The journey continues

The year 2009 is coming to an end. Many of my batchmates would agree with me that we would have thought about 2009 for so long. I wondered, in 2005, how 2009 would be because just like 2003 and 2005, we always know that 2009 is going to be a big year, atleast for our batch. Now the year 2009 has almost come to an end. Yes it did make one of the most important changes in my life.

2009 is a tag for us. If we wish to go back to SSN or attend an alumni function, we would be calling ourselves 2009 passouts. I would be referred as Kavin of 2009 batch. Kavin CSE ‘A’ is all gone. It is going to be Kavin of 2009. Lol.

Every one of our batch mates would have known that they were travelling in the same road of education until 2009. It is in 2009 we departed, each taking our own ways. Some went on for jobs, business, and some want to travel in the same path of education. I belong to the latter.

Looking back 2009, it has been a great year for TAGS. It gained popularity which spread like wild fire. More people came to adopt and we were able to do it really fast. This day happens to be the Second Anniversary of TAGS. I wish TAGS all success throughout.

I would like to wish everyone a happy and a prosperous new year. Entering a new year is just like entering a new phase. You take all the experiences you had in the previous phases and you enter the new phase with courage, determination and happiness. I wish you all a successful New Year! Let the next decade begin!

My name is 'Kavin'

It is not often that people fail to pronounce a five lettered word perfectly. I often wonder how people could find different vocal pronunciations of my name. It has occurred many times that people look at my name curiously to find out how my name is actually pronounced, stutter a bit and then pronounce it wrongly. I avoid myself from correcting them unless they ask me. Some of the pronunciations I could remember are ‘Kevin’, ‘Kaveen’, ‘Kaavin’, ‘Naveen’.

It is often funny that when people read my name, they come up with new names which could only mean one thing – they think that I wrote the name wrongly. They would ask me “Is it Kevin or Kavin?” They fail to realize that it is evident from what has been written or printed. Do I have to answer them? Lolz. If replacing vowels is a sin for a short name, then what should one call a person who replaces a consonant that clearly has complete different sounds? One of such names is Navin or Naveen. Replacing K with C is forgivable but with ‘N’?

Even these days, one of my school friends would tell the story of how he got shocked in 7^th std when my class staff in charge asked him to call a guy named ‘Kaavin’. Yeah, that is me. Since then, I am able to convince myself that people are finding it difficult to pronounce my name. Then, there used to be a tutor who pronounced my name correctly at the first time and brought in a little surprise. After the first two classes, he convinced himself that the way he was pronouncing my name was wrong and called me ‘Kevin’.

There are still some childhood friends and newly sprouted acquaintances who call me ‘Kevin’. In one of my chats with a super senior of my school, he told that he remembers me because I am full of pranks. That made me realize that he was talking about another guy named Kevin, who is again from the school I studied.

Earlier when I was in 10^th or 11th std, my name used to come as first in the Yahoo! people search results but now my name has been pushed back and it seems like a lot of Kavins were born all of a sudden. It goes the same with the Orkut community. Earlier there used to be just 5 members with the name Kavin and then after a year, the community had grown to 50 members. There was a topic in the forum about how often the name gets pronounced wrongly. That brought in a conclusion that I am not the only one. Lolz.

If I were to write down how it is pronounced, it should be ‘Kah-vy-n’ (Thanks to Wikipedia for the written form of pronunciation) and I am glad to say that this is my 150^th post and I am more than surprised to say how slow my blogging rate has become. I would like to blog at a higher rate from now on. See you people. Cheers, Kavin.

College Redemption

There are many things that I missed posting when I was back in India. One among them is this post.Being in SSN, the rules and restrictions of other similar colleges seemed so weird. When one would talk about the rules and restrictions of such colleges, I have often thought that it is either a rumour or an exaggeration.

One of such rules that you may see is the formal dress code of engineering colleges. Such rules exist in most colleges. Some of certain rules are wearing absolute formal dress like pants and tucked in shirts. If that is not enough, some restrictions are also imposed. One of the worst cases would be asking the students to wear only light colored shirts and asking them not to wear black.

Few of my friends happened to go to one of the college to distribute promotional posters of our department symposiums and they had happened to go to such college by wearing a tee shirt and jeans. One of the security guards didn't let them go until they proved that they were students from other college. There is also an instance I heard that the security guard didn't let one person with a tee shirt to enter the college and that person ended to be the father of a student studying in that college.

There is one rule that exists that gives you a glance of the upper limit of stupidity of engineering colleges. That is the rule of asking boys to not speak to girls and vice versa. How stupid can they get? What are they trying to do? There is one famous college, which also came in news channels for the same reason, that appoints security squads to prevent such things from happening. The management tried to elude the accusations of the reporters by saying that the boys and girls are allowed to speak during class hours but not allowed during the rest of the time.

One day, after the classes got over, my friends and I exited the college to board a bus to go to Kelambakkam. We didn't get any bus for a long time and right then, a bus from such college stopped for us. It was empty and it seemed the driver wanted to give a lift. My friends boarded in the front staircase and I alone boarded in the rear staircase. As I tried to join my friends in the front, I was shocked to see a rope tied between two pillars and that separated the front portion of the bus and the rear portion of the bus. "The rule is true!", I thought. The rule is that girls should occupy only the front portion and the boys should occupy only the rear portion.

Not to forget, the driver was actually expecting money for the short lift to Kelambakkam and also started demanding when we got down. After negotation, we did pay a little amount. Speaking about the bus drivers of that college, my college buses would seem nice when compared to them. There are more than 100 buses in that college and a student is not allowed to board any bus he likes and the driver wouldn't even consider stopping for the poor students who missed the bus. A student wouldn't be allowed inside if he goes late and hence the student has only one option for a day, i.e to catch the bus. Another thing to be noted was that a student was not allowed to write a semester exam because he did not follow the dress code and was asked to do the necessary corrections and come. The only place where he could do the corrections is hostel where he is banned from going.

Are there any other ways to make an engineering life like hell for the students?