THE BOOTCAMP AT GOA (LONG POST - READ ONLY IF JOBLESS) 1:46 AM

Day 0: The Journey Begins

The journey began at 8:00 pm from Coimbatore. Madhan, Arumugham and me were the ones who set out together. We had a great time at the station cracking jokes and stuff. After we boarded the train serious discussions regarding the usergroups set the tensed mood. Madhan parted at Shoranur as he had booked in another train. Arumugham and me were left in the train. We discussed about the plans  that was made earlier and we came up with brilliant concepts. Then it was the "Lights-off" Time.

Day 1: @ Mangalore

We reached Mangalore at 5:00 am. Arumugham woke me up, as I had slept like a cow last night. We got down and it was surprising to see the our fellow MSPs from Madras! It was indeed pleasant to see them! After having a cuppa coffee (Without brushing our teeth lol!) Krishnaa, Diwaagar , Arumugham and myself took a walk to "explore" Mangalore :P. We had a couple of idlis at a nearby restaurant and we packed some for the rest too :) (We are kind people really) After a good Hog, we boarded the train to Goa (i.e. Madgaon) I being the amateur paparazzi kept taking snaps of each and everything :)

In the train I was very happy to sit at my favorite place in the train, The window seat with me facing the direction of travel!!! The scenery and greenery (Awesome! I can even rap now!) was amazing. The climate is very pleasant in the morning, but I dunno how bad it could get in the afternoon, as it is already getting warmed. A couple of "Flashy" people were there in the train, I guess they came for a tour or something. A female came and sat in our compartment, she pretended to be the hottest female on earth, hence she ran away from our compartment as she realized that we are MICROSOFT STUDENT PARTNERS and we are HOTTER than her :P lol! (She was sitting next to Arumugham but when I sat next to her, she ran away!! Lol!) I spent most of my time trying to learn my experiments for my OS practical exam! :P lol! Arumugham read the book "Are you afraid of the dark" by Sidney Sheldon. The train got really cramped up now and I'm typing this with only one hand lol! I listened to music on my ipod, it got pretty boring though. As I was listening, I dozed off and Arumugham completed his novel. When I woke up, Arumugham was at the back along with the other MSPs. I joined them and then we started with our awesome PJs( PJ = Paandi Joke [Mokkai])

By the way the journey was very lonely for Madhan who happen to travel alone :D

@Goa!! (Madgaon -------> La Calypso)

At last after  18 hours of strenuous journey we finally reached Madgaon! I was so happy to see the glimpses of the beach! We got down and we pushed our way to the entrance of the railway station. We were pleasantly surprised to our faithful friend Madhan who happened to have waited for us for more than hour at the station! :D But our "Friends" Jyothikarthik, Bharath and Harish  happened to ditch us and went to the La Calypso Resort. Nice Friends! Lol! Childrenin guys (Tired of the word Kiddin) :) We waited for another hour at the station itself with frustration and Grrr! Our PJ's were irritating everyone! (That’s what we wanted!!) The shuttle came after an hour and we left to La CalypsO. During the journey we waited for another half an hour to pick up MSPs from another area (GRRR!!) . I took a couple of snaps during the journey, the travel was not that stressful. As usual The CBEUG was at its maximum in their effective PJ skills lol!( Arvind G. and Krishnaa were waiting for an opportunity to kick the shit outta us lol!) We created a special song for the Goa Bootcamp. Its called the Awesome Song (Note: The word awesome is patented by Madhan Raj) The song would be uploaded, you can download using a link which I would provide. Lol!

Lyrics:

Aw…. Aw…. Aw…. Awseyy

Aw…. Aw…. Aw…. Awseyy

Aw…. Aw…. Aw…. Awseyy

Aw…………………AWESOME!

(Repeat until listener is irritated)

Aw…. Aw…. Aw…. Awshee

Aw…. Aw…. Aw…. Awshee

Aw…. Aw…. Aw…. Awshee

Awwwwwwww SHIT!

(Repeat until listener kills himself)

We sang a song for each MSP in the Bus. Lol! That’s how we managed the hectic travel.

@La Calypso FINALLY

We signed in, got our ID cards and an Imagine Cup Cap from Reza. We also signed the code of conduct which was a list of DO NOTS for the things that we would do lol!. Then we ran to get the keys to retire in the rooms, but NO! We had to attend an informal session which gave us an introduction to what the Live@edu was all about. It was done by Shesha. It was a good session, but  I was unable to pay much attention cuz I was feeling very stuffy and moldy. After the session was over, we had the Ice breaker session where we should work as a team to advertise a wacky product, MAD Ads was its name, My team consisted of Lakshman, Sattvik, Marmik, Akshat, Srikanth, Saranya and Myself. I guess they advertised the product "Perfumed Socks". I bunked that event cuz I was really tired and I was desperate for a bath cuz my face was covered with soot. I wanted to see the beach badly  :( After Relaxing and stuff at our room which had a friggin see through bathroom! I had a nervous time having my bath lol! We had a sexy dinner. I made several new friends too. After the dinner we went to the Beach!! YAY!

