10 things I will miss about Aggieland

Hah! I am not going to make that false promise again. I admit, I never been able to keep up with my blog and I guess I never will. It’s been a semester since I wrote something here. I am done, done with my Masters. Right now, I am in the mood of catching my flight to India and reunite with my family after 17 months. But, just thought I should share what I am gonna miss. Of course, I have lotz of other interesting topics lined up which I guess I will be writing from India.

1) Being a student at Texas A&M

Without any second thoughts, anyone would easily say that the best part of life is being a student. Being a student at Texas A&M makes it even more special. I am gonna miss attending classes, asking questions, inducing debates, slogging for exams, competitions, grading, and everything that I complained about when I was a student How much ever strenuous it is, student life is still THE best

2) Evans & WCL
Nothing can beat studying for exams at WCL or Evans. You are surrounded by people with lots of caffeine slogging at the last minute reminding you that you are not left alone It may sound stupid, but I have a sentiment of doing better in exams when I study at WCL 3rd Floor. Free coffee, hot chocolate and chair massage for students – can it be any better?

3) Aggie Nights and $1 movie at Rudder
Aggie Nights is the best thing I noticed in my first semester. Pizza, Soda, Bowling, Pool, Board Games, and much more – of course, everything is for FREE. They know that students don’t cook on Fridays
The second best thing is $1 movie at Rudder. The sound system sucks, but you cannot really complain when you pay only one buck. It would be great if they start giving pop-corn and coke

4) Aggie Football & Yell Practice
I was not really an American Football enthusiast in last Fall. I hardly seen a full game and always compared it to Soccer and demeaned it. But, the game has really got stuff to entertain which I got to know this Fall. I watched 4 home games and now I am really looking forward to next season. Midnight Yell is something unique to Texas A&M and I still know only few of the yells. Farmers Farmers Fight! Whoop!!

5) ISMA
ISMA is undoubtedly the best student organization at Texas A&M. While my class with 90% Indian students never gave me the international experience I was seeking, ISMA did. Now I have friends from France, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Estonia, Mexico, Serbia, Azerbaijan, West Indies, England, China, Taiwan, and many more countries. I strongly recommend ISMA if you want to make friends and have fun
6) AITP
If ISMA is for fun, AITP is probably the best professional organization in our school. Being the president of AITP taught me so many good things which otherwise I wouldn’t have learned. Especially delegating work to team members and getting it done on time. Man! I used to suck at that. Of course, there was couple of instances in which I was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, it was great.

7) Aggie Traditions
From saying ‘Howdy!’, ‘Gig’em’, and BTHO to Yell Practice,Ring Dunk, Silver Taps, and Elephant Walk, Texas A&M has got its share of unique traditions which are blended into our life. I am surely gonna miss these. I hope I have my ring dunk party next semester in Aggieland (but I will dunk only in Coke ).

8) North Gate
I am not a party animal and in fact, I visited North Gate for the first time only this Fall. North Gate is definitely fun, especially if you have had a rough week and want to forget the woes by shaking your legs. North Gate has influenced me to listen to English songs (Yep! I never listened to any English songs until like 2 months back). I am just sad that I did not get enough chances to go to North Gate of late but I can always drive back from Houston whenever I want to

9) Rec
I still remember many of my friends pulling my legs about working out in rec. I don’t really know whether I achieved my objective of putting weight, but believe me, rec is such a great stress buster. Especially when you have too much of work and your concentration is oscillating, rec can definitely be a rescue. Just flex your muscles, do some weights, and you will feel better. At least, I did.

10) Fellow Aggies
You may confront me saying some of the things listed above are not anything unique to Aggieland and almost any town/city in US would have them. I agree! But, the real flavor here is the Aggies who are present in all the things listed above. I lived in Houston for about 3 months and believe me, Houston is such a barren land (I hope you get what I am talking about). I am gonna miss you all Aggies!

When I wrote this post, I just felt like DJ of RDB (Rang De Basanti – a Hindi movie). If you don’t get what I am talking about:

Its over! Its over!! Its over!!!

I wanted to get out on the streets and shout this like Janagaraj did in Agni Natchathram. Man! Its one of the craziest semester I have ever had…its even more pressuring than my final semester in Undergrad in which I had 6 courses along with a large project…if I have to convey the enormity of the semester in Vijayakanth’s style, here it goes:

I had 4 heavyweight courses, 6 presentations, 10 reports,  26 case studies, 25 homework assignments, numerous articles, 1 really big data warehouse and BI implementation, 2 mid terms, 2 final exams, and 2 Herculean final take home exams. In short, it is close to 500 pages of written content and 154080 minutes of ordeal which has finally come to an end today …whether I was successful or not will be known in a few days…

Now you would have understood why I wasn’t able to post frequently in the past few months. I hope I get back my momentum and come up with interesting topics….

