How am I where I am now?

Me : ma, andha socks enga?
Mom : anga dhan da vechen, irukum paruda
Me : ma, indha shoe kulla irundhu karapanpoochi laam oduthu
Mom : shoe na use pannanum, kuppa mari pottu vecha apadithan

And yeah!! It was 7:00 AM in the morning of 11th Aug 2010, it was the day, it all started, the tension, the fear, the excitement, and what not. Amazon was the first company that was visiting our campus for the year. Having all the weirdest of imaginations that all would have, the previous day I was not even able to prepare something due the excitement I had. Having hope in heart that I would somehow manage to get a good job, I had put up this status on facebook that read Hope dream jobs are not really ‘dream’ jobs.

<!-- One Week Ago –>
As I would do on a usual weekend, I was playing FIFA on my pc and and my dad just entered the room....
Dad : ennada pannitu iruka, eppapathalum velayattu dhaana?
Me : solla maranduten, adutha vaarathula irundhu placements aarambikudhu, modalla amazon, apram microsoft, apram ebay, etc etc
Dad : exam ku dhan padikala, idukachu padikalaam la
Me : adellam pathukalam pa
Dad : ennamo panni thola, unnayellam thiruthave mudiyadhu

<!—Back to Placements Day One –>
After clearing the cockroaches, mud and all from my old shoes and polishing it to some extent, I wore it and was about to start to college to attend my first ever test for placements. My mom came with me and on the way to the bus stand took me to the temple and I had 3-4 colours on my forehead.
Mom : A/C bus la venumna po da
Me : kasu?
Mom : indha vechiko

<!-- One Week Ago –>
Mom : enna idhu daily a/c bus la laam pora... inga enna kasu kottiya vechirukku?
Me : :S :S

<!—Back—>
Okay! dressed up like a professional(inda vaarthaya ketu sirikadheenga) I took the a/c bus as planned, but I din get a seat. I reached college on time and all my friends waiting in their ultra-formals with new full-hand shirts, proper pants, and neatly polished shoes, and also people from mit had turned up as the placements for ceg and mit happen together.

<!—My first written test—>
I was sitting in the hall, and looking at the question paper, hundreds of people around me, looking in to their faces, all of them excited, smiling, and there were numerous thoughts running in my mind(Yessss, I’m writing AMAZON interview questions, its gonna be one hell of a life @ amazon if at all we get placed. A good package, good company, and the most important it is in our own Singara Chennai). And suddenly I realized that half-an-hour of time getting wasted with these dreams-of-life, as I walked out of the hall after the test got over, I was damn damn sure that I wont get selected for the interviews, and I did’nt.

<!—Night @ home—>
Dad : amazon ennachu?
Me : nasama pochu olunga pannala
Dad : ennada ivlo easya solra, konjam kuda poruppe illa
Me : naane kavala padala unakennappa
Dad : ipdi oru nalla vaaippa thavara vittuttu adha jollya eduthukura
Me : aama pa, nalaiku eBay iruku, padikren(and then browsing thru all the windows in the desktop, after all, an act of studying)
Dad : ennamo panni thola, nalaikachu therudhanu pakalam

<!—eBay written over—>
The questions were a bit easy this time, and I had definite hope of atleast getting shortlisted for the next round. Eagerly waited for the list to be published and seriously was shocked to find my name missing in the list. And I went home with a sad face.

Called up dad to tell him what happened today.
<—phone rings-->
Dad : Hello!
Me : Hello
Dad : ennada ennachu eBay?
Me : adhuvum pochu, naan nalla dhan pa pannen aana.....
<—dad cuts the call—>
Mind voice : idukke tension aana eppadi... innum evalavo irukkey

<—phone rings – one hour later—>
Dad : ennapa thambi panitu iruke
Me : chumma dhan pa iruken
Dad : yen pa, poi edhana game velayadradhaaney!!
<—sema kalaai, i enjoyed it more than feeling guilty or something :P – >

<!—Cisco Interviews – two days later—>
I had got shortlisted for the cisco interview, two days after eBay, and I told my parents and they were really happy regarding that.
<--After some general inroductions and stuff—>
(Int)erviewer : Okay, you have taken unix internals as your elective, tell me about unix
Me : unix is open source, and its powerful..
Int : powerful? how do u say that?
Me : err!! hmm!! ?? :S thats how they thought me!! (first attack)
after a few rounds of questions were over
Int : why do you prefer a job over a masters?
Me : uhh!! thats because I tried to study for gre, but 4000 words, manushan padipaana??? so job only (second attack)
Int : Ok, Best of luck, your interview is over
And some of my friends who had already written gre got placed, but I did'nt. There were no negative reactions from home as I atleast went till the interview.

