Lakshya Sivaramakrishnan: 2013

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Holidaying hard !

There was excitement, anxiety and a whole lot of other emotions when I got a call from the National University of Singapore, School of Computing for the one week summer school to address the Frontiers of Computer Science. The first task in hand was booking tickets to another nation. Our crazy times started right here with unsuccessful return booking. The concession we got for the innumerable calls we made to makemytrip.com to set this right was a return ticket in Sri-Lankan airlines. We would have certainly restricted ourselves to a low-fare airline, given our budget constraints. Our first blessing in disguise! Things in college kept us busy for sometime but once we were done with our semester exams,it was high time we applied for a Visa. Thankfully, Singapore Visa is much easier to get and there is no stressful interviews. I applied for Visa through Fourways, and I was lucky enough to get it in less than a week. There was one major thing to be done, Shopping. Aishwarya and me went hunting for new clothes in order to be dressed up for the occassion. There were a dozen of other things that we got exclusively for this trip to Singapore.The apprehensions had quadrupled as the D-day got closer. Everyone at home were probably more excited than me.

26th May 2013 : I reached the airport by 4pm and waited for around an our for Ashvini and Amulya to join me. We boarded into Indigo and reached Chennai around 8pm. The next one hour did not give us any time to breathe. We had to rush out of the airport, get in through the international terminal, check-in luggage, take our boarding pass, go through immigration check, security chekcs etc before we could get something for ourselves to fill our tummies for dinner. We packed some sandwiches and burger and got into the flight much earlier than the scheduled departure. We were busy for the next 15-20 minutes filling our tummies with the neatly packed chapati roll that Amulya got for us and the food that we packed at the airport. The plane departed from Chennai and off we were to Singapore. We did catch up on a few hours of sleep before we landed in Singapore.

27th May 2013 : Its really strange how much another country can amaze us in a few hours. We landed in Singapore around 5.30 am(ST). We hired a taxi from the airport and showed him the address. We instantly witnessed how much technology has touched our lives. On entering the pincode of NUS, Sheares Hall where we had been given accommodation, into the GPS tracker, the driver was given directions to reach our destination. We had some conversation with the taxi driver along the way. His words and hospitality put us to ease but at times, we found it a little difficult to comprehend what he was talking. On reaching our destination, we entered our password and collected our envelopes at the Sheares Hall entrance. Room 306 was alloted to me. We were quite impressed with the cleanliness and comforts that we were given. After chalking out a tentative plan for the day, we decided to sleep for a while as a hectic week ahead was in store for us. On talking to the package tour company, we were asked to wait till 9am(IST). On not getting clear service information, we realized we were quite late for that day's tour. Spending the entire day at the hostel would be a disaster after traveling miles to visit another nation. Ashvini's friend, Shruti came to our rescue. She took us to the NUS Engineering canteen where we had a nice meal. She treated us with ice creams and told us the route to Sentosa Island, the same place where the package tour has to take us. We followed her instructions, travelled in the MRT and reached Sentosa. Right from Day 1, I was impressed with the MRT system. The planning, the co-ordination and the implementation of MRT may have taken many minds to put it all together. On reaching Sentosa, we took tickets for the Underwater show and Dolphin lagoon along with the Songs of The Sea. From Amulya's past experience, she said these were the must-watches at Sentosa. We started off with the Dolphin show where the dolphins and walruses were trained so beautifully. The show was very much different from the sights we see here in India. Quite happy, we went to the Underwater World. 270 degrees of water and under water creatures in them. We were moving around on a belt clicking pictures with the creatures and admiring the beauty of each creature there. With more happiness, we hopped into a bus that would take us to Songs of the Sea venue. The show started with a few kids depicting a story. I was already enjoying so much. Little did I know that this was just a tip of the iceberg. The laser show began showing us water,fire, air, earth and space and gave a perfect conclusion to the story that the kids were showcasing. We were beaming with joy at the end of the show. We managed to visit Sentosa on our own on Day 1. We felt quite proud of this achievement. We rushed back to Sheares hall and were in our rooms by 9pm. We settled our bills and had maggi for dinner. We decided to sleep early so that we are full of energy for the workshop.

