It's O-V-U-R, Over

4 Years ago still feels like yesterday, when I stepped into the college and felt my heart racing after checking out the football ground. It was August, much before the start of the term, and I wanted to see how the campus felt like. The bustling environment that I saw for the last time yesterday wasn't there 4 years back.

I still remember entering the gates way back in 2005 with a striped orange tee and a jacket over it, and already getting into the firing range of the then HoD, who said this kind of clothing isn't allowed in the college. I thought this was the clothing that one likes to wear for college and was forced to believe the opposite. Tucked shirt, smart shoes, no jeans, ew.. I couldn't take it in the beginning. And the worse thing was, I was forced to un-tuck the shirt, get rid of the shoes, the watch and even the belt, by the only senior batch at that time. It looked like they wanted us to look like the worst of the lot just for fun's sake. We went on with it, and by the time we blinked, we were already sitting in the last ever exam of our engineering life. Now when I look back, I suddenly feel why didn't I do anything useful in those 4 years. They zoomed past so fast that I was only trying to catch all the time, and failed miserably most of the times. But whats over is over and there's no time travel kind of options to change things.

One one side there's delight in finally getting rid of all those headaches with the college. The sick lecturers, the sick management, the sick crowd, everything was on the down side. No encouragement, no support, no advice, no teaching !! What we achieved in these 4 years is definitely not because of the teaching! That statement can be readily confirmed by almost every student in there. Either it's over-ambitious 25-35 year-olds whom we have to teach in reverse, or it's 75 year-olds who can't talk, forget walk. Their achievement: They successfully squeezed out the love for the subject of Aeronautics I had all through my childhood. And the college crowd? Another EW!!! One word: Tasteless..

But when I look at the other side of the coin, the story's different. I came out of school almost nerdy looking. With nothing to be really proud of. But life suddenly changed here. I met friends who were always by me. What I should be happy about is that fact that, I got people to like me. They didn't stick around because I was popular, or cool or hep, or un-popular, un-cool or not hep. They stuck around because of the 'me' in me. The thing that really made the college my home was my brother Srikar. 30KM away from home still wasn't boring or uninteresting. The frustrating academic life forced me to look for alternatives to release the pressure. And I found many. A blessing in disguise. Freaking out with friends and Srikar's friends too, playing music, drawing stuff, multimedia, reading, writing (blogging), soccer, and whatever I could lay my hands on. I tried everything and had the time of my life trying them. When I think of all this, it makes me a bit nostalgic. Yesterday was the last time I finished my dealing with the college and yet, I didn't feel a thing when I was moving out of the gates.

Suddenly I swim out of a river into the dark ocean. Nothing is familiar, nothing is clear, nothing is visible, everything's cold and creepy, the nearest destination is thousands of miles away, literally speaking. I suddenly feel like going back into the warmer, calmer, and more comfortable river water.

4 years of life just whizzed past my ear without even whispering to me. And before I realized it, it was gone. It's all over now. All the irritation and all the fun. It's all O-V-U-R, Over..

The 'out' Thing

While everybody talks about the latest 'in-things' being tweeting and blogging and stuff. That's exactly the 'out-thing' for me here because of the final set of exams that I am about to face from tomorrow. Maintaining about 10 posts every month as an average, the number has dropped to less than 5. And this month is coming to an end with just 3. Call that the definite 'out-thing' for me.

Yeah, exams here. One last time in my engineering life. No interest anyway. Only 3 subjects to cry over, but still completely greek-latin looking symbols, diagrams, and derivations. It's come down to a level where I am unable to understand the working of a simple hydraulic system. One look at the diagram, and there's a bursting urge to shut the textbook and switch over to facebook.

Just about 24 hours are left for me to prepare for tomorrow's exam and there are 8 complete chapters (of which I don't even know the names or what they deal with). The task ahead: You have 24 hours to do what you were supposed to do in 6 months. Great task. Here's a good example of a Mission Impossible.

Best of luck.. (for what??)

