Hey , how's it going at CMU ?

Well this is often the question I get asked when I talk to people back home. I generally reply with something generic and not detailed enough. So I decided to write a slightly detailed account about my first week here (too much free time in my hands)

So first things first , for the unfamiliar , I have moved to Pittsburgh to study at Carnegie Mellon University. I arrived last Saturday on the 13th . Upon landing the airport with 4 huge bags , I realized I had not planned how to reach my apartment. And there I was 4 huge bags with me , not even a trolley to carry them standing close to a life size replica of a T-Rex dinosaur (which was pretty awesome by the way). So I finally decide to get a trolley ( $ 4 ,wtf ???) and move on. Some kind lady lent me her phone and I called one of my roommates for directions.

I boarded this 28x bus and again was luckily helped by a Swiss student with the bags. Most people are really friendly here and help you out. Bus ride was pretty scenic ( and to the Chinese couples on the bus , GET A ROOM !!!! ) and Pittsburgh looked like a hilly city. So I reach the bus stop and there my friend Aayush is there to help me out. We move with our trolley bags to our apartment and along the way I meet a couple of people waving at me , saying they recognize me from Facebook. Social Networking has really come a long way it seems.

I enter the apartment , its a little untidy but really its quite big and has a cosy feel to it. Especially the big living room is awesome and has 2/3 comfy futons , a really awesome leather chair (like the one in the Godfather) and a TV :)



After a weekend full of rest and setting up my bed etc., I go get my ID on monday and start attending orientation. Public transport , museums etc. are free with a CMU ID , so its really important to carry it all the time. The campus is really pretty in this weather. The trees , the open lawns and the clean air all make it magnificent. Its not too small and not too big either, just the right size. Anyway continuing with the graduate orientation , so yeah it was basically 4 days full of talks , seminars , random lunches and yes a fun Bar Be Cue (which did have vegetarian food by the way). Although the line was long but yes the Bar Be Cue was worth it just because I met awesome people on a table I randomly chose. Someone was from NY , someone from LA etc. different courses and really varied group. We hung out at the Carnegie Museum after the BBQ and that turned out to be time well spent. A full blown Dinosaur exhibit is after all every man's (and some women for that matter) dream come true.

The next day again I went out with a pretty eclectic group at this place called Mario's on a pretty upmarket street near my house , its called Walnut street . Well beer was flowing like a river here and there was a live band playing. It was more of a mini street party which we had hardly expected, we had dinner at an authentic American Diner ...and yes the chocolate milk shake was LEGEN.....DARY.

So last couple of days I have been hanging with a CS guy and a Materials guy (both PhD , needless to say "pretty" smart) . I am just a Masters student , so yeah that creates a few laughs. We have been exploring Pittsburgh through the day and night and although its a little on the quieter side , I kind of like it . This city has something for everyone.

In the coming week , there is hopefully a Poker Meetup , a Potluck (google it ..like I had to ) and my departmental orientation lunch at a Water-Park . Sounds fun ....I guess last days of freedom before classes start.

The Lovely Bones

I was listening to our very own James Blunt the other day (yes you may pass snide remarks , "Blunt ??..what happened to Metal bro ?"). Some of his songs are pretty good I think and apart from the one major hit he had , I really liked this -

James Blunt - Too Late . If you read the lyrics , you"ll understand the story or well scenario behind the song. A few days back , I was looping this song and it was actually amazing outside with the wind blowing and a little rain in the air. It was the perfect time for a solemn mood. So I ended up writing this sad poem , about a little regret and moving ahead with life. I later realized how my poem was subconsciously affected by this song .

So here goes...

THE LOVELY BONES

Sometimes I think about the past,
About the actors my story had cast,
About things that went wrong ,
And if I could change my song ?.

Maybe say the things I didn't say,
Shout when I just sat and prayed,
Or laugh when I decided to cry,
And Run rather than just keep walking by.


I see around and I am all alone,
There is just a lovely sky and some lovely bones,
These bones are of my past,
Of things unsaid and things that last.


While I sit in this graveyard all alone,
I dig a grave to bury all these bones,
For I know that being haunted is a choice,
And I have made mine with a determined voice.


One by One I pick them up,
I put one in and lift another in a cup,
The grave starts to fill with bones of my past,
Of Things I said and things that don't last.


I cover with mud the seeds I sowed,
And it starts to rain before it snows,
I put some flowers on the top,
Make sure it settles down before the weather knocks.


I move out with a slow pace,
I buried my bones with a haunting grace,
For the past needs to be forgotten and I need to move,
Away from those bones and this lovely moon.

