Incident '09

Notice the badge:-

Put simply its a representation of the theme for Incident '09: "Beyond Expression"

What is Incident you ask? Well if thats the case then you missed a hell of a show brother! Incident is the cultural fest of NITK Surathkal and is regarded as one of the best 5-day fests in India. When you have about 4000 students and over 100 colleges participating, you know you are in for a wild ride...

Inci this time didn't disappoint- Check out the official site (Thanks again Kiran for that wonderful website) here.. Use the map and the bot well and you will be getting a trip of NITK (Well, almost!)

I was not present for Day 0 as there is practically nothing on those 4 hours except the Easten Musicals. Speaking of musicals, for the first time ever in Incident history we had a live webcast of all major events and recorded videos of most others. Have a look here for that but I must warn you that the vidoes are huge and need a fast & unlimited internet connection if you need to watch it all in proper manner.

So the next day, Feb 26, was Day 1 (D-uh!) and I had the Ju-Jitsu workshop. As usual NITK followed a timezone 1-1.5 hrs behind IST and I had ample time to get myself a pair of shorts before realising none else had even bothered. Those 2 hours were really great as we were taught several holds and locks apart from a few falls, throws and "Life saving and Deadly" techniques- The instructor's words, not mine.. Oh did I mention I got manhandled by a final year trical girl when we were practising a few moves? *SHUDDER*

Once the gruelling session of Ju-Jitsu was done, I went over to the main building and the Artist Forum had done some really great work there:- 

They also had this art exhibition going on which saw some most remarkable work:-

The last 4 were by a girl in class 9 of school! Talk about talent.. 

More coming up..

My meeting with a "Far-Seer"

No, I am not kidding here! There was this guy advertised as someone who knows all about you despite never having met you before and would then give you tips on the future.. So I simply HAD to go see for myself, pretty sure this guy was a hoax.

The day was Sunday, 22/02/09 (3 days ago) and I was in Gurpur, a small town by the shores of the river Gurpur (Click on the map for a bigger image):-

There was some family occasion at the community hall over there and then I learnt of this guy at the Sri Varadraya Venkatramana Temple. This temple is believed to have been built in 1712 A.D; Punar-pratista was done in 1952.

So we all went- Everyone else with reverence for the guy and I with skepticism drooling from my lower lip. First up was my younger brother: The guy actually told about him (my brother) being in class 10 and being an average student at best, and went on to tell him to do blah-blah-blah for getting more marks. At this point I was a little interested but then it could have been deduced by any smart chap.

Next up: Me! He looks at me and tells I am an engineer and wish to go for higher education... WTF??? There is NO WAY he knew about me and at this point I was shell-shocked and would have remained so had he not opened his trap again. He says: There are economic issues so getting a job is difficult. Is that so?? Take a look:-

Strike 1! 

I controlled my smirk successfully. Next he tells me I havent prepared anything for the higher education process so I need to do so soon. He tells me to take TOEFL next month as it is a lucky month for me:-

Strike 2! It was getting harder to not laugh out loud.. He then tells me I am generally silent and experience sudden bouts of anger. Well nothing anyone can tell to that, except that he is wrong! STRIKE 3 AND YOU ARE OUT!!

I was gloating with a sick smile on my face looking at everyone else there and showing them I was right about this guy being a fraud when, and I never expected this, my cousin sister went up to him...

He tells: Canara Engineering College, Electronics & Communication, 63.2% marks, no job yet, only 12 in her class of 74 placed so far etc etc for about 3 mins. All facts, no guesses!

I was not ready for this, especially after my "glorious victory". That guy told everything precisely to 2 significant figures accurately about her. I desperately wanted to be told that he somehow knew this, that my cousin had talked to him before but she and everyone else vehemently denies it to this day.

Is he a seer or a fraud? I have my reservations about him and the entire world of "men-of-God" but that day was not the most normal of days..

Engineer: An audio-visual look at the magical event!

Before I proceed, take a look at the promo video:-

I guess that gave a good insight into Engineer as far as the sort of events held but this is more like what the students experience:-

Engineer saw participation galore and the actual events began as early as Feb 4th although the inauguration was on Feb 13:-

The two students at either end of the table are Anand Karpatne (Convenor- Engineer '09) and Deepan M.N (President, Student's Union '09). Two of the main committee members:-

Engineer and other fests give a reason to spruce up the college:-

A huge attraction was the laser show on the night on Feb 12. Here are a few pics:-

Any more and it would have lost the magic! The last day had symphony (Pics not yet out) and the last word:-

That is but a teaser, the real video is way too long to put up here. A pic will have to suffice though:-

That was Engineer 2009, and its just a week for an even bigger spectacle: INCIDENT 2009, The cultural fest of NITK which sees about 1200 outside students across 50+ nationwide colleges participating in the only fest involving a private beach.. More on that soon!

Engineer: Day 3

I thought my work at Engineer was mercifully over but I am not so good on luck lately. Waking up to a call at 8:15 am on Feb 14, I learnt that my "certain skills" were needed, no info on what those skills were. I didnt even have time to see the daily schedule for the day..