28th May 2013 : We geared ourselves for the 3rd South Asia Workshop. We had to report at the Sheares Hall lobby by 7.45am. We were escorted by the student co-ordinators to the conference hall followed by the breakfast venue, Students' lounge. We had the packed food and the workshop commenced at 9.30 am. The first one hour was spent in introducing National University of Singapore and its School of Computing. Tan Kian Lee, Vice Dean (Academic Affairs & Research), School of Computing and Abhik Roychoudhury, the workshop chief and Assistant Dean (Graduate Studies), School of Computing addressed the gathering. The theme for the day was Data Analytics. After a short break, a keynote was delivered on "Polynomials from a Computational Perspective" by Manindra Agrawal, a professor at IIT Kanpur. The session was followed by lunch where there was some brief networking happening all around.Prof Krithi Ramamritham from IIT Mumbai enlightened us on "Smart Electric Grids" for around one hour. Professors from NUS addressed the gathering and shared their work/research with us. Prof Wong Limsoon on More Data is not Better, Prof Tan Kian Lee on Advanced Query Processing, Prof Tay Yong Chiang on Modeling and Analysis of Social Networks and Prof Khoo Siau Cheng on Data Analytics at SoC. The sessions were followed by a group photograph. Just before assembling for the photograph, one of the co-ordinators came up to me and asked "Are you Lakshya? From IIITB?". Ahhh... That felt good. Later did I realize that he was Bodhi, an alumni from IIITB who has seen me asking and answering various questions at the IIITB forum. A social event was planned late in the evening. We were taken to the Singapore Night Safari and had an Asian buffet for dinner at the same location. The planning of the location, the placement of the animals, the ride on the tram where we were told about the uniqueness of every creature there was amazing. We were also allowed to take a stroll around the leopard trail. We managed to spend sometime at a show for entertaining the audience but had to leave the place as the time to meet all others at the common place was soon approaching. We were dropped back at the Hall and relaxed for sometime on getting back.

29th May 2013 : The theme of the day was Information Systems. We had to report to the Video Conference Room at 9.00 am. We had our breakfast and was well on time for the session. The first talk was by Arunabha Mukhopadhyay, Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM) on "Cyber-risk decision models : To insure IT or not?". The talk was followed by short talks from professors at NUS, Department of Information of Systems. Prof Teo Hock Hai, Head of Department gave us a sneak peak of the department. Prof Sharon Tan spoke on Information Systems in Healthcare, Prof Tuan Q. Phan on Inter-disciplinary Studies in Social Network: Influence, Big Data and Beyond and Prof Kaushik Dutta on Design Science Research in IS - Designing Large Scale Systems. The talks were followed by lunch. Post-lunch, Prof Navneet Goyal, Head of CS Department, BITS Pilani spoke on "Predictive Modelling for Multivariate Time-series Data". The last session for the day was taken by Prof Kim Seung Hyun from NUS who spoke on the Economics of Information Security. The sessions were followed by a campus tour of NUS. We were shown their labs, their places of relaxation, and others. The main attraction was the NUS University Town where many of the university students resided. There were places for shopping, dining and what not. We rushed our way back for a meeting with Prof Prateek Saxena from NUS, SoC to find out about prospective studies at NUS. We had a long and informative talk with him and he put us to ease from the moment we met him. After the meeting, we had an Indian dinner at the NUS University town. It is very strange how people manage to have dinner at 6.30-7pm at Singapore. It was around 8pm. Ashvini and me decided to visit the Marina Bay. It was one of the tourist attractions and we wanted to go there. Amulya chose to stay back at the hostel. Venturing in a new country without even a cellphone sent some chills down our spines, but we were quite determined to make a visit. MRT, once again, came to our rescue. We spent about an hour traveling. We reached Marina Bay. The lighting was exquisite. We could see the flyer, the hotel designed like a ship at the top and the great grand buildings of Singapore. We clicked a few pictures and made our way back to the Hall. We also managed to travel by bus for a very short distance to have a feel of the local bus service. We reached the Hall by 11.45pm and decided to take some rest.

