Trip or trek? I think we had it all…

It was my first trekking experience and truly it was great one. My trek started in Bangalore itself on the way to the Majestic bus stand. Reason: Awesome traffic jam 🙂 We, the bengalureans have got used to it. I got to walk with the luggage for about 2.5 km on the curved footpaths with deceiving potholes. Finally made it to the bus stand. 7 of us; myself, thejas, daya, hemanth, ravi, rahul and giri had planned to visit dharmastala, kukke subbramanya and sringeri before, but the trek to Kumara Parvatha was a last minute decision. 6 of them had already arrived at the bus stand and i joined them on time. The timing of the trip was bad tough, since many were on their way to kukke for souramana ugadi. So had to contend with the Bengaluru sarige vahana.

I thought we can experience roller coaster only in bengaluru roads, but the roads to kukke made my view wrong. We are in the last seats of the bus, and i bet u, no fun world’s roller coaster can match it. We were literally being bounced for every second and by the time we reached kukke at 5:30am, thank god, all the joints were in place.

Refreshed ourselves in kukke and had our breakfast at the Mysore Cafe. We started of the trek with loads of water, glucose and oranges. It was the first trek, so we didn’t have any idea about the needs. We walked for about 20 minutes to the KP entrance from kukke. We were greeted by a snake!. So , all of us thrilled as to what we can expect while trekking.

We started around 9:30am, within 15 minutes , everyone were tired because of the steepness. Gulped water and continued. After 55 minutes, we met a group who had climbed from the somvarpet side. All 7, energised, were now with the goal to reach a flat land. After 2 hr inside the forest with very high humidity, all sweated out, we started to feel the coolness, indicating that we were nearing the flat land. We took a break and some snap shots. The group we met said that Bhatta’s house was nearby, so we started again. It wasn’t steep now, after another 45 minutes, we reached the Bhatta’s house. It was 1:10pm. We enjoyed the appy fizz, which drove us to reach Bhatta’s house as fast as possible. Its really great that the bhatta has lived there for 30 years. We ate the lunch, Rs. 40/-, unlimited.. There were 2 more groups there, who had come from the top. They advised us to start as fast as possible so that by 6:30 we could reach the peak. Bhatta said we would find a mantapa within 30 min, so we started again.

It was almost 1 hr, no traces of mantapa at all. We saw an infy group climbing a very steep peak.. So all were pumped up to race them. But, the steepness drained all the energy we had. What meant to be 30 min trek to manatapa acccording to bhatta, took us 2.5 hr! It was almost 5pm, only 4L of water remaining. So decided to stay in the mantapa for the night. The clouds started to form. It was a deadly experience. We hadn’t taken enough blankets, all shivering. To add, daya started to narrate the horror stories. Thejas shared his new found methods of meditation. A lone tree near the manatap feared me the most, all throughout the night. Myself and thejas gaurded the mantap while others fought for the space to sleep. At around 3 am, the sky was so clear that stars were so clearly seen. The brainies started to recognise the constellations. It was the most gruelling night i had in my life. We started to feel why were we trekking? we could have enjoyed the rock and fashion show of Utsav, BMSCE. Everyone were expecting to see the morning. Everyone were happy to see again the blue sky. Rahul, on imitating daya’s pull up’s in the mantapa broke the rock which fell over his hands and was injured. All thought, lets save our lives, lot of things to be achieved yet, so we didn’t go up further. We were disappointed as we couldn’t make it to the peak. We started to descent at 6:30 am. Getting down the steeps was also the difficult part of the trek. We were suprised that we had climbed such steeps. We reached the bhatta’s house, had our breakfast, took some snap shots and started our trek back to kukke. We were again greeted by the snake which fell on the path from the tree. Finally, made it to the starting point at around 1:30pm. Then cooled ourselves at the kumara dhara river and got the darshan at kukke. We left for dharmastala and then Sringeri. It was really a wonderful experience that i had in my life with the super sevens team.

Anyday we are in difficulty, we remember KP trek, we get the feeling that the difficulty is nothing!!

Super Seven rocks!!!!! yoooo…..

( Rahul, Ravi, Me, Hemanth, Thejas, Daya, Giri)

Kumara parvatha:

F1 pit stop.

F1 race is a co-ordination of car, driver and pit crew. The electronics that goes into the car is highly sophisticated. The mechanics and the dynamics of the car are also important. However, the pit stop plays a crucial role in the race.

A view of F1 pit stop.

US visas, a lottery!!

