Post Homecoming thoughts ...

My undergrad was in Regional Engineering College, Trichy (REC Trichy) now re-christened National Institute of Technology, Trichy (NIT, Trichy). Unarguably the best days of my life. When I talk about REC, I always think about it as the place where:

• I got out of the comfort of my home in Madras for the first time and started to learn and live the independant way
• I met a lot of amazing people who have now become the closest of buddies and brothers in arms
• I transformed from an innocent-not-at-all-worldwise teenager to a spoilt-worldwise-youth ;)

Now all of the above happened not because I joined REC per se but because of the hostel life. It happened because I met people from all the states in India. It happened because I met people from all the stratas of society and more importantly I learnt to understand, respect and live with them. It happened because I shared my life with theirs 24/7/365/4! Now all that was between 1995 to 1999. An altogether different millenium I guess.

During the last week of December '06, a batchmate and a very good friend of mine from good old REC days - Senti, decided to drive down to Trichy for old times sake. You know to get the feeling of Nostalgia and basically have a good time. But what we saw there disturbed us quite a bit. Thanks to the PC and telecom revolution that is happening, we found that the student interaction in hostel has hit an all time low. Here is what we found:

1. Almost every room in the hostel has got a PC or a laptop with an internet connection. So every student is stuck in his own room
2. Every student has a cel-fone. We hardly found students walking in groups to the snacky place or tea-shops. Each one was with his cel-fone stuck to his ear. What was even worse was that there were quite a few blokes with cel-fones in the mess too!
3. TV Rooms are dead, because I guess everyone downloads movies or get their own CDs and watch it in their room
   

Still unclear on what to make out of these observations. But here is a list of reactions:

1. Damn! And we thought we wouldnt face the issue of generation gap - Viggy
2. They are missing out on the brotherhood we shared - Viggy
3. Crap! This is not the REC I studied in - Senti
4. What the hell, I am not going to worry - I got the best of both the worlds. Had a great life in REC and I am also on Orkut - Kille
5. May be these guys would have a much better network than us. They are already very well connected through all these websites and IMs - Kille

Your thoughts?

Signs of being single for too long?

I am by no means a great singer. But I live alone in Hyderabad in a pretty big apartment. What that means is I can sing as loud as I can as and when I want to. But the problem with me is, I know when I sound bad while singing. So I try to make some amends here and there.
Very recently, I read an article somewhere that a singer should relate to the song he is delivering. I took this cue pretty seriosly.

Fell in love with this song "Tere Bina" from this film - Guru. As usual tried to sing this song, but not once did I come close to how Rahman was delivering it. So I tried to incorporate the tip I read about singing - "relating to the song"

This song is all about how difficult it is to live without a girlfriend/spouse, you know the usual every-other-filmi-song types. So here I go, trying to come up with one girl that would help me sing this song better. To my surprise quite a few names popped up. But the second it popped up there was this voice in my head that dismissed every one of them. Some of them listed below:

1. 'Dude! The girl is married!! Leave her alone.'
2. 'Ewwwww!! Her??? Naaaaa...'
3. 'Her?! Dont you remember what she did to you?'
4. 'Dude you need to get a life'

Signs of maintaining the single status for too long? :))