The Great Apping Season

Here we are.. GRE long over , it is time for the horrendous process of apping to begin.. actually it already has begun torturing me day and night. The only solace I have is also not certain. If (and I must say it is a big if) I get into a good university with sufficient funding I can probably justify all the sleepless nights writing a SOP (Statement of purpose, for those who don't know). I have always considered myself capable of reading simple instructions about filling the forms. But no, this is not the case for filling out all the online appliactions. Its scary I don't know why but it is. The whole graduate studies thing is over hyped, and rightly so, because it is a big deal for many and for me too.

Coming back to the process of Apping, its not just the SOP , you have to write a diversity essay, an accomplishment essay, an essay justifying why the university would give u a few thousand dollars of funding fro their pool... but am I complaining? Well yes, I did complain for a long long time but I think I have settled. Almost settled that is. I can't stop cribbing, its one of my characteristic, without it I wouln't feel like I have worked at all. Ya, the process of apping, I have become used to it. The last minute scramble to do everything ranging from sending packets, sending ETS scores , organizing letters or recommendation to actually uploading the SOP which single handedly has the potential to make or break your chance of studying at an International university is dreadful.

Everyday I come back from office, switch on the laptop, stare at my statement of purpose and think of ways making it better which include evrything from looking at different SOPs, to bugging friends (which I doubt someday will stop them from being my friends), to bugging any person who I know can help me making my sop better , to improving it myself and then discarding all the changes. Its confusing and frustrating and something you cannot do without. So, the point in writing this post is nothing, its just one of the ways for me to complain on a much larger level...

P.S. Its not that bad as I have made it sound, I tend to dramatize things a bit sometimes :)

The man with the straw baskets....

Walking down the road I saw a man, barefooted , selling straw baskets, hoping that somebody would buy them so that his family doesn't have to sleep hungry today. Wearing mangled clothes , he had a disheveled appearance, but the twinkle in his eyes at the prospect of a new customer was unmistakable, it belied all the sufferings he had gone through though short lived for the person. He was moving up and down the road looking for customers, on a Sunday afternoon. Were the baskets made by him? Looked like it. SO, instead of selling it to some handicrafts shop for a meager amount while the latter charge an unnaturally high price he decided to foray into the market himself. But now he is thinking did he do a mammoth mistake , should he would have sold the baskets and in a way confirmed a source of income for himself no matter how meager. Finally he set his eyes on a person coming down the road. Looking at the vendor the person had a pity in her eyes, which the vendor was quick to notice. He called out to her " Madam, baskets!!!!", "Please", but don't know how this person became so stoic, she walked on without even acknowledging the existence of the vendor....

Someday....

I don't know when I heard of this song , but its like one of the best songs I have ever heard so, for not any particular reason , here it is.....

Some day, when I'm awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you...
And the way you look tonight.

Yes you're lovely, with your smile so warm
And your cheeks so soft,
There is nothing for me but to love you,
And the way you look tonight.

With each word your tenderness grows,
Tearing my fear apart...
And that laugh that wrinkles your nose,
It touches my foolish heart.

Lovely ... Never, ever change.
Keep that breathless charm.
Won't you please arrange it ?
'Cause I love you ... Just the way you look tonight.

Mm, Mm, Mm, Mm,
Just the way you look to-night.

I just love this song and Frank Sinatra

the one fraught with unscrutable vocabulary...

Here comes the post which though not all but many of my friends expected me to write but at an embryonic stage of my preparation. Well, guess what I am still there even after 3000 words.
At the inception of my attempt to master this colossal task, I was apprehensive and skeptic about how this process would alter my view and in some way my love for English. You may be inquisitive about such an obtuse behaviour on my part, but I couldn't help it. I was always of the opinion that though my English not superb was passable enough to enable me get an admit from any US university. But skimming through the high frequency words and not even cognizant about more that two thirds of it made me dubious of my caliber as a person with sound vocabulary.

I was supposed to give my GRE eons ago but this very fact stated above made me postpone it twice. Well that's another part of the story. So, when I embarked upon the humongous journey of improvising my vocabulary , I was irritated and frustrated by the fact that how can anyone mug up 3500 words. But after reading a few other blogs I realised there is no other substitute. Realising the aforementioned fact I was nothing but devastated leading to a loss of one month's time from my crucial preparation time.
After a rather fussy summer I began my preparation this time on an extremely zealous note, which hopefully will persist until the end.

The preparation has not been as smooth as expected and is marred with mood swings, resentment , longing for all the fun my other PS mates are having. I have almost always been stuck in a dilemma of choosing between fun and work, it has never been a clear choice be it in school, in college etc. etc. With me always opting for a stand with less fun and frolic , there had been consequences ( unpleasant ones) and situations which made me brood about the rationale behind my choices and also the fact that would I be repentant if I had been less serious. This time was no different. Occasionally I do feel that I am missing out on something but most of the times the feeling is nonexistent.

