The even sem honeymoon

Consider the scenario .. You have just spent the last one month lying around doing nothing . You had a timetable which went something like this :  Sleep , Eat , Sleep , Eat , Sleep ...  and if ever you get time in between that , well there are always enough Movies and TV shows to fill in the gap ;) . And now after one whole month of lazying around you are back in college . Talk of a holiday .. but wait was this enough .. Obviously Not !!

  Come January , you see the college life in full blossom . After all , why not ? You just had a whole month of the best holiday possible and there is no work at hand right now. In addition , there are a hell lot of things that you would look forward to in January :

1. Australian Open takes up half of January . It's a necessity to watch all these matches, after all you have to win the next argument in the wing on Tennis . And all those arguments on who is the best player of today as if it wasn't any more obvious ( FEDERER it is !! ) ;).
2. Alongside comes the Indian tour of Australia . Well, every year they do tend to produce some quality cricket at this point of time and there is no way in hell that you can miss that . Luckily this year , the team has made adequate arrangements to make sure we have enough of that time for ourselves ;).
3. The EPL and the La-Liga have just restarted . We need to make sure that our favourite teams have to stay on top of the league . If not , that would mean losing face :( . Not possible . 
4. Closer home , SAARANG . Yes , I know we dont do much in the cultural festival of IIT MADRAS ( publicity anyone ? ) , but then we still cant really study during that time , can we ?
5. In addition , all the TV serials that have now become backlogs for the one month that we did not watch them !! It is very important to stay abreast with what's happening in the world , isint it ?
6. Not to mention all the activities in the wing and all the sports that we would also play during the free time !!

Well , so you see . This is the best time of your college life . And just when you thought , life could not get any better , you have a small burden on your heads . Wait , is it a  small burden . No , the Quizzes are on the head and then you start cursing . What did I do for 1 whole month !! Why could I not have studied something in that time . Nothing can be done now . All you can do is throw up your hands and go watch Djokovic play Murray in the second quaterfinal ;) .

Cheers

PS : Do add stuff that you do in the even semester , in the comments .

Technological Advancements in the Technological Institues

  We are currently in that phase of civilization where anything seems to be possible . The ideas are flowing free and fast . Everyone around seems to have a new idea to make our life easier . What else would explain things like USB Fridge and Smart Windows ... some amazing ideas !! Who would have thought 10 years ago , that we would have the world in our hands using the smart phones . But wait , just when you start thinking that maybe you are in a world that is now being revolutionized by technology , the most technological institutes seem to remind you of the truth.

It's been 3 years since I have been at this place , and still I am amazed with the technological advancements of the institute . We have a net on campus , which at best , works at a speed of 4Kbps . Sure that might be our fault , but then the DNS servers crashing every weekend is certainly nothing to brag about . OK , maybe this was not so much in the hands of the Administration . So what do they do , come up with better ways to show us that they do not believe in technology .

Some examples:

1. When all the students were registered , we were supposed to give 2 or more photographs during the registration . Acceptable since they would need them for identification . Now 3 years later , when the mess cards are made , we are asked again for our photographs . I mean , are you joking . Cant you just scan out the pictures and use them instead of asking us to get pictures again and again. But who's complaining.
2. The institute Gymkhana office is the "adda" as you would call it of the biggest problem in the institute . Every semester , people from all walks of life leave their differences aside to fight the person issuing the cards to make sure that they get some sort of permission to play . And the process to get a card is not very simple . You need to have a Master's degree to understand which of the queues to stand in to get a form , then come to realise you need a photo copy of the ID card that the institute has a record of , a queue to pay the bill and finally another queue to get the card attested . Phew , atleast I am bored of the word queue already !! And this in an institute which holds a position as one of the premier institutes of the country . But who's complaining.
3. Add / Drop Courses : This time , there was suddenly a change of heart from the Acadamics department . I really do not know whether it was a devish plan to make the whole process more complicated or to just make sure that the students were made to run around . Well apparently they decided that Add / Drop Courses would be done online only this time . But the point they forgot to consider was " The Net does not seem to work " . People working on GPRS , screw you . Not everyone has a GPRS and it resulted in a lot of confusion . There is still a lot of confusion and no one is really sure of what is going on . Maybe some day we would have a system in place which makes the transition much more easier. But till that day comes , who's complaining

Well , if I continue complaining then I dont think that this blog would be sufficient . So lets get to the point . Why does this seem to happen . Not because we do not have the aptitude to maintain the appropriate technology , but because the people involved presently according to me are not so much interested in using technology to get the job done . They believe in the age old method of doing things manually and this is resulting in upteem problems for everyone . The scenario seems to be changing slowly but then it still might take a while to change the picture . Meanwhile , we can just hope that things like these get resolved at the earliest and we use technology in an appropriate way to make life in insti more comfortable .

PS : For people inside the institute , you would be suprised to know that there is a way to access the pictures that you submitted at the time of registration in the institute . For some reason , everyone can view the pictures . If you want to view the pictures , click on this . Another example of admin not knowing much about the website that has been created !!.