A 'Last Day'

Okay. So here we are finally. Am in office on my last official working day. Given that I actually haven't been to office since the day I resigned 4 weeks ago, and that I really had stopped working a long time before that, today is largely symbolical :P. Also I had to come in to return my card, laptop etc, say bye to people and perhaps collect a farewell gift ;).

Colleagues are surprised when they learn that I am not moving onto a new job but rather moving back to home country and doing nothing, at least for a few months. It still seems to fun to tell people of my plans, or rather the lack of them, and watch their expressions :D.

Quit.

So I resigned from my job. The notice period of 4 weeks starts now, which basically means I will be paid for 4 more weeks for barely doing any work ;)

Let me explain before the bombardment of questions like: "found new job?", "what next?", "why?" et al.

I haven't found any new job and I do not know 'what next' in terms of my career. In fact, am not even that bothered about it right now. All I know is that in a month's time I shall be returning to Hyderabad and staying at home for a few months. How many? Again, I don't know :P

Several justifications do exist for this apparently radical decision --

£. Money? It is a myth that one needs to be continually employed. Why can't one work for just a while, save up some money, stop working and live on the savings until they are exhausted, then go back to work and repeat the cycle? Of course, it is not possible for everyone, but I have no responsibilities or commitments and I can afford to do this ;). Also having the safety net called family provides the required confidence for the step.

$. Health. There is the belief that going home will improve the health. This approach hasn't been verified and it may not work. However, staying at home will certainly relieve the stress of managing everything oneself. Being completely independent is actually quite fun but it is not that much fun any more when you are barely able to hold everything together. In the fairly ill periods, the idea of being back home seems very inviting, the familiarity and support reassuring. However, in the fairly okay periods, the happy self takes over and questions the logic of leaving behind my happening life here - all the friends, the gatherings, some of the comforts, the weather ;), the ground-breaking sky-shattering research work, etc - for some drab unexciting existence back home. In the end, I suppose the former sense prevailed.

Wow, my medical conditions can actually have a major influence on my career. I never looked at it that way, until now.

€. Job? It is not as if I was looking to continue in this job all my life. Plans to move onto something were always in the making. Just that nothing came up that was worth moving onto. Well, I seem to have decided to move on, nevertheless :P. Doesn't imply that I will end up finding awesome work next, but maybe it's better to move than being stuck in the doldrums - even if the doldrums are around a relaxing tropical paradise.

On that unusual extension to the clichéd metaphor, we shall end our 'dear diary' chat for today :P.

Awake ... and this is October

»» Okay, this would be my first post on the new upgraded version of Blogger. This upgrade should have happened many years ago. While others like Wordpress and Tumblr reached the moon, Blogger was still building a boat to cross a river. At least, finally now it has managed to catch up with the others. Oh, and why did I persist with this dinosaur-like blogging platform for so long, you may ask. I can only attribute my dedication to Blogger to my laziness and the reluctance to change my blog URL. Anyhow, google has finally deigned that Blogger needs to be improved, and lo, behold, it has!

«« Why haven't I posted in September? Oh, in case you haven't noticed, over the past year, I have been striving to at least post once a month. And I have managed to maintain the trend. Until September of course. My excuse? I was to wake up when September ends :P. Okay okay, that is quite a cliche now :P. Truth be told, it didn't cross my mind until towards the end of September. And then, surprise of surprises, I was so caught up with work and other activities, that I barely had time to sit down and procrastinate. Of course, such rare busy'ness does bring out my inherently awesome writing abilities. But in this case, they were being put  to task for writing the research papers rather than inane blog posts (this shouldn't be construed as a claim that the research papers are extremely important :P ).  In the end, I decided to let September pass by without a blog-post rather than forcing out a pointless, mediocre post (clearly, the same reasoning doesn't seem to hold for October).

«« Working with the real world is way more painful than meddling around with things that only exist in simulations or in the abstract domain of mathematics. And this real world pain arises out of two things: hardware and humans (or replace 'humans' with 'unaware', to maintain consistency :P). Hardware works or doesn't work as per its fancy. When it works, you start frantically figuring out why it is finally working, and before you make any progress, it would stop working. Then you spend time figuring out why it worked initially. The cycle continues until you replace the hardware and begin a new cycle or, you replace the task and not need the hardware :P.  And as about humans, they are erratic, irrational and afraid of everything. They might exhibit these essential behaviours through an assortment of other annoying characteristics... 

Does the above sound like I might be a supporter of the creation of the Matrix?

222 = 11010 ... and we have a job!!

Base 2 and base 3 clearly present the progress over the last year, the end of a revolution, around the sun of course ;). Yeah, am sorry for coming up with my mandatory birthday blogpost a week late, but then, I am not idle anymore :P. Anyway, on this momentous occasion, what should I talk about? Why not my new, in fact, my first ever employment? Yes people, I finally got employed, just before turning 26 :D. And I have quite an unique job description ;). Before we delve into that, just to be clear, I have tried my best to remain jobless .. but it's just too tough .. had to acquiesce at the end :P. The process of getting this job, by itself, is a fascinating story ... will be willing to reveal in a more personal setting (in chats I mean :P) and not here ...

Anyways, the job title is 'Research Engineer'. I shall be working in the same field (multi-agent systems aka a part of AI) as my PhD which is also my specialisation in BTech. I am employed by a company, which is sponsoring a research project with my former research group at the University where I did my PhD. And the company has no expertise whatsoever in this field. But it is quite a leading one in its field, which is totally unrelated to my research field. Oh yeah, I am now supposed to be working on this project that the company has with the University. So I am attending project meetings at the University with my former group mates. And I am also attending related meetings with the few members in the company who are overseeing/observing/helping the project. My university group mates call me the company spy, and the company might be considering me as the university spy. Yeah, I now lead the life of an double agent (or double double agent?). In a week, I am spending 3 days at the company office and two days in the university lab. And not doing much work in either places yet ;). Can reverse the ratio too, if I want. "Matrix" was always a good example of my work (as cloning 'Agent' Smith would certify) :P .. but now I think I shall nickname by job as "Matrix 007"

Vacate ... vacant .. and now going home!!!

