Round I

I knew the interview will not last more than 15 min or at the maximum it can stretch
upto 20 min.
I entered the room in the most possible polite manner. Thankfully the dampers were
working well enough so I didnt had to do much.
There were 3 persons in the male. One of them was HR head, others two I dont know.

Since this was my first interview in my life I was quite nervous because by now I
was very serious that I dont want to miss this company. No matter what happens they
will find very hard to reject me.

The question-answer session started.
"Tell me something about urself " I gave a long history about myself. My
family,spoke about myself. May be I had given a 2 minute speech.

My nervousnes was very much evident in the brief speech of mine.. so the HR head tried to allay me and asked me was it my first interview and asked me to calm down.. All this did calmed me down.

"What are your favourite subjects?" "IC Engine, Automobile engg, Referigeration and Airconditioning engg" I was waiting for this question. I blurted "IC Engine". They asked me a few questions about IC Engines.. like Volumetric Efficiency, Otto & Diesel Cycles and operating principles of engines.. which I answered quite comfortably...

Then they asked me few questions from Production Engg.. which I answered but not all were correct... Clearly Production engg was not my cup of tea... finally they asked me few more general questions about current affairs .. well thats it.. all done in 20 min.. first interview of life..

After interview left for room and honestly was not sure to get through but sitting in room along with rooms was quite taxing so decided to go to Placement office.. so after around 1.5 hours when I finally was around Octagon .. A few of my batchmates ( Vikas jain .. dont remember who else..) were looking out for me to tell me that I am thorugh it.. well I must say I was shocked..

I went and had talk with HR person who I learnt was Rakesh Gupta ... He told me to prepare on Production engg for the 2nd round of interview... which was slotted to be conducted on 19th Aug... Not much time.. but I guess just enough to scrap through..

Remaining some time later..

Placements during engg

10th August 2002 4:00 p.m.: Infosys was in the campus yesterday. It had given the students a reason to cheer up. It had recruited almost 43 students.. and in a single day placements figures had gone up by 75%. The going was not so easy as the software companies were still coming to terms with the tech meltdown and it was getting reflected in the placements.
For him the newst was that there will be a hardcore mechanical company on 13th and there will be no shortlisting based on the BioDs. Finally he fancied his chances. Till date 2 companies had visited and he was not shortlisted for either of them, not even for the written. Anyway he knew if it comes to written then its going to be easy for him, relatively. Then there was another element that papers reached to the campus before the companies After all only 6 guys had got placed and if the class rank was considered he was ard 30 in a class of 56.

12th August 8:45 pm: Speaking to his friends; he discovered that this company has a rule of no Past arrears. The road seemed marginally better now.

13th August: As usual classes were deferred..bcoz of placements. Pre Placement talk started ard 9 am and continued for almost half an hour. An interesting point was made by the HR head "People who are interested in going for higher studies my not sit for the company"
Then the written tests started. One after another.. It continued... 5 papers in all.. One paper at a time and by the time the ordeal was over it was almost.The papers were pretty easy and in fact he was the first one to finish them.
So instead of going to Mess for a messy lunch, he settled for Cant(have it)een lunch. His name was 7th in the list which meant he had a little over 2 hours for the interview.
The easier part was done. Now the intervew which meant lot of technical questions will be asked and this was not going to be an easy thing. Till date he had covered only 3 subjects for placements - IC engine, Thermodynamics and Automobiles. Fortunately for him, it was an automobile company and had come to campus offering roles in Marketing and Production.
He went to room and half of the wing had turned up to his room. Some had come to teach him, some to give him tips for interviews, some to help him in getting dressed while others merely to watch some kind of drama. In the college when a guy used to go for interview, his friends used to turn up at his room and used to make sure that he is dressed as if he is going on his 1st date. One of his friends, Vineet turns up to check the dress and was not quite satisfied with his outfit and went out to fetch a shirt and came back within 10 min with a white shirt. It was not in a good shape so he ironed it for his friend. Then he said that he has been bringing good luck to all the guys whosoever got his shoe laces tied up by him. Very good.. why would he mind it.. So around 4 pm he left for the placement office and surely enough he was accompanied to the placement office by a few good souls like Sarit, Vineet..
When he reached there he found that there were 2 guys before his turn comes. 2 guys means at least half an hour more to go ..
Sitting peacefully and waiting for his turn to come is something he never really had learnt.. especially when guys around him are trying hard to mugg the fundas...and within 15 minutes shirt was already crumpled.Vineet was disappointed and made no efforts to hide it. Not to disappoint his friends much; he finally sat on a chair to wait for his turn.