Getting a job in US has now become a lottery. The H1B visas are given to the outside professionals working in US companies and also graduates from the US universities. The quota for the number of visas for highly skilled workers is 65000. According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the applications have exceeded the limit. This seems to be the reason for the authorities out there to hold a lottery while approving the visas. The lottery is carried out by a computer generated random selection process with all details of the applicants fed in prior.

In addition to the professionals, the graduate applications which is restricted to 20,000 has also exceeded.

Let me get you through how this affects the Indians in specific.

Indians are highly skilled which is the reason why the US companies fish around the IIT’s, NIT’s and also the engineering colleges to get the best talent. Its not only the talent that the company is gaining, but also the lower costs for the labour. This has indeed forced companies like Microsoft, Oracle etc. to hire the Indian professionals. But with the US govt. putting a cap on the US visas has put not only the companies at risk but also the Indians will not be able to expect a clear future. The lucky one in the lottery gets the job! Well, the quality of professionals getting into US will reduce encouraging the off-shore increase. I think this would have a impact on the mindset of the Indians going to US to seek a job in a longer run since there is no job security. This would definitely help India. Well, i am highlighting the brain drain scenario that is evident presently. This would plug it.

The number of Indians going to US to pursue higher studies, be it MS or MBA has increased substantially. Its the technology, the depth of research and of-course the job that drives an Indian to pursue higher studies. Well, after spending tens of lakhs on higher studies and the commitment, do we want to put student’s future into a lottery?? The US has done that. The future of outsiders in US will be bleak in the coming years. The unemployment rate would increase in US. The 20,000 visas allocated to such students will be put into a lottery. Those who fail to get, will be put into the remaining 65000 visas for highly skilled workers.

Hope the talented students and skilled workers get justice in US….

Pranamaha..

a I u N

R Ri lr lrik

e o^N

a i au c

hayavaraT

lyann

na ma^NaNa na m

jhabha^n

gha Dha dha Shy

jabaga Da dash

kha pha Tha tha cha Ta tav

Kapay

sha Shasar

hal

What is this? Any guess?

Well, this would probably be the first thing anyone would learn in a Sanskrit class, the Maaheshwara Sutrani. It gives me some kind of excitement when i say it. This could be because i still remember it 🙂 . Sanskrit, a sacred language of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikkism, Jainism and many others dates back to around 4000 years ago. It is one of the official languages of India. Samskrutham means “to compose or something which unifies”. Those who have studied sanskrit in their school and colleges would definitely feel it, since there was some kind of a drive of studying the language. However, the curriculum for Sanskrit in the present educational system is much like a one way traffic. It doesn’t encourages students to speak in sanskrit. There is no use of studying various sandhi’s, alankara’s etc etc without knowing its usage. The language in general is diminishing. I think there should be an encouragement to speak and understand the language; to unravel the thoughts & morals the language has in its deep roots.

I recently read an article in Deccan Herald, that the students from various US universities such as MIT, UMD, CMU, UPitt, Pennsylvania State, UPenn, Purdue etc. have brought up an online Sanskrit magazine with an aim “Rachayema Samskruthabhuvanam” meaning “Shall create a Sanskrit world”. It feels great people are still interested about the language, know its importance and implications on one’s way of thinking. The various shubhashitha’s and shlokas that we recite would be meaningless unless we understand. I think its a great step taken by them.

Also, i had been to Mattoor a few years back, a village situated 4 km from shimoga and was astonished to see that this village has Sanskrit as its vernacular language with 80% of the people converse in it. Till now, the number of people speaking Sanskrit in this village has increased which is really good for the language as such.

Hope, everyone understands its importance and save the language from being routed out.

Do check : http://www.speaksanskrit.org

BBMP, looting Bengaluru??

CVS- Capital Value system is the new buzz in Bengaluru after Sakrama. The mastermind to introduce it, is the BBMP ( Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike). While the Palike has given five months of deadline to its bengaluru citizens to adhere to. I believe BBMP is being desperate to loot the citizens after its earlier scheme, Sakrama failed and faced lot of agitations from various organizations with court ordering a review into the scheme.

Sakrama, a scheme to convert the illegal part of the site owned into legal one. I feel the problem is at the roots. Any citizen before constructing a building  should have its blueprint approved by the BDA. So the question is, how can there exist a illegal building dimensions? Its because of the corruption that has deeply routed in the system which gave such illegal plan approvals. So now, the same officials, not able fill their pockets have devised this plan with exhorbitant fines which i think is unrealistic.