<!—Global Scholar – next day-->
Global Scholar was the toughest of all interviews I have attended till now, yet interesting. The interviewer even offered me some mixture to eat during the interview. But, finally idhuvum naasama dhan pochu...
Went home and reshared mama's dialog in google buzz marubadiyum mudalla irundha?
Dad : iduvum illaya, vera yaru placed
Me : Vijay pa
Dad : hmm... nethu venkat, iniku vijay, un friends a oruthoruthana place aaki vitutu vanditu iruka..

<!—Deloitte – 2 days later—>
About 700 people wrote the tests, and I were one of them. Around 100 got shortlisted for a group discussion kind-of next round
Naasama pochu, I was not even amongst that 100 out of 700..... Naan enna avlo mosamaava poiten…

<!—Chronus – a week later—>
Same old stories, as that of eBay, I found no wrong in the written test that I had taken, and I really dint know why I was not shortlisted, maybe I (was/am) destined for something else :P
Dad : ennada idhu, atleast interview attend panna kuda paravala, written eh clear panna matendra...
Me : vidu pa pathukalam..... :S :x X-( ….<--vendha punnula vela paichikitu-->

<!—Oru Maadhathirku Piragu(A month later)—>
College notice board reads Microsoft on Sep 20 and Google on Sep 22
Things running through my mind, will it be worth the wait? will i clear atleast one of them? and that too with a bunch of people already getting placed in the previous bunch of good companies, that has reduced the competition, I was hoping for something to happen that week.
We had a written test on Sep 19, that I did properly and the ppt was on Sep 20 as planned, I have been shortlisted for the interviews, and yeah started to put all the buttons of the shirt, including the wrist buttons, and waited outside the cuic where interviews happen. It happened from morning 10:00AM to night 8:00PM for me.
first round - was an easy question same for all folks
second round - went well and the interviewer seemed impressed
third round - they were logical questions, they asked me to test a Reynolds 045 India pen and it was good :P
fourth round - more of a stress kind-of round with Perry, and as the interviews got over, I asked him when will they publish the results, and his reply was “You dont even know to write code for linked lists. do you think we will hire you??”
Marubadiyum mudalla irundhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

<!—One day later—>
The people who came from the company had already left the campus, and when asked for results they had told they'll send a mail later. Sep 22 evening there was a new notice in the notice board, that was a print out of the mail, that Microsoft has sent to my college, regarding the list of people who got selected. After all those jumping, hugging, running and stuff for a few mins……

<—calling………dad’s phone rings—>
Dad : Hello!!
Me : ipo naan game velayadalaama pa? :P :P :P

One Last…. Vacation

Yep… My one last vacation ends today.

Not one of the most interesting vacations though. It started off well with a trip to trichy for a friend’s marriage, thereby meeting all college friends again, followed by a few back-to-back movies with different set of friends from college, school, calling the college for marksheets and losing patience and visiting the college to enquire the same, getting frustrated with the way they reply, managing to get the 7th semester marksheet somehow, tasting the canteen flavour for one last time, missing all friends, shopping for Hyderabad, a trip to Tirupathi, visiting a few relatives’ house, amidst all the packing, printing, taking photocopies, taking photos, searching sulekha.com for houses, contacting brokers, and in the urge of not missing out anything, I’m here typing a blog post. Leaving to Hyderabad tomorrow and joining the company on Monday. Goodbye Chennai!! Will visit you soon and frequently.

Solving the Rubik’s Cube

Once, during a visit to my friend’s room at hostel, I came across this Rubik’s Cube that attracted my attention and I borrowed it from him. As usual, it was irregular. On the way from the room to the hostel entrance, mama(Ravi Sankar) finished solving it in 5 minutes. When I asked him how he did, he told that there are a set of formulas. Ok, I kept going that I will learn them later.