30th May 2013 : The theme for the day was Graphics and Media. It was quite an interesting day with many talks that I could relate to on a personal front. The session began at 9.30 am with a talk by Umapada Pal, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata on Recent trends in Document Image Analysis. The talk was not very deep but the breadth made up for it. For the first time in the seminar, I asked satisfying questions to the speaker. After a short break, Prof Ooi Wei Tsang spoke on Mobile Video: Research and Challenges followed by Prof Wang Ye who shared his experience in Sound and Music Computing. Post lunch, Prof Ng Hwee Tou enlightened us on Research at NUS Natural Language Processing Group, Prof Mohan Kankanhalli briefed us on Research at Center for Sensor-enhanced Social Media (SeSaMe) and Prof Michael S. Brown told us about Modeling the Camera Imaging Pipeline. After a short break, we had two invited guests who addressed the audience. Prof Jagannath Aghav, Head of CS Department, College of Engineering Pune spoke on Reactive Systems and Prof Chandana Gamage, Head of CS Department, Univ of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka spoke on Interrogations. The day ended with a session by Prof Tulika Mitra from NUS on Energy Efficient Computing. That evening, I had been to Sriram Anna's house. It was the forst time I was seeing Rithvi. Babies are always so lovely. She immediately agreed to come into my arms after I gave her the gift I had taken for her from India. After spending some time at their home, I had a yummy dinner. Just when my tongue had died out due to the bland packed food we got in the workshop, some home made food seemed too good. After dinner, Sriram anna dropped me to Sheares Hall.

31st May 2013 : The theme of the day was Software/Systems and the workshop was scheduled for only a few hours. At 9.30am, Prof Y. N. Srikant, Professor, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) spoke on Program Phase Behavior and Worst case execution time analysis. After a short break, we had Prof Wong Weng Fai addressing on Future Generation Memory Technologies, Prof Prateek Saxena speaking on Secure Computation Using Sensitive Data on Un-trusted Devices and Prof Abhik Roychoudhury briefing us on Automated Program Repair. We came to the end of the workshop and five days have just passed so quickly. After the closing remarks, a Certificate of Appreciation was presented to all the students. After lunch, we bid goodbyes to the other attendees and left for shopping. Due to shortage of time, we only managed to shop in Little India. We went to Mustafa Centre, Niranjans and many other small shops with 3 for S$10 offer. I picked up momentos for everyone at home and for a few close friends back in college. I met Sriram anna outside Mustafa after shopping and then he took me to Clarke Quay. It is one of the most beautiful places on Singapore. The lights and sounds of the place are really refreshing. We went on a boat cruise which explained all about Singapore, showed us the premier banks, buildings and other attractions in Singapore. After the cruise, we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. The food was top class. After a happy day,we went back home at almost 11.30pm. The workshop had ended that day and last few hours left in the foreign nation.

1st June 2013 : I told Sriram anna to wake me up as soon as Rithvi wakes up so that I could spend some quality time with her. I woke up at 6.30 am that morning. I went around their locality with Rithvi and Sriram anna in an attempt to put Rithvi to her day's first sleep. But our efforts went in vain. She was clever enough to understand that our walk had ended and we had to get back home. Suddenly the smile faded and was replaced by tears. I was amazed at how a tiny little kid displayed such varied emotions in a matter of few seconds. After heading back home, I got ready and we went to the East Coast Park after making a visit to the drive-in McDonalds nearby. The beach was beautiful. After getting my legs wet for sometime, I tried my hand at cycling. I got into a cycle after years. I managed to ride it for around an hour, probably because I did not have a choice after getting lost for a short amount of time. After the East Coast Park, I quickly got ready, had lunch and it was time for me to leave. To say good bye to the people who treated me like they have known me for ages, to bid goodbyes to the foreign nation which gave me so much exposure. I reached the Changi Airport well before time. After collecting my boarding pass, Sriram anna took me in the skyway at the airport. It was for people to commute from one terminal to another, but I got in to experience the new mode of travel which had automated control. It was time for me to bid goodbye to Sriram anna. I met Ashvini and Amulya at the airport and we waited at the lounge to get back to India. There were millions of thoughts running in my mind. Ashvini was pretty disappointed about bidding byes to her college friends at NUS. We reached Namma Bengaluru around 9pm. Appa was there to receive me at the bus stop. I came back home and hared my experiences with everyone at home. As I was laying down in bed that night, I only wanted to thank God for being so kind to me.

Adieu Singapore! Life would soon get back to normal with the new summer semester at college starting in a day's time.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

The Second Semester...

The semester started by greeting the new year with some gaana, sprite and fun. Meeting each other after a month of holidays and looking forward to the new year is how it all started.

Lots of things changed in the second semester, both personally and professionally. After sleeping for 12-15 hours during holidays, I had enough energy to remain awake during classes this semester. This was a resolution-successful scenario since I had managed to sleep in almost all classes in the first semester. The seating arrangement changed. Electives were introduced. The friends with whom you spent all the time were suddenly attending totally different elective classes. There were apprehensions on project groups, final elective choices and what not. No wonder they say beginnings are usually scary.