After complaining about it for almost a week, on thursday, I had set upon the task of clearing my desk/drawers/shelves in the lab. And, it was pretty easy. It mainly required throwing away several kilos of printed paper into the recycling bin. These pages were basically versions of my various papers, reports and thesis filled with the supervisors comments. I don't own any books in the lab and haven't stored anything much there either. So, all my stuff from the lab eventually fit into a single small backpack. It mainly contained the binded final version of the reports and thesis.

Thursday evening had the so called farewell party with my labmates and was awesome :). Oh, and how did feel to have been vacating my desk? Not very pleasant perhaps, after all, it had been somewhat my home for 3 years! Yeah, my actual house did change over this 3 year period, but my desk and my lab had been a constant...

And in 10 hours, begins the journey home! In an Airbus A380-800, that is the huge huge double decker plane :D! And with that, officially begins my joblessness vacationing period of 70 days at least. Well, not that I have done any semblance of work since the thesis corrections. It's mostly been partying and partying :D.

And now, we move onto a completely different topic. Since, I am finally trying to ease back into my voracious reading mode, here is an interesting extract:

=====
"You are now bored of talking to me now and you will let me pass unhindered"
"Gosh, good try. But I'm afraid I'm not. Actually, I'm going to eat you"
"You aren't scared of limes, are you?"
"I am frightened of nothing!"
"Nothing?"
"Nothing"
"Are you extremely frightened of nothing?"
"Absolutely terrified of it"
"You know, I have nothing in my pockets, would you like to see it?"
"No, I most definitely would not", and then he disappeared.
=====
Nothing matters. It most definitely does!

The above extract is from the novel I read this week "Anansi boys" by Neil Gaiman ... its a somewhat farcical, somewhat fantastical kind of comedy. Let's say, a non sci-fi Douglas Adams kind of a book.

post-defence ramblings + abstracts

./restart abstractness
[about to start] ctrl-s [long break] ctrl-q [memory blank] [vocabulary found wanting]
just a simple question: did you ever get anything right at the time that you desired it most? or has it always come late, too late that you no longer cared much about it?
Or is it the other way round? Those that you don't manage to obtain become more and more desirable, and those that are on their way lose their attractiveness such that by the time you actually get them, you have lost most of the interest?
Either ways, it's a pity, "ain't it so"?
#ctrl-c

Oh! by the way, I felt like rambling the below few bits, a week after my PhD viva .. but never really got down to posting the post .. anyways, here it is [was written on 4th or 5th nov ]

A lot of people in the lab are apparently aware of me and my name. People who I never thought knew my name (and hence couldn't have really figure out who passed their defence just through the mail announcement) are coming up to congratulate me. What can I say, some people are more popular that they thought themselves to be :P.

Almost a week of partying .. finally ends with monday of work. Oh yeah, I still have some work left, namely, the post-viva corrections that ought to be done for the final hard-bound submission. Monday was spent in work from like 11am to 11pm (with breaks ofcourse :D) And then a rigorous tuesday evening of work .. and voila, they were all done! and then after ratification from the examiners+supervisors, will have to give for the hard-binding which will take 7-10 days!! No idea, why it should take that long !!

Dr. Mythalez

The PhD post!

The past three years basically came down to this.
In fact, the 20 years of my education comes down to this- "Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science" aka Ph.D. ;)

So, herewith, the author of this blog should be addressed as Dr. Mythalez. :P

PhD thesis submitted !!!

i don't remember since when i have been waiting to announce this, and write a post regarding it. definitely more than year! yes, people everywhere and nowhere, the PhD thesis is now sealed and desposited for 'examination' aka 'viva' aka 'defence'. this procedure involves professors both internal and external to the university grilling me regarding all aspects of the thesis and beyond for as many hours as they choose. my supervisors would be just mute spectators in the room. the examiners apparently tend to question both the higher purpose of the thesis (like why it is significant or novel) and also the minute details (like how and why this particular parameter was chosen). anyways, since this is scheduled for end of october, I pretty much have more than 40 absolutely free days staring at me :D .... yipppe !!

\begin{bragging}
£$€ - 123 pages of PhD thesis [quite on the smaller side but as is said, the smaller the thesis, the better and more precise it is ;) ]
€£$ - 3 years 14 days [would have been much less than three years if not for the vacations my supervisors and I have taken over the past 2 months]
$€£ - consumed approximately £37,000 as stipend and more than £40,000 was paid as fees on my behalf by the school to the university [yeah, it is a strange system :P]. also several thousands of £s were spent to provide for my various conference attendances ;).
€$£ - considering the problems and ill-health faced over the last many months, the fact that i still managed to complete on time deserves applause :P
£€$ - there should be more points to brag about, definitely. but i don't seem to be able to recollect them right now :P.
\end{bragging}

okay, now that we are done with this, let us evaluate my current position:
%& am jobless and workless and thus not even being paid a penny by anyone.
&% am going to become homeless soon as I have decided to give up my room/house at end of this month.
%% have no job offers yet, haven't actually applied anywhere that i might want to, don't even know what kind of job i would like.
&& ................. ...... .... .... .... .... [intentionally left blank to represent several points ;) ]

fine, now let the celebrations, packing+storage, travel etc etc begin !!