CVS, capital value system is a tax on the building which is proportionate to the land value at any given point of time. S0 its fluctuating tax. Its a huge burden for the middle class people. Imagine a place like Sadashivanagar or Malleshwaram were the land value is enormous, what would be the fate of the middle class people living there? Well, its a system clearly introduced to loot money from the people in the city.

BBMP  should  chose a direction to improve the conditions of Benagaluru, the garden city, provide the necessary infrastructure,  handle the ever growing traffic jams instead of introducing some senseless taxes.

An IIT experience..

I had topped in my 3rd and 4th sem exams, was very satisfied with it, which i always dreamt of, from my school days. My hardwork and some other factors drove me to achieve it. But wanted to do something different in life, wanted to put my skills in a useful way. It was an usual  boring 5th sem class in Dec 2006,  solving some senseless SM charts problem. Had many ideas running in my mind. The class got over. It was a mere coincidence or it was destined to happen. ‘N’ & ‘Ni’ approached me and asked whether i was interested in doing a robotic project. I had not even spoken once to them in 2 yrs of engineering. So, i was a bit hesitant. Anyways, i wanted to do something different other than studying some crap, i accepted. Evening we met, introduced ourselves. Within minutes, i realized that i was on my way to achieve something special. It was a competition at iit-kgp and we required a 4 member team. So i called on my friend ‘H’. The next day we met and it clicked. We had a team ready to achieve the goal; to win the robotics event. We met a couple of days in the evening and worked out the strategy. I found out the fire for success in ‘Ni’, whose words motivated that we are no less than the iit’ians. We had the semester exams coming. 15days left, stopped our work and started to concentrate on studying meaningless subjects. Exam was over, thankfully i did well, though not to my full potential.

Holidays started…  some 30 days left for the competition. We started to work on the algo., to be implemented on the bot. ‘Ni’, the most talented i had come across in my class, started to get some derivations which looked like Greek to me.  This made ‘H’ and me to start working seriously on the prj. 20 days remaining, we had no idea as to how to construct a robot. So night outs was the only solution if we had achieve success. ‘Ni”s home was our meeting point.  Algo. began to take shape. Possibility of various problems of the algo began to pop up and we accounted for it. 10 days left, we had an algo. which we felt was distinctively unique. We were very happy with it. But then came the hardware, which we had no clues as to how to tackle. ‘R’ was the lifeline. 4 of us met him and discussed, which this gave us  hope of taking the bot to iit-kgp. We began to construct the bot. ‘Ni’ and ‘H’ ( a good programmer) started to code the algo.  ‘N’ and myself looked into the hardware. With 2 days left, we had a robot almost ready waiting for the program to be loaded. Did a lot of program testing in the comp. before it was loaded into the bot. After correcting the errors in program and bot loaded with it, we expected it to run on the last day. But that didn’t happen.

We had to pack the bot and catch a train to kgp. A bit disappointed with it, we met at the railway station. We had 2 more teams from our dept. going to kgp for the event.  It was for the first time i was on my way to an IIT. I had read Five point someone by Chethan Bhagat and was very eager to experience an IIT environment. Morning 5am we reached kgp and we had volunteers to pick us. We reached the iit, kgp campus , got our team registered and went to the hostel. We had the event the next day. We didn’t have any computer to debug the code. IIT’ians are very encouraging. ‘M’ lend us the comp. We started to debug in the evening , the time tickled so fast that only to realize it was morning 6 am. Well, the commitment paid. For the first time, we had the robot running. It was one of the happiest moment. We took the bot to the arena. It was great to compete with the iit’s and nit’s.

The environment was vibrant with the robots taking the centre stage. We had the robot inspected by the organisers and were given a slot to perform. Dont know what went wrong, some connection was lost i believe, the bot didn’t work properly. The organizer gave us time and rescheduled our slot from 2:00pm to 9:00pm. However, we tried our level best to get the problem rectified. It was 11 pm, the organizer asked if we were ready. We explained the problem to him. He was convinced by it and gave us time till 1:00am. That was the kind of encouragement we got from them. I now realized why iit’ans excel more than us; it was their commitment. However, we couldn’t complete the arena and we lost.  We had explained our algo. to an iit prof. who was satisfied with the work and its uniqueness and we won the Best Algo. It was moment of satisfaction for us, after month of night outs, it paid. We are still reaping on its success 🙂 .  Another team from our coll. also won a Law of motion event which brought double happiness.

It was this point i felt that we are capable of competing with the iit’ians. It was their commitment which brought them success. It was a wonderful experience going to iit-kgp, the Billoo’s,  the rasgolla, getting caught by the police for playing cards in the train, kalighat temple and chakka’s attack on us in the train!! lolz….