Aadab Uncle Sam..Goodbye Mother India

The D day had arrived. 23rd of July,2009 Bangalore International Airport. I was all set to begin what was supposed to be a new chapter in my life. I was there with my family : my mom, my dad, my sis, bhaiya, bhabhi and of course my cute little niece, Poorvi. Those that mattered the most to me where there to bid adieu to me. And for some reason they were more excited for me. And me? I was not really sure what was going on in my head. I was anything but excited. I was just looking back. The journey that had started about an year back with that ridiculous test that goes by the name GRE (and I am not saying this because I am arrogant or something. I actually believe this.) , that then continued with searching and skimming through university web pages during office hours, that resulted in an exchange of a huge number of emails to seniors/profs/lecs/friends/family, that branched out towards that unnecessarily hyped up event called the  US visa interview had finally come to this.

I walked in towards the Air India counter a little while after it opened. As expected there was some confusion regarding the extra check-in baggage.

Guy at the counter: Sir, your total check-in baggage weight comes up to 64 kg and only 46 kg is allowed. You will have to pay blah blah blah.

I did not even bother listening. I reached out for the excess baggage ticket and showed it to him like some param-vira chakra that I had earned. Guy at the counter starts making calls and talking to other AI staff. Clearly he had no clue what to do. I was all cool and gave the person enough time to sort his confusion. I was in no mood to yell at him. I guess I felt sorry for these people given what has happened with Air India in the last few months. Unforturnately some other passenger did not share the same view point. He started losing his cool and yelling at the top of his voice, blaming the staff and calling them incompetent.

The confusion was finally resolved and we did not have to pay a single buck. I was all set to go to the next counter. But before that I decided to go and wave goodbye to my family who were standing on the other side of the glass door. I looked into my niece’s eyes. She also smiled back and said ‘ta ta’. I was not even sure when was the next time that I would get to see her. She would probably not even recognize me. I was touched and with a heavy heart I waved one final goodbye and started towards the next counter.

I dont even remember when was the last time I traveled using Air India. It must have been when I was six I guess. I was not really expecting many things to change. They had those entertainment units on the back of each seat this time around. But apart from that, everything else was just the same. Aunty Air Hostesses who had clearly forgotten to see a mirror when they dumped their make-up on their face. Cabins that were not properly pressurized etc etc.

I was too bored to be bothered. I switched through all the channels on the entertainment unit and there was nothing interesting. I then decided to watch that cricket movie starring that young actor called Harman Baweja (I think). The guy who tries to copy Hrithik Roshan in every sense (Can’t blame him of course, he is an actor. He should try and be someone that he is not). Dont ask me why I was watching this. I guess I wanted to have some fun by watching this bogus movie.

Anyway we reached Delhi within no time. Took a bus. Reached IGI. and within no time we were on our next flight heading out towards Chicago via Frankfurt. As it turned out, the Indian hockey team were also on board. Atleast that is what their jerseys said. I dont follow hockey and I did not really know anyone from the team.

I did not bother playing with the entertainment unit this time around. I figured it was a long flight and I better get some sleep.

I woke up to watch the beautiful mix of colours in the sky caused because of the sunrise. We were close to Frankfurt. We finally arrived at the airport and were asked to wait at a airport before we could catch the next flight to Chicago. Judging by all the !ncredible !ndia posters hanging on the walls of the gate that we were waiting at, I guessed that this must be a common waiting terminal for all flights that come from India. The highlight of the terminal was a german shopkeeper who had managed to chalk out a nice message and the menu for his place, all in shudh Hindi.

Two hours later we were on the flight again. Next stop Chicago. This time a plump looking German teenage girl was sitting next to me. This time I decided to play around with the entertainement unit. The German sitting next to me tried to do the same and by mistake pressed Hindi as her desired language. He he he!!! It was hilarious to actually see her trying to figure out what was being written on the unit. I finally had enough and helped her set the language back to English. She decided to watch some sad German movie. I decided to watch some of the sitcoms that were being offered.