-

Abhishek

Second Chances

In school we were always told that "First Impressions are the last impressions" and if you had to make an impact on someone you should always come across as confident , look your best and so on and so forth.

As I grew up , maybe the effect it subconsciously had on me was that I was too quick to judge people. Maybe if a guy would dress in a slightly non-conventional manner I would brush him off as "artsy , liberal" types and someone who wasn't worth my time. If there was a girl that was not so called "attractive" in the conventional sense again at first glance I would not pay much attention to her. Little did I know that everyone has something different to themselves , everyone has a story and only if we give people a chance that we get to see the world from someone else's eyes.

As school went on , I realized my own awkwardness . I was not really unpopular but I wasn't lets say the most attractive (to put it mildly) , I wasn't conforming to the "norms" high school would want (being geeky isn't exactly a norm). As school was about to end I began to realize that whatever the stereotypes maybe the popular kid , the geek , the liberal artsies , the dancers , the singers....the bottom line was it was okay to be whoever and whatever you wanted and no matter how your views and opinions differed it was cool to just hangout and see what the "other" side thought like.


As college started , I decided to give people for once "Second Chances" hoping that some would give me "Second Chances" too. And those few who did , eventually became really good friends because trust me my first impression can be very bad :). I now make it an effort to talk to the "plane jane" (they turn out to be the ones who actually can have intelligent conversation) or the lanky guy standing alone (mostly because I can relate to him), once in a while I also jump into (not literally) the pretty girls giggling in a corner (often to come back without a smile on my face ). But even though it doesn't workout all the time , people may turnout to be exactly what you didn't want them to be but its cool because again life is about experiencing whats new or whats different . If sometimes people don't really appeal to me in the first go , I try not to write them off..because life in my opinion is about Second Impressions and not the First.

My College Mates - Part 1

Current flavor in town is this movie called "Pyaar Ka Panchnaama" (click on the link that song was playing in my head for 2 hours ). While I haven't seen it every other guy in college is raving about it and says I HAVE to watch it. I don't know whether I will watch it but what I will do is make this post about some of my BRO's in college and some awesome times spent with them. So here goes an incomplete list of some awesome people I met in college and the times I spent with them -

1. Aakash Gaangil

This guy has been around me for the entire 4 years while I have been in college. And while people outside know him as an awesome coder and a very *ahem* "cultured and civilized" person, only a few others like me and some other people on this list have seen his "true colors". From Dancing on a TT Table to scolding all waiters in GOA who didn't give him a cold beer , this guy has an INNER DRAGON inside him :D When in his element he doesn't give a fuck and just shreds everyone apart. 'Rita' as we call him loves to eat chicken and if he stayed a couple of months more in college..KFC @ Dwarka would have put his photo on their buckets instead of the Colonel.

Fun Fact : Me and Gaangil are founders of the "Luxury Gang" a select clique of people who believe in spending luxuriously on all college trips and outings. Unfortunately in our army of two we are touted as spoilt brats and have to come back to our real "undergraduate looking for money" roots.


2. Akshay Rastogi

I guess while we call him just by his last name in the hostel -> "RASTOGI"...I always wanted to call him DON. Because everyone knows..."YOU DON"T MESS WITH RASTOGI". Some of the funnest times I have had have the Rastogi Element involved in them including last night when he was driving the car at 2 AM in the night at RAJGHAT and all of us were shouting "Anna Hazare, Anna Hazare...". Some of the broken glasses and bottles in the hostel are literally screaming Alshay Rastogi the morning after but thats okay...cause this bro always is fair and stands up for his friends. He is also the pioneer of the two day treat..in which he split my CMU treat over two days. The result was 3 of us got a 2-day hangover...1 of us almost had a life threatening allergic reaction.

FUN FACT : Rastogi has a cool cloth shop in Daryaganj...and most of us go for our clothing requirements to him :D. His favorite beat is Astronomia


3. Shrey Walia aka "BIG BROTHER"

Vijay Mallya was wrong. He is NOT the "King of Good Times". Its our very own Shrey Walia aka BIG BROTHER. I remember once I entered the hostel to see a classic HANGOVER MOMENT and all the walls of the hostel were white and there were fire extinguishers lying all around. And there I see Shrey with a non-chalance on his face saying "They are just fire extinguishers bro, NO BIG DEAL !! ". After our farewell the morning after a few of us were hanging at Rajouri Garden an saw an actual car crashing into a wall. Walia brother and me were wearing our farewell suits and Brother went one step further by putting on his Rayban shades. After we made sure people were okay, we went on till I noticed that BIG BROTHER was missing. Then I notice BIG BROTHER still at the site of the accident acting as if hes an FBI agent investigating a case. He wasn't drunk ...but that raises more questions than answers about the behavior :D Walia also is a big Salman Khan fan and a couple of weeks back astounded everyone with his awesome dance on this song. This was followed by a complete SALMAN KHAN tribute. Big Brother rocked it that time :)

