Deepavali special!

There’s one more week for the festival. But I’m in a festive mood already   Personal life is eventful these days, especially at week ends.  After many weeks of teaching as part of Kanini classes, we(teaching volunteers) conducted an assessment test on MS Word at WET center, last week. The results are amazing with the average around 29 out of 50 marks. The kids have done a great job! Don’t ask what is so amazing about it. It took me first two semesters of my college life to understand what is a computer and what can be basically done using it. And it took even more time for me to get comfortable with very basic applications. I still remember how my fellow mates Srini and Vijay used to teach and help me out.  But these kids have learned about them in a couple of months and that too from teachers like me Meanwhile, Kanini classes are going great at VMT center also. I’m really getting excited like a child every week thinking about  planning classes and incorporating new ideas that come to my mind once in a while. At job, I’ve started working on designing a web service for HeyMath! to serve content. Right now, it has not really reached a good shape. I’ve this question related to the task. Pointers are welcome

Time to mix some bad news in between. I’ve lost my mobile for the third time in my life. First time I lost it, next time it was stolen at some public place, third time it got stolen at my office. I never like repeating mistakes more than once but this has raised “Yaanaikum adi sarukum” exception I was angry on myself  for my carelessness but nothing more can be done about the past. I’ve wasted around 17K rupees on mobile phones so far It has been almost 3 weeks since it happened. So, Yes! I’m living and I can live without a mobile!!

To those, wondering about the relation between the title and the content, Happy Deepavali(Diwali) wishes in advance!! Don’t you know how tough it is to come up with a title, especially when we are not writing about anything in specific?

Life Logger #2

I’m writing this down at the end of a happy week in my professional as well as personal life.  The main source of joy was the satisfaction I had, after completing two features for HeyMath! – Previous Years’ Assignments and Check Your Understanding.  This was my first hands-on experience with a web application but the features were not really complex. May be, they canceled out each other and ended up giving good results Anyway, I completely enjoyed developing them right from design phase to user interface coding. Lot of interesting things learnt along the way!  Moving on to the other side of my life, I’ve started making use of week ends in a responsible way through Bhumi’s Kanini program trying to make some underprivileged kids computer-literate.  It gives me immense satisfaction. Also I’m really thinking forward about how can  I help those kids through Bhumi’s Career Counseling program.  And my birthday (Aug 5)  this year needs a special mention. I never think of  it as any special day, but this time it had quite a few special moments! One of my best friends left to US for higher studies that night. Three hours before that he was at my home wishing me and sharing a lighter moment. It was very very special, as I met him after a long time!

Life logger #1

There are a lot of things, both good and bad, that have happened since I logged out from wordpress last time, just that I haven’t penned them down. Good things first. Did I tell you that I got a bike? Yeah, a black honda unicorn. And did I tell you that I managed to ride 1700 kms in 75 days without any accidents or curses from co-riders? Riding it on the highway brings so much pleasure that I completely enjoy riding on the stretch from Chrompet to Guindy which takes about 20 minutes. After that, riding through Saidapet and Nandanam becomes a pain with lot of signals, slow movement of traffic, and people crossing the road whenever they like, showing palms as if they belong to Congress. Anyway I reach my office in 50 minutes by bike (compare it to 110 minutes byMTC).  So, after 4 years, my MCWG/LMV license found a purpose to serve other than being identity proof for SIM cards I learned to ride only after getting the bike but people haven’t stopped teasing me commenting about my speed. But I would never compromise on safety and fuel efficiency(mileage) for speed, especially after witnessing so many bad drivers out there !
One more surprise was that my good friend and college mate rave has shifted his house to Tambaram Sanatorium reachable in just 10 minutes from my house(of course, in bike) Went to his house last week end and met him. Expecting to meet him more often !
Time to list the bad things -  Fire Accident The place was just 4 houses away from my house. The baby’s mother also died few days back, after spending nearly 2 weeks in hospital. This bizarre fire accident had a deep impact leaving me sleepless for days.
My mother’s health is still on the decline. Right from my childhood and  society even up to my college days, she used to be hyper active doing ten different things at a time. It is very sad to see such a person now becoming very passive, fighting against heart problems and low BP, chronic neck pain adding to the list. As she feels a support in me, I once again realized the importance and significance of that one decision which I took in haste – leaving Bangalore and hence Veveo (they were paying me a hefty salary) to come back to Chennai. It  happened to be one of the very few right decisions I’ve taken in my life.
Amidst all these, the urge to bring some changes in the society never left me. Recently, I joined BHUMI as an experiment. There are a number of reasons for why I wanted to try BHUMI when there are hundreds of NGOs. May need a separate post for that. But right now, no comments about it. I’ve to wait and see how different is it from NGOs, to what extent the words are translated to action and how significant is the change it brings about.

More things are there to write, especially about things I’m doing at HeyMath!  So in all probability, I won’t take much time to be back here

The Road Not Taken

Well ! , at last, after weeks of thinking, here comes my decision to go for higher studies, the main reason being my disliking to continue as a software engineer, as known to the outside world, any more. It’s worth to reserve a separate post to explain why. I’m going to switch my career towards a research oriented path, which I believe would help the human kind comparatively better than when I remain as a coder throughout my life! I’m talking about joining a PhD which would facilitate this transition and would give me an option for research combined with teaching. Taking some concerns into account, I’ve decided to skip GRE and to appear for GATE 2009. I’m aiming a PhD at IISc From this year onwards, the GATE scores are going to be valid for one year only. It is going to be a tough job for me to refresh my stale mind, when remaining committed to my present work. But a life without small challenges, like this one, is not going to be interesting!