buda pest wien wachau along danube

Okay, finally we shall talk about my 10 day trip to central Europe. The purpose is archiving and not entertainment :P. First stop was Budapest where the conference was held. And yeah, the conference was awesome. Well, it is the most important conference in my field and this time I had some proper papers to present :D. And one of my papers got nominated for the best student paper award. Of course that paper has nothing to do with my PhD. Of course, we didn't win. The results were announced during the banquet (which was on a boat cruising along the Danube river ;) ) á la the Oscars or something. Also, my work got noticed by most of the bigwigs of the field. Yeah, they all know me, and my research pretty well now :P. And it was funny when I looked back and realised that I had applied for a phd under some of these profs back then. And now, they discuss my paper with their students in their group meetings and all :P. So yeah, pretty good conference. My room in the hotel was not just a regular room. I was staying at the conference hotel itself and had booked a single room just like the others. But some of us (including me) got a single apartment instead. So, it had a huge living room, a big bedroom and a well equipped kitchen as well!

Buda + Pest:

A city with quite a character. Almost all buildings in the centre are grand and majestic in some sense. And they are interspaced with grey, dull, communist era towering blocks. The Danube river divides the city into Buda and Pest and hence, quite a few bridges around. The sights across the river are the best. Definitely a city to visit. The hilly part i.e. Buda has the castle and really tall green hills while Pest is crowded like a any big city is. Pest is where most of the action is.

If you go out to dinner in Budapest, it will end up taking you 3 hours. Food wouldn't arrive for at least an hour after you order. True, this is valid in any restaurant there, guess it is an Hungarian policy or something! And when the food does come, it is huge. Really really huge portions. And very very heavy as well. The size of the starters there will easily beat the main course sizes in UK or rest of western Europe :P. Apart from the local language, German and Russian seem to be as or even more popular than English, going by the language in the menus. The nightlife there doesn’t end until late morning :P. Everyone seems to drink and smoke a lot. The most known hangout place is this placed called Godor which is an open area that was to have been the foundation for a big building. But the building plan was scrapped and it ended up being the centre of the nightlife there. There are some islands on the river as well which are also mostly abuzz all 24 hours of any day! By the way, the city also seemed to contain the most good looking girls in comparison to the other places in Europe that I have been to! Eastern European exoticism I guess?

Of course, English is not common there and Hungarian is bewildering to comprehend :P. Tickets for buses, trams or underground can only be bought from some ticket centres around and it is not easy to buy them. Ended up travelling ticketless for most of the bus and tram journeys ;). Also, the currency exchange is ridiculously confusing with 1£ > 300 Ft, so we were carrying notes each worth 20,000Ft and so on! The escalators of the underground system must be the fastest ever. The underground is pretty deep under the ground as well :P. In addition to general sightseeing, went to one of the famous 'baths' there. The really hot 80-90 C saunas are a very interesting experience. Especially when you jump into cold 16 C water immediately after that. It is supposed to be good for the skin, though it felt more like a shock+awe venture :P. Budapest also contains the second largest synagogue in the world in addition to other attractions.

Wein:

From Budapest, two friends (call them S and K) and me went to Vienna (or Wein as it is called by the natives :P)! Why you ask? Because, it was the closest must-see city. Skipped Bratistlava in favour of spending more time in Vienna. And it is worth it. Awesome city in many senses. Cultural centre, it does seem to be, with lots and lots of events happening and museums and theatres etc. around. Every building in the centre of that city deserves to be photographed. Amazingly grand architecture with rich carvings everywhere. Even the roof in a Burger-King place is artistic! Transport is easy with the really simple and modern underground system along with the trams. Too many tourists (like me) everywhere though. Some of the area around the Danube has been converted into a tropical island atmosphere with even an artificial beach! Also visited what might be one of the most famous apartment buildings in the world. It is quite unique looking, designed by a well-known artist claiming harmonious living with the nature and so on.

Austria is famous for its cakes and desserts and deservedly so. Did the standard touristy thing by having this cake at the hotel of the person who invented it 170 years ago! Ice cream shops are abound. Maybe, they have a rule that every person should be able to be within 5 mins walking distance to an ice cream, you know, something like a fundamental right! Dinner here is served much quicker :P. Managed to have the dish called cheese fondue which is basically bread that is to be dipped into melting cheese and consumed :P. Actually, next to the place where we had this, there was a 'Cafe Coffee Day' !! One of the few franchises outside India. However, it called itself 'Coffee Day' by ignoring the 'Cafe' part of the name.

Went to the opera in Vienna! I guess, there can't be a more fitting place to see an opera than the grand opera house of Vienna. It is after all the centre of all such artistic things! We paid just 4€ for our tickets while the highest priced tickets range around 300€ ! Of course, with these cheapest tickets, which are sold only 80 minutes before the show which you need to queue up for, we get no seats. So, we actually stand and watch. We went in mainly with the idea of seeing the opera house from inside, see what an opera is all about, and leave in half an hour instead of staying for the whole 3 hours of the opera. But we stayed till the end! The one we watched is called Don Giovanni, one of the most famous ones and it was awesome. Hilarious, entertaining and lots of fun. Thankfully, we had English subtitles to read as there were small, personal screens displaying the subtitles in front of every person. Now, I know what opera is all about :D. A tick mark against one of the things to do in life, I guess.

Wachau valley:

Went on a day trip to nearby area which is popular for its vineyards and fantastic views of hills along the Danube. First, visited a vineyard + wine making facility where they gave us a tour explaining the whole process and some wines to taste. After that we had a plan to take the ferry from that place along the river to a town farther away, but we missed the ferry due to this vineyard experience. We were then recommended to hire some bicycles and ride all the way to that town along the river, cross the river and ride back from the other side. Sounded great and so we set off at 5pm. We had to return the bicycles at 8pm. We went leisurely, stopping too often to take pictures of the beautiful scenery and visiting souvenir shops on the way etc. And thus, by the time we arrived at the other town and crossed the river, it was 7pm! So, we had to cover the return journey in half the time. And so, it was disciplined cycling with just one break in between. The cycle path was very convenient and extremely well marked.