@The Beach

 The beach was so romantic, but unfortunately I didn’t have any one to romance with :( so We made a voluptuous mermaid that attracted all the MSPs ;) Praveen, Madhan, Anmol, Arumugham and I designed the *ahem* Mermaid :D (AWESOME!!).  That was one of the achievements! Then I went around dancing with some of the Bengalooroo MSPs (Raveesh and Lakshman, Raveesh did an amazing dance step, which got the beach mud flying into my mouth :P). After some dancing and photography sessions. Then we returned our tired bodies to the room and we relaaaxed. We met a couple of Amazing MSPs without whom our stay would have been boring.

Back @ The room

Praveen, Vishwa, Laxman, Siddharth and many more gave us wonderful company. Of course I didn't stop laughing when Praveen was around lol! :D It was around 11 in the night, I decided to take a walk in the streets of Goa, wished for some wine shop to be opened so that I could smuggle some stuff to Coimbatore! Lol! I was given a long order by my friends. But all I bought was a couple of fenny and a wine :D Cuz I didn’t have cash. :P Sri Ram, Praveen, Anmol and I took a pretty long walk, we went up to a bar called "Kamasutra" lol! Had a good laugh out there and came back cuz we were kinda tired. I went back into the room. Vishwa, Madhan, Arumugham and I had a chat. I tasted a small bit of the fenny, it screwed my happiness . Lol! That taste refused to leave my mouth. Then after drinking tea and eating a couple of mints I retired for the night. Goodnight!

Day 2: The Sessions

The day began at 8:00….. F*CK!!!!(Hope the * makes it look less abusive :P) I was supposed to get up at 6:30, run to the beach and take snaps of the Sun Rise!! MISSED IT !!! OHNOO!!

Again disappointed, got ready for the sessions. Ate the amazing breakfast! (I won't describe what I ate, cuz I would end up drooling on my keyboard) The sessions began , we had Siddharth explain the activities for us and the method of submitting them. Mark and Tejas also gave us more knowledge on the academic initiatives .After the short break which included some amazing hot tea/coffee with.. OK Lets jump to the session.

The next session was by Lakshman Srikanth on robotics with his i-Robot :) He navigated his robot through his laptop, and Sattvik also added more flavor to the session by making the robot sing a song from Rock on!!*  (Of course not like Celine Dion or someone but you know that beep beep toing sound thing ?) This was Video-taped by the 6'5" Hunk/Hulk ANIL!! (You can check the video at Lakshmans Blog.)

After the lunch it was the session by Krishnaa. He was the top performer of the year. So he gave us a gist on what happened at the Student Daze at Redmond. Then came his session on Windows Server 2008, I tried my level best to pay attention to his session, but unfortunately I happened to see Sahitya borrow an iPhone from Aakash.

<Jealous>

Then I was busy looking at Sahitya nondifying (Nondify is a Tamil + English word that means meddle) with Aakash's iPhone didn't concentrate much what was going on. I got the iphone from her and I started nondifying it. Hmm.. Lucky Guy Aakash :)

</Jealous> 

After a break the Madras MSPs (Arvind G. and Diwaagar) took a session on XNA Game development. I was very eager to attend that session, but I had to go halfway and pack my bags as *Sniff* I had to leave *Sniff* that evening *Sniff* I attended the last part of their session. I bid everyone bye in the hall and left La Calypso. Sigh…

@Travel Back to Madgaon

This was the worst part of our travel, We (Arumugham, Arvind, Sri Ram, Laxman, Siddharth and Myself) took a cab to Panjim. From there Arumugham and I part ways and we had to take a bus from Panjim to Madgaon. That was very thrilling. Our Train was at 8:40 and it was 7:30, time taken from Panjim to Madgaon - 1 F*CKING HOUR!!! Bus would arrive only after 15 Minutes. Arumugham and I were on tenterhooks! We got the bus, got down at Madgaon (8:40) Zoomed to the station. There the security checked our bags to see if we took any booze(Ulp! I escaped) , we decided that we missed the train, to our luck the train was late, and it was late by

THREE LONG FRIGGIN HOURS!!!!WE WAITED FOR THREE HOURS. So much for the thrill :( Finally the train came we boarded it and we had a safe journey back to Coimbatore

And then they happily lived ever after..

If you reached this line, I would like to thank you for spending your precious time in reading the entire post. Hope I didn’t bore you or anything. Please do comment on the post. Also I wanted to thank all the wonderful people who I met at Goa . I really look forward to meet you people and do a program someday. Hope we meet again before you leave the MSP program. :) Thanks to Reza, Siddharth, Mark and Tejas for making it happen at Goa. I know I missed a lot at Goa, but I'm happy that I don’t regret that one day stay. :) And also a special thanks to Arumugham who was by my side throughout the entire journey :)

Also If I have forgot to mention any of the MSPs please do let me know, as my database is highly limited :( Also mention if I had forgotten to mention any event. 