The electives I chose had quite a huge number of students compared to the other electives. I put my apprehensions aside and decided to go ahead with Data Modeling and OOAD. The only pacifier for me in absence of my three pillars of strength were the presence of the then-Argonauts and now-Vanarsena.

Hardly a week into the semester and we had multiple deadlines. There was OS holiday assignment submissions, JSP final demo, OS project allocations etc. But in IIITB, we really got to make sometime to have some fun. And, we did that. All the December babies decided to treat the group(extended group) in Silver Metro, Total Mall. We were 27 of us, that being almost 1/5th the class. We had a great time together pulling each other's legs, clicking tons of pictures in Abi's then-new phone etc. There were not many festivals celebrated this semester in comparison with last semester. But Lohri was celebrated in a grand manner. The bonfire, songs and dance went for almost more than 2 hours on Lohri night. We left behind all our deadlines and submissions to spend some time together celebrating a festival like Lohri together with friends. Occasions like these make us realize that India's so diverse. Project teams in OS were decided. We were asked to choose teams in case of OOAD and DM projects. Our batch was lucky since we were allowed to choose OOAD as our SE project. That made things 10 times easier this semester, and having 3 projects instead of 4. We also had to complete the project proposal document in OS by the end of the first month. We started the documentation on a very postive note but faced a few glitches somewhere down the lane. Getting things back on track was one of the many obstacles faced this semester.

Time flew quite quickly and it was already month 2 of this semester. In the first weekend, we had a trip to Swanthana, a home for underprivileged girl children and this was my second visit there. This time there were more friends along, the place and kids were familiar. After spending some time there with the kids and talking to the authorities about the state of things there, we headed towards lunch to Krishna Bhavan. Each day had a new tension, some new fun.. Our lives were a perfect blend of happiness and sorrow, work and play. Over a month and a half had passed and it was the time for mid-term. Spandan was coming and we had a couple of sessions with the senior SAC on how to get things rolling. Mid-term time saw multiple group study sessions, serious faces around and many past question paper discussions. The 4 days of exams really drains your energy with sudden change in work ethics. Sleeping on time, early morning breakfast, reduction in chats are incidents that do not happen usually in IIITB. All this was wrapped up in a week.

Holidays were spent for Spandan preparations. Choosing volunteers was one of the toughest task in hand. But, with considerable details of friends and their interests after being the un-official PRO of college and support from one of my favorite SACs made the job easy. The next task in hand was the budget making. Sending invites, getting the Spandan T-shirts ready, procuring equipments etc. were the tasks in hand. Multimedia team helped us with the T-shirts and Pruthvi Sir(PE) helped us with equipment procurement. The equipment procurement was well co-ordinated by Tarun and Manzoor. A couple of days is all that I could spend at home in the mid-term break. On returning back to college, there were multiple meetings with fellow SAC team, the seniors, the volunteers, the multimedia and portal team etc.

There was a plan made to go to Nandi Hills as a girl's day out. With so many tasks in hand and a hectic Spandan weekend ahead, I decided to miss the trip. The girl's day out plan somehow turned into our group outing. When your Spandan SPOC friends plan to go for the trip inspite of a busier weekend and when they give you no choice but ask you to come in such a caring tone assuring you will be back on time to carry out SAC responsibilities, you really cannot deny. And so, I decided to not bother too much about the work and go with them to Nandi Hills. We had to leave the campus by 3am in the morning. As usual the security threw tantrums to let us out in the morning. We had to take permission from the Registrar and write an indemnity bond before we left. The drive was awesome, the songs we sang, the dance in the bus where there was hardly any space to even stand... Ahh... I am so glad I made it to this outing. We couldn't get a clear view of the sunrise because of excessive fog. But we climbed to the top, clicked many pictures, pulled each other's legs and I also got them home after breakfast at Shanti Sagar. It was like a much-needed break for me post the exams and pre-Spandan.

