Last weekend, I spent some time looking back at the photographs I took in a span of nearly 2 years. There were almost 1000 photos. Looking at the photographs, I sensed that many of the photographs I took were very poor. The main problem was I didn't focus the entire subject. Either I missed some part of the subject or included some unwanted object.
I sorted out some photographs that looked nice as 'My Best Photographs'. There were 12 photos in all. I present the Picassa Web Album below.
We had some fascinating activity in the Communication Lab period today afternoon.
Most of the students were not present in the class. They had gone to practice for the cultural competitions. Only 32 out of 67 were in the class. So we had an interesting game. The class was divided into two. But our group had 12 members and the opposite group had 20 members.
We were given the theme ‘Entertainment’ and were asked to write as many related words as possible in 5 minutes. The team leader must be the one to write. I was the leader of my group. Pasanga ennaiye palikada akitanga!
They were saying many words and I was scribbling them. By the end of 5 minutes we had written 28 words and the same time the other group lead by Bala Kumar wrote some 41 words. Now both of us were given 2 minutes extra time to write more words. In that time, our boys came out with 43 expressions, whereas the other team wrote only 22 words. Actually the secret was we divided the job. Vimal wrote on one side of the note and I wrote on the other side.
We were asked to read the words. I started reading and in the middle I was unable to control the laughter. The reason was, a series of words Vimal had written were Football, Volleyball, Cricket, Hockey, Tennis, Boxing followed by Theatre, Cinema, Movie. Anyway the staff said nothing. But the other team started shouting that they all meant one and the same. Nothing happened in favor of them!
By this time 40 minutes had passed and we were told to write something creative using all those words. We sat in to write a story. The story began well, but within some time it collapsed, since everyone suggested something and I was not able to follow. It was a great comedy reading the story. I present it below, but don’t know whether you will be able to follow (all words in red denote the words related with entertainment).
I have had so many dreams in my life. Some were just dreams. I have thought of riding a horse. I was amused to see sea surfers. Trekking will be a nice experience, but I never got a chance. I wanted to visit a resort, go boating nearby seashore. I wanted to go on an adventurous outing and put a campfire in a hill station. I wish to visit a village and visit the temples there. I like to ride a sport bike with an earphone in my ear. I wish to be entertained in an amusement park. And last of all I wanted India to win the hockey gold medal in 2008 Olympic. Some dreams have come true. India won the T20 cricket world cup in 2007. I have visited palaces. I have played football. I’m collecting coins…
When we were spinning the story (if you are a writer, forgive me) time was out. I finished this story within 10 minutes that too hearing 12 different suggestions continuously. To end with Vimal read the story. The opposite team just wrote some sentences using these words. That was the end of it. The greatest comedy was some guys were fighting ‘nanga than jeichom… nanga than jeichom’… Enna Koduma sir idhu!!!
In the end it was announced that we won the game. Though we collapsed with the story, we were announced the winners, encouraging our effort.
In my last post, I mentioned that I’ll be writing about my memories of the Quiz competition. A mixture of good fortune and misfortune yielded us the 3rd prize.
The competition occurred last Wednesday (11-2-10). There were 7 teams (1 from each department). Each team consisted of 3 members. In our department myself, Raja and a junior (whom I didn’t know before) participated.
We didn’t prepare anything before the event. The event was by 3.30 pm in the seminar hall. We went by 3 pm. Some EEE boys were standing there reading some huge books. Naanga jollya ninnu kadha pesitu irundhom! Namakum mathavangalukum oru difference vendama?
We were called by 3.30 pm. The HOD of English department was the Quiz Master. We were team 5. There were 5 rounds in all, namely General, Science & Tech, Sports, Rapid fire and Visuals. A correct answer yields 2 points for a direct question and 1 point in case of a passing question. This applied for all the rounds except the 4th.
We didn’t score any points by the end of 1st round. In the 2nd round we scored 1 point. The question was “When Graham Bell discovered Telephone, what did he speak in the phone?” It came to us as a pass question. I remembered that he called his assistant. I said “Please come here”. He was expecting the exact answer. But other teams also failed to give the exact answer. So, he awarded us with the point. The actual answer was “Mr. Watson, come here! I need you”.
