Finally....

When I registered for this program, thought it should be easy to finish. I am completely wrong, the course is not comparable to what i thought....its same as full time course and thing is its really good. Faculty is good, they are strict about the attendance, teaching is fine. I feel its better than the open book courses provided by other universities.

First semester was fun learning and could manage to finish with 7.92 CGPA. When it comes to second semester I could feel that students are bit lazy and could see only few students asking any clarifications but in first semester it was very interactive.

DIP - digital image processing was one of the night-mare subject for me....but could pass it :) and second semester with 7.8 CGPA.

3rd and 4th semester completely spent on project work it was fun.

So.....finalllllllllly completed the MS with 7.92 CGPA.......Thanks to Manipal faculty (Bangalore) for turning my dream in to reality.....

It always Heppens even with awareness.

Finally, I am on the edge of proving my previous blog about Dogs tail. I should attend coming weeks Data Structure internals, since last two internals already missed. This is the only chance I have to attain at least 10 marks if I manage to score 20. And in the final exams I should score more than 40 Marks to pass this subject. If I miss this internals due to un-avoidable circumstances which happens to me all the time, then I need to score at least 60 Marks that will be hard seeing my situation and schedules.

I don't no why I always push few things till the last movement, one reason could be few things give much please/thrill when u succeed if in case. I know its not a good idea but it always happens.

Do you fall in the same category as I do?

28th June 2009 - "ನಾಯಿ ಬಾಲ...ಯಾವತ್ತು ಡೋಂಕೆ"

"ನಾಯಿ ಬಾಲ...ಯಾವತ್ತು ಡೋಂಕೆ"
I can give many examples which I tend to push till the end and the movement it finishes one final and consistant question that eats my mind was the feeling of..."what if I started early?".

This weekend suppose to be my first internals of MS course. I knew it almost a month back, but never bothered to see the test time...isn't it bad?. yEs...I only realized the test time when Mohan called and started asking about preparation.

I was just thinking "When should I start preparing for this exam? Sunday will be the test...so why not saturday?" OK, I decided. But, as usual plan is always a plan which can change due to un-avoidable circumstances. Pavan is getting engaged...thats good and he planned to give one small treat and the date he fixed was none other than saturday!!!! The date I suppose to start exam preparation. One might think "spend less time for party and concentrate on exams" this is really a good thinking but I doesnt workout when a person wants to spend more time with friends than exams, so it is same case with me and Pavan/subin were eager to finish this party.

So, now why did I mention DOG's tail being always curve....Eventhough I knew the exam dates long back, I pushed the preparation date very close to exam...this is what I did even during my engineering days. But it doesnt seem to work all the time. I spent two days friday/saturday in friends house......food, movie, chat, bike stuffs, shopping, nice evening/moonlight walks and heavy sound sleeps. So, where is the time for exam preparation :).

Early Sunday morning I borrowed pen from Pavan and reached the exam hall almost 25 minutes late. Lady superviser handed over question paper and answer booklet. what question should I attend now? out of 5 only 3 I could answer and rest 2 questions are related to last class lecturer, I missed that class too..."why did i miss my last class???" There is one more story attached to this. Anyway...first internals was scraped totally. I might get hardly 10....... :(

Lets prepare well for the next exam as early as possible. I am not sure if its going to happen..since "ನಾಯಿ ಬಾಲ...ಯಾವತ್ತು ಡೋಂಕೆ".

21st June 2009

I didn't get chance to attend this weekend classes, so I dont have much to write. But certainly I can tell one joke - just for time pass, which u might like.

A policeman was testing Laloo Ji, Manmohan Ji and Atal Ji who were training to become detectives.

To test their skills in recognizing a suspect, he shows Manmohan Ji a picture for 5 seconds and then hides it. "This is your suspect, how would you recognize him?"

Manmohan Ji answers, "That's easy, we'll catch him fast because he only has one eye!" The policeman says, "Well...uh...that's because the picture I showed is his side profile."