The food in the journey so far had been lousy to say the least. Looking at the German girl trying to eat the rice with some typical Indian curry was real fun though. After playing around enough with the entertainment unit, I decided to turn towards my pod and watch some movies that I had copied onto it at Bangalore.

We were nearing Chicago. I could see the Sears Towers from a distance. We were just about to land when all of a sudden the pilot decided to take the plane to the skies again and give us all another tour of the Chicago city and Sears Towers (Actually he later announced that he could not see the runway clearly and wanted to try landing again, but I think he was lying and wanted to have another look at the Sears Towers.)

As expected at the Chicago airport, the American Airline official asked me to pay 100 dollars for the extra baggage. I had to flip out the param veera chakra out again (the excess baggage ticket that is) and mentally said ‘Up yours!’. All settled. The wait at the Chicago airport was agonisingly long. I had started my journey with a slight cold from Bangalore. And unfortunately that had intensified at Chicago. Swine flu?! I decided to spend my first buck in US of A. I ordered a cup of hot coffee. That helped me get through the agonising wait of almost 8 hours for the next flight.

I was way too tired by the time I boarded my last flight to Tucson, Arizona. I did not even realise that I was sitting next to a very pretty American girl. I was too tired. I slept throughout the journey, even through the landing and take off which had been very very routine events by now.

And there I was. Tucson, Arizona. Got out of the airport to be greeted by the hot breeze reminding us of the blazing hot sunny days that were waiting for us.

Routine stuff buddy. Seen enough of it in Sharjah and Dubai. Bring ‘em on!

More later….

Application Status check routine….

Source :  Edulix

• Saving all the status links as bookmarks (listed according to the order of their result date/month)
• Remembering by heart the login ID’s, passwords,the server name and even the welcome messages of all the websites.
• With butterflies in your stomach, you check your Inbox . Pray the first thing in the morning and the last thing before zonking off to sleep at night.
• Each day after dissecting your inbox thoroughly, with great patience you proceed towards the brave feat of opening your spam folder and even foolishly open a mail sayin ‘Surprise!! you are selected’.. only to discover that its the international lottery spam mail..
• You then check your other email account, even though you havent sent them this id, wondering whether they had secretly investigated it & wanted to surprise you just for fun…
• Every time you get a new mail from the university, you take 5 minutes to click it open… and 2 seconds later you feel stupid after reading their Extra Form Requests/New year Greetings/Scholarship deadlines reminder(though the probability of getting this is equal to the probability of Laloo becoming the US president) ..
• Each day after 8 p.m. you start checking the inbox every 30 minutes… And continue opening the status links of all websites….you always check USC last..
• You format & send carefully reviewed detailed mails to each university inquiring about your application completion status
• You keep checking the Results Forum on Edulix to check which colleges have recently started giving out results..(unsurprisingly, a large bulk of the Edulix population is found to be present here , doing the same )
• You get tired of seeing the words ‘Under Review’, ‘Pending’, ‘Out to Department’ and you feel like replying there instead ‘Does Your Royal Highness by any chance require My Humble Assistance to make your decision?? ‘
• And one day.., just like any other normal beautiful day, with the birds chirping in the sky, the trees swaying with the wind, and a world awoken to sunshine…You open your Inbox the first thing in the morning… as usual you get their ‘application completed and submitted’ mail, only to discover.. that it is a reject letter in disguise..
• You check whether you are still wearing your glasses, then make a mental note to get an eye check up in the evening and read the mail all over again.. and again… till it sinks in….you cancel your eye check up..
• After reading their crappy explanation that ‘they had to reject many talented students due to limited intake.. blah blah.. and wish you luck (really?)..blah blah.. and you can apply again for another program before the deadline in the same university(what??) or the same program in the next semester(Are you out of your mind? )’.. you wonder whether something’s wrong with you or in fact with them..
• After the invaluable honor of receiving a reject, you develop an incurable phobia towards your inbox, curse the university,the entire internet, your internet service provider for surprisingly providing you with a net connection that day, the logitech mouse lying innocently on the mousepad which helped you click the link, the entire admissions office department and their lazy staff who didn’t even bother to read your SOP before making a decision….
• After a while you start wondering as to what went wrong–, Think the GRE?? or the aggregate??.. no, of course nothing went wrong with the recommendation letters as well as the SOP..then what??..what??  Mad u start cursing them all over again..
• Within a couple of days you get over this and start visiting the results forum again… you start posting the words ‘tough luck, cheer up’(with a feeling of experienced empathy) and ‘congratulations, gr8 admit’(being happy that at least someone on the same planet has got an admit and hoping that you would soon be posting a similar thread)
• You throw your phobia in the bin and open your inbox again… (still nothing new..)..
• From now on, you open the USC status link first followed by the rest..
• Within days, you receive an unexpected admit (which was posted 10 days ago) stating ” congratulations for your acceptance.. blah blah..” (still no RA/TA).. You feel,..’big deal, it was a safe bet anyway!’ Mad …Then you notice in the result’s forum that an unlucky few have got rejects from the same univ .. You realize you could have got a reject too, though it was safe, and realize the value of that admit and thank god that you had made it …you come back to ground zero mode again…
• Next morning you start with the inbox checking routine like before….. d’oh! (still nothing new..)..
• You hate the fact that feb and march are unwanted ‘kabaab mein haddi’s’ between jan and april
• You are frustrated that it’s the weekend again and the offices are closed…forgetting the fact that once upon a time you used to crave for the weekends ..how times do change
• You realize that waiting impatiently for the bus in the morning to go to coll., standing in long queues at the stations,..waitin for the semester results.. was in fact nothing at all…