The next day was Spandan. The three days of Spandan(8-10 March) are undoubtedly the most memorable, the most hectic and the most awesome days at IIITB so far. The games started as early as 7am and went on till 2am. The SPOCs and volunteers did an amazing job. Words would fail to express all the hard work we had done to conduct one the the best Spandans of IIITB. Personally, the first choice of the team to support in any game was Vanarsena(Preethy, Spandan got the world to know who our Vanarsena is). The second choice was Chillar party, whom we lovingly call the Junior Vanarsena. Playing badminton as a part of any tournament for the first time, playing mixed doubles carrom (with Rahul) without even having great expertise to strike a coin in, playing volleyball representing SAC with the basics I learnt months ago in IIITB and playing basketball with girls-only was an enriching experience. Winning gold in basketball made it even more special and the credit would go to all the people whom I played basketball with in the week before Spandan. They taught me how to strategize and the skills coached by Richard Sir way back in Kensri was always there with me. I saw my really close friends playing,organizing and winning in multiple games and respect for each of them grew ten-fold. They would be totally drained out as the day passes but then when on the field, they would gather enough strength to win the game. Spandan saw a few fights, a few new friendships, passion in a few to learn more sports, a few champions and more... Personally, my event management skills improved, rapport with friends and respect for a few increased and it took me nearly a week to get over the Spandan hangover.

Suddenly, life got back to the IIITB mode. People had to go back to books, few submissions, few deadlines, few presentations were already waiting for us. We had a month in hand to wrap up all our projects and there was a lot to do. A group of 15 girls were chosen to visit the Cisco campus as a part of the Girls in Technology initiative. We had to present on the topic "Cloud Computing in Virtual Environment" as a part of the pre-event challenge. Cisco visit was scheduled on the 21st of March where we visited the campus for an introductory session, followed by a video conference, some live demos of their projects, a grand lunch and the finalists of the pre-event challenge made their presentations. We were given away goodies as a gesture of appreciation. We learnt that it is very important for the girls to be more passionate about technology, develop good multitasking skills and not sacrifice jobs in the name of family later in life.

A long weekend because of Good Friday was coming up. Another trip was planned to put the weekend to the best use. But before that, we had to clear our pending C tests. The C retest was scheduled a day after Holi. Due to constraints and not much support from the college authorities we could not really plan a bonfire for Holi but we made up for it with a Holi filled with colours, mud water, eggs and what not. Not even a test can stop us from having fun.Students from all the batches came together to celebrate the festival of colours, but there were more things in addition to colours for us to celebrate. A day after Holi was the C test and that evening we left the college to visit Kuntibetta.

The trip was planned sitting in a boring Software Engineering class. The theory and the one and a half hour lecture took a toll on us leaving our minds to think on how to spend the weekend. The trip was KPs brain child but it was well-executed by Sarthak. We were 21 of us going for a night trekking. The initial picture that I got about this experience was really scary. I don't think there was any God whose name I did not utter while leaving college for this trip. I was only praying that everything goes well, we enjoy enough and come back safely. We left the campus around 6pm and reached to the base of Kuntibetta around 11pm. We stopped the bus for around half an hour at Adigas for dinner. We had planned out a buddy system during the trek and were cautioned not to make any noise for the first 10 minutes. The first two minutes of the trip was the most strenuous period. I was left wondering how we were going to get going like this for the next one hour. But things eased out as time passed. And when you have such gems with you to help you out, nothing seems impossible. The guys kept motivating us to move ahead, helped us whenever we found it a little difficult and finally after an hour of night trekking, we were at the top. Things were too good to view from there. There was no roof above us, only open skies.. no worries in mind and a bunch of friends who were almost family by then.. We spent the night by lighting a bonfire after collecting wood from here-and-there at the top, singing songs, playing dumbcharades, listening to stories etc. A few of us also caught some sleep for a couple of hours. By 6am, we were all awake waiting for the sun to rise. The sun kept us waiting for almost an hour before it slowly came out around 7am. We saw the sunrise which was really pretty, clicked some group pictures, some profile pictures and finally had to leave the top. The journey down was much easier and we got to see the path which we had climbed with torch lights. After coming down, we climbed on small rocks which was almost like a slide in a child's park. We left Kuntibetta, had breakfast in a small hotel nearby and headed towards the Thonnur lake. A few of them remained at the sidelines while most of us got wet in the lake. We played in water, I made an attempt to learn swimming and failed miserably at it, we watched the guys play with the sand.. After around 2-3 hours at the lake, we cleaned up and headed towards college with a stop for lunch again at Adigas. All of us caught up on some sleep too on the way back to college. We reached college, slept for some time, had dinner and a few project meetings followed. The night-trek experience was one of the most adventurous ones for me and I cannot thank God enough for blessing me with such friends.