 

I went home and dumped the Rubik’s Cube in the mess of my computer table under notebooks, headsets, cds, pendrives and left it.It was until a month when my six year old cousin entered my house and took this out all of a sudden and was playing with it. I had decided by then that I should learn solving it before the next day. So, I tried myself hard rotating it in each possible direction I could. Tried to solve one face alone but in vain. Finally googled it ‘How to solve a Rubik’s Cube?’ and found a few tutorials.

Step 1: Solving one face and thereby one layer

Ok, they were actually simple formulas that were there. First align the plus cross of one side, that is pretty easy and then bring the cube needed at each corner and apply the formula (Ri Bi R B). One layer is done.

Step 2:

Following the tutorial and using the formulas to solve the second layer (Ti Li T L T F Ti Fi)  for all colours.

Step 3:

Then using (F R T Ri Ti Fi)  to solve the top cross.

Step 4:

(R T Ri T R T T Ri T) to solve the top sides.

Step 5:

(T R Ti Li T Ri Ti L) once or twice to alogn the corners.

Step 6:

Finally a set of (Ri Bi R B) from all the corners.

Congrats!! The cube is solved.

The End

This was what I understood from the tutorial and I have written it in simple formulas.

I followed the above tutorial exactly and what i got was……

 

 

 

 

P.S: However, learned to solve it after a couple of tries :P

Trichy Trip – A start to my vacation

A Sunday morning, I had kept alarm at 6:00 AM snoozing it 5 times and then again resetting the alarm to 7:45 AM, I finally woke up at 8:00 AM. I was starting to my friend’s sister’s marriage at Tiruchi. This was my last chance to meet all my college friends together. We, 8 of us from Chennai had planned for a bus at 10:00 AM in the morning and I messaged all my friends and got ready in an hour and started to Koyambedu by 9:30 AM. Santhosh(mls) reached the bus stand before me and was roaming around there, and I could’nt find him for some ten minutes after I reached there even though we were talking on the phone exchanging landmarks. Then I found him finally and we walked inside towards the place where the Tiruchi buses would stand. Shahul, who reached after both of us was already inside near the Tiruchi bus and he called out our names. Then Vijayakumar K(murky) also joined with us in a few minutes. We enquired with the bus conductor the timings and tickets and booked 8 tickets with him, and told him that 3 of our friends will get in at Perungalathur and we will buy tickets for them now itself. Now, we had to wait for G Sriram, till he arrived in a share auto that left him outside the bus stand, that came very slow stopping at all places waiting for people to board, unlike the buses that drop you inside the CMBT bus stand. Then, the bus started by 10:40 AM finally and we alerted our friends Tamilmani, G Vinoth and Shyam Sundar who were about to board at Perungalathur. In another half an hour we reached Perungalathur and they found our bus correctly somehow and boarded.

Although we were in AC bus, we could’nt feel the coldness, it was a so hot summer afternoon that the sun pierced through the windows of the AC bus and it sweat at times during the journey. It was really fun travelling with friends. We were all chatting aloud with a few of the co-passengers giving a weird look (Manusana thoonga vidamataanga pola) but our mls does’nt matter, whatever happens he slept well, until a stop arrived after some 3 or 4 hours of continuous travel in the heat. We had a stop for lunch. After paying Rs.3 and using the “Ultimately Clean and Hygienic Urinals” we entered the hotel. It was not more than a small tea kada hotel that was unclean, but the menu was like Meals – 115 rupees. Oh god we came out to a shop and bought a few biscuit, chips packets and soft drinks at a rate atleast 10 rupees more than the MRP for each product we bought. I bought some snacks worth Rs.45 at 80 rupees and returned to the bus and started munching them for a few minutes until stomach was full. I had bought too much of them that I saved a packet of Little Hearts ;) for the future. At near five in the evening I came across the name boards of the shops in the road sides that read Tiruchi as the district and I was glad that we have arrived, but the bus travelled for 30 more minutes and got into Tiruchi city and we reached the bus stand by 5:30 PM.