Life and Updates….

It has been a while since I last decided to test my typing skills out here. Surprisingly, I have managed to keep myself busy and occupied with lots of stuff…

• I had a nice trip to various places in south India with my family. It was brilliant and a well-deserved break from all the boredom of work-life. Will write about this in some other post.
• Got an admit a few days ago and got a reject just an hour back…. a little bit of    and a little bit of 
• I have been doing a lot of reading up on photography. And I must admit, I am enjoying every bit of it. Trying out new stuff, doing some crazy experiments with my PowerShot G7 camera (atleast to the extent that I can).
• Still reading Shantaram and a couple of other technical books.
• Work with the Krex is finally drawing to a close. Thanks to all those who helped me out. Special thanks to my prof from college Mr. Shivshankar and also my guidelight for this project, Partha. All the slog in the last year has been totally worth it. Finally, this baby is ready to rock !! (Sorry if I am being a bit cryptic here, but I promised to myself that I will keep this under the wraps until the right time comes).

I finally got the Tata WiMax broadband connection at home. It was a tough choice but it was also my only option since both the Airtel and the Hathway broadband cables were not available at this place. So far I have no major complaints with the WiMax connection.The connection is actually based on the Telsima WiMax solution. Enjoying excellent speeds mainly because the Thippasandra base station is at exact LOS from my house. Couldn’t have asked for a perfect place for this connection. The antenna is a flat variant with good directionality. Not sure how it compares to the traditional Yagi-Uda antenna though. This one has four different sectors and each time it contacts the base station to fetch a IP  for that particular sector. If that fails for some reason, the antenna switches over to the next sector and tries to acquire the IP again. Interesting stuff ! Something about which I need to read up more. A simple diagram explaining how WiMax works for those of you who are interested.

I have also been reading up about the Android SDK. Managed to get the Hello World App up and running. For those of you who are interested, this is a very nice walk through to help you build your Hello World App. Download the SDK and the other required packages and try it out today!

Also planning to go down to the Aero India show on Saturday. Got a free entry for the air show but did not manage to get passes for the exhibition. What the hey…I can see the air show for free at least!

More later.

Current Music : Socha Hai from Rock On!!

Current Mood : Sleepy!

In case you’re wondering…

…I am still alive and well.  Just been so busy with work and applicating that I’ve hardly found time to write something out here. Few updates….

[rant]

I am being downright honest when I am saying this, the process of writing your tests ( GRE and TOEFL) and then creating a list of universities you would like to apply to and then eventually applying to them is one pain in the arse job. Why so? Well firstly, you spend an unbelievable amount of moolah.  You probably will not realize the amount you have spent until you see your credit card bill statement soon after.