We returned exactly at 8, just in time to hand back the bicycles before the place closed and before the driver's license of S was lost forever (he had to give it as a security deposit for the cycles). The cycle trip was 35 kms in total. I guess that is equivalent or more than all the cycling I might have done since coming to Hyderabad 13 years ago!

Dead exhausted, we were walking back slowly to the station to catch the train back to Vienna. On the way, we stopped at the tourist information centre which was closed, but with a free phone outside to call hotels/hostels for booking accommodation. S mistakenly dialed a place while playing with it and was not able to cancel the call. So, the people at the hotel picked it up and S just innocently asked them what time the last train back to Vienna was (It helped a lot that S is German). And they actually searched online and replied! The last train was in 10 mins and we were quite far from the station! So, we ran and ran and caught it, again just in time. And given that we were already exhausted, it wasn't an easy task at all. Just the fear of missing the train kept us going I guess.

The adventures of the day didn't end there. We reached Vienna at 10:30pm and were famished. But what places serve food at that time? Almost none! We had to scour the city centre for an open place and found one at 11:25pm. It was supposed to stop taking orders at 11:30 and close at 12. So we had one of the quickest dinners ever. Yeah, we could have gone to some McD kind of place but we wanted some nice proper food after all the hard work we had put in for that day! And after the hurried dinner, we had to somewhat rush to catch the last underground train back to the place where we were staying. Actually, we weren't in a hotel, we rented a furnished apartment for those 3 days as it was coming to be cheaper and better than a hotel.

Danube is an impressive river, quite blue and fast flowing. I enjoyed the trip a lot but it did come with a price— contrary to expectations, Budapest is not cheap at all and Vienna is expected to be expensive anyway.

Conference and Portugal

Okay, so I was in Portugal for the past 8 days attending Aamas 08. Though I had attended a bigger conference before (IJCAI 07) and also Robocup 05, this was different. This time, I was a proper phd student (was just a beginner at Ijcai) and also had to present something. Anyway, lets start with the flight.

Since this was a official aka sponsored trip, the four of us who were taking the same flight had a taxi to take us to Heathrow from Southampton at 5am. The flight was at 8am and as I tend to do for such early flights, I did not sleep at night and packed around 4am. Everything went along too smoothly (I wasn't even asked to remove my shoes at security, which I always had to do at Heathrow) and we were in the flight and the flight took off on time! But then the fun started. 5 minutes after being airborne, I was rudely jolted awake by very loud and weird noise seemingly emanating from below the aircraft. We felt it was the landing gear. After another 5 minutes, the pilot announces that the plane is experiencing 'technical problems' and hence we will be going back to Heathrow! Presumably the landing gear was stuck and could not be retracted. As we landed back at the airport in a very jerky fashion, it was amusing to see the runway surrounded by fire-engines and ambulances :P. Soon, we are asked to get off the plane .... and after taking us to another terminal and back and through another security check, they asked us to go through immigration, collect our luggage and check in again for one of the later flights! So at immigration at Heathrow airport in London, this was how the conversations went:
Official: So where are you coming from today?
Me: err ... here .. london?
Official: /:) Where did you go?
Me: I was to go to Lisbon but didn't.
Official: eh? Then how/why are you here??
and I had to explain the whole story :P
So, we reached Lisbon at 5pm instead of 11am. TAP did sap all our energies!

Moving on, spent the weekend at Lisbon (or whatever was left of saturday and whole of sunday). Lisbon is a city of many squares :P. And all of them invariably have a statue of a man on a tall pillar kind of thing. Most often this statue would be on a horse, though sometimes it isn't. The Vasco-da-gama bridge looks something like the Golden gate of SFO (from what I have seen in pictures/tv of the latter) On sat nights, life starts around 12-1am. Thats also the time when the metro ceases to run. By the way, the metro has only 4 lines but each of the station is huge .. really very very spacious. Stranger is that the each of the train stations (normal ones .. not metro) in Lisbon seem to have only one route. That is, all trains from station A go to Sintra, all those from station B go to Cascais and so on.

Then went to Estoril, where the conference was held. Estoril is a town only catering to tourists and vacationers I think. It just contains hotels, restaurants, bars, beaches, marina with yachting and surfing facilities, golf course and a tennis complex where a 'open' was going on while we were there, involving Federer and co. And ofcourse, there was a casino right opposite our hotel which was billed as the biggest in continental europe. The millions of blinking lights of the casino constantly gave me a headache :P.

The conference was held in a 5-star hotel, very posh but barely able to keep up with the huge number of people attending it. Our hotel, a 3-star one was pretty good too with huge double beds, AC, TV and an awesome bathroom all of which was maintained daily by the staff. It was a bit disconcerting when I used to return at night, to not find the towels etc where I had left them in the morning but to see them fresh and neatly arranged and ready for use :-s. Another strange system in Portugal is that the switches are opposite to the general trend. To switch off, we have to press them down and vice versa ..... very confusing :P.

As about the food in Portugal, vegetarians are bound to die of starvation. 4/5ths of the dishes on the menu will be seafood and the rest would be meat (with just 1 chicken item .. invariably grilled chicken). However, I did enjoy all the fish and shrimps, I didn't know I liked seafood but I guess I made good menu choices and only got served the yummy dishes and not the yucky ones :D.
On this note, I should mention that Caipirinha is a good drink :P. Now for the banquet of the conference, it was just awesome! Was held in a very very long wine storage house (Colares wine cellar). Trust me, it took 10 minutes to walk from one end to another and both walls were lined with barrels, some as huge as 15K litres. The banquet itself was a 4 course meal excluding the starters. I guess it was the second 'formal' meal I have ever had, working our way through the forks and knives from outer to inner ones and all that.