Slightly flustered by this ridiculous response, he flashes the picture for 5 seconds at Atal Ji and asks him, "This is your suspect, how would you recognize him?"

Atal Ji smiles and says, "Ha! He'd be too easy to catch because he only has one ear!" The policeman angrily responds,

"What's the matter with you two? Of course only one eye and one ear are showing because it's a picture of his side profile! Is that the best answer you can come up with?"

Extremely frustrated at this point, he shows the picture to Laloo Ji and in a very testy voice asks, "This is your suspect, how would you recognize him? He quickly adds, "Think hard before giving me a stupid answer."

Laloo Ji looks at the picture intently for a moment and says, "The suspect wears contact lenses." The policeman is surprised and speechless because he really doesn't know himself if the suspect wears contacts or not.

"Well, that's an interesting answer. Wait here for a few minutes while I check his file and I'll get back to you on that." He leaves the room and goes to his office, checks the suspect's file in his computer, and comes back with a beaming smile on his face.

"Wow! I can't believe it. It's TRUE! The suspect does in fact wear contact lenses. Good work! How were you able to make such an astute observation?"

"That's easy," Laloo Ji replied. "He can't wear regular glasses because he only has one eye and one ear." :)))

3rd and 4th Classses - 7th and 14th June 2009

Last week I didn't update this blog, does that mean I was too busy or too lazy to do so?. If you think there is time then there is always time for any thing. These two weeks haven't been productive for me, there are several reasons i can quote but those are just for my satisfaction. From last 2 weeks my school/village friend asking me to buy a mobile for him and send it. But i haven't done that so far, and morever lied him saying I have already purchased mobile. So, he calls me everyday asking for mobile....simply I dont have answer...really bad.

Above example doesnt mean I am busy/lazy to do others work or doesn't mean i dont want to do. Another friend(Ramesh Babu) who is in London(UK) right now, sent one gift(great watch...i always wanted one...) through his colleague. And from last 3 weeks i have not collected the gift, more than me...my friends colleague is worried and he tells his daughter to enquire with Ramesh whether or not he is going to collect the gift or should we only reach him. So, this explains I am not only doing others work but actually not doing my own work. whats the reason??? I am not sure......may be because of my lovely bike :) which just has gone missing 20 days back.

Now, I am trying to purchase one bike and the difficult part is to zeroing down to one brand and finally bike. And the descision becomes even more complex when your budget is more, smaller budget very few choices. Since, my previous bike was PULSAR DTS-i 150CC with 13.2 bhp, choosing a new bike has become even more difficult. I just want one bike which can beat pulsar, so thats only one its Royal Enfields BUllet....:) standard model comes with 350CC and 18.2bhp. Its a trendy and super bike as the caps says "Made like a GUN and goes like BULLET".

So, now my heart says go for BULLET but some thing is still stopping me...that is the basic price of this bullet. Machismo is the one i like most in Royal enfield family and it costs around 1.05 Lacks on road. Isn't it more...i can even purchase a second hand car...thats what my mind says. And the final conclusion which can be drawn from above points is....I was much dependent on bike(which saved my time) and am not sure what I really want and make decision :(

Now, coming back to our MS classes. Today also i was late by almost 50 minutes. Each sunday i think of reaching the class on time but simply its not happening. Prof Priya was taking the Project management subject. When i entered the class there was much of the discussion among students and i realized it could be because of on the class assignments normally Prof does this every time. So, this time the task was related to performance issue of the web portal belongs to XYZ company and the students have to identify and present the same in the class. As part of this assignment we identified title, description, business needs, project justifications, resources, stakeholders, deliverables, constraints and assumptions. Eventhough few people thought its a boring work, but its good to do atleast in class rooms if you think so.