The next round was Sports round. We had a lot of luck in this round. A question was “When and where did India win its 1st Olympic hockey gold medal?” I remembered it was in 1928, but I forgot where. The next team answered it was at Amsterdam. So we got .5 marks each. Another question was “In a golf match if a ball is lost, how long will they search?” Team 6 answered “10 minutes” I guessed it was 5 and it ended as the right answer. Another question was “In which game, the term Long and Short Corner is used?” We knew it is Hockey. Finally our direct question was “In a game of Tug of War, what is the maximum number of players?” Raja told me it was either 7 or 8. I told him to go ahead with the answer. He said 8 and it was the right answer. By the end of this round 4.5 points were added to our table. Scores of Significant teams at the end of this round were as follows
Team 1 (EC)-5… Team 2 (CS)-2… Team 5 (Mech)-5.5… Team 6 (MCA)-5.5… Team 7 (MBA)-7…
The next round was Rapid Fire. The rules were: there will be 10 questions. The answers should be in yes/no format. The team leader must answer the questions. A correct answer meant +1 and a wrong answer meant -1, whereas a pass meant 0. In this round Team 1 scored 2 points (4-2), team 2 scored 7 points (8-1).
In our turn I made blunders. The 1st question was right, 2nd one was “New York was once known as New Amsterdam”. I should have passed, but I answered yes. It was wrong. The 3rd one was right. 4th one was “Atlantic ocean is the largest ocean in the world”. It was very clear that Pacific Ocean is the largest. I was going to answer No, my junior team mate said yes to me and I blurted yes. The 5th question was “James Cook discovered Australia” I was quite sure he did, but I was not dead sure. So, I passed, but the answer was yes. We were 0. My mind was clouded by then. I was not even able to listen to the questions. Raja told me the answer and I repeated them. We scored 4points (6-2). Team 6 confused more than us. They finished with 0 points (4-4). Team 7 scored 9 points (9-0). The scores were
Team 1 (EC)-7… Team 2 (CS)-9… Team 5 (Mech)-9.5… Team 6 (MCA)-5.5… Team 7 (MBA)-16…
It was clear Team 7 was the winner. The competition was for the 2nd prize. The 5th round was visuals. A photo will be displayed and we needed to identify who it was. We identified it correctly getting 2 points. But team 2 got a pass question and also answered their direct question scoring 3 points. So the result was
1st: Team 7 with 18 points
2nd: Team 2 with 12 points
3rd: Team 5 with 11.5 points.
We could have got the 2nd place with a little effort. But it was all mind game. You need to be cool. A good lesson learnt at the end of the day.
Anyway it was good to win the 3rd prize. There were appreciations from my classmates. Even the faculty members appreciated us and it was quite unexpected!
Happy Reading!!!
P.S: Some Interesting information from the Quiz:
The animal that sleeps standing is horse.
Albert Einstein got his Nobel Prize for Photoelectric effect, not for the Relativity Theory.
Nobel Prizes are given from 1901.
India got a chance to participate in the 1950 Brazilian football world cup. But they didn’t participate since they didn’t know to play with football boots.
In this post I’ll be writing about the illegal things that are happening in the college cultural competitions.
Interdepartmental Cultural competitions are taking place in our college from last Tuesday. There will be lot of competitions like Skit, Dance, Song, Adzap, Quiz, etc. The competitions are scheduled up to next Friday. The winner gets 10 points, runner 5 and the 3rd place team/individual 3 points. These points will be added to the department table and whoever tops the table gets the Cultural shield for that year.
This year CS was dominating the tables from the 1st day. I was wondering how they came to the limelight all of a sudden. Today I got a chance to coordinate the Ad Zap event and thereby I came to know all the things they were doing to steal the points.
The event in charge for Ad Zap event was a senior lecturer from our department. So he just called me, Bala, Vimal and Santosh to coordinate the event. Santosh was there in our Ad Zap team and hence the other 3 of us were there managing the venue and keeping the time. The judge was the AHM from school. Time allotment was 4 minutes for preparation and 4 minutes for presentation. There was a boy’s team and a girl’s team from each department.
The event was conducted in the drawing hall. Audiences other than participants were not allowed to watch the event. There were 4 staff members from the CS department including their HOD (there was none from the other departments). When the CS girls’ team came there was a loud applause from the CS boys’ team and the staffs. Whenever they did something idiotic they laughed and clapped as if they had no brains. That was enough to stir the judge.
