Let's Go To Goa, Baby… (Part 1)

It's been nearly two months since this trip occurred, and I was too lazy to actually blog about this, I had my lab exams, I had my new semester start, and then someone reminded me I was grossly overdue. So here goes, and thank God some memories never fade away…

Goa. One of the most sought after holiday destinations in India, hell, the whole world. We were all lucky to have been able to go there and enjoy. And me? I should have missed the whole trip if it hadn't been for a crazy roller coaster decision making process. But that's another story.

Lets rewind, shall we.

4 January.

6:00 AM.

Margao.

This is where it all began. We alighted there and the first thing that flashed across my mind was "My God, I am actually here. And I promise you that I am gonna enjoy every damn bit of this".

That, and the fact that it was cold. Nothing I couldn't bear, but I was more concerned about having left my incredibly warm jacket back home. Comfort, not so much. Style, a whole lot. As we got out of the station, I saw my uncle turn back with a smile and say something I couldn't hear. I heard my cousins laugh. I couldn't hear why, but as I moved forward, I saw it too. There was a guy there with a board in his hand. And the board had my uncle's name written on it. Never, for one second had any of us expected the resort to send someone over like this. Plus, I had never been escorted by someone like this…

We reached Primo Bom Terra Verde resort at around 7:30. This was awesome. I don't think I can actually go about describing it, so here are some photos to show you…

The first agenda of the day was breakfast. Everything was damn expensive but hey, you wanna enjoy, you gotta pay up here. All of us cousins collectively decided we wanted to break the routine breakfast style aand ordered English Breakfast. Full with bread and butter, beans in ketchup, bacon, ham and eggs. I was excited about having these things for the first time, but that was until it actually showed up. I dunno, the sight of it just didn't appeal to me, or my stomach. As my cousins binged on what they called a delicious dish,I contended myself eating the traditional poori-bhaji.

Well, now that we had filled our stomachs, we wanted to do something to digest this. The resort offered a mini golf facility and allowed us to fish off their ponds. We tried our hands at both, with varying levels of success. Mini golf was easy, for me that is. While I watched my cousins going into double digits on the score board, I was leisurely hitting my way to victory. (Hey, before you start to question, the one with the lowest score wins, okay….)

Then it was fishing.They had only one fishing rod, not counting the one that *someone* had broken by swinging it wildly and hitting a fan, so we all watched eagerly hoping that some fish would bite on to our bait(bread) and we would have our first successful fishing quest.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

A few of us left.

Wait.

Still waiting…

I began wandering off…

Only one stoic survivor left…

The waiting continues...

Okay, the plan is off officially. Either these fish are too smart, or we are lousy fishermen. On second thoughts, you should've seen the ponds. In spite of being regularly changed via an outlet, this thing was as dirty as it could get. We could blame it on poor visibility for the fish.

Okay, okay, I admit. You must be rolling your eyes thinking about some thing. What is synonymous with Goa? What is missing here?

The beach.

The Baga Beach was a literal stone's throw away from our resort. We walked to the beach at around noon in shorts, and there was only one thing in our minds. Were we still in India??? You couldn't see a single Indian around any more. All you could see were numerous foreigners sunbathing.

Well, we didn't come here to ogle at them, we came here to enjoy. There were numerous rides into the ocean, including paragliding right over the ocean. But none of us were so adventurous to do that. So we went for a motor boat ride.

In minutes we were wrapped up in life jackets and we were sailing over the ocean. This would've been an ordinary boat ride if it wasn't for the waves, and out boatman. As the waves came rushing towards us, our boatman would perfectly time the wave and ram the boats' hull over the wave. The waves would shatter there, spraying us with beautiful shining drops of water like shreds of glass. As the waves got bigger, the water would literally engulf us and we were wet, brother. Our mouth was full of salt water and we were spitting it out, seconds before we would get our next shot.

We wanted to go on forever, but all good things must come to an end, and we returned back to the shore. Wet, and covered in sand, we retired to the resort. The beach adventure was over, but there was more to come.

The evening was dedicated to a cruise over the Mandovi river. There were around a hundred passengers on board, and the DJ was playing songs after songs and urging people to come to the stage and dance. Since none of us were actually into dancing, this was easily the low spot of the tour. But hey, we're on a cruise over a river with scenery all around, how low could it go?

That was how we spent well over an hour. Clicking away at scenery and posing for each other.

This was how day one ended.

Day 2 later...

Moving...

Moving can give you a whole new outlook on everything around you, and sometimes even within you. Whether it is out of a country, out of a state, out of a district or even a slight dislocation from one house to another completely and absolutely encompasses the same basic thing.

Pack and Leave.