Okay that was a bit of digression from the focal theme of the post. Reverting to the post after I started my preparation it took me a week or so to come into the right course. With my social life down the drain all I had to do was study and attend classes, give tests and then study some more.
After going through nearly 45 of the word lists I can proudly say I am better that what I was before.
I am no longer animus to the idea of mugging up words , because whether you like it or not it works. Also since its in my daily routine to write a diary, using 4-5 words that I learn during the day helps a bit, even though there is hardly any continuity amongst those sentences. Even while watching movies or television series ( which by the way I love doing) I do recognise those words which makes me realise its not all futile , people do use these words, and at the same time one can find these words strewn across any novel one uses and it does act as a morale booster when you don't have to delve into a dictionary each time you see a difficult word.

All in all it has been like every other experience till now to be appended into the opus called LIFE.

The joy of a working code....

Even person not entirely coding geeks appreciate the immense joy one has when after hours of toil and ardent work a code works, no Errors, zilch glitches.... I hate coding more than any part of acads more, I would rather sit around killing all my time than code.... I sucked at CP-1 and CP-2 and managed to get a low B. This very hatred of coding makes me terrified of it. Inspite of all this one fine day you are given 6 codes of 2000 lines each and asked to modify it. WOW talk about nightmarish experience!!!! It all started when I decided to do engineering, oblivious to the fact that a very negligible amount of those people actually work in a lab , most of them being researchers while scads of them are slammed onto a 6x6 cubicle with a comp and asked to code... well I get it , coding forms the basis of everything, it is essential to code and blah blah blah... BUT I don't like it. But 9 out of 10 persons in this world wished they would get work they like so I am no different. Sometimes all of this makes me really really want to do a PhD and be a professor and do work I like for the rest of my life... then again it's a different story and a whole blog has to be dedicated to it.

So coming back to the joys of a working code, generating results you expect it to. Ever since I was given this huge folder of source codes and modify it, I had been trying to just postpone it, hoping by some miracle my mentor would realise I am best suited to work in a lab and send me there. This was not to happen. instead after a good 3-4 days of giving me twelve thousand lines of code, he called me and asked, "Is it ready?" There went all my hopes of working in a lab down the drain.After much ado I started to work on the code and let me tell you one thing it is neither interesting nor easy to go through a code someone else has written and modify it. It took me a week to understand what the code is doing let alone modify it.

After spending another week pondering over the code, it finally seemed to generate an ounce of interest in me, and after tinkering with it for another week it seemed to work partially. I worked on it again and again doing all kinds of experiments on it. Weird things keep happening with it, when i implemented something I knew was wrong it would show no error and when i did something I knew was correct it would show errors. The first time I run it , it showed 750 errors. I had to go and lie down before coming back in front of the computer screen again.And I thought I am going to work on this stupid code for 6 months and then also get an incomplete implementation . Then there came the day when I was as usual doing some experiments on the code and VOILA!!!! it worked, everything, giving all the results I wanted, not saying "Segmentation fault", or" file not found", or "Encoded decoded values not match" or hanging in between....

I know I sound like a loser in this blog with no better thing to be happy about except a stupid code working which is not even the major part of my project, but I don't care... The bottom line is THE CODE WORKED!!!

Even though the joy was not much long lived as the same day in the evening I was given another code to work upon and modify.

thoughts of a fledgling....

I did not shed a tear when I left college yet I yearn for it the most right now. I still remember the day when we were supposed to leave our campus forever, the day unlike others begun at 5.45 A.M. in the morning with me getting up to see off a friend leaving then. There were I think hardly 15 people left in the whole campus and it was so eerie to be there at such a time with the juice centre closed down, the nescafe shut, and even the monginis closing at 8 P.M. I know quite unbelievable. Coming back to the day I was going to leave the campus, after the goodbyes, I went back to the hostel, had a bath and was impatient to leave the campus not realising how sorely I am going to miss it. Everything packed it was time to bid adieu to my room, my second home for the past three years and then I left, never looking back once, glad it was over.
Few of my friends said you won't miss college as in not the buildings just the people we met in there but what I miss the most is the people in those buildings. I can't believe I am not going back to stay, to plan outings on weekends, to just sip Ice tea at nescafe, to the walks at night, no cribbing about mess food, no trips to the SC cafe, no hanging out at monginis till it closses or hovering over the foodstalls in WAVES, QUARK, etc. etc. I am so jealous of those who get to go back to enjoy college once again with all the enthusiasm they can for now they have seen the real world....
Maybe I miss college beacuse it always feels so insecure outside out here , about not knowing how things are supposed to be, about not knowing how one should do things the right way... Being the second batch in a new college it was us who set the standards about how things should be done... noone to check us , maybe later it got changed but when we were getting acquainted with our college there was hardly any apprehension. Maybe I miss college because I am just out of it and it will take time for me to get used to this new found unsettling feeling about being stuck nowhere at all..... Maybe after two this whole year of PS I won't miss college as m,uch as I do now. But right now everything is measured in terms of how it happened in college, sharing a room with two or for that matter even one other person is unthinkable for we have been spoilt by giving single rooms since our very first semester, sleeping at 11 in the night is almost next to impossible for we are used to go to sleep when we hear birds chirping outside, even good food surprises us as we are used to mess food, sitting in a small cubicle for 7 hours irritates us for we are not even used to sitting 50 mins in one place, and more importantly keeping quiet more than four-fifths of those seven hours makes me wonder was I ever called a loquacious person. I can't even write down the thousands of other differences which I wish to write for it is almost time for my bus back home , to go and go through a word list, eat food , sleep, get ready in the morning and again come back for seven hours of pondering what made me come here.....

