The first batch of IIIT Hyderabad

AdSense

2007-07-03T09:39:00.000+05:30

I've signed up this site for AdSense mainly to check the validity of the programme and the financial 'impact' it was hyped upto have. If any of you have any concerns please voice your opinion in the comments section. Whatever amount we recieve through this arrangement would go to Alumni Fund.

If you've any better ideas or think that we shouldn't do so, please comment.

-Vivek

One year

2007-02-06T12:39:00.000+05:30

We are now approaching one year of inactivity on this blog. The last post is not by a person but by a spam bot.
So, why are people not posting to this blog?

My excuse: Duh! Its been 20 days shy of an year from the last time I saw this blog.

I will see when the next post is made.

The First Trip We Made

2006-02-26T18:05:00.000+05:30

The Great Biscuit Robbery Episode

2006-02-24T12:07:00.000+05:30

It is well known fact that our mess food sucked big time! (Kev and Sujit might have a different opinion) Pained by the quality of food served by the mess-wallahs and the ridiculous amount they charged for it, a small clan was formed in our batch who were lifting petty things (like chips, biscuit packets etc.) from the mess. A rookie was trying to cut into this clan and wanted to prove his talent and show how good he is at this extreme craftmanship. This story is about that rookie.

It was midnight and there was big group watching some movie in Anil's room. Feeling hungry, the rookie and I decided to buy some stuff from the mess. We went there and found the short and stout mess owner sleeping. So, I got some chips and put the respective amount on his table. The rookie was standing there for a moment and I could see him cooking up some crooked thoughts. Suddenly, he grabbed a biscuit packet, put it in his pocket (it was half visible) and began walking. His face was filled with sheer joy and looked like a celebrity walking down the aisle after receiving an award. But he was apprehensive about the caterer seeing his half visible pocket. Anyways, he came to the room and boasted of his debut. Everyone complimented on his efforts. The clan members were also happy and were ready to recruit him. We praised the rookie for some time and then got engrossed in the movie which was running.

Few minutes passed by and we hear a door knock. From the window we could see a short and stout guy and alerted the rookie that it was the mess owner. The rookie was panic stricken and said "rey choosesaadu ra.. ippudu ela.. nenu bed kinda daakuntaa.. nenu lenu ani cheppandi.." (Translation: I think the caterer saw me.. Now what! I will hide under this bed.. Tell him that I am not there). We were also somewhat worried and opened the door slowly. Suddenly, everybody in the room burst out laughing, but the rookie was clueless about the change of mood in the room. He peeped out from under the bed and to his surprise, he found the short and stout guy to be Kev. Seeing this, he heaved a sigh of relief! We had sooo much laugh that night and made fun of the rookie.

Believe me, he stopped entering the mess premises for more than a month fearing his indictment. But finally, he was recruited by the clan and was commended for the courage he showed that night! (Hey rookie, if you are reading this, pls don't curse me. I thought your efforts are worth putting them here and what you did is not all that bad either)

Can you jump ?

2006-02-23T17:15:00.000+05:30

It all started with this statement between myself and aruchu. We both had come out of the mess after the snacks and were standing on the first floor of new boys hostel outside his room looking at the lush green grass on the lawn. At that time, there were no grills on those huge openings (or whatever they were called). As we were approaching his room, I challenged him, "Bet you cannot jump from here onto the grass. You are shit scared to do that".
He looked at me, knew he was really scared, and smiled, "I can. No big deal". We both knew that he will not jump no matter how much I challenged him so I kept on pressing, "You chicken, You loser, You are scared to death to jump this small height. Everyone in this college can jump but you. Even a kid can make it, but you."
We were having this argument, when our mr-tall-with-longest-legs was passing by. He listened to us and said,"This jump. I can make it with my eyes closed." Went to the room, put on his shoes, came back and jumped out from that place without a thought, came back up the stairs and said, "That was easy." Aruchu did feel a little insulted and replied, "This is it. I am doing it as well." He went to the room and got on his shoes, came back and sat on the window facing the lawn, "arey yaar, yeh bahut zyada hai." I and peddy were laughing like mad and continuously taunting him. By that time, a good 8-10 people had joined us and poor aruchu was sitting there trying to muster some courage so that at least he could look down.
By then, Prashant Verma appeared from nowhere and saw whats happening. He was like this-will-give-a-nice-kick, and jumped from the first floor, came back and jumped again. By that time, some 3-4 folks have also made their jump including myself and aruchu was still sitting there waiting for a push. Then came some more fellows from 99 and 2K batch and made the jump without hesitation. Now, our guy was having a serious inferiority complex as to what to do. By this time, he had tried 3-4 times to jump out and one point he was almost on his half ass, about to jump, and came back into the corridor as soon as he saw someone approaching him. Now, I do not remember how many people had already jumped and how many more were still coming to the hostel to enact this. Finally, aruchu gathered some courage, when he saw that people have left after being tired of taunting him and he is not gonna jump, thats when he finally pushed himself out and realized that he was the tallest person to have made this jump. People continued this till the dinner.