I've been staying at one place, say P, for nearly 3 whole years. And now I had to move to a place nearby, say K. And what this truly means is a complete change in my rituals, my time-table and my entire life. And above all it meant that I had to search for and pack every single item I had come to possess in these three years. And boy, did I find them!

I searched for two whole days, and accumulated quite a lot of stuff. Stuff I used for maybe a day or two. Stuff which possessed some other-worldly quality due to my pack-rat mentality. Stuff which could come of some use sometime in the not-so-near future.

Basically stuff I didn't throw away.

But now the question was, what to do with this capharnaum? Do I take every single one of them and feed my pack-rat mentality some more? Or do I throw these away against all of my evil forebodings?

It was decision time.

I fell to my pack-rat mentality again and heaped a lot of things, old magazines, newspaper supplements and what not until the number of bags just exploded. But this is not what I wanted to talk about.

It was when I shifted through the stuff that I realized what psychometry meant. I had heard the term during a broadcast of "So Weird" and somehow it stuck. It meant the ability of certain objects to explain their history to those who touch them. Suddenly I felt the rush of emotions and memories from about 3 years back. To the time I moved to P in the first place. To the lengths my parents had gone to make me feel at home. To the money they spent without a thought.  I could recall all of that as if it were yesterday.

How much do parents suffer to make you happy? And how much do you return them? How much of love do we owe them? How much do we really give them?

Thank you God, for giving the best parents anybody could ever hope for.

I started on a different note, and got off somewhere, but the fact is I have moved, and am now settled. Moving gives you a new perspective, a look back at all the things you've done, and what you should have done, and a chance to make amends with you past and extend a hand to the future.

A chance to start afresh.

2012 Retrospective: Award Night

In just over 48 hours, we leave behind 2012 and set foot into 2013. We are genuinely, absolutely, 100% leaving behind the year 2012!!! Now, if that's not a good news, I have no idea what is. 2012 was supposedly where it all came to an end. 2012 was supposed to be the end of the world. And guess what, we are still here. Just like we survived 2001, just like we survived…eh, which was the one before that…I am seriously losing track…but anyway, the point is, we survived. Again.

Now that we know we've got another couple of years left on God's Green Earth, it's time for a little bit of retrospection. What did 2012 have in store for you? Did it make you want to pull your hair out of your head? Or did it leave you felling on top of the world? For me, it was a mixture of both.

2012 started out on a wrong foot, or rather it started out on a wrong note for the old me. I've changed a lot, I'll tell you that. I thought 2012 was going to be a huge disaster, a humongous fiasco, but, barely a week into 2012, I started changing my tune. It was alright.

16 April 2012. S3 Result, and I topped the class. I was so elated, I've got to say, well, I did post here. For more details, refer my previous posts.  On that day, I had hoped at least in my wildest dreams that I could secure the top spot again next semester. But oh no, that was not to be. But that's later in the year.

18 may 2012: This was a trip to Masinagudi, and I have to award this "Highlight of the Year". This was one of the best times I had this year.

28 May 2012. What can possibly be described as the worst day of my entire life. I would've given that award to my EC lab exam, but given that I was expecting that, and the fact that I got good marks in that, I'll let that one slide.

So, Mr. Digital Lab Fiasco, please accept the award for causing the Worst Day of My Life.

<Mild applause, and a chorus of boos>

18 August 2012. Something which I never thought would ever happen happened on this day. I had given my first year paper up for revaluation, and on this day, I received the results. I had scored 9.43 instead of the 9.17 I had earlier.

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

And for this day, I thought I'd give "Day of the Year" award, but, not so fast. We've still got 4 months to review.

17 November 2012. I told you to wait. And here it is. The day Microsoft called me for an internship test at Kochi. Now, with that on the list, there can only be one sure winner.

So, this is, "Day of the Year".

22 November 2012. Well, this is a result of the Worst Day of my Life. What goes up has to come down. You write an exam, you have to deal with the result. 8.81. That's it, not the worst day of my life because I was expecting this.

10-17 December 2012. This might cause some raised eyebrows, but I've got to give away "Lesson of the Year" to this period, and the lesson that I learned is:

"The only thing you have to fear is fear itself".

I was going through a tough time, I was physically down thanks to Mr. Cold, who struck TWICE this year, and was going through a tough time mentally as well. I was upset about a lot of things, and I was tensed about a whole lot of things. Things that should have been sneered at, things that should have been brushed aside, I was falling prey to the most vicious, the most vile disease Satan devised, and that is anxiety. Everything was starting to make me nervous, and I was ready to snap anytime. But slowly, everything solved itself. Things that I thought were going to take my life slowly paled away into insignificance. What I learned then was that, we can always survive, if we don’t fall prey to fear.