Bengaluru... the struggle begins...

Almost a month in blore and still I haven't grown fond of this city... Did it take me this long a time to fall in love with Mumbai? I don't remember. 'The only thing constant in this world is change' I was of the opinion that I can adjust with changes but these past few weeks in b'lore really tempts me to rethink this point. But then again its normal to resist the changes.... the changes in everything?? from the time I go to bed to the time I spend reading or to the time I want to do something I like. A few months back people used to ask me my secret about staying awake till 3 and again attending all the classes from 8 to 5. Well they should see me now lying half asleep in the sofa of my sister's place at 10.00PM and sometimes going into deep slumber without having dinner. Somehow I have not been able to digest this fact. I think it kind of comes with the work culture, "Early to bed and early to rise" has surprisingly become the way I function these days. I don't know about anyone else but somehow this is totally new for me.

There was almost a gap of 20 days in which I didn't switch on my laptop nor did watch an episode of FRIENDS nor did TP on facebook, everything has changed and I am still in a fix to decide whether it has changed for good or bad.

A typical day now starts with the alarm going off at 7.00 A.M. and me keep snoozing it until the time shows 7.15, I get up and get ready and till now haven't been able to catch my bus to PS which comes at 8.10, quite contradictory to me getting up at 7.45 and still having plenty of time to have breakfast and stroll towards the classroom for morning tuts in the campus. Then comes the gigantic task of haggling with the auto wallahs and finally reaching the office at 9.00 and somehow stay till 5.30. That's when my bus comes back from office. Though it only takes 10 minutes to reach home from office, all I need is a bed to doze off... but that's also not possible for after coming back I have to go through the stupid word list , from which I forget almost two-third of the words. Anyways the fact that I am still living out of my suitcase irritates me the most, even my brush and paste are in my travel bag. I have moved four times already and the fifth one is in order, hopefully this is the final time I have to shift.

I really want to like B'lore and am making huge efforts towards it, but somehow it seems a lost cause now...... I don't want it to be like this. I have to stay a whole year....

Till now I have made myself accept all the bad things thinking that I'll adjust, I always do... but its coming to be a month now... When ??

It shocks me to find myself in a mood to do nothing nothing at all, not even listen to music ( :( ) but when I do its the best thing in the world full of changes, there is still something that wont change ever.... and I am glad I don't have to adjust in this... Music seems to be the only bulwark from the callous cold world outside.

Right now I have sore throat so sore that I can even laugh without hurting and only thing I want is my hostel room GH4-350 and a kettle with warm water, and a chick flick... ahhhh the golden days... Please come back just once .... just once...

Friendships...

Phoebe once said to Ross ' Who cares even if I am wrong just be a friend and be supportive.' Friendship had a different meaning for me when I was in school and it completely changed as I am on the verge of passing out of college. Either this new definition is more accurate or the old one was I dont know but I kind of liked the older one. I just dont know why... People often ask me to stop expecting but why?? why should I expecting??? I dont expect things to be done for me out of the way I just dont want things to be done differently for me... i.e. bad differently... Anyways lets just forget the comparisons... I just wanna recollect those sweet fond memories of friendships in my school, my coaching... who have stood the test of time... We hardly call each other or see each other probably once every 6 months when I come home from college... but still thinking about them fills my heart with such warm feelings... we might not remember each other when we are happy but the moment one is in some kind of trouble I am sure one call no matter where we are is all that it takes to bring the smile which would have been otherwise elusive. And thats what makes me cherish these friendships.... these friends remind me of my childhood of all the innocence all the dreams , all the silly li'l games we used to play... In short it makes me happy.... and as one grows there is quite a shortage of things to feel happy for... A very dear friend once told me and I quote, "Hapiness is not a feeling , it is an attitude to live your life." I neither agree nor disagree with him just that when we are young we adopt this attitude towards everything and as we grow somewhere it just vanishes. Maybe this is the way it should be without expectations but how do one completely gets rid of it.....

AAAaaarrrggghhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

'when someone pretends to believe something that they do not really believe or that is the opposite of what they do or say at another time' the cambridge dictionary defines hypocrisy as stated above... word to word.. and its the top of my HATE list... needless to say this kind of increases the number of persons I hate un this world leading me to forgive such kind of persons but I never forget.. and despite taking all precautions not to entrust these kind of persons ever again somehow one does fall into the trap only to be betrayed again and again...and which just leaves u fuming but I have promised myself not to yell at anyone just be calm maybe write a blog or diary about and not speak for sometime but not to yell seeing how fruitless it can be.... I just dont understand how ungrateful people can be how very ungrateful....I am just writing this to vent out my anger and nothing else because i promised myself not to yell... and considering what a spitfire I am You can expect lots and lots of these kind of blogs... so this post is just a way to vent out my anger... So where was I yes... ungratefulness.... combined by Hypocrisy this makes a lethal combination and needless to say I have found loads of such kind of persons...loads of them I dont know whether People really belong to this category or that i abide too much by the literal definition of these words... Whatever it is...I HATE such people who always expect never ready to give nothing in return.. Is it really true that having ceratin principles and abiding by them no much how much inconvenience it causes to one is a thing of the past now??? then Why does it does not make one feel good ??? why does when caring and considerate feelings not reciprocated does one feel bad and neglected??? why do people lie outright to your face when you know they are lying and still not be shameful about it ... rather defend what they are saying...??? well... please anyone who knows answers do post them ... beacuse i neither have the patience nor the will anymore to find them out myself.....

"PS: I Hate PS!!!!!!!"

Lame topic i know(sorry megha.... :)) ....

It means I dont actually hate PS since I am not actually in PS now and in no position to pass a judgement but just the cumbersome procedure which makes me go mad... and that too during the comprees but since noone can actually do anything about it but crib and fill the form hoping we get a station from within our top choices... now about the cumbersome process... I still dont know how having three copies of the same thing actually help a process rather than making the information just redudant and that too not copy paste , one copy to be filled online, another copy in .pdf/doc format and another handwritten copy... Isnt giving us the password to fill the form authenticatication enough that its us who actually filled up the form???

And its not a joke making three copies of the same document with 242 companiesand ensuring that all the three copies match with each other ... but that's the system and they might have a whole bunch of reasons for that. Still it would have been nicer if we wouldnt have to hustle between the comprees. Its not just about filling the PS forms but about a million different conversations you have with different people each expressing their own views... I am sure the intentions are to help and we only ask for it but 15 different persons giving 15 different opinions is certainly confusing. And then there are the discussions where everyone tries to guess the criteria for allotment.. Some say preference to dualites, some say its CG, some say its the BIODATA but most of the times people are just bluffing and noone has ever found out the real criteria. But its frustrating and exciting at the same time... Frustrating because of the above mentioned reasons and exciting because all of us want to be at a really good place for 1 year....

Well I am not complaining though seeing the situation now with the economy crisis and all, getting to do an internship in a top notch company is certainly going to be a great thing i.e. if i get a top-notch company.... The procedure for filling up all the hardcopies and soft copies end tomorrow and thus will begin an endless wait for the results to be out... JUst waiting with my figers crossed and hoping I get what I want...

On a philosophical note....

Finally its coming to an end.... or its the beginning ???? It certainly was everything I expected and everything I didn't expect..... Happiness galore but it had its share of disappointments too which is perfectly OK otherwise it wont have been memorable. Lots of lessons learned in all spheres of life some hard way and of course those are the ones which will be remembered by me all my life... I learnt to recognise people and it was definitely a lesson learnt the hard way. I learnt a lot about myself too and my capability to deal with things, my bestest friend Sonam used to say and I quote " You are one of the strongest persons I have ever met." and to be honest I never ever believed her because I was the first one to shed tears when something didn't  go as I had planned. Here I learnt its my way to deal with things, crying and then striving hard to prove every damn person against me wrong. 

 Four years gone and even though one year left it wont be in Goa, wont be in the campus whose every nook and corner I am so familiar with. I have to go into the scary world outside and find my own way to my goal.... which is still so undecided that its scary. 

Just 35 days left before I pack all my stuff give my room to someone else and just leave. BITS-Goa was my dream I remember the day I saw the advertisement for BITSAT and I said "kaash mera BITS-Goa mein ho jaye" and here I am almost ready to finish my post graduation, when I first entered the campus i just fell in love with the gorgeous campus , with the ambience almost perfect for studies(;)). Today on the verge of leaving and everything that I have gone through during my stay on the campus I just hope that I leave it at a happy note and not a bitter one...

P.S. Its a bit philosophical but then again I am in a philosophical mood now-a-days.