After the conference, spent a day touring Sintra, another hillside town seemingly designed for tourists. It had a castle on one mountain peak and a palace on another peak ... both of which were worth the visit. And the return journey had no special technical issues :P. Oh yeah, had a person standing outside the airport arrivals at Heathrow holding a placard with my name on it ;) (since I am the last person to be dropped off by the taxi, they chose my name to book the taxi :P).

Oh, didn't I mention anything about the conference as such? It was an okay affair, I gave the presentation on tuesday morning at 9:30am after being out until 2am the previous night :D and not having prepared after making changes to the ppt a week ago. But despite my unprofessional approach, it went along okay I guess :D. By the way, we also lost the football match 1-4. Now this football match is becoming a tradition at Aamas, Southampton_led_Europe versus USC_led_Rest-of-World. Why did we lose? Our team had such awesome players like me while they had atrocious players like Manish Jain :P.

work-wise updates ....

I realised that there have been only two posts labelled "work-wise" ever since I moved to the UK and started working towards my PhD i.e more than 18 months now. Prior to that, according to the statistics :P, I seem to have written 28 posts in the two years of blogging at IIIT. Quite unusual, because I feel PhD provides with many many interesting anecdotes too. But I guess, I never felt the inclination to blog about them :-s.

Okay, so where should I start? Or maybe I can just put in bullet points in chronological order?

»» I wrote the first paper of my PhD and got it accepted in a workshop of Aamas. Not a big deal at all .. but I had a paper in a workshop of Aamas 2006 and another one in another workshop of Aamas 2007. So with this paper, I complete a hat-trick :D .. though this will be first time I will be presenting the paper ... So Portugal .. me shall be coming in may !

»» After writing this paper, I started working on my mini-thesis. Completed it a few weeks ago, by producing a book-like document of 103 pages ... a century! woo hoo!! :D

»» The mini-thesis is followed by a viva (mini-defence? :D). So I had to submit a copy to the examiner .. who scrutinized it for a good three weeks. And then, we had the grand viva ... me, the examiner (an internal guy .. one whom I already knew), and my two supervisors. The purpose of this minithesis+viva activity is to decide whether to
- let me proceed towards my phd by concluding that my progress over the past 18 months was good enough
- kick me out with an mphil by finding that my progress does not match up to the expectations
- give me a bit more time to produce an improved minithesis and conduct another viva

and the result is obvious :P. So, now I am officially, half a doctor :P lets say I learnt the philosophy part .. now just need a doctorate :D.

And yeah (instead of PS): did a very instinctive thing on a whim today .. and am I glad that I did! :D.

a random post ...

° Why? because I have some work to do and I am running out of procrastinating options ... there is no one online to chat either (and that's a rarity given the huge chat-contacts list and the large number of people I chat with) as most of them must be at their homes, gorging sweets (read as gaining weight) and running around bursting firecrackers (read as damaging the nature).

° I started writing this post when, after analysing all that I was supposed to do, I heard myself say, "aah, its so simple, I don't want to do it." And let me tell you, this 'simple' thing will hopefully solve the problem that has been dogging my algorithm since the past 3 weeks :D. Finding the problem is always harder than finding it's solution ... yeah thats my quote .. feel free to reuse it, with due acknowledgments of course :P.

° Global fusion of cultures? cutting out small pani puris from the big rolled out dough using a shot-glass. Yeah, I did this last week.

° Is the 'Fall' season named so because the leaves fall from the trees or because of the drastic fall in temperatures from a pleasant 15-20 °C to a frigid 1-5 °C ?? :D This is a rhetorical question, readers are not invited to answer it!

° There are so many movies that I ought to watch :-s, ranging from Pirates-3 to Bourne Ultimatum to Chak De India and a host of other movies in between.

Better get back to work and start doing that 'simple thing' (only to discover that it is not so simple after all).

A post by a PhD student

Yeah, I am doing a PhD. Its been almost 5 months now. Many people do ask me what it is all about. And I give hazy fuzzy answers like it is about research, about trying to create/discover/prove something new, something never done before and blah blah :D. As about my work, I knew what area I was dabbling in, what kind of problem I was looking at and so on but didnt have much of a clue on how to go about it. Yeah, I did falter these 5 months, spent time on things which are somewhat irrelevant now, spent some more time on doing things which at that time seemed quite big and important but now appear insignificant. Most of the significant things were done in a day or two. Anyway, I can safely say that now I do know what I am trying to do and how I should go about doing it. Yeah, the path is slowly making itself visible. And yeah, it looks like I shall enjoy walking/running/stumbling/faltering on it :D. And maybe even get lost midway :). Well, thats what Phd is all about. Discover something about the world and at the same time discover something about yourself .. (shouldnt I be giving out this gyaan once I complete the phd .. and not while starting it? :D)

And yeah, I should be changing this template soon. Got kind of bored with it.
And yeah, finally I have written a normal general post after a long long time. No stories, long accounts or 'poetry'! :D
And yeah, I try to bypass the popular PS trend with this 'And yeah' phrase :D

Farewell ... now wat?