A few days later, we got the grills.

Anything to beat this day?

2006-02-21T20:24:00.000+05:30

We waited for about 3 years for this day and finally when it happened, there was cheer and joy amongst all of us. I do not think anybody would have enjoyed that moment more than we all did:
21st August 2001.

The way to the Mess

2006-02-21T10:49:00.000+05:30

In the whole of the first year, we all used to have our meals in the guest house. And since the road in front of the girls hostel was not there, infact the girls hostel itself was not there, there were just two options left. Either to follow the road from the main building and then cross the playing ground, or go to the corridor in the main building facing the ground and jump the wall to enter the ground and then cross the ground. Needless to say, that in a hurry to get the best bowls of chicken, an average person would come near to the lab, then onto the corridor and jump the wall to enter the ground and sprint all the way to the guest house for food and it wasn't long before it became the only option and we all forgot about the road that existed in front of the main building.

This all went on fine until the June of 1999, just two weeks before the start of third sem. Approx 8 or 10 guys were called from their vacations, who more so wanted to be in the college and asked to attend the Linux workshop being organized by some guy from Illinois. The attendees were some bigshot networking guys and sysadmins and senior managers from various IT companies and other institutes. Now this was the first day of the session and all the IIIT folks were well dressed and on time. Usual introductions and all and it was told that food is organized in the guest house for everyone.

Without being an exception, I started feeling hungry as soon as 11 and the other fellas, kuttu prakash, prem, suzku followed. As soon as we broke for lunch, we started the usual habit of running out of the class, entering the corridor in front of the admin offices, then onto the back gate and onto the outer corridor. What kutta prakash realised 2 mins later, that everyone else is following us cos we seemed to be the only people who knew the way to the guest house. Until we reached the last corridor it was all fine. Then they all seemed wondering where is the way out until we geniuses took the long-practiced-and-perfected jump across the wall into the ground. All the folks were sheepishly smiling and seemed to be kicking themselves, but then the biggest factor -- pet ki aag -- overcame them and they all jumped one by one into the ground. How badly I wish I had a camera at that moment.

A few weeks later Govindu was also shown the same way...

Holi at IIIT

2006-02-19T07:49:00.000+05:30

I enjoyed every Holi at IIIT. Here is a pic from the first Holi.

My Tryst with Mechanics

2006-02-19T01:20:00.000+05:30

It was the 1st sem at IIIT and I was just starting to let go off my inferiority complex. I didn't realize the jatka was about to come. Midsems started and it was the day of Mechanics exam and most of the fellow junta were writing seriously. I was having my share of "fun" trying to understand the questions properly and thinking others in the room were facing similar difficulty. After the exam, I asked Zigma (Nagma's brother, aka Hemant) how his exam went. He, with a sad face, said he would cross 5 marks (out of 50) with great difficulty. I believed him, consoled him and assured that he was in the right company, but later realized that I approached the wrong person. Marks were given and Zigma got 40+ and I got 17 marks (mostly because of the generousity of D.N.Reddy sir). Believe me or not, every diagram I drew, there were two force arrows, one with pencil and the other in red ink pointing in the opposite direction (sir patiently corrected my diagrams). It was then that I realized that Newtons third law holds not only in reality but also on my paper!

In the end, I was happy to receive the honors of a C grade and more importantly I found the right company with my fellow-mechanics-wizards (Pls, dont feel shy if u r one of those).

Twosome awesome

2006-02-18T08:53:00.000+05:30

If you all know Govind uncle (as ThataD quoted earlier) & Rajeev Sangal as just comp science profs, think again. You might have missed a clue. This is yet another rib tickling incident from our very own Jilebi-Shah.

