It’s May 10, as planned this was the day in which the class boys finally decided to have the reunion in a form of a tour. The reason why girls didnt wish to show up is still a mystery for me, anyways the tour turned out to be worthy one. We planned to go to yercaud and this was the first tour in which I had my Xype with me. Because of the very worse battery life, I had to take my old Nokia 5610 for backup. I had to goto Ooty with my dad for testing one of his projects but I dropped it as I had some kind of intuition that this could be one of the most important days which I no NIETn should miss in their college history. And as I expected the story was not just about the tour, it turned out to be the most special day for some of us in class.

At the start of the day, Morning – 03.00 AM, Battery – 100%

I woke up very early and removed the charger from my Xype. I got ready to move out by 4.15 AM and my mom already hired a cab to pick me up to Gandhipuram but unfortunately the cab company failed to inform the driver. Because of which, there was a half an hour delay in getting the cab reach my home after a long quarrel by my mom with them. At around 5.05 AM, the cab came to our home and the driver raced off to Gandhipuram as he drove lightning fast in the empty bumpy streets and driving in the wrong directions of a one way lane. Within 8 minutes he managed to reach my destination and I joined in with my classmates. Me, Panneer, Mani Vasagam (Panneer’s Brother), Kasi, Shahul, Muthu Sankar, Nantha Kumar were waiting in the Gandhipuram bus stand for the Tour bus to arrive.  All of us had the challenge with the dying battery on our Android phones to make it last till the end of the day. Normally, my phone wont last even for half a day but I had to do something to make the best out of it today as I had to take a lot of pictures.  I completely ignored all the text messages and notifications by removing the vibration from my phone and disabled every radio service such as WiFi, 3G and GPS to increase the battery a little longer.

The Bus Arrives, Morning – Nearly 5.45 AM, Battery – 86%

The bus arrived at our stop, pre-occupied with Arumugam, Bagavath, Arun Malar, Faizel, Aravind, Leela Shankar, Saba etc.   Without further delay, we started off from Coimbatore with no breakfast as the gleaming sun started rising over the calm early morning sky. Maybe because of sleepless night, the boys weren’t looking much excited as they spent their time sitting calm in the seats inspite of Arumugam‘s continuous effort to make them rise up and make the journey more enjoyable.  On the way we stopped by in some bakery for having some tea and coffee.

The Real Journey Begins, Morning – Around 8.00 AM, Battery – ~65%

After having some refreshments, we started off once again towards Yercaud and on the way we picked up Natraj.  We stopped at Salem for having breakfast at one of the hotels named Saravana Bhavan.  I wasn’t feeling hungry and so I skipped breakfast.  We had fun with a very strange guy/beggar/sage who kept on irritating us to spare some change for him.  Especially, Sadam was very annoyed by him as he grabbed his shirt and chased him as I took video of him.  We also had fun crossing the streets by jumping the concrete walls which separated the two lanes of the highway. Soon, Akash also joined us and we finally set off to Yercaud.

Despite several irritating songs playing the background stereo system of the bus, we had lots of fun on the way, played several games most of which were started by Arumugam.

Entering Yercaud, Morning – 11.04 AM Battery – 57%

We entered the foothills of Yercaud and slowly drove up the hill crossing exactly 20 hairpin bends and reached the top by 11.30 AM.  We came out of the bus and visited one of the most beautiful schools in Tamilnadu, The Montfort.  We were very late, the watchman told us to visit and comeback within 10 minutes since they had to close the doors by 12PM. We had fun taking a lot of photos with friends, and I was putting my Xype to the ultimate test by taking some spectacular shots of some beautiful flowers I spotted with the help of Sadam.

One of My Favorite Xype Shots

Then we moved to the top of the Yercaud hills, I believe its name is Shevroy’s Temple. It was a wonderful place with a beautiful scenery where our boys had fun shooting balloons with a gun and having more snacks at the tea bars.  There was a temple with a very strange legend, where it was told there is a Shiva Lingam idol hidden deep inside the water (water from the Cauvery river stream) which is not allowed to be seen since 2 years back.  Anyways, we saw another small cave temple which was prohibited from photography.  The cave was superbly cool, the stones around the cave felt ice-cold which was amazing! We wandered off to the areas nearby and saw some giant tanks with some water having some small fishes.