25 random things about me…

Somebody tagged me with this nasty thing in Facebook because of which I had to write 25 random things about me…

1) Good things first, I am extremely hard working. Somehow I don’t lose energy till the task is completed. But, when I do not have much to do, I procrastinate things to the very last minute and waste time on useless things…so, I always like to have loads of pending things left…

2) I am an ardent believer of Almighty and destiny. Even after putting our best, if we don’t get right opportunities at right time, the efforts go waste…so, I attribute all my success to Almighty first before thinking about my hardwork…

3) In my childhood my favorite color was Red…but somehow changed it to blue in past few years…you can see a blue shade in everything i do..my shirts, my blog, my presentation backgrounds, my project report backgrounds…my mind doesn’t think out of blue…

4) Though I watch movies from all languages, I only listen to Tamil songs…somehow couldn’t change this habit…

5) My memory is content specific…I remember lyrics of several hundreds of Tamil songs…I could still remember the lyrics after several years…but I forget subjects immediately after exams

6) The only thing I am afraid of is DOG…once a dog chased me for nearly half a mile and I luckily escaped

7) I had an aversion towards Curd (Yogurt), Butter Milk and Butter till my age of 22…I even leave the place if someone is eating any of these…but, now these are integral part of my life…in fact, its a huge transformation in my food habits since I came out of my house for work

8) I am extremely bold towards incidents…I never lose hope and courage till the very end…my policy is simple – ‘except for death, nothing is end of life’

9) Having said that, I cried for almost every exam till 12th standard because of ‘exam fear’…I study at the very last moment and get afraid of the portion left to be read…till my mom says ‘don’t cry…just get (score) whatever you can’, I keep crying and reading… I didn’t write my quarterly and half yearly exams in my 12th standard as I fell sick because of ‘exam fear’…on the day of last exam of half yearly, my uncle slapped me and dragged me to the exam hall…i scored 97% without reading anything…thats the last day I cried for an exam

10) My mind is very ‘relative’…I automatically remember all things I heard, read or seen related to a topic as soon as that topic is being discussed…

11) I plan for far off things but do not plan for immediate things…for instance, I do not have a plan for next week but I have a plan for what I should do after my age of 40

12) I started reading things in English and conversing in English only 8 years back

13) The only thing I feel bad about myself is my weight…the maximum I have been is 61 kgs (134 lbs) 4.5 years back…I constantly try to improve on that but never did …I also feel bad for not having developed reading habit…I seldom read books…

14) I didn’t talk to my brother for 4 years since he didn’t listen to my advice…I didn’t talk to my neighbors for 6 years since they scolded me for a mistake I didn’t do…I am serious about things like these

15) I have been myself irrespective of the place…everywhere I try to follow all the rituals and practices I do at home

16) I wanted to learn several things in my childhood which I am yet to learn (like Mridhangam, Sanskrit, etc)

17) I take bath everyday without fail ( yey! thats an achievement) and I always take bath only in hot water (even in extreme hot temperatures)

18) I get excited very easily and quickly recover from that…

19) I was short-tempered a while ago…now, I am more matured and better…once I beaten my brother with a club black and blue for cheating in a game…he didn’t go to school for a week after that…

20) I am a pure vegetarian except for chocolates (snickers to be specific)…I am somewhat addicted to it…

21) I don’t like people who don’t follow their rituals and become rebels…I never had a friendship with such a person…

22) I am an ardent fan of Ajith (Tamil actor)…if I am in India, I watch all his movies on the opening day…when I was not earning, I even stood in queues for 5-6 hours to watch his movies…(still don’t know why)…

23) I love cooking…thats one of my stress busters…another stress buster is shopping (only window shopping )

24) I was a good painter in my childhood…probably, the last painting I done was the day before we
bought a PC…

25) I think and write very fast (even if it doesn’t make any sense )…during my undergrad, for one of the exams I wrote 65 pages (ruled sheet) in 3 hours….you can see it here, I didn’t have any problems in thinking 25 random things about me…you will feel the difficulty when you start writing

Success is counted sweetest…

There is this poem by Emily Dickinson which goes like:

“Success is counted sweetest 

By those who ne’er succeed. 

