The Farewell That Wasn't - SOS

Sothapals Of A Somberi


Epilogue : The Farewell That Wasn't.


Having watched a lot of movies/tv series I always imagined how a farewell would go. But what happened was actually a little different.


Expectation.
Sitting in the last class of my college life and thinking "This is the last time I will be sitting in a class with my best friends. Maybe I should try taking notes one last time. Am gonna miss attending class though. How much fun I have had.."
---
Reality.
I overslept and missed the last day. Actually I didn't even know that was the last day of classes. I realized that only after seeing the message "Why didn't you come on the last day of classes?" at 1 pm.


On the last day looking at people and thinking "That dude's English made us laugh so much.. That guy singing without any care was epic.. The guy who walked like a girl.. There goes the "choreographer ".
---
When I saw all the people hugging each other and bidding goodbye, I couldn't help thinking "Ada pavi this fellow is in my department only huh.. Four years and I never knew that girl was studying in the other section"..


Talking to my favorite people in class and unwillingly saying goodbye to them. Becoming sad that the chances of seeing them again are very small. (All while a sad song is running in the back of my mind).
---
Okay, this kinda did happen to a certain extent.


Going up to the two (maybe three) girls whom I secretly had a crush on and talking to them at least once.
---
Too shy.


Writing pages and pages on people's slam book re counting all the memories that we shared over the four years.
---
Writing "We have never talked much in the four years but hope you have a bright future" in almost all the slam books.


Giving people my slam book and later reading them and remembering a few nice things.
---
Too lazy to buy a slam book and giving it to people. Ended up reading this.


Looking at the few "couples" in my class and being glad at least they have made it through four years and working on continuing it beyond the college life.
---
High five-ing with your best friend that the oddly matched couple are finally showing signs of breaking up. Good for her!


Receiving messages saying "Goodbye friends! If I have done any wrong to you, it was fully unintentional so pls forgive me" and forgiving them for those mistakes.
---
Receiving messages saying "Goodbye friends! If I have done any wrong to you, it was fully unintentional so pls forgive me" and thinking "Unintentional my arse. I didn't like you in the four years. That is not going to change because you sent an apology to everyone in your contact list thanks to your free message booster".


Walking around college and looking at places and seeing myself and my friends appear suddeny, laughing at something silly that we once did and then suddenly disappearing again.
---
Yet to do that. Am considering going to college and doing this by walking around with my headphones playing a few slow songs :D


Anyway at the end of the day, I loved most of my classmates and will miss them terribly. And for people whose path I have crossed, if I did anything wrong, it was completely unintentional (seriously :D ) and hope you will forgive me( am still serious :) )

Politics And Facebook

So the election campaigns are going on. I know this from the sudden construction of roads, groups of people wearing vetis popping up all over the town, the drunk Vijaykanth video etc etc. I have never followed politics or know the politicians name except for Mr.Karunanidhi and Ms.Jayalalitha of course.

Most of the election campaigning ideas seem to be based on making a list of stuff they will give for free. But one thing that is puzzling me is, why there is no serious campaigning going on in Facebook. You can argue that only a small portion of people would be affected by this, but still every vote counts.

Now I searched in Facebook to see if Mr.Karunanidhi and Ms.Jayalalitha had profiles in FB :D I found only this for Mr.Karunanithi and these two for Ms.Jayalalitha (no idea if they are authentic :) ). Admittedly the latter has better profiles. But not a great deal of activity on the profiles.

Now there are a lot of ways you can use a profile in Facebook. Consider if Ms.Jayalalitha had posted "If the DMK government promises to give 24 hr electricity for the next term, why not give it right now?"*, imagine the no of people "liking" it or re sharing it. Imagine the effect it would have on the people like me who don't really have a lot of idea on who they should vote for. Especially on the ones who have stopped watching TV and look to Facebook for day to day news.

* - As quoted by Vishnu

They could have even followed the Cricket World Cup and wished Team India all success from their profiles. That would have a mighty positive effect on the people online! And if you see "Ms.Jayalalitha is attending the Support Anna Hazare meeting" on your Facebook wall, you would be impressed.

And the whole thing is not gonna take a lot of time. The parties can even hire a few people from colleges and get the Facebook campaigning going on. An internship for a err "real-time application" like this looks swell on your resume :D


P.S : There is a possibilty that online campaigning is going on a large scale and I am simple unaware of it :D

P.P.S : I hope one day I will see on my FB wall "Opposition Party |> Ruling Party : Pls amend the bill according to the mail we sent you, if you need us to agree on it" :)

What Assessments Do To You

Having written my last Internals/Assessment exam today, a reflection on how these little tests changed our lives.

IT MAKES YOU SAY THE SAME THING. AGAIN AND AGAIN.

Ever had your friend tell you, "You've already told us the story a thousand times before"? It comes from the habit of writing the same thing in different formats for a single question. Like "It is very simple to implement i.e. the complexity of the implementation is rather low".

IT MAKES YOU COMPLICATE EVEN SIMPLE THINGS.

Most of us hate to write answers that are very clear and to the point. Especially when you have no idea what that point. So you end up writing stuff like "A line, a straight one at that, without any argument will furnish you with the shortest possible distance between two points provided that it is possible to draw a line between the fore mentioned points in the first place" (aka a line gives the shortest distance between two points). This habit continues even when you speak normally to anyone.

IT MAKES YOU THINK YOU CAN LEARN ANYTHING.

With almost negligible preparation for the tests, we still end up passing the exam. Most of the time at least. This only makes us to think that we somehow have the ability to learn almost anything. It makes us believe we can learn everything there is to learn about rockets in a night's study!

IT MAKES YOU BELIEVE IN TRUE INSPIRATION.