21 December 2012: The End of the World As You Know It.

28 December 2012: I told you I went for a test on 17 November. On this day, I got news that I had qualified and I was going to have a phone interview on in January. That really threw me off balance. I was stunned and shocked for along time. And for that, let us award "Shocker of the Year" and "Moment of the Year".

2 more days to go. Will anything happen that will get into this list???

Wait to find out.

Was that your goodbye kiss?

 I have touched upon this subject before, but now I feel I need to bring it up one last time. Today our exams started. As usual the first exam was maths. And I am not so good at maths.

In fact I hate maths.

I hate the ominous looking brackets, I hate the curled up integration signs, I hate fourier transforms, oh Lord, I could go on and on…

But, coming back…

I got into the exam hall and turned over the exam paper. I scanned the paper roughly. Nothing extremely venomous to watch out for. No vipers or adders or cobras. So I started, with my fingers crossed.

Part A. This is where things get dirty. Random process and random variable. Definitions? Come on!!! I barely know how to solve those problems, and now you want a word by word definition? Well, I believe an example is worth a thousand words. Let's just hope they feel the same way too. Anyway, I wrote down my example and a brief explanation.

Question 10. Hey, I finished part A. This didn't get as dirty as I thought.

Part B. The really big fish swim here, by the way. I caught a lot of trout, lets hope I can catch a shark or two here. Module 1, module 2…hey I can actually do this stuff!!!

And BAM!!!

A brick wall was hit. And it is called module 3-Random processes. One of the most despicable things in our syllabus. But whoa, wait one damn second, fellah!! I did this question last night!! And bam!!!

I was done. With half an hour to spare. This had never happened before. I am usually sitting with my head in my hands during this time.

Now, what actually happened? Did I prepare too much? I don't think so. I prepared like I usually do. I did nothing more, and nothing less. Then what?

I can only think of on thing. Maths ends this semester. For being on my back for so long, for making me pull out my hair time and time again, for being a serious pain in the a** for so long, maybe this is your goodbye kiss. Your parting gift. But I shudder to think otherwise. Maybe I avoided the truly venomous adders and vipers and cobras, but were there too many little snakes in the grass? Will they play spoilsport?

You gave me your goodbye kiss, I just hope it doesn't turn out to be a dementor's kiss.

I didn't fail !!!!!!!!

If you've not read my posts Dead Again and Trying to Rise, I strongly advise you to do so before you proceed, but its up to you.

I have been walking on broken glass ever since that day. Every mention of someone failing, someone who didn't make it, any mention of our results, it really got under my skin. In fact, the first couple of months I couldn't even read the microprocessors text book without having to close my eyes and telling myself to relax because it was conveniently littered with references to 74LS138 and 74LS151, all unhappy reminders of the day when my life turned hell. The past couple of months, I have been telling myself it's okay, it's okay to stumble up on this long journey called life, and that it's important to rise every time you fall. But scriptures and proverbs and quotes do not ease a tensed mind. Why?

Because I have never flunked an exam. I always get good marks and I am always at the top.

Quoting Conan O' Brian,

"Success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you're desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it in any way."

I had the tuxedo on.

 I had kept it from getting dirty for so long that I couldn't picture myself in a dirty tuxedo.

And I was out in a marshy swamp.

I could die in this swamp, but even if I didn't die, I most certainly would get my tuxedo dirty.

And I did.

8.81.

Yup that's it. .9.43,9.31 and finally 8.81.

Am I grateful I didn't fail, that I didn't have to die in that swamp? Hell YES!!! Thank God I didn't fail. And I know that God alone saved me from that terrible fate.

Am I disappointed I didn't come out at the top? Yes. Begrudgingly I have to say yes. But that is too much to ask for, especially when you've come out of a near death situation.

I got my tux dirty. And I have nowhere but upwards to go from here. I have been letting my life get bugged down by unnecessary fear, ego and bad habits. I let my impulses guide me. But I need to stop that. I need to garner control of my life back.

I will become a regular in blogging again.

I will balance my life out.

And most importantly, I will never feel pathetic again in my life.

I hope.

:-)

THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!

I break my prolonged silence to bring you the news of something very important, probably the most important thing in my life so far. That, and to let you know that I am still alive.

Now that you know I am alive, let's get to the second part, shall we?

It is Thursday. Around 9:30 in the night. On most nights I am either in front of the TV or reading some book or sleeping at this time. But somehow, that fateful night I was staring at my gmail inbox. And I found something staring back at me.

Microsoft. Naam toh suna hoga…

Yup, Microsoft, the software giant had invited me to Cochin for an internship test!!! I had submitted my resume about 10 days ago and now, I was one of the shortlisted candidates!!!Oh lord…THIS WAS AWESOME!!!

Cutting short the travel details, I ended up in Cochin on Friday night. Everything was ready. The test was scheduled to start on Saturday morning and end by evening, so I was ready to leave by a 4:30 train. Everything was ready. Except I hadn't studied.