To comprehend a nectar 

Requires sorest need.”

If I remember correctly, I read and understood this poem in my 9th standard. But, I realize the meaning only today. My life was as smooth as a high way in United States when I was in India. It has become an Indian road after I came here to United States. Part of that is due to the high expectations that I had for myself. As always, ‘expectations bring sorrow and surprises bring joy’. I faced several failures after coming to US. They were extremely painful as I am not used to failures in my life. Right from my 1st standard to my college, I always got what I wanted. I got my job without even knowing the value of it. I got an onsite at right time and life was peaceful. 

But, only when you face failures, you realize the value of success. My failures were in getting an internship for this summer (which will potentially get converted to a full time job in most cases). I interviewed with couple of firms, went on to second round but ultimately got a reject. I was clueless on what went wrong as in both instances I did my best. But, God is great. He was having something big in store for me. Last week, I had an interview with Deloitte, one of the leading consulting firms. It was a tough day as we had 2 rounds (4 interviews) on the same day. I cleared the first round in the morning and was called up for 2nd round in the afternoon. I did OK in the 2nd round. But, you never know how the interviewer interprets it and the relative performance with fellow interviewees. 

Ultimately, I got an offer from them today …I am excited, not only because I got an internship, but also because I got one of the best roles I can get…Now, I understand the joy ‘success’ can bring in, after a couple of failures…I must say I am lucky…after all, luck is when opportunity meets preparation, isn’t it?

A black Monday and a green(?) Tuesday

This is something which I wanted to write when I attended my first career fair 4 months ago, but then stalled the idea as I was not exactly sure of how the system works here. Now, after attending my 4th career fair today (after a day in which US lost 71,400 jobs), I feel educated enough to write a post on career fairs and the current situation.

Coming to the point, beginning student life again after 4 years of a high paying job is not that easy. Initially you might be enjoying the feeling of being back to the student life but then when you realize that you are ‘actually’ jobless and need to get one, the pressure builds up. Career Fairs will most probably be the first opportunity for many students here to meet potential employers. In every career fair (be it engineering, retail, business, geoscience, etc, etc) you can see Indian students dressed up in suits with a folder in hand carrying bunch of resumes visiting almost every stall. By the end of the day, it hurts when many end up with lot of goodies in hand but not even one promising offer (especially International students).

In fact, I was wondering about how changed I am, for good! I never bothered about a job during my undergrad in India. I was told by one of my friends that TCS is visiting our campus in a week. I just casually prepared and some how made it (Believe me, my confidence with English was extremely low that time compared to now). But then, the competition here with a gloomy market makes you really worry about securing a job and makes you more mature and better prepared. Good thing is that, the job market is dry but still not dire, which was evident from today’s career fair (and the word green has been added to the title to denote that). So, there are opportunities out here and there and it entails lot of efforts to land in one of them. At times, it might make you regret on the decision to leave a job and do higher studies. But, if you are lucky (seriously, that is what is needed with this market), you might get good opportunities too.

I had a very tiring day today having three 1:15 hour classes (I bunked one of them) and a whole day with potential (?) employers at the career fair repeating almost the same dialogs with each of them and handing over my resume. As a resolution, I decided not to collect any goodie this time and I never did I wrote this post not to educate any one on career fairs but to advise those aspirants of Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 from India to reconsider their decisions. A couple of days back, I got a chance to talk with the CIO of AMD. The first question he asked me was ‘So, are you planning to take another course here once you are done?’. Thats the kind of confidence he has on this market. Even if there are some improvements, I don’t expect any miracles within a year. So, its better safe to play a wait and watch game rather than getting into the quagmire like us. Be happy with your current job

Hibernation…

Its been really long time since I wrote something…There could be two reasons, i) I am extremely busy, ii) I am becoming lazy…Gotcha! You got it right…My indolence is again impeding me…There is never a lack of topic to write…especially at this point of time, I have hell lot of things to discuss about: the anticipated response for Mumbai attack and what actually is happening now, the economic turmoil and its expected aftermaths in US and India, my semester exams and results, movies that I watched and liked, the soaring form of Indian cricket, and so on…But, somehow, I don’t feel like writing…I am rather wasting my time in watching useless movies…

