|| Daily Humdrum ||

Good Morning, Good Morning

Arijit — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:46:45 +0000

And it all whizzed past.

New year wasn’t exactly party time for me. However, mom’s cooking can, and does, qualify as a celebration. Was too cold out in Noida, and mom had to go out for a Puja at someone’s place. And though I was allowed a ‘bath holiday’, I somehow made uo my mind to go ahead with it. New year’s day is new year’s day, after all. My only resolution this year: to lose weight.

THE post

Arijit — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:44:26 +0000

Yes, I know. I’d vanished all of a sudden from blogosphere, and that is unfair. See, the thing was that something utterly unexpected had happened (I’ll tell you why it was unexpected in the next post), and I was simply blown over; life suddenly became king-size (well, almost) and it is only now that things are coming back to normal. The euphoria remains, though. But I’m back on here.

The Longest Day of my Life: Part I

Arijit — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:13:05 +0000

It’s tomorrow. The Reliance recruitment. Written test followed by personal interview. I want to crack it. I need to crack it.

In Pursuit of their Skulls

Arijit — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 18:11:49 +0000

Counterstrike 1.6, better known as CS, is the favourite past-time of most guys out here, and I’m no exception. If you’ve not heard of it, you’re probably farther from LAN gaming than Indian villagers are from potable water. Though one of the most popular LAN games, it’s quite simple: somebody creates the server on his comp, you join either the terrorists (T for short) or the counter-terrorists (CT, for short), buy a gun with the money you have (the money here is virtual, and depends on how many of the opposite team you kill, your team’s overall performance, etc), pack some grenades and you’re off. I’m no MVP (that’s most valuable player for the uninitiated), but I do score quite a good number of headshots (that’s the mark of a good player: a shot to the head which kills the enemy instantly).

If the number of players is small, the one running the server selects a smaller map with a simple objective: kill the players of the other team. A round ends when all members of a team are killed; the other team, naturally, wins the round. These rounds last only a few minutes, and most of the time the battle boils down to a one-on-one between the last survivors of each team. You don’t have to buy anything here, you just pick the weapons up from the ground. My tactics here are varied: I may run berserk with a Benelli XM shotgun, or go steady with one of my (and most everybody’s) favs: the Sig 552, the Colt or the AUG. Sometimes I get frustrated and pick up the MP5 too, often with devilish consequences.

Then we have the ‘bomb’ formats, where the Ts have to plant the C4 at a bombsite, and the CTs have to stop them from doing so; they must also defuse any planted bomb. This is the most popular format of the game, and you may choose any role you like: from a room-clearer to a sniper. I love the more versatile clan role: using the Sig or the Colt, depending on whether I’m a T or a CT, respectively. Sometimes I pick up the tactical shield coupled with a DEagle, just for fun. There’s the ‘hostage’ format too, but for some reason it’s not that popular here.

And then there’s the deathmatch: no objectives, 50 or more players, complete mayhem. You either kill, or die and respawn. And yes, I’m the king of this format. All I need is the Colt, and I’m happily spilling enemy blood all over the map with my burst fire. Sometimes they catch me from behind, and I actually manage to turn and take out their skulls. Of course I’d never forget the last time I played a deathmatch, a few days ago. For a change, I picked up an AWP and started sniping. I was surprised when I discovered I was still on top.

To sum it up, CS is always fun, and an effective way to take a break from the real life and unleash the primeval animal instincts. In a peaceful way, that is.

Just Another Day

Arijit — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:26:29 +0000

Quite a lot has happened in the past few days. First, I bombed at the Shell technical interview. It was a project interview, rather, and the interviewers weren’t particularly impressed with it. It was quite obvious, and I knew I wouldn’t make it to the round I was supposedly made for: the case study. But then, among the rejectees were people who’d done path-breaking work, people who were praised by the interviewers for being innovative, even someone who was given a card by one of the interviewers. After the case study, there were two left, and after what they called group activity, they decided only one made the cut. And for all this, they made us fill that stupid application form (took hours), prepare for that telephonic interview (took a day, many took a week), and then grill us over a project. To hell with Shell, then.

Today, sat out the Cairn recruitment. No point in it, I reckoned, when all they see is whether the candidate is among the top ten. Instead, I went shopping for the one thing missing in my wardrobe: a red necktie. Found the perfect one at the Raymond’s outlet. Came back and tied a knot. Perfect. I love ties. Shortly afterwards, my batchies came back all spent from T&P, and bingo. Second question of the written test: your GPA till the last semester. To hell with Cairn too. Next stop: Reliance.

