So I have been reading the novel Revolution 2020 by Chetean Bhagat in the metro during my daily commutes. I've been through the first 100 pages and am feeling very nostalgic today. The same old feeling when JEE results came out and about that feeling when I couldn't clear the first time around. The depression of the drop year, the feeling of "eating, drinking and sleeping IIT" and the deparate love affair of those times.
I felt so happy today, that after deboarding the metro I went for a ciggarette and tea. I have left the habit of smoking, but still I did it for the old times sake. It was so awesome. I was finally feeling internal bliss after a very very long time.
Last week went by super fast. It feels like it was only yesterday that I was wailing about another week of work ahead. Today is Sunday again and again I feel scared. It feels wrong.
My first few notions of my own email account came when I was with my dearest friend Abhinav. The time when gmail came out, I vaguely remember us going in a riskshaw to his house and talking in astonishment about a mailing service which gives 1GB of storage. "Mother of Emails" as it was called back then.
So we created our first emails from the invites we got. We were discussing the passwords we had used and how long it should be to be really secure. At some point I said that Bill Gates might have the longest and the most secure password in the world. His password might be so long that he might take at least a minute to type it. I know it was stupid and it was way back in 2004, I think. I don't know why but those memories just flashed by for some reason.
So the stupid me forgot my iPad at office. It was Friday and I was just in a hurry to start my weekend. But then from the metro I called my senior there and asked hi to put it in a safe place. No harm done.
Also I was just astonished how good I am at forgetting things. More at not giving a feck than forgetting really. ( just came across a chat meme with the word 'feck'. Rad? ). So I tried to recall what my iPad's screen size is: hmm, 11 point something. But what if someone asked me. Bezzatti. So I just went through apple's website.
Mine is a 16 GB ipad3, wifi+3g with retina display screen of size 9.7 inch , 2048by1536 resolution, dual core Apple A5 processor, 5MP back and VGA front camera. It has upto 10 hours of continuous wifi browsing, video or music, dolby digital 5.1 speakers and lots of other cool stuff.
I posted an ad on olx.com to sell my old books some months back. I got a response yesterday. Someone interested in buying it. But now I can't find the book even after I've been searching all morning. Come to think of it, just a crazy thought appeared. May be once you post something on olx.com, it just disappears and gets transported to their silos. May be olx.com was started by aliens.
Symptoms are severe burning sensation in the food pipe, reflux of acids in the throat, stomache and a general uncomfort in the chest. I have been having this problem for sometime now. I suspect some kind of lung infection. I feel better relieved to some extent when I think it just might the stomach instead of my lungs. I am going to see the doctor tomorrow anyway.
One of the most inspiring things I have learned here at Info Edge is the amount of respect that everyone gives to the code. Cron scripts here are treated with emotions, talking to them while making them, feeling anxious when the script is running, appreciating the script when the results are good like a human and feeling sad when something breaks.
Also the lingo used here in normal conversations to discuss issues has a touch of typical informal-indian lingo that we used as kids.
"Wahan code phat rha h... mere server pe theek chal rha tha but live pe mar gya"
( The code is breaking there.. it was running fine on local server but died on live)
"Bohot sahi kaam kar rha h ye.. saara kaam sahi se kia isne is baar, jaldia bhi kardia isne.. good h"
(The code is working really good.. did all its work reall well this time and also took very less time.. nice). I love it here. :)
We use ubuntu here. When I first started using this OS a long time back, one feature that interested me was that of locking screen. I always imagined using this feature being inside an office with cubicles and preventing other colleagues from accessing your terminal when you were out for a coffee or something.
I just imagined it that way with no previous experience, just the picture I derived from american movies: just a manhattan style office, coffee vending machines, cubicles, terminals with linux with locked screens, those typical plastic window curtains, high rises visible across the window, etc.
Now that I spend 9 hours daily inside my Info Edge office and some of that virtual picture has substantiated splendidly. There are cubicles alright, coffee vending machines, my own linux terminal which I can lock whenever I go for a coffee or sandwhich; those exact curtains, and trees visible outside them. Its unreal. Its great here. The work is good, people are nice and everything.
I don't feel like I ideally should. It does feel weird, that of something coming to an end. But I've never really felt attached to anyone, place or thing, hence the apathy. What bothers me although, is the sudden change in schedule that is visible on the horizon. The shift from careless-college to a pensive-professional life. There is too much uncertainty.
The journey for the last four years has been very happening. Especially the first two years. The next two were sober. A little downward slant in my confidence graph which I regret sometimes. I port it to the reason of me leaving hostel. Had I stayed there, things would have been very different for me. You just don't abandon a house which you've been building from scratch for a very long time. All I was left with was a broken reputation, faded friendships and a confidence lost with time.
It was not that bad though. I learnt other things. I was able to give more time to my parents and stayed in a better health. So basically its a confused reaction I would give if someone asked me how it feels to leave college. Too many happy memories for sure, but also too old to try and relive them. As I told a friend once, "What you are missing is already gone" and telling this to myself always makes me feel much better.
There are couple of things I would regret though. I could never have a girl-friend in college. Not in the conventional sense, but a companion for mutual learning and caring at a respectful level. May be because I don't have the swag that ladies prefer. May be I am not that socially outgoing. May be the girls weren't good enough either. An engineering college is almost always the wrong place if you want to meet a girl of your taste. Too complicated, fuck it.
Another thing I would regret is my back in Optical Communication paper in my seventh semester. If you are a bad ass adrenalin junkie, boasting of a back does make you look cool and makes everyone else feel jealous. But if you are one of the jealous lot, and later try to be a bad ass adrenalin junkie when you get an unexpected back, its not the same. You try to act cool, but at the back of your mind, you can't get the guilt out of your system. You just try to convince yourself, that its a dream and it will be all right somehow. I can't drop the paper either, its a compulsory subject. I'll have to wait another year to get my engineering degree and that is if I clear the retest. This ruins the moment. Damn!
Meanwhile I was rummaging my old hostel stuff and found this diary. There were lyrics of a song written at the end which I remember writing two years back. Ironically, the song fits this situation and its a nice song too. I'll share it here along with the lyrics.
One of the earliest songs I ever heard. The tune of this song is like embedded inside my head. It plays back sometimes when I get up and look at the clock. The lyrics don't make much sense to me. Its just the warm, juvenile, dreamy emotion attached to it.