The month post midterm exams was one of the best months it IIITB. There was Nandi Hills trip, Spandan, CISCO visit, Holi and Kuntibetta to top it all. On the 3rd of April, I got a letter from NUS SoC inviting me for a full-scholarship workshop on Frontiers in Computing. Too many good things happening all of a sudden felt great. The month of April kept us busy with all the project work and documentation. The major events this month at IIITB were the Open House and the Alumni Day, both falling on the same day. We, as SAC, had to co-ordinate with the Alumni council and make arrangements for them to have a grand Alumni Day. The new star lecture series was also initiated this year with Mr Ashok Soota being the guest speaker. We had alumni from different companies coming and sitting at the MCR, sharing their thoughts on college life and the life after that... From the Open House perspective, SAC had to constantly co-ordinate with Jayprakash Sir for arrangements, posters, invites, T-shirts and participation. The participants had to make posters strictly adhering to the rules mentioned by us and we had to keep a check on that. The multimedia team, again, helped us a lot with this. The participants presented their projects for over a period of 3 days with utmost patience and dedication.

We had to give demos to our TAs and professors for various projects. Our new year, Vishu, was on April 14th. I had come home on a week long trip post Ugadi. It was really nice to spend some family time minus the work pressures of college. On Appa's request, I invited friends home for lunch on Vishu. Vanarsena+Sucheta gladly agreed to come home on Vishu for lunch. I had a great time with friends pulling my leg and family taking their side. Can't ask for more when you have almost all the people who matter the most to you all under one roof. I went back to college on the same day with them since we had our OOAD project demo that night with Amrita. We also had an IEEE debate event followed by a group discussion lined up that Tuesday where RC sir was the judge. The topic for the debate was "Is internet making us poor" and I believ that it certainly has made us poor. The topic for GD was "Is open source the answer to piracy?". It was nice to get away from the books and share or thoughts on common issues such as these. Aishwarya really helped me loads on this one. The event did not have one winner. The judge declared all of us as winners.

The semester had almost ended with a week left for the final exams and project demos. The SE project demo was one of my favourite since it had all the 7 members of our project in one room to answer the questions thrown at us. And with a team like ours, no question would seem difficult to answer from SE perspective. All we have to do in SE was to impress our client(Sir here). Given the amount of skills gained over the past six months over developing the Flipkart prototype, it was not really a tough ask. The DM demo was satisfactory though the learning graph in this project was too flat. The OS demo was pretty good and Sir was happy with our performance. One of the exams I feared the most this semester was the OOAD lab exam. Programming always manages to send chills down my spine, no matter how much I like the subject. The OOAD lab test was a 6-hour exam with 3 tasks in hand. I managed to do 1.5 out of them and was very worried about the results. Basketball came to my rescue when I had to let out my frustration. Almost three hours of basketball on the eclipse night helped me put behind the exam and move ahead with SE documentation that had to be submitted the next day.

I had to also come home on the same day since I had to attend the MVIT College Day with Amma, Appa and Thathappa for the prize distribution ceremony. I was awarded a gold medal and a certificate of appreciation for consistently scoring distinction in all the semesters. My family and friends were overjoyed with this achievement but deep down, I knew that sharing this achievement with nearly 200 others is not that tough to achieve. I did not have much time to spend at home and celebrate this feat, as I had to get back to college and prepare for my exams that was scheduled from the next day.

I spend more time sleeping during exams. But I managed to efficiently study in the remaining time by some hard and smart work. A few group studies, a few pair studies, a few individual studies, solving previous year question papers, discussing slides, complaining about the subject and exams at large and finally getting rid of the exams was how the month of May began. We got a few marks, a few grades even before we could complete our remaining exams. The 4th of May ended the second semester. It was exactly one year after my IIITB interview that day. After exams, I went out with friends to Mantri mall to have some fun, before being separated from them for the next month.

It's really strange how friends suddenly seem like family. You give them the rights to criticize you, to tease you, to care for you, trusting that they would only wish the best for you. It feels nice when a friend secretly leaves a book of quotes to describe your friendship. It's nice when you have friends to sit and teach you a piece of code or rather how to code amidst such hectic schedule. It's nice when you really feel like giving your friends chocolate bars for no reason. It's nice when all your dialogues are remembered by friends to tease you more and more. It's nice when someone is your punching bag and you are someone else's punching bag. It's nice when you go out in a big group occupying nearly all the chairs of a small restaurant to have some street food. It's nice when some friends scold you for eating too much street food everyday. It's this love,care,affection and dosti that keeps me going at home, away for home.

Looking for some good break and good rest this holidays. Today, being the 5th of May, the first time I cast my vote for/in the Republic of India. Rest in Next...