An Intriguing NSS Camp

வணக்கம்! (Vanakkam) — That’s how we greet someone formally in Tamil, which is a direct equivalent of ‘Hello’ in English. Speaking of Tamil words, this has been an another interesting week where I spent most of the time playing around with Tamil for NSS Camp. A.K.A Computer Mela. Yes, It’s July 16th 2011, the day after the long tiring week in which, me and my friends spent most of the time teaching school children, some Computer Basics.

As most of my college friends know, I’m the Official Designer of most of the college related activities such as Workshops, Symposiums and Sports Events and Camps. I design the Certificates, Posters, Banners, Invitations and even ID Cards. It’s a job for which I never get paid for and I hate it even though I gain a lot of experience by doing these works. I’ve been doing this for the past 3 years expecting nothing but I also get some ill-effects like losing attendance, showing my absence to my classmates, and most importantly I miss a lot of classes because of these design works.

Well, for this NSS Camp, things started differently. Our Beloved Sampath Sir, already notified me through Facebook about designing an invitation while we were on holidays. He had said that the work was supposed to be done in Tamil, so initially I was taken aback on hearing that. After college had started, he had asked me once again and I accepted to take up the work. I started a site for logging everything related to the invitation design, which can be found here. I started the work on my Mac and finished the Invitation design in about a day. I used the Google Transliterate to type in Tamil. Last Sunday, I had uploaded the design and notified sir on Facebook about the site. Later after he had seen the design, he called me and said that the design was awesome!

On July 11th, the week started as usual which soon turned out to be a busy week. I had to goto Sampath Sir’s cabin to finish off the remaining work regarding the invitation and also I had to design the certificates. I was accompanied by the NSS Student Co-ordinator — Arumugam. I had to miss the Software Testing Test and I had asked permission from our professor to write it the next day. We spent the whole monday in designing that and I went back home and uploaded the certificates to the site. The next day, my companion took leave so no one asked me to come to the cabin and work on that day. I had to study hard for the test (ST) and but I couldn’t write that since I was late after lunch, Ma’m told me to write the test tomorrow. On Wednesday, Arumugam had made a comeback and we had to move to the cabin once again and start designing the other certificates. We missed all the classes and the day was spent wholly in the sir’s cabin. And finally after 3 days, most of our work had been finished and we were ready for the NSS Camp.

On July 14th,

The most-anticipated Computer Mela had started but still we got some new works which had to be done soon. We had to design the Banner which had to hung out in front of the college and also in front of our adopted school. We had done that as fast as we can and we had to design ID Cards for the members of the Student Council, which I discussed in my previous post. By afternoon, all the banners were printed out and we had a lots of fun in hanging them on the gate. The weather was super awesome, with subtle drizzling and the temperature was very cool. All our classmates were forced to move to the Internet lab, where they had created their own blogs and filled up my notification bar by joining Google+.

Later that day, our adopted schools had arrived to our college and headed towards our MCA Lab. All of them took their places and started playing with the computers. It was very difficult to manage them, as they were too naughty to handle. Most of them responded to us very disgracefully so I had kept a certain limit and stayed away from them. All were exploring the computer and tried working on Microsoft Paint, Notepad and Word. My fellow NSS team members took in-charge and started teaching them how to work with these softwares. I went outside the lab and went to sir’s cabin to finish the remaining work regarding the ID Card. I had created a simple not-so-good logo for the Student Council and urged with the work. After 2–3 hours, we had our tea and came back to the lab. Me and Arumugam decided to examine all the works made by the students, and we moved across each and every computer. All the students made good creative work using MS Paint and we saw a kid named ‘Dhanaprakash’ whose work was amazing. My friend complimented him by saying that he will get him a job at Microsoft. That kid took it serious although he did not know what he meant by Microsoft. He took that as some of kind of Candy/toy and started torturing us to give that to him immediately. Freaking out from that kid’s behaviour, we immediately went out from the place and soon the day’s work was over. The students started back to their school and we started back to our homes.

On July 15th,

The next day, we had everything setup and were well-prepared for the 2nd day of the Camp. At about 10.20AM, the students marched in to our college and I took a lot of snaps using my Ike. To our surprise, that kid ‘DhanaPrakash’ still remembered what Armugam had promised to give him and shouted to give that to him as he was walking by. They headed out to the computer lab and started playing with the computer again. We had our tea, and went inside the computer lab and saw all the children working with the computers. Most of the children was drawing animals, landscapes and modern art, while some writing their names of their family members in a notepad.

Our fellow mates tried their best to help them as we started our inspection to each and every computer. Later, Sir wanted to write all the students’ names to each and every certificate which was a tremendous task, so me and Kasi Vishwanathan suggested that we can atleast give this work to the girls, who haven’t done anything regarding the NSS until that time. So we took all the certificates and went to the Internet lab, where the remaining classmates were browsing the net. We handed over the work to Suganya and Tharani and showed them what they had to fill in the certificates. Then, we returned back for more inspection.

Dhanaprakash — the naughty kid had created a wonderful picture of an Indian flag and some modern art. He grabbed onto us each and every time we walked by him and was asking to give that Microsoft job to him. We couldn’t help so we ran towards sir and prepared the certificates. We added the seal of the Principal and the college logo to each certificate. Then we arranged all the certificates in the attendance order and went out to have some more tea and biscuits.

After a few hours, the session came to an end and we had to move out the students to the college bus. Sadam Hussain, who had made a lot of students become his fans, arranged all of them in a single line and escorted them to the entrance of the college. We all took a group photo together with the Banner at the back. I also took some solo photos of a few boys who forced to me to do so.

Then we all headed out towards the school and bid a temporary good bye to everyone. Some of my friends shook hands with them as I took some snapshots with my Ike. It was interesting to see that all these students being afraid to move out of the school gate without the permission of their staff in-spite of having so fiendishness inside them. Then we went back to our college and had our lunch.

After our lunch, we headed back to the school for the evening session which includes the prize distribution and other usual events. After we reached the school, we were welcomed by the boys with so much enthusiasm as they were super excited to see us. Some of them grabbed me to each and every side of the school to show me around their classes.

I met another silent kid named ‘Prabhakaran’ who sticked to us most of the time for showing around their campus. Later, rain started pouring in, so we had to take shelter in one of the classrooms. The class was pitch black amidst total darkness that even my Ike’s flash couldn’t take a good snap inside it. We spent about half an hour inside the class, where all the students (even girls) tortured me to take snaps of them as I tried to escape them.

Then my fellow mates called me to check a problem with the Nikon CoolPix Digicam in which the Xeon Flash wasn’t working. I examined it and found out that its a Hardware problem so I couldn’t help in fixing it either. We waited for about an hour for the rain to stop but it was of no use. So the ending ceremony was postponed to next week and I had to bid good-bye to everyone.

I returned back to college with Muthu Sankar and Natraj getting fully drenched in the rain and set off back to the bus stop at about 3.30 PM with my bag. Then I got the bus to Perur along with Arumugam and took some snaps of the temple on the way home. I was astounded by enchanting beauty of the temple and its lake that I wished to post one of its photos to Facebook. You can check it out here. Finally I reached home at about 6.20 PM and started transferring these photos to my Mac.

I’ll update this post once again after the ending ceremony is finished, so stay tuned. And For more photos taken at the NSS camp, check out the my Google+ Album or my Facebook Album.