Today, I got a chance to meet new friend who works for wind and energy sector. I am still trying to recollect his company name...i guess it is "Ariva or Riviva" He is a product marketing manager there. After chatting with him for a while, I see he has got quite a good experience in product marketing and promotions. Since, i am a hardcore engineer who doesn't bother to analyse the customer needs most of the time, just learnt a little bit on how you analyse the market trend/previous market share/propose new products or improvements depending on these factors and then finally promote the new product in to the market. For me its quite a new are which sounds interesting but doesn't pull me.

Second class was OOSD handled by Dr Shivanand Handigund, personally I feeel this subject is boring. There are more jorgons than actual explaination of this subject. I just dont wan't to write any thing about prof since whole class has responded to the feedback form provided today. During the course of this class I just saw students sleeping, playing games on computer and even on mobile phones(this is what I also did for a while) and few students enjoyed chatting on the mobile phones. And those who didn't do all these things should have enjoyed the class :) Coming to the assignment which is for 25 marks and i feel we have to write entire book for this :) i guess which we can publish some time down the line :)

And the last class was Data structures by Prof Keshav Murthy, as usual entire class will enjoy his teaching. Today it was more about trees(BST, AVL, B Tree, 2-3 tree...) which i mostly like to hear about.

I see the students learning about each others, knowing more about what they do, interests, habits(bad, good..all), this is good to see. Today we had one funny incident during the lunch time in the nearby hotel. Which i will update soon.....I am sure some body is going to hit me for this :) atleast the guy who did this :)

First Day in to class - 31st May 2009

Its true that you do not relize the importance of a person or material as long as its with you. I experianced and realised the importance of such thing over last 15 days and still not able to forget it. Truth is somebody picked up my bike few days back, hope he is enjoying it :) as I did. Now, bike is not with me thigs are getting tougher now. I started to think office is much far away than usual, days are getting smaller and some things are really eating up my usual time. This may be my way of thinking or perception or too much dependent on bike commute, whatever it is but it's true.

I have to catch the Banashankari bus to reach Jayanagar east end and from there walk for 500 metres to reach SAN IT solutions near Tilaknagar main road, this is where our MS classes will be held. But that 500 metre turned out to be 2KM, so next time better to catch one more bus from east end. Today, i was late by 20 minutes to class. Class was already started, just entered the hall realised the whole class is full and all the seats were occupied except the first row. I never like to sit in the first bench, even during my college/school days. Thats because I dont like to show my sleepy face to the Prof. But today no options except the first bench.

Dr Shivanand Handigund was taking the software engineering class, but it took almost 2hrs to realise its a OOSD subject, I got confused with Project Management and OOSD. Even friend of mine who was sitting side by, after the lecturer was over about 3-4 hours he asked me "Is it OOSD or Project Management subject? Do you know?" No surprise he asked me that question. It happens when somebody hate those two subjects, I did hate them even during BE final semester. But still managed to top the subject in the class :).

Dr Shivanand Handigund did his Mtech and Phd from IIT Bombay (its now Mumbai, but prof or most still like to call Bombay). His teaching methodology (oosd term) is quite good, and most probabably he explains each term by giving example and thos example most likely related to the current education system rather than software engineering. So, we can learn much more about how the education system works :) But, he is really goood in giving examples and accepting the fault so we can call him self more reliable (he just took this example to exaplain what is realiability?) :).

After this OOSD class from 9Am to 12:30 PM, now comes the one more most interesting subject :) Software Project Management. This was conducted by Prof Priya, who got almost 9 years industry experience as project manager and 5 years in teaching. This is the second batch in Manipal she is handling similiar subject. (by the way mine is 5th A batch). The way she puts up the examples, use cases and software terms one can easily say she has got enough work experiance in the software field. She is really good in communicating the subject and making sure they understand it. She normally takes her previous experiances and puts them as example to understand the current topic.

So final class and more fun oriented was Data structure from Prof Keshav Murthy, who works for BIT. He is more interactive, enthu and sense of humour. Prof even cracked few jokes and I guess that was necessary if you are handling last class of the day that too during sunday.

