My Engineering days Part III

It is pretty difficult to recollect everything which happened a decade ago but am doing my best to uncover everything.

One subject which I didn’t find that interesting was Microprocessor. And there was this Elevator lab program. I remember trying to uncover what exactly the logic. It was one hell of a task. I didn’t have the basics right and it complicated the matters. Somehow managed to prepare for it and fortunately I didn’t get it in the lab exam :-) :-)

Two unfortunate incidents happened related to my health in second year. One was a minor accident with my Hero Puch. Had minor injuries to knee which resulted in a week’s rest. Chassis of Hero Puch was completely damaged and had to be replaced. Fortunately vehicle insurance came in handy. :-)

Then had a minor surgery on my back. Something called Pilonidal Sinus. Had to be operated. Was in a hospital for week and then rest at home for 15 days. Result I couldn’t play cricket for the next 6 months. I was just confined to watching. Our department did exceptionally well in the inter department tournament and we reached finals but lost the finals. Sudi, Mahendra, Aruna, Umesha, Vachan, Ballari alias Praveen, Apporva, Shakeeb all played very well. I played the role of a coach:-)

Enter 5th semester and the beginning of mini projects. We had 3 mini projects every semester starting with 5th and it was hard work all the way. And the name which instantly comes into mind is Avinash. He was my partner in all the mini projects and we had a great time together. Editor in Linux, Computer graphics project, Visual Basic project, Network project, Java project. I remember doing the Visual basic project on Language translation and sitting together entire night fine tuning the logic to ensure translation from Kannada to English and vice versa succeeds. He undoubtedly worked more than me and was exceptionally good at coding. Thanks a lot Avinash.

Securing distinction was becoming a formality and it continued in 5th and 6th semester.

One subject which was made interesting was Multimedia Computing. It was handled by Murali Sir and he created an interest in that subject. The first thing he used to do was to test what we have understood by throwing very basic questions and we were all on our toes hoping the question is not addressed to us :-) In a way it ensured that we were in regular touch with the subject and his way of presentation was pretty good.

Who can forget the Operations Research(OR) subject. It was an elective and we all took it. The syllabus was ready and we found it interesting as it was problems all the way. Later for some reason syllabus was changed to a large extent and we started following it. We all Sudi, Umesha, Jaya, Aruna, Naagu, Avinash and myself were at Mahendra’s house doing night outs to prepare for OR. It was real fun. Avinash, Mahendra and Naagu used to understand and then teach us. Till then we were all discussing needless things and having fun.:-) But we worked hard to ensure we learnt everything. And on the exam day we were all confident of doing well. Then came the Question paper. We were in for the shock of our engineering career. The question paper was set entirely based on the first syllabus which was sent and the revised syllabus was not taken into consideration. Oh God we were all looking clueless and in the exam hall everyone’s face was full of smiles.:-) Reason nobody knew anything more than 40 or 50 marks and we were all sailing in the same boat :-) Then we wrote a letter to VTU through our college complaining. I had written precisely for 40 marks and it included a 20 marks problem. I had got it right. And when the results came almost all had cleared the paper and I had got 36 :-) In our group Umesha I guess had 80+ and we were all shocked on hearing this :-) He was also shocked :-)

As usual few trips were there and i will discuss about this in my next. Take care...