( To be concluded..)

Sleeping in Class !!!

Typically in any of our instruction hours.. close to 5% are perenially sleeping and the total no. of students who take a nap or two or sth more than that wppuld come to a peak of almost 50%.
There is a major competiton among who will be the top most sleeper in the class. Some of them who r leaders in the pack are Sayan Sircar, Aswin Mani, Kabra, Mohit, Gaurav Mittal, PKT, Amitava,Vikas Iyer and myself. Off late we find even our CR sleeping in Operations class.
AS usual there was a mid term test of finance paper today and we were all preparing for the paper. We were told u study up to whatever has been covered till date. So Happily I studied and since there was a paucity of time, towards late in the night decided in the usual funda of selective studying. In tahat I took the last set of ppt which was given to us by Sir, and took up the last topic as per ppt and studied it properly. ALso glanced into the last but one topic as well,but didnt do it properly enough.
Next day morning, i.e. today morning when the paper came in my hands I saw that the last question was the topic which I had covered with a "glance".
As expected this question I messed up and this particular question along had a weightage of almost 50% of the entire paper...
Like me most of us had not studied this topic, for various reasons.
After the test I had a shock of life time when classes started again and I found that I had covered topic which was being taught after the test..

How I had wished that I had covered the topic prior to that one; then my strategy would had worked and i wud have been a happier soul !!!1

Techfest in IIT

Last weekend was the Techfest weekend. It was held over 3 days and various copetitons were held in it. Some of the most intersting ones were the Full throttle(in which cars had to dart over a distance of almost 15m. The best timing I saw was 9.2 sec) GRIP.

The event which attracted my attention was the exhibhition by Indian Air Force. On display were Pechora SAM ( Surface to Air Missile) with its entire set up i.e. radars which detect the enemy aircrafts then another one which helps in locking the target and guides the missiles, the launchers and other accessory items. Also on display were Shoulder fired heat sensing missiles - IRLA.
The pics r uploaded at http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=2113353644..

njoi

One night @ call centre

An excerpt from the book

"A bad boss is like a disease of the soul. Ig you have one for long enough, you get convinced sth is wrong with u. Even tho' u know ur boss is the loose and u start doubting urself and that is when confidence goes..."

I read the book this weekend... was not really a griping ones.. otherwise i wud had finished in a single sitting...
There was much hype among my frends.. so it was very much a disppointment. A real let down after the author's 1st book "Five point someone"... or did I build up high expectations without reading any review..

In fact that is the only chapter in the whole book which I read twice.. In fact it is the most dramatic one... Kind of Hindi movies when all kind of suprenatural things happen and hero/heroine gets out of all the problems.. when all of a sudden,at a nowhere place,the protagonist finds himself along with his friends is facing death gets a phone call;
tho' who was this GOD the author reveals at the end of book but ends with another mystery.. If u r unable to crack it.. I will be able to help u..
If asked to evalute the book I will not give the book more than 4 out of 10.

(pls note this is my personal view; just like any other entries in the entire blog. Others r entitled to their views)

My friend's dilemma

I sensed sth is amiss... The moment she tried to say sth but was searching for words but cudnt... Never short of giving anyone a earful dose..
Mind was somewhere else but had little option to be there physically...

Then seeing her goofing up couple of times cudnt control and asked her for a coffee... Not that I was jobless but I cudnt wait till lunch hrs..She declined, as expected.. This is not normal, she never said no for a coffee.. not that coffee was gr8 but it was more of a time pass session for her .. suspicions got confirmed ... Gotto pull her out... With no other option, I got back to my work... and within 5 min.. she came to me and asked whther I am still interested in coffee... Whoever said I was intersted in coffee.... was kidding ard.. I was more interested in her.. or rather my failure for being unable to read her today..