Then there is the pain of actually writing two extremely stupid tests, GRE and TOEFL. This from a guy who has already given CAT once, the mother of all stupid tests, and screwed it up royally.

But the real ‘fun’ is when you are applying to universities. Going through each university’s web page, mailing some arbit lecturers, begging profs from your college and maybe even your manager at work for a recommendation and then the actual process of sending the application packets and sending queries to the university as to whether your application is complete only to find out that the person answering your queries is a dodo.

[/rant]

The ‘applicating’ part seems to be drawing to a close ( relief ! ). And I just hope that I get ONE admit somehow!

Meanwhile, I was following Sachin’s century on cricinfo on the final day of the recently concluded Chennai test between India and England. What a wonderful knock ! And I felt happy for Sachin because it was on the same ground that he was criticized for not guiding India to victory against Pakistan. Fools still hold that against him without even considering the fact that not one in the Indian batting line up stood up to the likes of Akram, Waqar and Saqlain Mushtaq except Sachin on that day. Also read this gem of an article by Peter Roebuck. Brillaintly worded and emphasizing the importance of sport in a way that I have never known it before.

Work is boring and very uneventful. Nothing much to write there. Just a big yaaaaaawwwn!

I finished reading this book  called ‘Business Stripped Bare‘ by Richard Branson.  Im sure people who know me well will know for a fact that I am not someone who shows keen interest in books on business strategies or the likes. I am not sure why I picked up this book on a dull Sunday afternoon at a Crosswords store. But I couldnt let go off it once I started reading and managed to finish it in one go.  Branson’s approach to explaining things is simple and easy to follow. But his ideas are very unique and interesting.  It is amazing how he is able to draw the same picture that you would probably see at your work place day-in and day-out, problems with the picture, and the solutions that he has learned through his experiences.  Worth a read!

I am currently reading ‘Shantaram‘. I have heard a lot about this book from my brother and some friends.

Ok thats about it for now.  Planning to go home and spending new years with folks! Wishing my readers a merry Christmas and a happy new year in advance!

More later…

TOEFL iBT tips

Got my TOEFL scores a few days back. Managed a 111. Now quite a lot of people have asked me about the material I used for my preparation for TOEFL and the minimum time required for preparation.So I thought why not write a post here so that it would help others with similar queries.

For those you have no idea what TOEFL is all about, you can start here.

Well, I used the Barron’s TOEFL iBT CD for my TOEFL preparation. Thats it! I must say that giving GRE before TOEFL made things a little simpler for two sections in particular : Reading and Writing. But even otherwise, the reading and listening sections should be a cakewalk for anyone with decent english. The writing section is not that hard. But it might require a little practice for those of you who aren’t used to writing a lot. The speaking section, in my opinion, is relatively more harder than the rest of the sections. Unfortunately, the Barron’s CD does not provide you with a utility through which they can judge your speaking ability. Therefore, judging your speaking ability can be a little difficult as you have no idea as to what is classified as a poor/decent/excellent response. In such a scenario, it is better to use the sample responses that are available on the ETS – TOEFL site and use that as a benchmark to rate your responses. This will also give you a fair idea as to what the evaluators are looking for while they hear your response.

Now with regard to the minimum time required for preparation, I gave myself one week ( I used to work during the day and prepare for about three hours in the evening). It might sound a little less for some of you. But it depends. I took my GRE before my TOEFL and I thought that because the reading and the writing sections on the GRE are relatively harder, I could spend more time preparing for the speaking and listening sections. The choice is yours!

Well thats about it! All the best to all TOEFL takers! Ping me if you have any queries.

Tips for GRE takers

Ever since I have finsihed giving my GRE, a lot of queries have come my way regarding the exam. Hence this post. Use this post like a FAQ document. Hope it helps!

How much time do I need to prepare for GRE?