Ever thought on seeing a particularly nasty question "Wtf is that question about?". And after twenty minutes you realized you just got through five pages of answers out of nowhere. Five pages easy on a topic you had no idea about. That, my friends is called true inspiration.

IT MAKES YOU REALIZE SOMETHINGS ARE SIMPLY NOT WORTH DOING.

We have written a total of 49*3 internals so far. Now there is a certain someone in my class who just grinds through every material for every internal exams. The grinder spends atleast six hours for each of those internals. That is a total of 882 hours spent studying for these tests. A friend of mine spends at the maximum 30 minutes for these tests meaning he has spent a total of 74 hours for his study. So the grinder has spent nearly 34 FULL DAYS more on only studying.
Both of them will leave college dual placed in Aricent and TCS.

R.I.P internal exams :)

Rest In Peace, B.E.

This being the 67th post, is written in fond remembrance of college memories both good and bad.

Just a few things I might miss from B.E.

The troubles to find the correct bus that goes to college..
The "I will not encourage terrorism in my class" speech..
The long night fifa gamings thanks to Hamachi...
All the big matches watched at Vishnu's place..
The last minute goal by Iniesta to sink Chelsea, Ronaldo free kicks, United victories..
Eating chicken at 1 am, maggi at 2 am..
The egg puffs at Outside Canteen..
The extra hour of sleep by bunking first hour of class..
Bunking first hour after arriving five min late..
Bunking second hour as friend is fast asleep in pump house by the end of first hour..
Roaming around the town with a friend..
All the birthday celebrations..
The "I know the level of torture you girls go through in this class" speech during second sem..
The "enquiry" sessions attended by friends..
The irony of going to Chennai for industrial visit during March..
The getting to roam around with your best friends in Ooty during the second IV..
Trying two/three sets of dresses before wearing the wrong combination..
The race against time to catch the bus..
Sleeping in class..
The one-full-day preparation for internals during first semester..
The twenty minute preparation for internals during other semesters..
Archana Gayatri's chappati thanks to Vishnu..
The long long phone calls..
Looking at that single women thrice every minute(ya we actually counted :D )..
The coming and going of words like "SS", "NRS", "Bayangaro"..
The train journeys back and forth to Chennai hoping in vain for a decent figure to sit in the same coach..
The dinners at bismi when low on cash..
The dinners at the mall when financially strong..
People constanly otifying others..
My friends constantly otifying me..
Going blank for a few months..
The dance culturals where only one girl always seems to be dancing, even if it is a group event..
The "off-stage" performance in Glitzia..
Watching lame ass movies because your friends suggested it..
The unbelievableness of 2010..
Ergonoxis..
The more eventful trip to Sasthra college..
The long polambifications..
Seeing numbers like 67,78,110 as just not numbers..
Trying to convert many numbers to one specific number in network security period..
The Airtel 10 paise scheme..
Having mobile for the sole purpose of your friend putting kadalai in that..
Going to bed at 4am..
Getting up at 2pm :D

And cheers to the people here and others for making it fun.

Surya, for giving news when things were dry,

Viswa, for his constant jibber jabber,

Nemo, for few fond memories,

Aniruth, for hanging out with me,

Rufus, for hearing me out in dire times,

Sowmy, for being a close friend,

Sarvesh, for being almost like a brother

and

Vishnu Gowthem, for always being there.

Rest in peace, B.E.

The Good Days

It is 8 30 in the morning and my alarm messed up. And waking up, I realize there is no real use going to college anymore. Lets face it, I can't make it to the 9 o clock attendance and my project work is still incomplete which means I won't be getting the 4 o clock attendance either. So I decide to make the best out of the day.

Ate breakfast for the first time in months. Got back into reading books during the two hour power shut down. But the most productive use of the day was probably watching Scrubs fifth season in full. Twenty 20 minute episodes, time well spent :)

Everyone in college has so many good days like these. Thats the thing about college life. You get to bunk the whole day simply because you don't "feel" like going. And this will probably be one of the things I ll miss the most. Not doing anything when you got work to do.

Reasons People "Like" on Facebook

Trick Or Treat - SOS 3.x

Sothapals Of A Somberi

Semester 3

Chapter 1 : Trick Or Treat

Its June 21,2008 and the birthday of Vishnu Gowthem.

After cutting a huge cake at his house, we went to this place called Tornado for his treat. There must have been at least twenty five people already there waiting for him. I found a few familiar faces here and there, but for the most part it was full of his school friends most of whom I didn't know. What followed next was one the few wtf moments of my college life.

Now when I was told "treat", I imagined people sitting around in a table, eating food and having conversations. Nothing of that sort happened. And for ordering food, I expected people tell separately what they would have. That didn't happen either. At the least I thought we would be sitting and eating. Nope, that didn't happen either :)

Vishnu went to the manager and said "We will have.. Six of this, six of that, four of those blah blah". And as soon as those orders starting coming out, everybody dove straight into the plate. And within seconds, the chicken fried rice disappeared. Every dish lasted only for seconds. And none of them made their way beyond a few feet from the kitchen. I never thought it was possible for six guys to eat a single small pizza at the same time.

There were a few guys like me who had second thoughts on jumping in too. That didn't mean we didn't get anything to eat. The others made sure a few plates were "reserved" for us. So in the end, everyone had their fill. But I guess their way of eating was a lot more fun.

One of the other interesting incident was, one of the guys was making the "badass phone call" to someone. You know, the one where they call someone up, use every swear word they can come up with to make their point. I guess some of you can see the irony behind this.

And oh ya, it was this day that Viswa bought a new slide phone and rued it for nearly an year. All because the shopkeeper gave him wrong information about the cell he actually wanted to buy :D