Because, because, because, its winter break and I don’t feel like doing anything…After 3 months of hardwork (very short time for a semester, considering Indian system of semesters), its time to relax and enjoy the much needed break (and my hardwork has really paid off well in the results )…Since I haven’t planned anything for these 40 days of winter break, I don’t have anything useful to do…As of now, I am just watching at least couple of movies a day, doing some enhancements to a website (unfortunately I am the Web master for that association) and sleeping a lot…I might travel to some nearby places like Austin and San Antonio…if I do, I will probably write a travelogue on those…suggest me some good English / Hindi movies so that I can grab the DVDs from my college library (they have got a huge collection) and watch…

Its hightime to reply back…

Indians have been agnoized enough in past few months. Right from political capital to financial capital, terrorism has strongly showcased the vulnerability of Indian security. Almost every month we hear about a bomb blast somewhere in India. This time, the enormity of events taken place at Mumbai has exceeded everyone’s imaginations and left people stranded about their security of life when they get out of their houses. 

I am definitely not going to criticize the government and officials again. Because I know its waste of effort and know what actions they are going to take. Undoubtedly, this is what the government is going to do. . But, what is the real solution for this issue? BJP Spokesperson Ravishankar reflected my thoughts in his interview today. He said this incident is analogous to 9/11 (of course it is) and we should do what Americans did. 

I second his words unconditionally. Enough of having peace talks. Even after it has been confirmed that one of the detained terrorists is from Pak, the Pak prime minister with an innocent looking face denies involvement of Pak in Mumbai incidents. I sincerely feel that the time has now come to give a reply, in a much stronger manner to demolish these evil creatures with iron hand. But, as usual, with impending elections, I couldn’t see any chances of that happening. Who knows, the detained ones may get pardoned to attract minority Muslim votes. It is obvious that without any help from inside, it is impossible to carry out such a ferocious operation. These internal weeds must be cleared before we take action on Pak.

What’s more funnier is Vilasrao Deshmukh asking Mumbaikars to relive the spirit of Mumbai and get back to normal life. I agree that the financial capital has to move on. But, country’s security should be the top priority. I must laud the news channels who commercialize anything and everything irrespective of the sensitivity of the issue. One says that it is tough to get England team back, another says there is a possibility of ally between BJP and Shivsena and the other says that its a clear attack on foreign nationals when 119 out of 125 dead are Indians. For God’s sake, can some terrorist group attack these channels first? 

Coming back to point, it is hightime we reply back firmly…no need for negotiations…no need for peace talks…a bold act now will save a lot of invaluable human lives in years to come….

A week to remember forever…

When I registered for the case competition organized by our department, I never realized it is going to be so exacting. When I turn back and see how we worked for 1 week, it amazes me…I still couldn’t figure out from where I got such an energy…” It takes struggle, a goal and enthusiasm to make a champion” said some one I remember…how true it is!…week of sleepless nights, arduous effort and dedication has yielded us something that we can really proud of…Yep…Our team won 1st prize in the competition for giving the best solution

http://cmis.tamu.edu/Case-Web/winners.asp

I have to tell you about the background of this competition..the case was a REAL one prepared by a REAL consulting firm…the task was to come up with a business proposal with our suggested solution, technical details, prototype and budget analysis for a given RFP (Request for Proposal)…The experience that I had in real proposals in IT industry really came handy but then the time was so short for the amount of work that we had to do…

It doesn’t stop there…we had a mid-term exam in between and a project report to be submitted as part of another course…and I had an Internship interview…amidst all these, I kept pushing my team to put our 100% on this as the judges were going to be from various reputed companies…I wanted to make a first good impression on them…thats how it started…but it never stopped…we were so enthusiastic and dwelled into the case for a week completely forgetting sleep…but, with 15 teams participating (which had lot of teams who had already participated in similar competitions) and giving a tough fight, we were aware that its not going to be easy for us….

So, we devised a strategy…”Attention to detail” and “Innovative business propositions”…I feel these two were our key for victory…with a time crunch, we were able to come up with a report which addressed every possible detail of the system (the report was 45 pages :O)…and the judges were really impressed by our propositions…I should mention about the PPT with cool diagrams that I had created (IT Experience helps ) which got some extra brownie points ….

350$ Scholarship and 200$ gift cards…thats what I got…above all, a very good reputation amongst potential employers and good recognition in my school…I hope I leverage this in my job search…As of now I am too excited…I am going to Dallas tomorrow to watch THALA in action (Aegan) and will surely come up with my review…Till then, take best care of yourselves and keep watching this space….