I think this is one of the most common questions. It really depends. I think the first question you need to ask yourself is: what kind of source are you looking for?  This inturn depends on the universities you would want to apply to eventually for the course that you are looking at. Given a choice, everybody would want a 1600! But is that really required ? Is the time and effort that you put into this really worth it? These are questions that you need answer to. Quite a few of us have other responsibilities too while we are preparing for the test. Some of us work. Some of us are still doing our graduation. So its important to see how one can effeciently dedicate time for this purpose.

I got a 1330. According to me, it is not a great score. But it is good enough to work with. I gave myself just a month’s time to prepare for the exam. This while I was also battling some deadlines at work.

Wordlists are a pain! Is it really worth dedicating so much time to them?

This is a key question because this is where most people get it wrong. I am not really sure if covering all the wordlists at you disposal is really going to help you maximise your score in the antonyms & analogies sections of the GRE. The most common approach that most people take is to start with the Barron’s word list. I really dont think it is worth all the effort. Instead, I think it is important to develop the habit of making ‘educated guesses’ as to what the word might mean in the context it is being used and then answering the questions that follow. Negative/Positive connotations , Elimination, Is the word a noun/verb/adjective ? , building strong bridges in analogies etc. These are more important than mugging up day in and day out. I found Kaplan’s workbook excellent in developing these habits. I am sure there are other equally good alternatives. Another useful resource are the set of audio files for Barron’s word list which I used to listen to while at work. You can find them here.

RCs, Quant…

I think these are the two important sections in the GRE. The quant section is easy. I have also heard that the sums have become a little calculation intensive. But honestly, it still seems pretty easy to score. If you are looking at doing your masters in engineering, you MUST get a 750 even if it is a horrible day for you at the test. I would say this is the par score.

The reason why RCs (reading comprehension) requires some practice is because for some, it may not be an easy task to read off the computer screen. Especially long passages. Sometimes your eyes start hurting and you are not able to concentrate. Sometimes, it hard to maintain sync in terms of continuity i.e you might get lost when moving from one line to another. Therefore practising as much as possible is important. Also, try and practice on the computer instead of a book. It makes a huge difference ! Buy/Beg/Borrow/steal a computer from some place if you dont have one with you.

AWA

Do not disregard the writing section. In the heat of preparing for the other sections, sometimes, we tend to forget about this section completely. Try and practice atleast one or two times. After that developing key ideas for any argument/issue topic can be done mentally. If you blog a lot, I think you will have an advantage here. If not, it is still not that much of an issue really.

Test preparation materials

This is confusing. With so many test preparation materials around, it can get hard to know which one suits you the best. In my opinion, the following materials are great :

1. GRE powerprep : Especially the practice tests. From what I have seen and heard, your final scores will hover around your scores in these practice tests. I suggest you to save one of these tests for someday close to the test. The writing section in this s/f is also great. It gives you an idea as to what the test evaluators are actually looking for in your passage.
2. Kaplan : I think the verbal tests in Kaplan are harder than what is eventually going to appear on the test. The quant section is of the same difficulty level. I liked the feedback they give on how you performed in your tests. In particular, it tells you which areas are your weak points and how much time you spent on each question versus the recommended amount of time that you ought to have spent on those questions. Get hold of this software. It is pretty useful.
3. Big Book : Quite a few guys advised me to go through the big book atleast once before giving the test. I did not go through it eventually because I had ran out of time for preparation (and I was also terribly bored with going through the same routine over and over). Moreover, the big book was available to me as a part of several pdf files. I was somehow not comfortable with the whole idea of using that as an indicator to how good my preparation was.

There are lot many more options available apart from these. The likes of barron’s, cambridge, nova etc etc. But I suggest you to stick to these ones. They are good and they are tough and ,consequenlty, they will give you the true picture of how well you are prepared rather than giving you false impression.

I will keep adding information here as when I remember them. All the best to all GRE takers!

Update : One of the readers of this post called Raghu requested me to put up this link here so that it might help out some GRE aspirants. Raghu, if you are reading this, thanks for sharing this link with us !

GRE done!

Yup. I have finished giving my GRE. Got a 1330. More than anything else, I am just relieved that the test is over.