I had got an sms from Yogi saying that he booked rooms for us in Saraswathi Cafe near Mayil mark mittai kadai. I dint know any of those landmarks, anyways we had Shahul with us who has been in Tiruchi until his twelfth standard and he showed the way for us. On the way we saw a bunch of good hotels along with Hotel Ajantha where the marriage was about to happen. We met Yogi on the way to our rooms, Yogi was decorated with chain, bracelet, etc. Sunil had already reached Tiruchi by afternoon and he was co-ordinating the room allotment duties, and as we reached the room he was seeing the IPL match, where I could see a new colour of light green (kili pacha) jersey worn by Chris Gayle and the Scoreboard read a whopping 60-0 of 3 overs. It was like a dream with unusual things happening, along with the kili pacha jersey I surely thought it was a dream, but gladly it was not. We waited in the rooms for our other more friends to come, then we went a small mall in the city near Hotel Femina that Shahul showed to us and bought a gift for the marriage couple after collecting money from all our friends. It was already 8’o clock doing these things but the marriage reception was from 6 to 7:30 PM nobody bothered to notice that. We went to the marriage hall so late that the couple stopped posing for pictures and were about to leave. With Yogi’s recommendation we took a photo with them and then sat in the last bandhi to eat at the night. After coming out of the dining hall, we had a chat with the mappillai interviewing him from all directions, he was so friendly and open-minded. Then we came soon back to the room because a few of our friends wanted to watch a Man U vs Chealsea match in which Man U won. Then we watched tv for some more time and slept off.

I woke up in the morning to find almost some ten people gathered around in the room and asking all of us to get ready for the marriage. We left to the marriage hall at 10:00 AM and atleast we reached before the marriage was over and as soon as the mapillai tied the thali, we all sprinted towards the dining hall but in vain, it was already full and they stopped us and closed the door :(. We waited for sometime to catch seats in the next bandhi and ate well. After eating we were sitting in a gang and planning what to do next but ultimately all the people split into gangues and started leaving to their homes. We had no other choice, we came back to the rooms and had some rest and started to catch the 1’o clock bus to Chennai. This time it was only the 4 of us. The rest had some work at some other place. Again we got an AC bus and slept as soon as we boarded it. The previous AC bus was better. It was sweating almost throughout in this bus. Again, in the middle stop we had for eating we got some snacks and I also had the Little Hearts that I had saved earlier. Almost at 6 we reached Vandalore and it took half an hour to reach the next half a kilometre to Perungalathur after which there was a highway and we reached Koyambedu around 7:30 PM. Not much adventures in this travel, as it was sleepy throughout. And again traffic struck on de way home from Koyambedu it took almost an hour for me to reach my less than 5 kilometre from Koyambedu home. Then after that night’s sleep it has been an as usual overall vetty sitting at home eating, sleeping, watching tv, playing games an typing some useless blog posts like these killing time.

Last two Days of College

May 3rd 2011, It was the official last day of college, atleast for me along with a bunch of us, the day my final project review was over, although we got ultimately screwed by the external examiner, our sir told us we did a good job(he din sound sarcastic). The review was supposed to start at 9:00 AM, but the external arrived at 10:00 AM and we were the second team in the queue, on the first day of the review. Our review took nearly half an hour, and we were outside the room, never mind what happened inside. We have successfully completed our most feared Final Year Project without even doing half the work our fellow-teams did. It was then we had lunch and then I waited for my friends to finish their review and come outside. Then we had these No due formalities of getting signatures from almost 20 of our college buildings with a “No Dues” seal. This took almost three days to finish all the places. The evening I went to hostel and played a few matches of FIFA with my friends. It was that evening that we decided to goto Thor 3D(Now I know it was a wrong decision) night show at 9:30 PM. We reached Murugan Idli Shop in Tnagar, went to the buffet hall. The buffet cost was Rs.125 (Sriraam’s treat), it was a decent one, we had unlimited dosas, unlimited idlis, vadas, unlimited pongal, sakkara pongal in that buffet, and a final touch of either one jiguruthanda, coffee or milk. Try this place once. We had already booked tickets online at the pvr cinemas and we reached there half an hour before the show. I called up ma mom and said that I’m here for a film, she did’nt react much. After a few minutes I got a call from my dad with a little bit of scolding for going for a night show, that too without informing earlier. Thank god I left my laptop at the hostel, else ma dad would’ve asked me to come home without going to the film :p. The film was not much of interest and I slept at some points of the film. It got over at almost 11:50 PM. Then we went on into some caves searching for the parked car and found it ultimately, then Sunil drove it down seven floors into the dark caves. After a few miles, towards our college, it was my turn that time, I started driving and deliberately taking sharp turns, scaring the people sitting behind, we reached the college in some 20 minutes. After a 5 minute chat with the watchman he finally let us in and we parked the car in the main parking and walked to the hostel and on the way we tried to enter the ATM to get some fresh AC. We were not even able to open the door because already some eleven of our college students were lying down inside for AC :P. Then we reached the hostel and it was time for some sleep atlast. The next day I woke up at 1030 AM and finished a few more of the No due formalities and applied for a course completion certificate in the department and left for a group photo session to the gallery. Probably this was the last time I can see all my classmates and other batchmates for the last time together.