Remember, in our 1st sem we had PC S/W tools 2-grade course (not my mistake if you read it as 2nd grade course!). We used to get bombarded with slip tests almost bi-weekly during then. In that, there was this famous question "Name any two web browsers that you know" asked in one of the tests. Many of us in our GDIT98 batch were entirely new to the idiot boxes then. But we were atleast intelligent enough to leave the question unanswered. But here is Mr Shah who had taken this bold decision to give it a try by answering "Govinda Rajulu & Rajeev Sangal". Yeah u have read it absolutely right!. According to him, whoever browses internet were all internet browsers. Might make some sense in true vocabulary though. And it was also that we had only these two comp science profs in our first sem in the college. So Shah could not have picked any body else.

Don't we really cherish all those innocent moments!. Thanks Shah for contributing so much for this blog. We all owe you a lot.

My watch

2006-02-17T21:40:00.000+05:30

When A_Rule and the gang-of-four went to New York
A_Rule bought me a wrist watch. Guess what - someone tell* A_Rule that I still have that watch and thank you for it man.

* - Do you really expect A_Rule to read this blog eh.

Horrendous AoE rules

2006-02-17T21:36:00.000+05:30

This is the list of rules for playing AoE (1st year)
- No attacking before Iron Age (is this the last age?)
- No 'stealing' of resources from each other.
- If someone's towers kill the opponents villager, then this guy HAS to lose a villager.
- Full tech tree

This is the list of rules for playing AoE (final year)
- Screw you there are no rules.
- Anil gets the 'free spying' bonus. AKA stand-up-peek-@-everyone's-screen

Moving...

2006-02-17T21:31:00.000+05:30

This one is not hilarious, but something I cannot forget ... ever.
Something happened between Subhash and me because of a misunderstanding and he hit me.
I walked away from that place, had my dinner in the canteen and when I was walking back, I saw Subhash waiting on the stairs. When I came out of the canteen he walked towards me and said 'Sorry'.
He waited for over 45 mins just to say Sorry. Hats off to your character ra. Subhash.

Freeze

2006-02-17T21:26:00.000+05:30

Scenario:
year: 1998
time: midnight, the time to play football (soccer for some people)

Asif, ShortPrem, GSan and I were walking on the ground, towards the football area. Suddenly ShortPrem stops, and screams "FREEZE!!". Asif and I were wondering what it was all about. We look at the direction in which ShortPrem was pointing and break into a laughter.
It was an aircraft.

Who said we couldn't dance :P

2006-02-17T03:14:00.000+05:30

This is our version of the famous "ek pal ka jeena" step :P.

Vijay and his kukroo khoo alarm...

2006-02-16T14:56:00.000+05:30

Vijay, mama and kaushik used to share one room in the first year. But, nothing common in their sleeping habits. If at all we need to make it to the classes early morning (9:00 AM is early, right?), especially to escape Govind Uncle's (yeah! Prof. Govindarajulu's nick name) bouncers in the next class, we needed greater coordination. So, Vijay had a deal with Sed and I (one of us, have to wake him up in the morning).

He has this wrist watch, with a built-in kukroo khoo sound alarm, hung to the bed and close to his head. I think Vijay has this frequency tuning on this alarm of his with his auditory system, otherwise even a person who's half sleep can't wake up due to the intensity with which it rings.

It's one of those days when sed tried his best and left. Now, it was my turn. I tried all the tricks I could to wake up vijay. But, I was not successful. Looked at his watch, I think it tried its best already, but to no use.

We see bajji mama entering the room, told him the situation and the need to wake up vijay. Mama decides to help us and shouts at his natural best (btw, did I tell that girl's hostel is just seperated by a compound wall from Vijay's room and is directly visible through the window?) with an intention to convey the message to the parties on the other side of the wall rather than to a 6 ft pulla rao (thin) body lazying around in bed, "Vijay, podduney tondaraga lechi chaduvukovaali annavu kadaa! ammayila kanna ekkuva markulu techu kunta annavu.... inka legava ledenti?"
Translation: "Vijay, you said that you'll get up early in the morning and study to get more marks than girls. Why didn't you get up yet?"

For this, Vijay gets up in a jiffy. From then on, he never asked us to wake him up, unless there is an exam. He just banked on his bed mate - the kukroo khoo alarm...