FUN FACT : Big Brother was MARKETING HEAD of MOKSHA 2010-11. He raised the OOMPH!! factor of our college fest :D. His favorite dialogue is "Beautiful !!!!!" :)



4. Piyush Maheshwari


I dont want to make this post about placement and salary etc but I just want to say "AMAZON @ 15 lakhs BITCHES". Yes thats my homeboy "Maheshwari" or as we fondly call him "Pussy" (dont get wrong ideas). He wont admit it but he is a fellow geek too...his loves include #Maths #Coding #Algorithms and documentaries on scientists gone mad like this.

Some of the best times reminiscing about life , the universe and BIG BROTHER have been spent with "Maheshwari" and co at our Hi-Mirchee where we always order Honey Chilli Potato , Drums of Heaven and Paneer Tikka followed by BROTHER and MAHESHWARI going for vodka shots in which both of them use truck loads of salt. Me and Maheshwari have decided to use BIG BROTHER's awesomeness and role it into some merchandise and a trilogy of 3 movies titled Big Brother : The Beginning , Big Brother and the case of Rohit the Imaginary Friend (inside joke) and the final movie titled Big Brother "The Love Saga " . I guess both of us are "set for life" :D


FUN FACT : Maheshwari only likes orange stuff in his life. Mirinda , Fanta and last night at 2..he still ordered Orange Bar :D



5. Mahesh Chandra Sharma aka MC aka SEAL

Our very own MC is renowned for his awesome coding . But not many people the "real" MC , the one who sold someone water in an ALL OUT bottle for 10 Rupees :D :D In all "seriousness" though SEAL is the funnest person to hang out with . If you can see his expressions in the AN Shukla Toothbrush video my friends made , you would know what I am talking about. There was also the time when MC didn't know that his winter training viva is on the same day , so he woke up and made the report in 2 hours and gave the viva :).
MC also fulfilled his hidden love for water when he literally used to splash around like a baby at all the beaches in Goa. I mean as soon as we reached the beach ..MC would run like John Abraham running towards Bipasha and just splash around in water :)

On our last morning in hostel, we drove MC crazy as 4 of us (me , MC , doks and gaangil) were simultaneously and "miraculously" lying on his bed because his cooler is awesome. MC was trying to reserve his train tickets back home ( while abusing us constantly ) but unfortunately due to some server problem he must have tried at least 28 times and failed. Once he got close but Google Captcha gave up on him and when he refreshed the page all seats got filled. MC then went on to abuse those 48 "Gahrwali idiots" who decided to book tickets before him :D .

FUN FACT : Me and MC share the same taste in so called "lame" ( we love them no matter what the world says) Hindi songs like this one that he has been listening to for 2 days since I reminded him of it


Like I said this is an incomplete post , in the next such post I will cover Hitesh aka Harry , "Jain" , MC , Harsha , Doks and a few others.

**********************************************

Personal Update : It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. Here is something that helps.

More digression next time.

Random Update - I ("Kuch Bhi....")

Sorry for the hiatus , my exams were going on and I couldn't post much. If you are reading this then let me start by saying "Its Good to Be Back".

Exams were really a hoot, I have realized my concentration span has almost reduced to zero and follows the 10-30 rule. What is the 10-30 rule you ask ?... 10 minutes of Study corresponds to 30 minutes of Random Musings about Life, The Universe and Everything. My random musings have consisted of thinking about my future life in Pittsburgh , some fond memories of my last semester and my grossly ambitious plan to change this world. All these thoughts come during exams or well come more frequently during exams.

Another eventful thing happened, my sister's Board Exams result came out. She did really well given she has Humanities and everyone is really happy for her. I feel like an ass for sleeping through the morning of her result but still I got to order out food the whole day amidst all the celebrations. She did the same when I got my results, it was only fair.