It felt really good seeing them all together, once for the last time. We were already exhausted of not having breakfast and also walking throughout the college for the no due formalities, now it was the time to walk into the canteen to have lunch. We had lunch and then went to the department to get the Course completion  certificate by 3 PM and my friends got it but somehow they missed writing my name in the certificates. So I had to wait till 430 PM to get my certificate as the HOD was missing till that time. We had already returned the smart card(My college ID :( ) and then got the Alumni application forms and also written account numbers for caution deposit refunds. Then in the last minute when the office was to be closed we finished all the forms and one of the staff working there helped us with taking the xerox copies of our certificates as the xerox in our campus was closed. Then I returned home, starting from college at 6 PM. Maybe that was the last time I’m returning home from college in the evening. Friends!! Hoping to see you all soon. Missing college plus friends a lot.  :( :( :(

Koing out with friends

It was long since I went for a movie. Maybe I think one or two months. The exams were also over and we decided to go for the much awaited Ko, that had one of our own Assistant Professors from our college writing two songs for the movie. The initial plan was for Thursday but due to some technical difficulties the plan was shifted to Friday. I had asked a few of my friends, Sudarsanan, AV, and Raj, and booked the tickets the previous night. When i opened Satyam’s official website for booking, it had three options like Elite, Premium and Economy. It was sad that I had only economy class was left. How ever it was not one the “economical” classes literally. The prices were Elite-120, Premium-115 and Economy-110 and booking charge Rs.10. So we had booked the 5th or 6th row from the screen, but at the rate of the last seat in a balcony. And i was thinking what could I do with that economically saved 10 rupees of the four of us, and found that the smallest popcorn pack cost Rs.50. These are already-known facts, nothing much to stress on it. Coming to the film, Ko was not one of those normal tamil films, it had everything from comedy to political issues to social messages to some good photography, but for the fact that it had a few unnecessary songs. Many, not all tamil films would be so good without a few songs. The show started at 3:00 PM and ended at 6:10 PM.

This was the time the adventure began, my friend AV had already booked tickets for “Limitless”, an English film at the PVR cinemas. Since he did not know the exact route, I had to take him there before the movie’s time 7:30 PM. We started running out of the theatre as soon as the film got over. As usual Sudarsanan and so raj were walking slowly behind. Saying a bye to them, we started moving faster outside the theatre, AV was asking me directions and I was just pointing to a side and he ran there within a few seconds and I had a hard time following him until we reached the thousand lights bus stand in almost less than 3 minutes, alongside the tempting Hotel Saravana Bhavan. We had two choices of buses, on bus stand was at where we were standing and the other was some 100 metres away after walking some distance straight, and then taking a left and walking more 50 metres. There was a bus heading towards us. Expecting it to stop, me and Av were eagerly waiting for it, until the bus cheated us and kept on moving forward, Oh! Darn, the next stop after a hundred metres was its actual bus stop. As I was before Av I started running towards the bus thinking that he was following me, but I was wrong, he had already overtook me when I was thinking this. I tried very hard to catch up with him I could not. The I started jogging, waving hands to my friend saying Bye man you leave,  but it was my luck that the bus was standing and people still boarding until I jogged till the bus, and finally got some space to stand in the footboard and for some fresh air atleast. Then we took tickets to Valluvar Kottam, but the bus did not have a stop there. So, we were waiting in the footboard and thank god the bus stopped in the signal at Valluvar Kottam. Getting down in the signal and running across the roads when there was just 7 seconds left for the green signal, and finally we reached the bus stand, where we got a sight of few share autos that reach my home via Skywalk, so that it would benefit both of us. We got into the share auto completely sweating,exhausted,wanting for some liquids, and in not more than half an hour we reached Ampa Skywalk. Me too decided to get in as there was almost 40 minutes for his show to start. Then we went to McDonalds and had some coke to compensate the running race we had in Mount road. But AV’s run was awesome covering almost some 50 metres in 2-3 seconds and the whole road watching him. Then, we had dinner, and I left home and AV went to the movie with Sriraam and Sunil.