Cheeku's bicycle kick

2006-02-16T04:08:00.000+05:30

This is the first story in the Doggy-Master (kalyan - cheeku) series.
Just to give a context on the Doggy-Master thing, kalyan and cheeku never make fun of each other, when the other one is around. This is one of those incidents where kalyan got caught making fun of cheeku.

Kalyan, kaki and I were talking about how our batchmates would do a "bicycle kick" in soccer. I don't remember exactly how, but somehow the topic comes on to chait, and suddenly Mr.KALYAN gets very excited and starts laughing. I asked him why he was laughing, and he starts explaining in his own funny way, how cheeku couldn't lift his leg at all, and if he lifts above 60 degrees from the vertical he would fall back. The "good" thing kalyan didn't notice there was that cheeku was walking towards us while Kalyan was telling this. After patiently listening to kalyan's story, cheeku calls "abey shah ga" in a low tone. That was THE moment. It was a treat for us to watch the expression on kalyan's face :).

Who is Chorus?

2006-02-16T03:57:00.000+05:30

This was the episode which happened when Shah and I were returning from Bake Magic to the Hostel. We were in a mini-taxi and discussing about music and various singers. Suddenly, Shah decided to shoot a question. I said okay and then he asked this:
babai. naaku chaala mandi singers voice telusu. but ee Chorus gaadu evadu ra babu?
I waited for his question to complete and then he went on.
anni paatalu veedey padestaadu.. chaala languages lo kooda paadutaadu.. appudappudu female voice lo kooda paadutaadu.. veedu male aa leka female aa?
(Translation: I know a lot of singers, but who is this chorus dude. He sings most of the songs and he also sings in many languages. Sometimes, I hear a female voice of him too. Is he a male or a female?)
At that moment, I was in a state of silence and was about to burst with laughter. For a moment, I thought if it was a test, but realized that it cannot be possible with Shah at the other end. I couldn't stop my laugh for a while and then explained who Chorus was!

Reetu Matharu

2006-02-15T21:44:00.000+05:30

Does that name ring any bells? NO? Then read ahead:

"We have been tracking your movements on the site for the last couple of days, and have found discrepancies in your score card. We have further verified this with our programmers and they have informed us that it is not possible for anyone to score as many points as you have had in these last few days, legally. The point being that you have hacked into our system and broken the security code. A site like ours which is very popular is surely a target for hackers like you, and for which we invest heavily into security and investigators who trace them for us and take them to task. Hence do not ignore this mail as a vile warning because we mean business here, and you will be hearing from our legal representatives shortly.

We give you 24 hours to revert back to us explaining your stand, failing to respond we will start the process of legally prosecuting you."

It will crash

2006-02-13T12:12:00.000+05:30

This is the scene when I guess Somu got his first shock ...
Setting:
Lab 1
Time:
The brand new IBM P I MMX 133 MHz with 32 MB SDRAM came in. Networking was complete and it was waiting for some 'mahurat' or something like that.

Event:
Somu walks into the lab, that is not yet opened for the mere mortals like the rest of us. He goes in and gives his 'hmm' look and rights clicks the desktop (I did not know what it was called @ that moment) and Properties and selects forest as the background texture... just then lightning bolts strike him. M. B. Prasad reads out a verse the first warning of the things to come... "Do not touch it. It will crash".
Make your own conclusions guyz...

First Post - Reminiscence

2006-02-12T13:59:00.000+05:30

Remember those days... loads of funny moments, embarrassing situations, historic events, heights of leg pulling, dare-devil acts and intellectually stimulating conversations.

I want to quote a mail from Alok (98001)

--------------------
From: Alok Reddy
Date: Sep 2, 2005
Subject: 7th anniversary

Guys,
It's been seven years since 50 supposed to be brilliants walked into a jungle called IIIT. I congratulate each and every one of u including myself on this occasion for having taken a bold decision (not sure if we had any other options) which is really paying off now (?? At least let us think so for a day, today).

-Alok.
--------------------

We've had tonnes of mailing groups, dicussion fora and other interfaces to communicate. But, you know what, whenever we meet face-to-face, setup conferences and recall those days, we realize that we've had a lot of experiences that we feel nostalgic about whenever we share those. Some are lost in the dust and some are still as fresh as they were at that time.

Here's the place to post all those. Without any ado, I give it to you... [become a member and keep posting]

Caveat: Keep in mind that this blog is visible to entire world and so be in your limits ;-)

-Vivek(98050) [getting nostalgic ;-)]