Life is busy :) :(

I think ‘blogging’ is there only in my Resume as a hobby and not in my life…This is the time I get lot of new things and interesting experiences to talk about. But, I have only 24 hrs a day and always have something pending to be attended and completed. Life has never been so hectic with multitude of tasks to be completed at the same time. Its a new experience and I am managing it so far.

In between, during last couple of weekends, I reprieved due to advanced planning and execution of tasks. I wanted to share my exhilarating experiences last week itself, but couldn’t accomodate blogging into my schedule. On 5th October, there was a violin concert arranged by SPICMACAY (Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music & Culture Amongst Youth) association of our college. Mysore Brothers (Shri. Mysore Nagaraj & Shri. Dr. Mysore Manjunath) enthralled the audience with their excellent violin performance. They were accompanied by Shri. Srimushnam Raja Rao with Mrudhangam and Shri. Gowri Shankar with Tabla. The close to three hours of performance never showed any slack anywhere. I never attended any classical music concerts in India and neither got a chance. This was my first time and I really enjoyed it as it came as an escape from my routine.

 

 

The next escape came this weekend where I attended my first American College Football game between our college team (Aggies) and Kansas State. People here are crazy about college football. In a small town like College Station, if the attendance on that day was 78,000 people then imagine the level of enthusiasm these people show on football. I actually went there on behalf of AID (Association for India’s Development) where we taken care of a shop to sell food items to visitors. We get a share of the profit and send it to India for good cause. It was a tiring day as I was standing from 10 to 4. Nevertheless, the effort was worth as we were able to collect around $500 in a single day. I was able to watch and enjoy the match in between my work. Though our team lost the game, the last quarter (which I watched) was intense. (I am slowly learning the rules)

 

 

I just completed two mid-term exams and leaving a sigh of temporary relief. I have two more exams scheduled for next week with an impending case competition apart from my regular work. So, its time to get back to work. Will try to write whenever I find time. But, please keep visiting irrespective of whether I write or not

Student life and sleepless nights

One of the reasons for me choosing the Management Information Systems course at the Texas A&M University is that, as my seniors told, the course allows you to have perfect balance with your life giving ample free time for doing activities that you are interested in. But, after coming here, I realized that, I have to keep running headlong, at least for this semester as of now. Upon discussions with many current and old students, I found out that this IS the case in most of the graduate programs and PhDs in US universities. At least, I was not prepared to have continuous sleepless nights like this. So, how did I find time to post this? Well, if I am not sleeping, I bound to have extra hours

When I selected my courses (4 courses for this semester), I found that each course has only 2.5 hours of class room sessions every week. Apart from that I have to work as Graduate Assistant for 2 courses which roughly will be 20 hours per week. I was presuming that I am going to have sufficient time to visit to REC (Student Recreation Center) and improve my tennis…Alas! though classes are only for 10 hours, the assignments given by profs (professors) here make you work for the whole day…thats how the system works here…don’t think of these assignments as what we used to do in India…these are different, challenging and provide excellent information….

For instance, in two of the subjects that I am having in this semester, the assignments mostly comprise of writing 2 page summaries for case studies, industry examples or new concepts…that sounds cool…but each article is at least 30-40 pages long…reading and understanding these swallows most of your time…if you don’t get the pith of it, you will never be able to summarize it…in between, every now and then companies are conducting information sessions on the positions they have…so, being a job hunter, we cannot miss them…i found it really difficult to manage these during initial couple of weeks..now, I am alright, as I am devoting my entire weekend and nights on completing deliverables…on average I slept for 4 hours for the past 4 days…next week seems to be a little lighter than this, and we never know when a ‘prospective’ employer will announce an information session

So, that tells a story…almost every course (at least Masters and PhD) here at US exacts hell lot work from you…if you are a prospective student, be prepared…its not the same as what we did in UG and you are expected to work hard…though it depends a lot on the courses you take, almost every prof here expects the students to work hard on their part…

I must discuss about the attitude of some local students here…when International students like us mostly respect profs and behave like ‘students’…many students here have a different viewpoint…they think, since they pay, its their right to listen to or not to listen to classes…you can see them solving sudokus, reading magazines or surfing net in their laptops during the class..and very importantly, profs don’t mind these things (thats a BIG difference between Indian profs and profs here)…discipline means different things here…the discipline that we were taughgt back in India is blatantly missing to some extent and profs don’t seem to be bothered about that…

That’s it for now…I will try to discuss on the Harvard Business Review articles that I am reading as part of my assignments…they provide WEALTHY knowledge…keep watching this space