Now CS HOD told their boys’ team to go last (teams were allowed to choose their lot). She came to the event coordinator and said that they will take 3 minutes for preparation and 5 minutes for presentation. That was beyond the rules but we had no other go but to accept. They were the last which meant they had enough time to prepare since they knew what their topic was, when the previous team came. The preparation time was meant for the 6 members, but many others assisted them.
Within this time a lot of students rushed in the hall from nowhere. What is to be noted is they were all CS students. When their team came they clapped, shouted and did whatever was possible to encourage them. Whenever something humorous was said, they shouted. That was enough to impress the judge. After the end of their presentation, they were yelling ‘CS, CS’ which is considered in disciplinary (in our college!!!). Last year when our guys did something like this in folk dance competition we were disqualified from the event for the same. Today it went just like that!
Today was one of the worse victories I’ve ever seen. I just remember what Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of modern Olympics said
L'important dans la vie ce n'est point le triomphe, mais le combat, l'essentiel ce n'est pas d'avoir vaincu mais de s'être bien battu (which means)
The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.
After all, these things will yield them the prizes and may be the shield, but I’m damn sure that they will never have the satisfaction or pleasure of winning! But we will have the pleasure of having fought so well.
Also, I would like to congratulate Sundar who has won III prize in the Pencil Art competition. I was present in our team that won the III prize in Quiz. I’ll write those nice experiences in my next post.
Last week, there was an interdepartmental paper presentation in our college. It was named Mosaic, since Mosaic has all the colors in it and this paper presentation event had all the departments participating in it.
I and Bala Kumar sent a paper titled ‘Locomotion Simulator’ and we were selected to present our paper. We were confident of presenting the paper well, but we collapsed there. Personally, it was a very embarrassing situation for me. After the presentation, I thought about the mistakes we committed and learnt a lot from it.
First of all, we were overconfident. We went to a symposium in another college last year and won the 2nd prize. Before that presentation we discussed a lot about how to present and how to answer the questions. This time we didn’t converse at all. We just went and presented the paper.
Another reason was the ‘judge factor’. The main judge was from EEE department. So he was in favor of EEE papers. But thinking about it later, I realized that was a very natural thing. Our paper was also mechatronic in nature since it had to do a lot with microcontroller. So the fact was we didn’t impress him. That was the truth.
In paper presentations we need to finish it within time. The allotted time was 10 minutes, but we finished our paper in 6 minutes, which created an impression that ours was a very short one. There were a lot of things in our paper and we failed to elaborate them.
Finally my friends told that we were affected by ‘bad luck’. When we were presenting our paper, there was a sudden power cut. Though it came back in 5 seconds, it took 10 minutes for the projector to work. Though that is not a very normal thing, sometimes these sorts of things occur. Thinking about it I remembered something that I read in ‘The Last Lecture’ written by Randy Pausch. I present the matter below
Chapter 46: All You Have Is What You Bring With You. Page No: 160
… I’ve admired people who are over-prepared. In college, I had a classmate named Norman Meyrowitz. One day he was giving a presentation on an overhead projector and in the middle of his talk, the light bulb on the projector blew out. There was an audible groan from the audience. We’d have to wait ten minutes until someone found a new projector.
“It’s okay”, Norm announced. “There’s nothing to worry about”.
We watched him walk over to his knapsack and pull something out. He had brought along a spare bulb for the over head projector. Who would even think of that?
Our professor, Andy Van Dam, happened to be sitting next to me. He leaned over and said, “This guy is going places”. He had that right. Norm became top executive at Macromedia Inc., where his efforts have affected almost everyone who uses Internet today.
Another way to be prepared is to think negatively.
Yes, I’m a great optimist. But when trying to make decision, I often think of the worst-case scenario. I call it “The Eaten by Wolves Factor”. If I do something, what’s the most terrible thing that could happen? Would I be eaten by the wolves? …
So, I decided the next time I’m on to something important I would think about “The Eaten by Wolves Factor”, so that I would be comfortable in those situations.
Apart from us, the paper presentation was good. There were many innovative topics like Micro engines, MEMS, Image Processing, Hybrid Vehicles, AI, etc. Gowthaman and Ganesh suffered a lot. They were the last to present and none of the judges seemed to listen to them. They were interested in winding the section.
Failure is the Stepping Stone of Success!
Happy reading!!!
P.S: To know more about Randy Pausch and his last lecture please visit www.thelastlecture.com