On the day of the last exam we had a great freaking time. Went to a nearby restaurant called "Spiceshot" (awesome name in my opinion) and 6 of us decided to order and drink "openly" , no restrictions. Of course my drinking was restricted to the Mocktails menu but our table was a sight to see with all the glasses and bottles of vodka, tequila, gin etc . We then saw Pirates of Carribean which I didn't like too much except the awesome reclining seats in the cinema.....and our meal at McDonalds afterwards. Seriously, I really love the McVeggie burger, I love digging into it after a long time. Picking a bunch of fries and smoothing it over with a long sip of Sprite is one of the best feelings in the world. Coming back to the hostel we danced like crazy and one of my friends was dancing with his rayBan shades on at 2 in the night. Such was the night . (It was Legen-wait for it - Dary !! )

I caught a bus back home at 6 in the morning. Bus rides or Metro rides alone are fun . I think a lot during the one hour commute about life in general and how I screwed up / did well in the week gone by. Staring out of the window and watching people and places pass by gives me a calm feeling. These Bus/Metro rides will be one of the things I will miss about Delhi. Sure they are crowded sometimes but you can just stand there and get lost in your own world. 50 strangers just heading down the same path.

I have 2 months left now before I leave this country (forever ??...who knows ). Sometimes I think about coming back after a long time , 10 years or so, and seeing all my friends again...its fun to imagine someone as a rich banker , someone as an innovator , someone a big programming hot shot and the usual awesomely well taken care of assortment of MBA's :) . It would be fun to exchange stories and discuss how the the rivers of our lives took separate paths. But until these 10 years pass, I am presently looking for some work in these 2 months , mostly just to distract myself from the staticness and a couple of thoughts that are persistently there on my mind (maybe we"ll discuss those later) . I will also learn to Cook , Drive, Iron my shirt , Tie a Tie...things other teenagers did well before me. This will be a lot of work but fun work nonetheless..and I will actually learn well this time.....not like the time I youtubed "How to Tie a Tie" before our college farewell. :)

P.S. -

1.This was a boring post but a post nonetheless, the coming week has some exciting
opportunities and events will post about them once done.

2. My TEDxNSIT video is out, the one I mentioned in the blog post titled "The Talk"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NylRpcE3Oc
Hope you like it :)

My Teaching Assistantship

This past semester I was a Teaching Assistant for the Embedded Systems course at a university (located temporarily) inside my university ( Inception ? ) called IIIT-Delhi. I was lucky enough to work on a project there for sometime and now I had been offered this job by my professor. I went home and told this to my parents and their expression was the virtual equivalent of "LOL. What can you possibly teach anyone ? " .

This was exactly the question I asked myself before starting off. Technically, I was supposed to take Lab classes to teach 3rd year students programming and interfacing with AVR microcontrollers. Although , I would like to think I have reached an intermediate level in knowing these controllers but still I was worried as to how I would get my point across to students , given my general "awkwardness" and the worst timing with jokes ( cracking jokes when a girl is crying is not cool, NOW I KNOW ) .

So , I went for Day One. I thought I would dress all formal but decided against it (only because I woke up 10 minutes before the class ). Turned out to be a good decision , I think I might have freaked them out in formals and then I would have had to dress like that in every class. Anyway so there they were about 25-30 of them all looking at me eagerly and I am just staring with a marker in hand. Eventually I just decided to go with the flow and started going from the very basics like Bitwise Operations to the different features of the controller. As it was the first class , I knew I had to make this "exotic" course appeal to them. Exotic becuase these students were champs on the software side but had very little hardware experience. So , I wanted to make them enjoy the world of LED's , Resisitors , Capacitors etc (They would know later on how bad life is while debugging hardware problems :-) ).

I wrote a simple program on the board...went over each line explaining what each line did and what it corresponded in the physical world. And then I helped them setup their kit and in sometime I could see about 30 LED's blinking. I saw a few people excited about the first class...or maybe they were happy that class was over. Either way the first class was definitely fun. A new experience...one of many in my last semester.


The next couple of classes were more hardware oriented...we had an intro to Soldering for example. Basically , I tried to go over the things I had trouble with while learning things on my own from the internet or books here and there. So I wanted to make it a smooth transistion for them.

Another fun thing was grading the students :-). I now realized how the teacher feels while grading...and how stupidly nervous I am about the weirdest of things. Taking Demos and Vivas was fun. I could easily see which students matched some of my own friends in class...it was fun to be honest . I was also fair while grading..infact I was a little lenient :P . And at least this was the only thing I was proud of doing perfectly during my stint.

I don't know how the students liked me. I tried my best. Being just one year senior to them would have been weird for them...but I admire them for being patient with me. They would call me "Sir" while I would be drinking Coffee with a friend at the college cafe...I would get quite shy to be honest. If they ever saw me in my own class they would know how big a fool I am...I think some of them already know this :-).