So, in a few weeks, we are expected to leave the institute. Most of my friends know where they are going to be. At max, they may change the company that they are currently placed in. Some of them know the institutes that they may join. But what about me? I dont even know the country I may end up in!! The whole process of this MS/Phd applications and the resultant irritations and frustrations certainly tempts the mind to question whether it is all worth it. The most major question is the financial aid part .. if you are not offered aid initially, you would have to spend atleast 5-8 Lakhs for the first semester (depending on the univ) and then hoping to get something for the next semester. Why all that when it is much easier to get MS admission here in IIIT that too with a income like 6K per month? Want of a new and better place?? Greater exposure and tougher competition? I have no idea.

Another major question that has once again started plaguing my mind is why am I even going for further studies? This last 3-4 sems, i have realised that I have totally lost the patience and zeal to sit, listen and learn in classes. On the other hand, I have gained interest in working on some problems and trying to solve them. Yeah, thats what Phd is all about, you may say, but most of MS or the first two years of Phd in any US univ would only involve taking courses and attending classes. Am I cut up to that now?? I seriously have no idea.

My earlier reasoning used to be, you have to do a job all your life anyway, why hurry now, why not spend more time studying? But somehow, now I ask, you have to do job anyway rite, why go through all this trouble .. why not get into job right away? Either way, it all depends on how you perform ... but then how you perform also depends on what you need to perform!! AAh ... its all a big tangle .. thats what it is.

Nooo, I dont intend to stop blogging ...

Yeah, its more than a month since my last post. I havent been busy at all during this time. I had loads of time. But never did i feel like blogging. I realised that I have mostly blogged on those days that I was jam-packed with things to do, days that I havent had a minute of leisure. Now that i dont have much to do, my blogging frequency has suffered!!

I had written a few posts about my travails with FYP link Also remember elaborating on the various difficulties with my fyp to all those uninterested and unconcerned. However, guess what? Mine is the first fyp to be officially over. Yeah was the first in the first panel of the final vivas. Yeah mine must also be the first unofficially completed fyp. Kudos to me :>

Cultural life seems to have come out of the hibernation. After the Cul nite, we now have Amalgam and then farewell. Everyone in my batch seems to be busy with their projects and vivas. The yearbook is going great guns and is sure to occupy much of my time in the coming days. I resolve to visit library everyday in these last few days of my stay at IIIT to compensate for my lack of use of its great facilities i.e books (non techie).

My status mesg: 'fyp? wats that?' a nice reply by dilip: 'a 1 day project (24 hrs) stretched over 8 months '. I add: 'with loads of reports and a lot of paper wastage'.

Why you shouldnt do a phd? link
The wait continues ... am getting bored of it.

Nope .. havent quit blogging

Dashing the hopes of some (particularly SUzeh), i am back. So, why havent i posted for so long? To tell the truth, i had nothing to say. This doesnt mean that i always had something to say when i blog ... but i was never in the mood of writing these past few weeks. The character William Forrester of Finding Forrester (played by Sean Connery) who is a well-known reclusive writer says, "When you write, write. Dont think." This had been the maxim for most of my posts. Recently however, i have started to post only when there was something worth to be told. Hence, havent blogged since long as nothing worth blogging has happened. No .. dont let your hopes rise, nothing interesting has happened now either.

Meanwhile, The congress mela happened adjacent to the insti .. had to crisscross a lot of politicians those two days ... made me feel exasperated that these are the people ruling our country and who will continue to rule the country (referring to politicians as such .. not to congress specifically). And yeah, like all good citizens, i shake my head, walk my way and forget all about it.
Meanwhile, co-authored a poster paper, then a research paper (will it be accepted?) and now have to write a team description paper.
Felicity came and went, this time was free enough to participate in the events ... and garner some money.
This is getting boring .. lets try some innovation (a very abused buzz word)

And so, ... walked away.

a week, some tests and interviews ...

[ I started writing this post a few weeks back but left it midway since had better things to do. Finally got around to completing it. ]

So after 6 writtens (and one dummy), I am still without a job. The question that is playing in my mind is whether I should even take a job. Attended my first ever interview in my whole life for microsoft. Wasnt a great experience. And served no purpose :D. I usually find that successful candidates mail/blog their interview experience so that it can benefit the future generations. But, we all need to know those other stories also right? And, those who have been selected are no great bloggers. So, I am now setting upon the noble action of narrating my M$ interview. Btw, the only reason i find we need to go to the M$ here in hyderabad is for the $ i.e Rs. Anyway, rewind back to monday, 19th december of year 2005.

The presentation was in the morning around 9 i think. And it was pretty decent (doesnt come anywhere close to that of yahoo though). After that we had a written test. They had a cut off of 7.5 Cgpa. The written test was just 8 questions. The first four questions which had 4 marks each were: What is the output of a C program, a question based on probabilities, a simple puzzle and some code was given and we need to find the errors in it. The next four questions of 6 marks each were: one is to write a program for something, the next question was to write test cases for the prev program and then two algorithm questions. All in all, it was a simple test, thankfully no aptitude test and no multiple choice questions. Guess, thats why i could get shortlisted. I also dont think i had any major errors in my answers and i hadnt left any question unanswered. From the experience of various written rounds that i failed to pass through, i think that one needs to answer almost the whole paper correctly for having a chance of being shortlisted.

Out of the 60 something people, they shortlisted 20 people for the interview. The results were supposed to have been released by 2 in the afternoon, but they finally came out at 4. Guess, they needed more time then they imagined to evaluate our answers. So, all the 20 shortlisted ones including me were asked to report immediately. So, we put on those formals, carried that folder which contains the resume, gradesheets and other certificates and rushed to the specified room. There, the HR lady announced 10 names and said that only those persons would be interviewed on that day and that the others would need to come back the next day morning. So, the unlucky 10 trudge back to the hostel and wait for the next day! In the night, we hear stories about the interviews from those who had been there and done it. Only 5 people were interviewed out of that lucky 10. The other 5 had to spend all evening just waiting for their turn. This is certainly one of the worst possible ways of spending an evening.