There is always a learning, during my GATE classes I have learnt many new things and even understood more clearly the known matters. But, now in MS classes also I can realise that its the new learning curve.

"You never stop learning. If you have a teacher, you never stop being a student." - Elisabeth Rohm.

Orientation Program - 24th May 2009

After waiting or better to say wasting 3 years to start my higher education, finally got admission in to Manipal University for MS in Computer Science program. First thing one could ask me, why did u choose MS from Manipal and why not BITS?? My answer is simple, since i want to obtain Phd at some point in later (may be 5 years...or even 10 y down the line) subjects covered in Manipal are much suited and gives proper credits to your Phd program or else even after finishing ur MS, u might have to get extra credits in case if you choose BITS. Its totally from my view point....i would put extra **conditions apply on top of these statements :) Here is the link to program details - http://www.corporateprograms.manipal.edu/index.htm

Day I got mail from Mavis DCruz to attend the orientation program on sunday 24th May 2009, it was bit surprise...no body expected that the orientation program would be held in Hospital :) When I reached Manipal Hospital around 10:05 AM, i could see few students waiting outside the hospital compound, so surprised to enter the hospital premises. I just went to a near by SBI ATM and withdrew some money since you never now when the private institutes demand :) not true in all cases. Mail from Mavis DCruz mentioned about the security measures in manipal hospital and once i entered the mail gate and even the reception no body even cares who you are. What you are carrying? except a small metal detecter near the entrance. I am nost sure why one would require such security arrangements even for Hospitals?? May be due to recent Mumbai attack. They even didnt spare hospitals....thats ****.

Its true that the world is small, u tend to meet same people over the time even though departed long time. Near the entrance I could see a person in surpised emotions and wondering to find the conference hall. I just got a hint and asked him.."searching for conference hall??" and Yes was the answer. We just had a small introduction and his name is Harsha. And on the way to find the conference hall in the ground floor we just had extended introduction and finally we zeroed down to same college :) that is BEC - we both studied in the same college except he is 3 years junior to me and he said there were around 5 students from my college got admission to MS program in Manipal, that will be really nice to see my college friends around along with new faces.

We reached the conference hall and there it is around 100-120 students. Mr Rajendra Joshi and Mavis DCruz welcoming students and handing over the welcome kit. I just sat near to a young man who looked serious and studios. He took almost 10 minutes to start the conversation, since even i didnt wanted to disturb his study. Other two guys sitting on the right side were bit surprised about the orientation program being held in Hospital. I too had small chat with all the three guys and Mr Ravindra was the guys i was talking about...serious and studios.

Orientation program was introduced by Mavis DCruz and followed by Mr S Bhat who gave extended introduction about Manipal University, history, its verious programs and state of the art facilities. One more professior(just trying to recollect his name) gave introduction to the MS program and its evaluation systems. One this is done, there was a Qustion and answer session as usual. Few guys asked some basic questions like - what is the difference between MS and Mtech? science and Technology? Prof Bhat gave few examples and got there questions cleared. He said "Technology involves process and not the science, so we have civil engineering and not the civil technology....." here is the wiki answer for the same question http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_science_and_technology_and_engineering

somebody asked "Does this course UGC aproved?" I am not sure why somebody should ask this question at this stage since he should have done that simple research before joining this course.

And finally one girl had a doubt and she even said its a simple question - "Why do we call Manipal university as MAHE?"

After all these questions we had a small hospitallity in hospital of tea and snacks. Me and Ravindra had a extended chat about current work, why would we choose this program? etc etc etc. So, by the time we finished chatting every one started leaving the conference hall. I had few doubts about the credit system and got it cleared from one of the professor. And finally left the conference hall to catch the bus back to home.....and by this my first day was over and to summarise got a feeling of going back to college, chit chatting........I hope to get more fun as we go further in to class rooms :) Bye for now.