Advice to AV’s friends: Next time when you go out with him and when you’re late for a movie, you might need a bike to cope up with him.

Last Exams of College Life

It was the day before the first exam of the last semester of my college life at the College of Engineering, Guindy, Anna University. A widely popular subject in the recent times it was, most of my friends who were pursuing to do Masters had this as their area of interest ticked in their Masters applications, none other than the Artificial Intelligence, popularly known as AI among us. Whatever be the case, for a semester examination I used to start studying, at least one day before the examination. But what am I doing now. These were the thoughts running in my mind when I was just sitting with the AI half-taken notes in hand that hardly went more than fifteen pages, on the evening of 14th April 2011, watching Aayirathil Oruvan through the half-open door of my bedroom. I had the notes of Vijay R Kumar, popularly known as the ‘notes-taker’ of our renowned CSE H Batch, but only for the first unit. However I successfully managed to complete it in atmost an hour. How did I forget or rather Where was I when my friends were taking photocopies of his notes of the remaining lessons. It was a sin, not taking the copies and I had to suffer the consequences. As I opened the text book to go through the second unit, it was just I realised, the first 80 pages of the chapter containing the contents of the second unit in syllabus were misplaced by some other junk pages. It was a hell-of-a-day as I went online I found a few powerpoint presentations of various chapters covered under this book in my mailbox sent by Sriraam A S, but in vain. There were missing ppts for a few chapters, one of them exactly being the missing pages in my textbook. All were going against me as I decided to call Someshwaran E(Enga College Guru). He told he was almost finished with the syllabus and I asked him to come to college as early as possible the next day. Sudarsanan K and me reached the college at 8:30 AM for the 2:00 PM examination and we were eagerly waiting for Somesh to come and save our ass. Looking into the roads finally we found a very lean and quite tall figure walking towards us, cheeeze it Somesh. He was well prepared with all the units and summarized each and every part of every unit at a pace that we were comfortable in learning with and we almost finished the entire AI by 1:00 PM. From then, we had already decided that for all exams, Somesh is the key. From then we had principles of programming languages and User Interface Design, both taught to us by Somesh. The only sad part was Some was not in our elective called Soft Computing and there was noone to teach the full thing although it was very small. However we managed to complete that exam too. Starting from 6th semester I guess, from the assessments to semesters, almost 50 percent of what I learn is from Somesh, and this time it was almost like he taught the full things. He was also the one used to submit assignment/projects first before anyone and was being used like a test set in those case. (For instance, submitting your thesis even before anyone finished it fully and getting mokka that the color of the cover should not be white and it must be pink, rebinding and resubmitting it thereby making it easier for others). And also not to forget Vijay R Kumar for his notes. The first time was in the 3rd semester algorithms when I failed badly in the first internals did I start taking copies of his notes and from then found no other text book as simple as that and continued to use it for all subjects and managing to get good grades. A part of my B.E. degree belongs to you guys Somesh and Vijay R. No, not only me, but almost half of our class depended on you for their exams. Good luck guys for your forthcoming days. (PS: And Somesh try being lesser pandu in office atleast)

Banking State – How to create an account at the State Bank of India

I had got this news that we needed an sbi account for the refund of the caution deposit in our college. I have been trying to create one for almost the past two months finding no time in college. And, finally decided to visit a branch near my home, as it would be easy even after the college gets over.