At the end of the semester , I saw some of their projects....I was pretty amazed by the fact that it took them just 2 months to go from a completely new idea to implementation that too in their first experience with hardware. But the credit for that goes more to my professor than to me...but at least I helped someone learn something in this world. Hopefully, they would use this knowledge to make something completely awesome that helps a lot of people. I had a great time as a Teaching Assistant...helped me finance my dinners outside too :-)

P.S.- If you were one of the students who had to bear me... I apologize for the poor inventory management in the Lab. It will be much more professional in the coming years. I hope I wasn't too bad... :-)

The Talk

So we were having this event in college for the 2nd year running called TEDxNSIT. For people unfamiliar with the TEDx concept...TED is basically an annual conference where people from different realms come and give awesome talks. These fields can vary from Technology to Bacteria to Underwater Exploration. A TEDx conference is an independently organized event on similar lines...but say by an organization/institute which has got the requisite license to hold such an event with the "TED" name.

All the technicalities apart we were having one college and somehow I was asked by my friend Roshan (who was heading the Organizing) to come and be one of the Speakers and speak about one of my research projects. Now a lot of other people had done so much better work than me in college that it felt pretty weird to come and talk about my work. Nevertheless, it had been a long time since I faced an audience (I don't walk on the ramp nor do I play the guitar...why else would people see you on a stage in college ????) so I decided to give it a go. It was going to be a change anyway from the staticness (or gloominess ??) of life in recent days.

Anyway, so I prepared my presentation not in your usual Powerpoint but a cool software called Prezi (thanks to my friend Gaangil for the tip). I guess initially I was a little nonchalant about it...but about a week left for the talk I started preparing in my hostel room...looking at the window and trying to speak. Somehow I always used to stammer..I speak too fast sometimes , I think there are too many thoughts in my head somehow. One day before I knew what I had to speak, I didn't write anything down it was in my head and either it would work out well or I would have to completely revamp my strategy at giving these talks.

D-DAY

On the day, I woke up at about noon...the event had already started at 10 am. I somehow manged to get ready by 2 and reached backstage. I was nervous you know...I felt like a kid amongst all the speakers. This awesome lady from NID was going over her slides and I was like WOW !! she will definitely give a good talk (She did infact give a great talk ) . Puneet Sahani a hitchiker by profession came in front of me and wrote 4 complete pages for his talk in about 20 minutes. Its like he had so much to say. I on the other hand was hanging out with Ankit Agarwal who was discussing (of all things) girls with me, in hindsight it did calm me down a little, although I had very little to contribute to the conversation.

This was also the day I was suddenly drinking Red Bull which I find absolutely vile and worse than cough syrup. But I had so much nervous energy that I needed something to drink. One of my friends Pragya was also backstage and there I was holding a Red Bull can and chatting with her. Talking did help reduce nervousness...Pragya if you're reading this..Thanks :-)


By the time my turn came, there were a couple of awesome talks that had already taken place. I was nervous going on stage and when I got up the light was directly on my face (that hurt !!). But I adjusted and as soon as I faced the audience there were no more inhibitions. I started off with the talk and I knew when to pause and try to crack a joke (No One Laughed...which left some awkward seconds for me to fill).
The crux of my talk was an DEMO that would require someone to call my mobile phone and press buttons on his keypad, this would then turn on a light bulb kept on my table. Somehow with the help of my friend Udit Aggarwal (whose wry wit on stage won one and all ), I managed to pull this off and I would like to think it looked mildly cool on stage. There was some applause in the middle...a lot of my friends had turned up but I do hope they were sincere :-). I was pretty relieved when I was on the last slide. I took out my mic and just took a deep breath getting off the stage. I then went back to my hostel room and did what I do best...open the door and fall on the bed with my shoes on.

AFTERMATH

I came next evening to see a huge poster with all the Speakers' photo on it. My photo was there too on the bottom right corner...it felt nice in a way...it also felt a little weird.

Standing there staring at myself I realized two things -
1. I need a better photo
2. I need to do something worthwhile with my life. You know "I want to change lives"
is a cliched line but somewhere I definitely want to figure out how I can improve
lives in the lower strata. (Maybe a trip back to my village awaits)

Lets see what the future holds !!

P.S. - I didn't want to bore you with the project details. A video of the talk will be out soon , you can see the talk and the project (MELOS it is called ) in the video itself.

Hope you guys are good. More ramblings next time !!