So we went.. The usual eyebrows were raised but by now these eyes were quite used to it..
I filled a full cup today, instead of usual half, knew that its going to be a long break...now she did she realised and asked how come today a full cup... I didnt want to losse focus.. so just smiled...
Started with a few general remarks... but knew she wanted to tell sth and thats why she has come..

A little probing revealed that she was being pressurised by her parents to get married and settle down... Pity.. waste of talent.. Loss of India .. gain of US..
The guy worked for a Fortune 50 company in US and will be coming to India see her in a week's time...
The US-Canada craze , I had thot earlier was limited to Northern staes of Punjab & haryana only.. didnt realise that moving up in value chain , in whatsoever manner is a common feeling shared by all humans.. More so if ppl feel that they want to declare .." me too" or " Mine too" is settled smwhr in a place which is thousands of miles away ..
She had a brilliant future ahead and was really doing well and was due for confirmation as her training period wud be getting over in a month's time..

Tried to console her but cudnt, she was deeply hurt by her parents.. Even she didnt expect her parents to come out like that .. is the NRI ( not required Indian) so important ??
Tho I have nothing against NRIs but for the sake of greener pastures, if u can leave ur parents, ur famaily, ur country and everything that u say that was urs.. dont command a great respect from me...
they r willing to adopt a phoren country but will marry a desi girl.. and have ABCD kids..
Me feel that u owe a lot to ur country and shud be here to serve it for a major part of ur life, bcoz now opportunites r there in plenty, not like the situation that used to exist till a decade or so ago...

The girl, a happy bird feels her independence is lost..?? can u cage a bird?? yes.. but her spirits .. certainly not.. but what is a bird if it cannot fly around..??

Certainly she can say no to him .. but what if she really says no.. what will they say "itna achha ladka badi kismet waalon ko hi milta hai" or "iska to deemag kharab ho gaya hai" or i dont know..
May be the liberalisation of our society from these ideas is still a few generations away.. certianly the girls need a lot more self determination and decide on her own what is rite for her and what not..

Dr. Pratap Reddy

One of the interesting part of curriculum in SOM is Leadership Lecture series organised. In this course students froma grps and study a leader and then invite him to deliver a speech to have a first hand course. This is the only college, I have been told, where it is being done regularly, and that too for over 6 yrs.

So,this Monday we had the privilige to meet and hear Mr. Pratap Reddy, head of Apollo grp hospitals. To say that he is a great person will be an understatement, he had left his successful heart practice in US and had come back to India following his father's wishes. The Apollo grp of Hospitals chain that he had started in 1983 is now the 3rd largest chain in the whole world. He has set up hospitals in quite a few countries like Bangladesh and few African and central Asian countries (dont remember..). What makes the achievement greater is that worldclass healthcare is provided at extremely low cost and this entire chain has been created by fighting against the gret Indian bureaucracy, where still after 15 yrs of liberalisation, ppl think twice b4 starting a business of their own. He did it. There were laws in those days in which items imported required spl licences and spl permissions. Such requirements were there even for life saving equipments.

He said that he started the hospital after being moved by the death of a young man,because of heart ailments,who cudnt afford to go to US for treatment. Its not often one comes across a person who gets affected so much by the death of a person not related to him.

He wants the Govt to introduce quite a few measures and if those r really being implemented then i think his dream of India becoming a Health destinaton will come true.He doesnt quite really beleives in medical tourism.

Lot of takeaways from such a geat person.
Hats off to such a great personlity....

A Trip to Matheran

Matheran is a small hill station , abt 2 hrs drive from Bombay (oops.. Mumbai). I found it very different from all the hill stations which I have visited till date. Like..

1. NO motored vehicles are allowed within the town... U have to get on a horse or walk around to do site seeing.
2. An entry fee of 25 bucks to enter in the town... ( good way to keep the economy going)
3. Compared to others it is relatively thinly vegetated.
4. Typically all hill stations whether it is Kodaikanal or Munnar, all have point called Suicide Point.. no point is named so .. on the contrary there is a HoneyMoon Point..

some of the snaps which I had taken, are available at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sachinsharma/page2/