The next day i.e tuesday, everyone in the list of 20 reported in the morning at 8:30 am except the lucky few who finished all the three rounds on the previous day. On request from the volunteer leader, the HR lady allocated timings to the people. I was told that my first interview round would be at 11. So, I went around and whiled away two hours to return at the appointed time. Going by their past record, I expected to wait for some more time before I get the chance to face the first interview of my life, but as soon as I returned the lady ushered me towards the first interviewer- Deadface.

I name him so because his face did not disclose even a single expression the whole period of the one hour that I was with him. I was pretty nervous. As I entered the room, he asked me to sit down. There was no hi/hello or any sort of greeting. I silently sat down and I could clearly hear my heart beat :D. He asked me what courses I had taken. I asked whether he meant in the current sem. He said yes. And i blurted our 'Linear Programming'. And my mind went blank. I couldnt recollect the other courses. I was desperately trying to think and at the same time keep a straight face. Somewhere, on the boundary on my memory, hovered a name 'globalisation' and i promptly named that too. Also added that it was a humanities course. I knew i had taken another course also. But, its named stayed stubbornly beyond my memory's reach. It was almost humiliating. I couldnt even recollect the courses that i am currently pursuing?? He started looking at me with some alarm :D. Just in time, I announced "topics in algorithms"! Then i tried to explain away the fiasco by saying that it was a half sem course and had not started yet :D. Then he asked for the courses I had already completed. Those, i rattled off with ease. The discussion strayed onto my areas of interest and he understood that it was AI. So, he asked why that was the case especially since AI was pronounced dead a few years back and so on. I attempted to defend by saying that I expect AI to make great progress, we can already see that in Machine Learning and that all future stuff would require some sort of AI.

Then the actual stuff began. He asked me to write the code to merge two sorted linked lists! I asked him whether he preferred a recursive version or a non-recursive one. He had no preference. So i jotted down the recursive function. That function has been my favourite ever since the DS midsem in my first year :D. I felt my heart rate was lowering down to the normal range. I finished and showed it to him in a jiffy. He asked me what the problem with recursive functions was. I explained and then he asked me to write the non recursive one. I wrote that and then he asked me how it was better than the recursive one. I answered all these pretty easily. Then he asked me a puzzle. It was quite an interesting one. As he started explaining the puzzle, he inquired whether i had already heard it. I didnt. I solved the puzzle but it required four steps. He asked me to do it in three. I was thinking but didnt get much ahead. So, he gave me a hint but his choice of words led me to believe that he was changing the problem statement. After clarification, however i utilised the hint to come up with the optimal solution. Then he moved onto asking questions about passing by values and reference and so on which I could tackle easily. The hour was over before I realised and he said 'thankyou' . I left him. All through the interview, my major problem was that i couldnt figure out from his countenance whether he considered my answers to be right or wrong. As i said earlier, his face was an expression-less one. :D

I came out and chatted with other aspirants and soon it was time to face another interviewer. This person welcomed me with a smile and also greeted with a 'hi'. He asked me to tell about myself. I cheekily asked him whether he wanted it to be limited professionally or even about my personal life. He obviously said professional and i started with my third year, described some of my projects, and my interests. Also mentioned about RoboCup, my TAships and programming contests i.e ACM. He summarised it all by saying that my interests are AI, Data-mining, Algorithms and Data-Structures in that order. I nodded. So, he very sweetly asked me what 'deadlock' was. OS? Anyway, i told him in general terms what it was. He asked me to be more technical and also asked how i would find whether there was a deadlock. I did not rememeber anything about it as I had no preparation whatsoever for the interviews and my OS concepts were long lost and forgotten :D. So i did not remember about the resource allocation graph thing. I just blabbered on about it in general terms. He moved on and asked me to implement quicksort without recursion. I thought for a moment and told him the method. He asked me to write it down. And so I did. Meanwhile he went out and came back. I just finished and didnt check through the code. He assumed i finished and went through it. I explained the code to him. He kept looking at it for 5 minutes. Then, he asked me to write blackbox testcases for it. I did that. Then he asked me to make the program crash. I went through the code and came up with the input for which it would crash :D. It was a small condition which wasnt handled. He asked me to fix that which I did. Then he asked me what would happen if a null array was passed and asked me to handle that condition also. I did that also. He then asked whether I had any questions for him. I said no to which he replied as 'Come on man, ask something, atleast ask about me' :D. So, I asked what he did at m$ and for how long he had been there. He told that he had been at IDC since it was setup in 98 and is working on some mobile thing. I then asked him another question related to the interview process. I asked him what he was doing on the laptop while i was thinking of the solution or writing the code. He laughed and said that he wasnt doing any other work as I may have thought but was noting down his observations about me. And with that we bid goodbye to each other.

I came out and resumed chatting with my friends. I was informed that many people had already been sent away after their first round. The HR lady came and told us all to go for lunch and return at 2:30. So, we returned at the time. Till then more than 5 people did not have even a single interview round. The others either completed all rounds and awaiting the results, or were shown the door or were still in the process like me. After lunch, as i went in, the HR lady called me and asked me to be seated. That was a clear signal that I was being booted out of the process and that I havent done well enough to be considered for the third round of the interview process. As soon as she asked me to be seated it was pretty clear that i was out. I had heard and even seen how she was breaking the bad news to others. So, when she told me to sit down, i pretty much wanted to just walk out. But she dillydallied for 5 minutes by asking how i felt the interview was, whether the questions were difficult and so on. She then told the news. She was acting as if she was really sorry and tried to comfort by saying that i could apply in 6 months off-campus. I wanted to tell her that i would certainly not apply again but refrained for fear of prolonging her monologue. She gave the same reason for my rejection as she was giving to the others i.e basics need to be improved and so on.

