It all started here......

It all started here...the indiranagar double road princeton review center always used to catch my attention..good lord...save me!! so many ppl going to US (as the princeton review ad suggested)....i too had to catch the train.....n the hardships began!!
die-hard srk fan as i am..."zindagi mein pyaar sirf ek baar hota hai...aur shaadi bhi ek hi baar---aur apping bhi ek hi baar"!!
<- yahoo ps-ii



bitstomsphd--the egroup started by bitsian seniors was of key importance now....i was starting from the a for alpha...

ps-ii weekends in yahoo! were exploited for univ selection, gre, toefl...plethora of stupid questions were flooding the sent-folder.


it looked so simple- write gre, toefl, get decent scores, apply to univs and get the admits!! credit card was a necessary condition...till then..i dint have a credit card ..in fact there was no need...wht was i going to do with a credit card at a place like pilani...swiping it at skylab or vk reidi?..finally credit card ka jugaad hua n gre, toefl was booked.

gre with its non-vernacular vocab occupied all of us...ricky,akhil,cp,kallu,dallu,me....anonymous sms and orkut scraps were replete with gre words...dogmatic,bacchanalian were used freely to adorn others.....i recall one such sms for which the reply was "one who msges such things himself is a dog"...we realized the fellow doesnt know the word-dogmatic.....n there was a laughter-burst....adding to the sms rivalry...akhil wrote "bow-bow" !!...n thus was born a new word "sh****fied"

kallu who got enthused with vocab..started barrons wordlists with letter 'a'.....but his horrific ps-manager, intel validation runs over the year have restricted him to wordlist no 3. i wish somewhere down the line he would surely exhaust barrons.

now it started to look like a herculean task...the ghotted words didnt last for more than 2 days.....memory cards were a fiasco....novels came as my saviors. numerous novels...those from dan brown to dr. kalam occupied the weekend tabs.....slowly n steadily i was atleast on the right path....par delli abhi dur thi......

internship ended n i vowed to pick-up gears during the 12-days vacation....in nagpur it was me and the books....i didnt bother to get down from second floor for days.....in those 12 days...i super-read shantaram 100 pages per day...n boy.. gregory david roberts is simply superb!

i joined intel on 3rd july 2006. ..the ginger hotel which intel had provided for accomodation was spotless clean. this was my first corporate stay..n i exploited it fully!! the ac, plasma tv, fridge, meticulously put up cosy bed....the only regret was... i was alone in the room ;)....
it was high soccer time with the FIFA world cup...it was ginger where italy dusted others to claim the title....a week later ibm thinkpad arrived....my first and the only one laptop till date.
those fifteen days were the most luxurious days of my life.

the day we left ginger....our to-be house owner dinged us and we were literally on road!! somehow we managed to find another house the next day....
how paradoxical life can be....previous day i comforted in a tata brand...the next day i was a vagrant!

finally the last month of gre preps began @385 ST Bed. sats n sundays were spent at SRR intel. the pin drop silence and seamless internet were the main features....
atlast the d-day came....prayers,best wishes came all over n gre happened.
750+620...wasnt very exciting result but then wasn't bad either......

its really frustrating when 3000 odd words rattle you day n night....i was so saturated that i could feel myself breathing gre-words rather than air!
the sleepless night on the gre eve made me realize that it was the first exam after 4 years for which i had really studied the complete syllabus and revised it....in bits pilani knowing what the syllabus is, itself was an arduous task leave alone revising it.

Day: 26th Aug 2006, Place: Hyd, my Toefl center.
i still feel, i managed to gulp some of the Felix Felicis potion.
my Toefl exam was about to start at 7 pm and at 6 pm a short-circuit at the begumpet center routed all the PCs. lucky potion played its trick here and i got a seat at the much better banjara hills center. i cant help wondering-- what if the test was postponed by a week or so??

i enjoyed the test throughout. each word you speak has a value (toefl test costed me $150 ;) )

next few months i was occupied with reporting the GRE/TOEFL scores to each university, shaping my SOP, resume...all the application materials were dispatched much much ahead of their respective deadlines and i heaved a sigh of relief!

meanwhile, i joined Infosys SETLabs in the Data Mining Research Group.

dec 11 2006, bangalore:my desk
to my astonishment, one day suddenly an email popped up in my inbox! Graduate School decision has been made, please access this link to see your decision.
Trembling hands clicked the linked. heartbeat was at its peak..apprehensive eyes read the first word "Congratulations"!! ...and i knew it! my first admit!!....the deadline for the fall 2007 admissions was dec 15 2006..n i had got an admit before the deadline!