I tried to do as much as I could in the night and next morning. The rest was all in His hands and I went to my examination centre. The test began late and ended by 11:30. It was pretty easy, basic C++ stuff and the like. On the whole I think I did pretty well. Now came the wait for the results of round 1. It was expected to be out by 3:00.

3:00…3:30……

Oh it seems now that results will be out by 4:00.

My 4:30 train plan? Out of the window.

4:00…4:30….

Oh, apparently they are conducting this test in centres across India and can only announce results after every centre has completed. Great.

The results did come. At 5:45.

And…..

…..

…..

I WAS IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

And now came round two. And it was easier than I expected. I solved the two programs easily. However, when it comes to execution time, my second program is too slow.

And this might cost me.

Dearly.

Anyhow, I was done…and I have to wait a whole 2 weeks or so for the results. Anyhow, this is what happened later.

It was 7:00 PM. No vehicles to get me to the railway station. I desperately needed to catch the 8:30 train atleast.

7:20.

Still no vehicle. And completely out of the blue, I saw an auto a short distance from there,  and he agreed to take me to the railway station. He also informed me that it was very difficult to get vehicles after 6:00 there. And it was pure chance that he had been there.

Chance? Or the Hand of God?

I believe the latter.

I made it and am now home.

Oh Lord, this is AWESOME!!! Thank You SO MUCH!!!

Horror and Hope:The Only Way to Get Closer to God

Today, in the span of about 12 hours I realized that God exists. God is there to help us and guide us through our hopelessly mundane lives, and be a beacon of hope when all seems lost. And when we, his Sons and Daughters, turn apathetic, he gently nudges us to believe. He encourages us to have faith, and believe in Him.
And most of the time, he does this using the only way we learn through. By letting us go through two phases which etch themselves in our minds forever.
Horror.
And hope.
It's the only way we learn.
Today morning I woke up, made my way to the kitchen and turned on the induction cooker, as I have done a million times in the past. But somehow, this time, the sound echoing out of the cooker was a little different. I let it slide, knowing little that that was the sound of approaching doom.
Boom.
No, I was not blasted out as the cooker exploded into a million pieces. But the circuit just tripped. Oh crap, I said to myself. But, my "scientific" mind told me, "It's a problem with how the kitchen is wired. See, it didn't trip immediately, it took a few seconds before it blew out. Try plugging it in your bed room."
My intuition told me repeatedly, "No, don't do it…It's a trap. Don't fall into the pit of reason…"
But as everywhere in the modern world, scientific thought and rational thinking won. I plugged it in my room.
BOOM.
Again, the same as before…I wasn't blasted out…yada yada yada. The circuit tripped.
No big deal.
I went to the MCB (Miniature Circuit Breaker, not Main Course Book…) and put the two tripped switches right. The one in the kitchen was set all right, but the one in my room, oh shit, it had absolutely no intention of getting set. I was literally up the creek without a paddle…………….
No, rational thought told me to go up and turn all the switches off and try again, while Intuition just sat there shrugging his shoulders as he mouthed, "I told you so…".
I tried. To no damn avail.
I was running out of time. I was running out of options. I had to get to college, but the thought bit me in the back of my head all day long. I was stuck in a room with no light or fan (strangely, one light worked fine…) for God knows how long. I was back in the stone age. I was back in the 1900s.
Hell, I can't live in the 1970's let alone the 1990's or the Stone Age.
I prayed to God, to somehow show me a way, to somehow put everything right. I had faith. I had hope that my Lord would deliver me. Somehow.
And he did.
I returned back home. There was no power there. I mean, the whole area, not just the room. Now was the test. I prayed to God, kept as many of my fingers crossed as possible and put it right.
And it went right down again.
This got me thinking. This is insane. There is no current in the whole area, let alone the circuit, then how could this guy be tripping? And I found the answer. It was not tripping due to the current. It was loose. After a small test of strength, he sat upright, straight.
And as soon as I reached upstairs, the power was restored, and man oh man, I was back in the 21st century.
Thank you my King for Saving Me.
Now many of you will say, it was a coincidence, it was pure logic, and God played no part in it. But to me, he was the whole play. If the power was there, I might have just put the switch right a couple of times, then accepted my inability and just left, suffering the wretched life of the early days for no damn reason. But I didn't have to.
Still not convinced?
Well, I can only say this…
In this world, there are two types of people. One type sees signs, and the other type sees miracles. For those who sees signs, it is 50:50. It can be good, it can be bad. But for those who see miracles, they know that whatever it is, God will be there for them, and that fills them up with hope.
All you've got to decide is this. Do you see signs, or do you see miracles???


( This is not the first time I have been in this position. But that is another post…….)