No, I’m not arrogant at all.

The Defeatist

Arijit — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:16:19 +0000

Inside every optimist lurks a defeatist. A coward who contemplates a meek surrender in the face of odds. The fact that the job at hand is of paramount importance and, if accomplished, might become the single most vital feat in one’s life simply magnifyies the woes of the defeatist.

I read an article in today’s newspaper which stressed on living in the present; the past is history and the future is uncertain. But what can you do when you involuntarily keep brooding about the future till it becomes a mania of sorts? Ironically, it is not something impossible, but to a coward everything difficult seems impossible.

The same thing is happening to me. Inside my brain, there are a hundred thoughts right now. The Jekyll-Hyde confrontation further complicates things. And in the midst of all this, the one vital source of strength is missing. But then that doesn’t mean I surrender to this coward inside me. Because I didn’t do it last time.

I have but one prey, and one bullet to hunt it with. Do I pursue it, or just watch it slip into the horizon and beyond?

Sleep Deprivation

Arijit — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:32:09 +0000

My daily sleep requirement is six hours, but I always tend to undersleep; even if I sleep after midnight, my eyes strangely open at daybreak, and, since I love the tranquil mornings, I don’t feel like going back to sleep. Which means I often tend to undersleep, and this in turn leads to grogginess after breakfast, which I hate.

This happened today too, and right now the blood vessels in my head seem haplessly dilated. So I’m going off to sleep. Again. But sleep is always pure bliss, so who’s complaining?

Finally, the Engines Sputter to Life

Arijit — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:26:58 +0000

After weeks of procrastination, I finally began my preparations for the Shell interview. The first round is the only one you can actually prepare for, since it is a technical interview centred around two of your projects. Then we are to conduct a case study, followed by a group discussion session. I’m touted as the king of group discussion, and a master of case-study (though I haven’t done a real-time case study, they still consider me to be a god in it, God knows why ), but it is the project bit that I’m most concerned about.

So I dressed up in my layers and headed out to the lib. Initially I just loitered around the various sections, wondering what to do, until finally making up my mind to sit in the reading room and study ‘formation evaluation’ (the subject on which one of my projects is based). As always, productivity in the lib is low, what with all the movement around coupled with my feeble concentration. But then, the lib always gets me a start, thanks mainly to the absence of my lappie.

One of the inevitabilities (and in fact one of the most interesting aspects) of sitting in the lib is bird-watching. You may do it to take a break from digging into your book, or to flex your inexplicably tired neck. Or you may just find your eyes automatically darting towards the species of the flowing hair, as if pre-programmed to do so. Which in fact they are. However, you might find the guy accompanying her digusting (while your mind involuntarily wonders “What did she see in him?”).

Needless to say, the other kind can become quite a nuisance if you’re there for some serious work. And after a while of shifting around in my seat, I finally made up my mind to write as I study. It paid off, and my rusty engine finally sputtered to life. Sadly, my pal SS, with whom I was sharing the table, said he couldn’t take the pain of the book any more. So I took pity on him, picked up my stuff, and cycled back to hostel. Job somewhat well done. But miles to go, still.

All the Best, Everyone

Arijit — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:45:40 +0000

It’s placement season here for our batch, and everybody can be seen preparing for the same (except me, that is ). Though I only have the Shell interview in the first week; the rest didn’t find my grades good enough. Surprising, considering Shell shortlisted only 18 people from our batch after the telephonic (out of 48), and I was one of them. As Harsh puts it, we’re like snipers, with only one bullet each, and only one shot at bigtime success.

However, Shell is not the end of the road; far from it, rather. There’s Reliance Petro, OIL, Baker-Hughes, Reliance Energy, IOCL, HLS Asia, Essar, ONGC and GSPC. Most probably, everyone will end up with a job, and harmony will prevail. I wish to land up a place where it is feasible to execute my future plans. Shell seems to be the ideal place to start a career. Let’s see how far that goes.

I must start with mugging the projects which I sent to Shell’s HR. There are two, but since both are primarily theoretical and about stuff we’ve already studied, it’ll be fairly simple. What will not be so simple is to show them as major achievements, though I do have the power of diction by my side. Let’s hope for the best.

I wish my batchies all the best for placements. May we all be happy at the end of our stay here in this place. Godspeed, everyone. And Godspeed to me too.