07.13.09
T minus 7 days
Life is about to change….for the worse. ‘Chilling Out’ as we know it, will soon cease to exist. It’s the time of the year where you can’t even do anything else thanks to God’s gift of sporadic heavy rains in Mumbai and drought in every other farm in the country which only asks for a modicum of rain.
College reopens on the 20th of July. What’s weird is that most people don’t even know this. They still think the big day is on 3rd of August and yet I doubt I’ll ever see those guys even in the first week of August.
To us, the new final year students of XIE (hopefully), this day adds another headache as we need to present a PowerPoint presentation about our project on the 23rd and I haven’t even decided on a project yet.
I guess we can only vent our frustration out on the freshers who will turn up shortly after they complete the completely unnecessary and cumbersome procedure that is CAP (Centralized Admission Process, jeez…).
Luckily, this time a couple of things outside of XIE have changed and you can expect to see some of these things for real:
- The new Railway Budget has further cut down costs for a student railway season ticket. Although I’m not sure if this is applicable for both 1st and 2nd class coaches, I’m fairly certain that at least the 2nd class passes are covered under this scheme.
- Aah, the freakin’
Bandra-WorliRajiv Gandhi Sea Link (I’m waiting congress…where’s my effing money) is finally going to almost entirely transfer all the traffic that originates from Lower Parel till Mahim along Senapati Bapat Road and should ease the flow of traffic outside XIE (which is a good thing as I had to pay 20 bucks once as taxi fare thanks to good ’ol traffic.) - XIE has a new coat of paint which will enthral those with olfactory fetishes.
- The scum of XIE (previous B.E. batch) are gone *phew* (lol, kidding. it’s not like we’re gonna miss you but u know what I mean
) Some of the other scums (profs) of XIE are gone.(Note to self: Never ever write something like this especially when they have you by the balls when it comes to internals)
I also hope that some of these things are implemented this semester:
- Upload class assignment and project files on the XIE website (like ex-lecturer Reef who used to do that). That saves me some fucking time and doesn’t require me to carry a pen drive to college every fucking day like a kiss-ass just to make sure I get all the presentations from the lecturers as soon as they use them, along with making false promises to every other bugger in class without a pen-drive about mailing them everything that I copied.
- UPDATE THE @&(^%$ WEBSITE! What’s the point of hosting it when there’s no relevant info on it? Universities today use twitter to broadcast college related news and we can’t even keep a website up-to-date. Ask the students, we’ll help. (okay okay okay…Rahul sir asked me a couple of times earlier about this, but I had my vivas and sem exams….Sorry man. I can *hopefully* help now
) - Better organization of the college magazine. I can’t blame anyone for last year’s disaster because I saw what unrealistic deadlines and politics the magazine team had to put up with. The good thing is that Meera ma’am wants to start collecting articles right away so start scribbling some neat shit during boring lectures and pass it on to her.
- Be lenient to us about our Spandan budget. We’re undergrad engineering students for fucks sake, not hardcore management gurus. Cut us some slack. Engineering events always include unavoidable costs such as components and hardware so there’s nothing we can do about it (other than make Spandan a software only event which would be uber-lame)
- Let us play football/basketball/table-tennis during college hours. It’s not like you’re reducing bunking. People bunk anyway so at least you’ll keep a couple of us hovering around the college premises. Think about it.
I have a warm fuzzy feeling that this semester is going be really interesting, so let’s hope for the best as we enter the gates of hell letting our lives be vulnerable to Mumbai University’s charming fuck ups.
Cya in college!
EDIT: The college website now mentions that college reopens on 21st July. So don’t turn up on the 20th
07.02.09
Play Counter-Strike Online
For those who can’t imagine life without Counter-Strike, here’s some good news.
A couple of guys play CS 1.6 on Hamachi on weekends during the semester but now that we’ve got a couple more weeks left of our vacations, it’s become more of an everyday thing.
If you wanna join in, download Hamachi (Free) and join the following network:
Username : xie47
Password : xie47
You’ll often find me pumping bullets out there, so be sure to drop in.
The server IP depends on who’s online so ask for the server IP in the network chat-room. If you have a microphone, connect it to your computer as many of use ‘team-speak‘ as we’re playing. The most popular maps that are used are de_dust2, de_dust, cs_untitled and de_inferno.
P.S: As this post will be crawled by search engines, it might attract spammers and other players. If you’re just a random dude looking to play some CS, you’re more than welcome to join in but even a single spam chat message will get you banned.
And So It Begins…
After 3 excruciating years in Engineering at XIE, we were finally awarded a 1.5 month vacation by Mumbai University.
I flipped out on hearing the news and started chalking out plans on how to spend 1.5 months in the best way possible. I knew it was too good to be true. There had to be a catch. But every passing day after June 11th kept inspiring me to give up my cynical nature.
A few days later, a SMS message was being circulated which looked like this:
Suvarna mam wants 2 address T.E.Comps.Mon,29-06-09 at 9.00 am.Pass on d word.
Just what I fucking needed. It was the fly in the ointment. As soon as I read that I said to myself ”Pessimism FTW!” and I made a few calls to gain some more information about the message.
Apparently Suvarna Ma’am wanted to talk to us about the final year project. She told us how the system works in a nutshell and asked us to submit our project groups there itself. She also expected us to make a presentation about the overview of our short-listed projects on the 21st or 23rd of July. Now wait a minute….We haven’t even got a confirmation from a company yet and she wants us to submit a fucking presentation? Every company we approach politely show us the finger and who can blame them during this slump?
Then we were told that college would be reopening on the 21st of July so that they would have more time to complete the syllabus. What the fuck happened to Mumbai University’s circular stating that all colleges should reopen on 3rd August? If you delve into all the technical intricacies of that statement, you’ll realize that the circular is just a guideline and what it really means is that colleges should reopen latest by 3rd August.
Then we are reminded that the next two semesters are going to be university exams and given the same lectures about how messed up our lives can get (as if it isn’t already) if we screw up those exams. And to add to that, almost everyone is giving the GRE/TOEFL/CAT/GMAT/etc. so that’s going to be an additional headache.
It’s amazing how one SMS can snowball into such a major pain in the ass.
So basically, the next (read: last) 2 weeks of our vacation are to be spent in exploiting every influence in this shit-hole of a system (which BTW prides itself on being meritocratic in nature) and work on a project under the guidance of a company.
The next semester has essentially commenced so brace yourself to deal with it.
In other news, apparently nobody cares about throwing a farewell party for the B.E. batch that passed out recently so they’re planning a little something for themselves which is being financed by the college. If it weren’t for the freakin’ general elections ruining the entire semester exam schedule, we’d (current T.E. batch) throw a helluva party. Sorry guys, but there ain’t much we can do about it.
Also in other news, speaking as a senior now in XIE, I can assure you that any extra-curricular or co-curricular activity that I’m involved in will be an attempt to set standards in awesomeness. I’ll also try and reduce all the crappy red-tape that’s required for any idea to be implemented.
Also Also in other news, since this will (hopefully) be my last year in XIE, I’ve decided to blog extensively about my college experiences and will share the greatest and the worst moments of our lives in XIE as the days progress.
Hasta la proxima.