State Bank of India (Mogappair Branch) – Day 1

I had got this “Account Opening Form” already from an sbi in my college and filled it up, also having the so-called proof documents for opening an account, I entered inside the bank. People people everywhere. Even in the temples where we get sakkara pongal for free, we can find lesser people. I went in and asked a guy Where should I submit the documents for creating a new account? He pointed to a small cabin where I could see a 40-50 year old nerdy guy. That guy sent me back home saying, the timings are over. I went in by 12 o clock, and I was like What the f**k? What are the timings? He told the timings for opening an account is separate and is from 9 to 11 only(Damn sure, its only for this branch). Ok, it was not my day. I came back home and carried on with my routine work.

State Bank of India (Mogappair Branch) – Day 2

I made up my mind, Whatever happens I’m opening my account today. I reached the bank after  a five minute walk and entered the cabin of the nerdy guy(it was 10’o clock by then). He was like, Why are you so late? I told you the timings are 9 to 11. I told Yeah, thats what I’ve come at 10. He argued more like it was the sin of my lifetime to have come at 10’o clock and he stressed that I could’ve come at 9’o clock. I was standing like a criminal accused of doing some illegal act for the next five minutes beside him. And after working on the request of the other customers, he finally took the form from my hand and started checking the proofs. After checking the proof acting highly indifferent, he gave it back with a verified signature and forwarded me to a peon for punching a seal. The peon was like Naanga illana indha bank ellam iyanguma. He made me wait for some 10 to 15 mins, digging into all of his pockets getting some 20 bucks, asking his ’assistant’ to get tea or coffee for him, and when I interfered he told Enna avasaram konjam porumaya irunga, then his so-called assistant came back empty handed and he got back the twenty and kept it in his secret pocket in his pant digging it even more deeper, and then came into the mood of taking the seal and punching it on my  account opening form. Now I had to get all the particulars verified by another lady, which took some 10 more minutes. The one thing she did was like she wrote 1000 rupees in a column where the amount i was to pay initially must be filled, without even asking me. I had only 500 :( And before visiting the next person for the formalities I had to go outside and take another 500 from my Canara Bank account using the sbi atm :P , Finally I had to goto a single window operator counter who entered all my details into her computer peeking into the monitor. Then she sent me to the first nerdy guy telling me to show the form to him. He saw my form looked into his computer, clicked some random buttons and copied some random numbers into my form. It was when I thought that was my account number, but I was wrong. He sent me back the counter and then she clicked some random buttons and used that big random number and now again sent me back to the same nerdy guy. I was like Ennaya enna pandhu maari thooki potu velayadureenga. But, thank god that was the last throw in the registration phase, the guy clicked some buttons to get a number and he told me this was my account number and wrote it on the form and sent back the counter, where she got back the form and told me to put money in the account. Oh man! I had one more form to fill. Then finally after depositing money in the account, she took a new passbook, printed the details, printed the first transaction, gave me a register to sign, then asked me to stick a photo at the last page of the passbook (It was in the first page in most of the banks) and get it attested by another lady who I had to visit now. She was busy putting seals and attestations over a few cheques and I had to wait for sometime before getting attested. And after that finally , I have created my sbi account. I had come in at 10’o clock and it was more than 12 when i stepped out of the office. Never thought this would consume so much time, unlike the Canara bank account that i created during the joining of college in less than 10 mins. Whateva!! I decided from now on, I’m never gonna close any of these bank accounts hereafter, may anything happen…..

My first Kavidhai

அதிகாலையில் எழுந்து அலுவலகம் சென்று
மாலை வரை மாடுபோல் உழைத்து
மாதா மாதம் ஊதியம் பெற்றாலும்
சாலையில் கிடக்கும் ரூபாய் நோட்டு
சிரித்து கொண்டே வா வா என்கிறது!!!!

Into Blogging

The first post in my personal blog, this is not my first blog though. Initially I thought having a personal blog for myself, posting episodes from my life was a useless thing expecting no one would read it, but after seeing many of my friends maintaining their own blogs, it felt really good to read all their posts from the first. I thought this was my personal wall where I only can scribble something. Let the scribbling begin!!!