Next we moved out to Lady’s Seat, where we enjoyed seeing the beautiful panorama of the Yercaud hills, had fun with monkeys, taking snaps and seen a guy who sketches wonderful portraits using a pencil.

The Search for Lunch, Noon – 2.36 PM Battery – 47%

We divided into two groups and had our lunches separately. Our group consisted of Kasi, Panneer, Mani Vasagam, Shahul, Sadam, Arumugam and myself. We had a hard time spotting the perfect restaurant for Lunch. We wandered the areas for a good one, and firstly we tried the restaurant run by the Tamilnadu Tourism Board, The Hotel Tamilnadu. They had a good looking hotel, but they had nothing but rice meals for lunch which didn’t look good.  We headed out and started finding another one.  After 10 minutes or so, we found Hotel Selvam. We dragged our tables and we asked what was on the menu.  That wasn’t satisfactory too and so we moved out and found the most classiest restaurant in Yercaud, Hotel Shevroys. The restaurant was beautifully designed, had some wonderful artifacts, some turkeys and few birds running in cages and a very tall Oak tree.  There were two restaurants inside and we decided to go with the Silver Oak Restaurant.

After a wonderful lunch, we headed out and joined with the other boys and headed towards the Boat House.  On the way, we met with our classmate, Roopa who is a native yercaudian. Just when we got the entrance tickets to the boat house and entered in, the rain starting pouring very fast, making boating impossible for us.  We spent around one and a half hours waiting for the rain to stop but the situation got worse and worse.  We spent our time standing near the fence watching the Deer Park, talking some scientific stuff. I found Panneer‘s brother to be very geeky with Android and along with Kasi, they taught me that I could zoom on the camera using the volume keys which I didn’t know before even though it was very simple.

Leaving Yercaud, Evening – 5.05 PM Battery – 43%

 After some difficult times, we started to head back to our homes.  We stopped by another bakery at the foothills of Yercaud where we had some tea at 6PM.  Later, we headed back to the bus and had some of the most intimate moments we can have together as NIETns.  We discussed about our positives and negatives individually and got a chance to know about ourselves how we were in the views of others for the past 4 years.  Although some opinions started some debates, we tried to solve it and stick to the aim of just knowing what others had to say about us from their minds.  On my part, I was very eager know about my negatives, didn’t ask much about my positives and we were discussing about it around 15 minutes or so. Every opinion that others shared with me were completely true, but all of them were startling to me and made me wonder about it.  We took an oath to ourselves to stay in contact with everyone and also planned to look forward for another get together in the upcoming months soon.

My battery was almost over, struggling with around 25% of juice and I had to drop my best buddy Prince‘s call from Netherlands  My mom had booked a cab to pick me up at Ukkadam at 11.30PM. Our bus had reached Coimbatore at around 11PM and after bidding goodbyes to everyone, myself, Shahul and Kasi started off from BK Pudhur to Ukkadam.  We waited for around 10 minutes, I got my cab and came home. My Xype still managed to pack in a juice of about 15% and the funny thing is, the Nokia 5610 which had for backup died fully out of battery, and I didn’t even use it for more than 5 minutes throughout the day  . As I was very tired, I skipped dinner and slept as soon as I reached home.

You can check out the full Yercaud Gallery at Picasa Web Albums here :