Fast Forward 9:36 PM

Ok now I cant be telling you all the prominent events that happen in my life at one go , cuz either it would get boring or I would get irritated lol! So several amazing events happen in my life almost everyday. Some of them are...

• TRIchrome '08: An Inter-Collegiate Event held at our college. It was conducted for the first time in our college, and in our city. A 3 day event conducted only by one department, that is the DEpartment of Information TechnologY (DeITy). It turned out to be a grand success. We were very happy, it was one helluva experience in life :) I was one of the coordinators in the 3 day event.

• Academic Developer Conference : Conducted by the CBEUG (Coimbatore User Group) Oh yeah Im a member of that group :P (Being an MSP from Coimbatore). We got a massive crowd of 1100 people from 17 colleges!
  

• The AIESEC LTS: The first event of AIESEC which I attended. It was an amazing experience. I came to know about what AIESEC really is and how we work as a team. I met so many people, made so many friends. Tagged around with Sashank and Gowtham. Two freakos! lol!

• The AIESEC LCONF: The first local conference of AIESEC Coimbatore at Sathyam Resort. It was an opportunity for me to recognize my peers and the way how AIESEC works. We had to do some self assessments like the Google Competency Model and stuff, I attended only for one day, but it was a three day function. Amazing experience it was! Yeah amazing.... amazing.... :P

• TechVista 2008: This was at Madras, conducted by Microsoft Research India. One of the most elegant events I have come across. Conducted with grandness and quality. That inspired me a lot. Hope we get to do an event like that. Ill be writing a post on this soon.

• The Goa Boot Camp: This was the trip that I was highly enthu about, I would be elaborating about it in my Further Post :)

I am an AIESECer 8:46 PM

I came across an article in the newspaper about this International Student Community AIESEC with a HUGE photo. I was intrigued by this community, cuz it looked good and I wanted to mingle with people of that kind where I could improve myself in all aspects also. So I went up to Atmos in Coimbatore (That was the registration area) and filled up a form and I was informed that my group discussion was to be held the next day 6pm at the same place.

The next day I went to atmos with five of my friends (I had registered for them too) for the group discussion, the topic for discussion was "Are the colleges impart education or just a platform for business". We spoke for a while, the GD was presided over by Shiva (President of the OGX - He loves Liverpool!). After the GD we had this thing called team activity, where we had to convince Dhaya (A girl with pretty long hair) to shave her head bald. It was really funny. We had a great time that time. We left atmos after we were told that we would get a call if we made through the GD.

I GOT THE CALL and so did my best friend Geethu George. We both got selected for the interview. I was the happiest! I prayed that we both got selected. My interview was conducted by Hardik and Udit, it went on really smooth and we had a great time. Geethu's interview was held by Namitha and Mayank. 

Unfortunately, Geethu was not selected in the interview process :( , I got a call from Prasanna who first said that I was not selected and then stated that he was joking. lol! I was flying when I realized that I was selected! It was AWESOME! I was the only one selected in my College. ;)

The Story of me Becoming a Microsoft Student Partner 9:33 PM

September 2007:

"Yawn! What to do next?" - That was the kind of boy who I am. So after joining my newly opened college, I was wondering whether I would get any opportunities to express myself. All of a sudden one day I heard that people from Microsoft are coming to our college. I was like WTF!?! Microsoft to our newly opened college!? That was Amazing! I went around boasting about it lol!

The day before the program, I stayed back in college to help out do the audio and visual arrangements. Then I saw the Microsoft People! They were Siddharth Prakash, Mayur Tendulkar and Sumedh Sakdeo. I spoke so formal and after engaging in conversation for a while, I happened to ask how were your college days, and the response I got from them was "Dude, I'm still in College!"

Shocked I was, I wanted to become one too! And to my luck, they were recruiting MSPs!! I attended the group discussions and interview. Now comes the worst part. The selection, I had butterflies in my stomach! Then I overeheard a couple of people who said that I was not selected. [:(] Sigh... When I spoke to Mayur, He too said that I was not selected cuz I was not good enough. It was very depressing, the results were not yet announced though. I decided to improve myself and get recruited the next time!

After a few days, I got a call. I was wondering who it was. It was from Microsoft!! They said that I was selected for the program and they wanted to have a telephonic interview. My happiness knew no bounds lol! I almost ended up kissing my friend! (Friend is guy and I'm not gay) 

So thats the story of me becoming a Microsoft Student Partner!

Whoa! Im back! Now don't read the previous post, as I tried my "Level Best" to keep up my promise to post atleast one topic everyday but I could'nt. Anyways now I am really serious in maintaining a Blog!