enough to still give me 300 bucks. Talk about motivation. :D This was one of the very few appearances that he made in the class. So naturally, when the final exams were around, we had covered syllabus amounting to only 40 marks in the paper. So, he resorted to extra-classes on Sundays! (Our seniors were ROFLing when we told this to them).

Power Electronics was one of those subjects that felt interesting at first, but then lost its charm as time progressed. Yeda anna handled this subject rather nicely, and I must say this was one subject that kept my final aggregate in 4th semester from dipping. :D There were moments in the class when a chosen few of us were in splits, specially when he let out a whistle while trying to say something that started with "Sh" (There was a gap in lower central incisors that caused the whistle. :D) and the occasional "beeee-zaaaay-teeee" (for BJT) and "you-zaaaay-teeee" (for UJT).

Surprisingly, Mr.Laaaazic Dezain was regarded as "The Chosen One" when it came to teaching Control Systems. While, he was extremely proud of this fact, we were all concerned about hitting rock-bottom in another subject taken up by him. While the mathematics part of the subject was interesting, the mechanics/application part never got into my head. Feedback loops, Graphs in all possible angles, uffff.. Pretty messy if you ask me. To make matters worse, our Control Systems paper turned out to be a disaster and took a big bite off our total marks.

Microprocessor-8085 was probably one subject that I liked, mainly it was programming oriented to a large extent. The lady who taught us 8085 was "Write-an-ALP" Ma'm. I call her that because,

1. I can't seem to recollect her name.

2. She used to start dictating Problem Description even before entering the class, right at the door. And used to shout at everyone in the class for 60 minutes straight!

One thing that I enjoyed in MP-8085 was the Lab. Interesting programs, even more interesting results when I code them. :D With Sarvesh being my lab partner, it was very natural for one of us to be summoned by the "Write-an-ALP" Ma'm and Rosy Miss every 10 minutes for doing some mischief or the other. It was great fun! ;) As much as I enjoyed the final 8085 Lab exams, I hated the theory paper. Bloody thing turned out to be another toughie alongside Control Systems. I remember, halkat Pammya was the only guy who came out of the exam hall with a 230 mm wide grin while I had lost 40 marks on the spot when comparing my answers with Dambal and Samar. Wanted to kill him (Pammya, Hattr le ninga!) :D

Ok! So I don't remember who taught us Computer Organization. So screw it! :P

Normally, this would be the point where I end my post, since I have covered the six demented subjects bestowed upon us for the semester and finished describing the harbingers of the doom that was to be brought upon by each of these subjects. But since I remember a couple of other things, this post is going to take a little more KB on my blog.

Cultural Fest:

During this semester, I attended my first inter-collegiate cultural fest (Youth Fest @ BIET Davangere) with Puttu and Vijay Patil for Quiz, which then sort of became a trend for the rest of my engineering (although diversified into various other events later on). :D We screwed up in the prelims itself, but this was a good wake up call for us.

Puttu gone Nuttu!

By the end of the fourth semester, our (mine, Puttu's, Samya's) combined studies sessions had gone down considerably, but had not come to a standstill. With Puttu around, its very natural for him to pick up a Strength of Materials book and start studying for his Data Structures exam. So, it was still a collective effort from the three of us to help each other clear our respective subjects. One such thursday, we three had been to the near-by Halganesha Temple. We were heading back to Samya's house when I began irritating Puttu by kicking him on his hindquarters. The guy took the first two three hits at ease. The moment I hit him once again, he went completely bezerk (We had watched the repeat telecast of a Goldberg match on WWE-Bottomline that evening). Bugger started chasing me all over the place with a big stone in his hand. Thanks to my stickman physique, I was able to run from the attack for a while. Finally, when I jumped over the compound of a neighbouring (Ga-Meh) house (leaving behind one of my chappals on the main road), Puttu caught hold of my collar and was all red-eyed, as if he was going to crack my skull open with that stone. Now, with me at one side of the compound in the neighbour's garden , and Puttu on the other side of the compound on the roadside, the moment looked like a rip-off from a Hollywood movie where the hero and villain stare deep into each other eyes before the final epic fight. Just when this was happening, we heard, "Yaaaarooooooooooo? Yaaaaaaaraadu???" from the neighbour's front door. In the next 10 seconds, Puttu had thrown the stone in the nearby gutter and run away, I had jumped over the compound for the second time in 30 seconds, now in the opposite direction, picked up my other chappal and vanished into the darkness on the other side of the road. I eventually got back to Samya's place later, only to find that Puttu had still not come back. A few minutes later, he entered, with an angry look on his face. He walked in, took the sofa seat opposite me in the hall, and continued to stare at me for another 5-10 seconds. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the moron burst into laughter (without the "Yavva Yavva" Thaskis) and said "Hengitt le Santya??? Hedhariddi houdillo? :D Tali kedsidra rakhta harasbiDtini, rakhta."

Idiot! :D

That's it for now then. Later...