The Story does not End Here

The word roller coaster is kinda getting clichéd on my blog. I am using it to describe pretty much everything. That, obviously because everything that happens around seems to have assumed this pattern of delighting me and then disappointing me and then delighting me back, and finally disappointing me by the end. Sometimes, this up and down process never ends, like in the case of my project work.

After 2 months of crazy travel and brain'aches', the project got 'over', and the report writing was done. We heaved a huge sigh of relief and within a few hours, we realized that everything we ever did in those 2 months could just vapourise like it never existed. The internal guide found certain flaws and refused to sign the report. Moreover, he even asked us to get rid of his name from the acknowledgment sheet. Now if there was anything more heart-stabbing than that, I would stab my heart. Apparently he didn't want his reputation to be associated with flawed data. And who gives us this data? The internet!! Just 2 days away from facing the external examiner, we don't even know who will be signing our project report. What a pathetic situation that is!! This is something that people talk about even before their engineering study starts. "There's gonna be this project work in your final year, which you have to do very well with some reputed organization". Wow, that sounds so important. And we took it as easy as having a candy. We fulfilled the second part (reputed organization) and failed on the first and important part. A report with flaws? Who would want that?

I am ready to trade my life with that person who would be brave enough to face the examiners and get away with the flawed data! Any takers? Looks like I have to face it myself along with my helpless group-mates..

And, this is only the warning before the storm..

Fly at Home

Oh yeah? It’s always been there with Microsoft’s famous Flight Simulator. But there are people like me who are just too lazy to install games and suddenly start playing them like pros. Well I found out quite some time back but never bothered to ‘announce’ it, that there’s an easy replacement for an er, ‘similar but not so similar’, ‘close but not quite there’ simulator experience. And it’s in Google. I installed the new version of Google Earth a bit too late (like months late) so I never found out much. I was too busy exploring the sky features as that’s my interest, and avoided looking for anything else. One day, out of boredom I just started exploring all the menus of Earth, and found this Enter Flight Simulator option. I thought I was dreaming. Being in the Aero field it just caught my attention and held on. I cursed myself for being so lazy. I could have found this option many many months back, and I never bothered. Finally I entered the Flight simulator. I saw the availability of 2 aircraft, one visibly supersonic, and one visibly subsonic (maybe incompressible.. hehe). So naturally I chose the Mach 2 aircraft and kicked off my ‘flight’. It felt good to be flying over the real, fake Earth. Flying over my house and everybody else’s too. It just felt great. With a little help from the Help menu, I soon got hang of the controls and found the mouse to be like a 1000 times better than the keyboard. The lack of a joystick never encouraged me to borrow Flight Simulator games from friends.

 

Coming to the ‘game’, the controls are pretty easy and fun. I didn’t expect it to be so good actually being the first attempt from Google. I learnt the controls within 2-3 trials, and I hope that’s good for a beginner. It’s sad that the plane and its cockpit are not visible at any point of time. And moreover the biggest downside is that, once you have moved out of familiar territory, you can completely lose your way. You can do it only if you know exactly what direction you are flying in, and what direction you want to fly in. After coming to know of Hyderabad’s co-ordinates, I managed to fly the plane from Vishakapatnam (was checking out my cousin’s house) to Hyderabad with just the compass. What an achievement. The landing obviously is the toughest of all. And with a Mach 2 plane the ground just slips away before you know it, and you end up with a black out and a window asking you to restart the simulator or exit it. But I tried and tried, and managed to land it somehow. I first flew over the city and then realised and turned back. I wanted to approach the old airport, and instead ended up landing in Hussain Sagar (which acted like solid ground) and coming to a stop exactly at Gandhi Hospital. What a co-incidence!! Maybe I need some brain treatment there after that crazy flying experience. Finally, with the feeling of having achieved something, I closed the application with delight. And as soon as I did, something went wrong with my eyes. I was on the simulator for so long that my eyes got accustomed to the movement. Once everything got stationary it felt like my eyes were on a constant Zoom out action. Everything seemed to be going away from me, the exact opposite of what was happening in the simulator. I took some time to get out of that disorientation and soon, my head filled up with all the thoughts of the project and college.

 

And I forgot everything about this, until some time ago when I decided to post.