And so ended the first and last interview in life (as of now). When would i next attend an interview process? Hopefully not any time soon. And what did I learn from the whole experience? Nothing much :D.
So after Adobe, Google, Microsoft, De-Shaw, Yahoo and CA (and Novell as a dummy), I am without any offer and it doesnt concern me at all now :). The process has only made my resolve of going for futher studies stronger :D. [this post is not edited ... so dont comment about any errors if any :D]

Applications and Frustrations ...

Applying to US universities for MS/Phd is like one of the most irritating things around. The whole process is totally convoluted and brazenly costly. Reporting the Gre Toefl scores tops it all. Sop, they want a statement of purpose. All Sops start in the same general way about how the field interests them, how it is an important research area, the experience they have and other related stuff, how this university is ideal for them and how they plan to be enriched by it. All of them are the same. So i tried this one differently. But am wise enough not to send it and waste my 100$ that is spent on the application proces to a single university. I do not have access to the different introduction right now otherwise would have posted it here. Other things that add to the burgeoning frustration level is the fast approaching deadlines, still not having hold of all the required documents, fyp deadlines and reports which have to be written though i have done nothing at all and the job-placement process in which i am performing at the very worst. Ofcourse, doing no preparation whatsoever does contribute, but nevertheless, i still seem to suck at them. But how does it matter? I dont think i would want to go for a job now anyway. But then, am i sure about doing phd? Not at all, but it certainly seems as the better option. I thought i was now beyond supervising and explaining projects as the 22 credits i mentored last sem have ended. But no. Some enterprising second years wanted a project under Dr. Pjn and what does he suggest? Our itws3 project .. right out of the blue? How come he even remembers it?? So, had to dust the project out of the archives, make it run all over again and then explain it to them after recollecting what it was.
And, there are few other things which contribute generously to frustration.

My gmail id is quite a popular one. I recieve very fews mails meant for me. I have been blessed with mails containing some assignment some student of some forsaken institute wanted to send to some lecturer of his/her, a lot of offers from companies asking for my resume, the latest ones being from Cognizant, a mail from Microsoft Technical Recruiter giving me his email in continuation of our previous day conversation on phone. And today, i got a mail from some poor soul requesting me to find him a job in some bpo. I wished him all the best :).

Someone search for profs in the universities and send them mails.
Someone finish my sop and fill the application forms.
Someone collect the recos and transcripts and post them.
Someone mail those researchers for the papers and read the papers and write the report.
Someone give me a long vacation that i have deserved for sooo long.
Someone give me a good reason to feel like waking up the next day....

FYP - Find Your own Project ??

Was supposed to have been a cool MSBR i.e dual degree student. After the success of the honours project, was looking around for a challenging topic. The semester was quite busy and was lost in a great many things ... though at hindsight, cant identify what exactly kept me busy :-s. Yeah, wrote Gre, searched for good universities to apply to. But was supposed to have been doing MS right? Yeah, it all depended whether I got through or not. Looked around when people around me slogged for deciding their FYPs and then later for writing their FYP report1. One fine day, get a mail from your advisor asking to meet him. He informs you coolly that you are no longer a research student, but a Btech final year like most of the others (fired?) and that you better buck up and start submitting Fyp reports from the next deadline. In shock, initially, quickly recover and start searching for an Fyp.

So, listen to the ideas, try to understand what exactly is required. Feel that most of the suggestions are impossible to be accomplished (atleast in the limited time available). Just in time, for the first report (second for the others), the topic is decided. But the topic is so vast that there have been conferences conducted specifically on it! What exactly is supposed to be done? No clear idea at all ... Slog around the papers sometimes, talk to the experienced and try to make sense of what my Fyp is supposed to be. After lot of contemplation and great many discussions, the position wasnt any better. Approaching the next deadline soon. And today, found out that the atleast the first part of my Fyp is to find a suitable topic. Find out all that has been done in the area, the technologies, the challenges tackled and those that havent been tackled and those that havent yet been discovered. In short a survey .... and later what? We shall see ....

Sop? Applications and Jobs ....

Lots of things going on as usual. As usual, i have some very tough deadlines to meet. As usual, i have brought this condition unto myself through the fine art of procrastination. :-s
Am supposed to write my 'statement of purpose' soon. Actually am supposed to have already written it by now. Most of my peers are atleast half way done. And, i have been waiting all this time for some kind of an inspiration and then hoped to do it quickly like say in a day after which just some minor editing would be needed. Sadly, the inspiration has been as elusive as ever. Or maybe the 'inspiration' is the approaching deadline?? When i asked our sage for advice, he replies as: "Answer one question - what do you want to see yourself as in the future?". Well, as i have oft said, the answer is "I dont know". I rather believe in taking life one step at a time. Did i even think of going in for further studies when i joined IIIT? Not at all. I had no idea what i wanted to do next. Same now. All i know is that i was to post graduate doing some research in the field of AI preferably agents (as i am acquainted with that). Guess, thats where the whole problem lies in. However, most of the 'Statement ofPurpose' or Sop is generally devoted to your past achievements and academic pursuits.

Theres the other thing too, placements .. jobs. Supposed to select 3 dream companies. My dream companies? Unless i know the kind of work i would have to be doing in them, i have no criteria on which to decide my 'dream' company. Ofcourse the pay package is always a major factor :D. My fyp? Its in the doldrums ... waiting and waiting ... when will it progress?? Nothing seems to going right or rather going at all. Even the choice for an open elective does not seem to be easily settled. But, that doesnt have any space in my thoughts right now .... :-s :-?