It’s April 3rd 2012, the 9th day after I finally got a job which I love. Last night, I didn’t sleep well and I haven’t been normal for the past one week or so, for a reason I don’t know myself.  I had to goto college today to pay fees for our degree certificate and because of my unhealthy sleep time, I couldn’t wake up early as I should.  I woke up 2 hours late than the usual time and therefore I had to rush up in getting ready for college.  Luckily, I got a strange new bus numbered ’46′ which goes directly to ukkadam by passing gandhipuram where I usually catch my bus.  The day was getting stranger already, and I got a bit scared that I might go late for college and so I texted Arumugam whether its okay to go late.  He replied with an awkward question that –whether its okay to go late, where?  I was totally creeped out as I realized the fact that he didn’t know that we have to pay the fees today.  By the time I could tell everything to him, he got the information from Kirthika and so I continued on, and told him to come to college with me since there was no one to give company for me today.  Of course, having no company was not a problem for me but I wasn’t feeling conformable today.  Arumugam was very angry over all of us since we failed to inform him about the fee we had to pay today.  Although one side of me told that I had not made any mistakes since I’ve never informed him anything like this, on the belief that many others would have already informed him, another side of me made me feel guilty. I couldn’t clearly work this out myself and so, I took it up as fact that If I’m really wrong and should be found guilty, then let me suffer for it and I guess I deserve it.

It’s March 12th, just another monday. Oh wait, It’s not just another monday, as the title says, it’s a freaky monday. The day fired off as usual as I woke up in the early morning and got ready for college. I was a bit late and therefore I had to chase a bus with my dad in order to get to Gandhipuram in time.  I always hated mondays but today, I guess it turned out to be a bad day for everyone.  Today we were supposed to submit our project documentation and so I had to take my Macbook to college.  In spite of being heavy, I had to stand in the hot sun in order to get a seat in the bus. The bus was late today and unusually a lot of college students were waiting for the bus.  I was very tensed how I could get a seat in the bus with all this crowd but I stood there with hope.

It’s February 20th, a week after I went to college because of this, and with lots of dismay, I had to go to college today. I went to sleep very late yesterday and therefore I was only about to get around 3 hours 40 minutes of sleep and I had to wake up at 4.30 in the morning.  I was extremely sleepy that I couldn’t even walk straight and somehow I got ready by 7.10 AM in the morning with two yummy nutella-filled bread sandwiches for breakfast. I was late by a few minutes than my usual timing and adding to this, unfortunately my dad’s bike was found to be punctured in the rear wheel.  I couldn’t walk to the bus stop since I was already late and so, Mom called for an auto to get me to the bus stop.

After reaching the bus stop, I boarded the bus no.76 which used to be my usual bus to Gandhipuram four years back when we had no college bus facilities in my area.  I started to think all the old times when I had to board the bus with my mom whom used to get very scared since it was when I had to board buses by myself. I used to reach Gandhipuram at around 7.30 AM everyday and wait with my friends notably Lilly, Debby, Prabhu, Bijin, Yukesh, etc to get my bus to college.  As years passed, we got our own college buses for our localities and we were forced to be separated since we belong to different areas.  Since I was a frequent passenger of the Bus no.76, I guess the conductor must have known me well but we never talked to each other besides exchanging currency for tickets.  To my shock today, he still

It’s Monday, February 13th.  I was waiting for this day for a few weeks now because I knew this day is gonna be real special.  I had planned to give the birthday present to my friend Nalini today along with some really different way of wishing ‘Happy Birthday’ using my Android Tablet but unfortunately plans had to change.  As always, I started off from my home in the early morning and I taken the bus 96 unusually so as to reduce risk of damaging the gift I had kept in my backpack.

I wanted to look strange today,

My college days were almost over and so I wanted to try out some stupid techniques to make myself noticed. For a change, I really wanted to get some scoldings from some staff today, and so I had been wearing a blue cap over my head for the whole day and also wrapped my wrists using a blue handkerchief.  I was feeling very uncomfortable with the kerchief and so I had removed it soon but I strongly had the motive not to take off my cap even when the class is going on.  Well, my plan worked. Almost everyone started to wonder why I was wearing a cap so oddly, some boys made fun of it that I look like a pre-school kid but the thing which really blew me off is that one of the staff had thought something is wrong with my head and I was forced to wear a cap for curing purposes. She even examined my head for about a second and didn’t believe that I was wearing it just for fun. The attempt was very successful as it made everyone think odd of me today, but my aim for being scolded failed.

It’s February 12th, and today was the day which I didn’t want it to come so soon.  Yeah, today we had to write the toughest engineering exam in India. A.K.A GATE (Gate Aptitude Test in Engineering).  I didn’t have a strong mind set or an deep desire to get into one of the IITs of India (for now) in order to pursue my higher studies.  Anyways with almost Zero-Preparation, I started off by waking up early in the morning at about 4.30 PM and got ready to leave my home at 5.30AM.  I had planned to meet up with my friend Deenuji at Town hall in order to catch the bus to Government Polytechnic College where we had to write our GATE exam.

Having texted ‘all the best’ to GATE aspirants like me, Lilly and Nalini, I left my home at about 6AM after having breakfast and got a wrong bus thinking that till will goto Town Hall but unfortunately the conductor said that the bus will not goto Town Hall.  He was kind enough to sit by me in the empty bus and started to talk jovially and told me to get down at one of the stops where I could hitch a ride to my destined place.  He also told one of the passengers to help me to catch the correct bus. The person whom he said helped me all the way from crossing the road, walked with me to the next bus stop, and got me into one of the buses which goes to Town Hall. Well, that was a really strange morning.

At about 7.15AM, I reached Town Hall and met up with Deenuji and Akash, who were writing GATE along with me in the same centre.  We reached the centre at about 8.05AM, I was mystified by the beauty of the city with its clean asphalt road with cars and locos moving with blazing speeds with a pleasant climate in a greeny environment. The road was so beautiful that I wished to drive an McLaren F1, right in the middle of it with a few drag racers.

It’s been a month since I’ve blogged because as usual, there was nothing interesting to write about. The year started very well, when I was in vacation at Hogenakkal Falls and Yercaud. Me and my family had a great time in the tour especially myself, who had been depressed a lot in the previous month. Anyways, moving with a very strong positive attitude this year – I really enjoy each and every day for this year till now. Nevertheless being unemployed, I am confident that there is a future out there for me too. Instead of whining for something which I don’t have, I feel happiness in every thing I do especially when having fun with friends. Just like a novel, we do have sad and pleasant parts in our story but I hope all our stories will have a happy ending. There has been a lot of surprises (starting with the ATV ride in Yercaud) for me from the moment I had stopped expecting things and they tend to increase day by day as the pages of my life turn by themselves.

That’s enough yada yada, its February 3rd 2012, the first post of this year. We had just finished our first review and I’m very much satisfied with what I had to present about my project. Although I feel a lot guilty for not able to contribute much to my project because of the lack of an Android device which plays a key role in our project, I have a strong hope that I can lead/follow my team to one of the best in the class.

So, its the Year-End, all hearts should be filled with joy and energy by now. It’s December 24th, 2011 and probably this might be the last post of this year. I may not be available here when the new year starts and so, I’m posting this in advance. 2011, It has been a great and a horrific year for me.  I did lose a lot, cry a lot but also gained something out of it.  I’ve got a lot of interview experience, friends experience, I got my lovely Macbook Pro and I guess that’s it for me. I became a stronger fan of Apple, Steve Jobs but also lost a lost interest in technology. That’s something that you might get shocked to hear from geek like me. Anyways, I hope you all had a fabulous year.

Next thing, you might ask me is : Where’s your New Year Resolutions?

This is the 3rd post of the 2011 Year-End Series and yes, this is the first time I’m mentioning my friend’s name directly on the post title. We’ll get into that in a few minutes, but first, I wish to thank each and everyone who has been with me all the way this 2011.  Thanks for every happy and sad moment you’ve given me, thanks to all those NIETns and everyone who’ve wished me on my birthday, thanks to encouraged me,thanks to Arumugam and Kirthika who threw me a birthday party, thanks to Panneer for having me for his birthday party, thanks to Debby for her valuable encouragement, thanks to all those who gave invaluable birthday gifts. I sincerely thank everyone who did everything for me, Well you get the point, don’t you?

So, Why Special Thanks To Lilly & Nalini?

This is the 2nd Post of the 2011 Series in which I’ve discussed about the things I’ve learnt (besides the tech & curriculum) all the way this year.  Of course, I’ve not learnt much this year as I told in my previous post describing how I wasted my time regards learning new things.  Although technologically, I didn’t learn new which was worthy, I did obtain a lot of wisdom about people and the way the world is. Here are those few things I’ve learned about :

1. I got to know a lot about Ayappan :