So I arrive at the Biotech department at 9:45 am and see a hustle of people going mad with confusion! Turns out it was Blueprint (Chemical) and the paper presentation event was going to start any time.. Mishra was asking others if it was too late to ask me to be the MC for the event but since I had no idea what was going on, he got the job. In comes GOD followed by a Babu (For those not in the know, GOD is Dr. Srinikethan and called so because he is the reigning deity of our department with a working knowledge of simply everything! The time is 9:50 am..

First up: Rajesh Hegde, our pet sacrificial lamb. He somehow finds ways unimaginable to screw himself (Not literally). In this case, the judges were fresh for accepting our sacrifices and Rajesh had no idea he was actually disqualified from the event for having submitted his paper for reviewal in an international conferance. 

So in the end an 8-min presentation caused a 14-min Q&A session from the judges where Rajesh was left literally speechless towards the end. Once he was done, he wasted no time blaming us for selecting the judges, the schedule, his entry being selected first etc etc.. YAWN!

Teams from LIT, Nagpur participated well in this and the subsequent event:-

Manoj and Avanti won 2nd prize for their presentation on the SURGE project done at IIT, Kanpur:- 

The winner of this event was Parvathi, 3rd year Chemical Engineering, NITK Surathkal. No pics I have of her, and she actually won 3 events this day!!

After a quiet lunch downstairs, it was time for IDP or Industry Defined Problems at 2 pm and there was a total of 5 teams across 2 problem statements. Prof. Saidutta agreed to be the judge with the usual wit while Dr. Rajmohan made a surprise entry later (Even we were surprised though we were luckily covered with sufficient judge sheets and mementos). The aforementioned Parvathi won again while my personal favourite was this guy from SAIT, Bangalore who showed via a working model the use of piezoelectricity:-

All through the event both judges gave their comments to all teams regarding the poor preparation for the event and then gave more comments at the end. Frankly, I thought the teams deserved a lot more criticism as their work was nearly all shoddy!

So after the event is over and Chemical events at Engineer finally come to an end (Modal Combat was an online event), a quick visit to the Artist Forum room close by to see the work for Incident (Just 9 days away now) and then onto see the much awaited Velocity...

This event held in the sports ground saw self designed remote controlled cars race against each other in a rubber tyre capsulated track and was great fun:-

 

As far as the finals went, it was not as exciting when one of the top teams collided into the tyre wall but the last 2 laps and the ending was magnificent.. Here take a look at this video:-

That was the end of day 3, amidst smart-ass comments on Valentine's day this was a great day!

Engineer: Day 2

Like I said before, I was involved in the chemical events and hence this day saw me spend nearly all the time in the Chemistry lab.

Task at hand: Breakdown finals at 1 pm and we got problems.. I arrive at 10 am to find none there! Getting "helpers" by 10:30 was no good, we all mostly lingered around uselessly till the lab assistant came and took 1 list of full chemicals needed for analysis of ANY chemical you can think of, only to let us know that the "poison" of our choice was out of stock..

As only good engineers can, we improvised then and there and Arati made a stunning decision to switch the eliminated chemical with another having, as it turned out, completely different physiological symptoms but then we were the organisers so a simple disclaimer took care of it all.. So far so good right? WRONG!

A trip to CCC to get the corrections done and printouts taken only to discover the lab assistant refusing to give access to all chemicals requested (about 45 of them), things were beginning to look ugly when Arati (Yet again! Bless her..) made another list having a lot less chemicals; I guess a moral victory for LabMan was all he wanted as things went their way again. Time now: 11:30 am, 1.5 hours to go..

We discover absence of chemicals needed for analysis of some chemicals and I get this brainstorm of declaring them as "too dangerous to handle with bare hands" hence eliminating that particular problem. Of course a certain chemical (Nope, not telling which one: LabMan doesnt know too) went "missing" during the event itself but the participants were fully under our control by then to complain -_-

The time is 12:25 pm and no positive test for two chemicals which are in the event! One (Oxalate) was solved by getting a positive result for another test while we had to scrounge literature for getting another test for the cation of the 2nd chemical which as it turned out later, was not required at all as the anion was present only here..

So there was time for a Samosa Chaat from Pande's food stall at Engineer (If you ever happen to be in the vicinity, I will personally treat you at Pande's stall; not the lame drop-up for Engineer but the original one a lil farther off) and the event begins at 1:15 pm..

Funniest thing? I had had a crime scene made up involving a circular chalk background in which was another chald outline of a body. That was it! But the innocent teams spent as much as 15 mins trying to see what's in there and a team actually asked me if the presence of a dead bee (pushed in by mistake by another team) had any significance.. We all knew it was bad on our part to keep them in the dark but what the heck? We were all having a lot of fun seeing them there :D

Finally the process of eliminations began and by the end 1 team stole the show by winning while the rest were still 2 rounds behind! Spot no. 2 was close, and spot no.3 still closer.. In the end all teams acknowledged the results fairly which is more than what I can tell for some certain teams who, after learning they weren't qualified for the finals for the 3rd time from us, went and told on us to the chemistry professor present there: Sour grapes!!

Once the mayhem of breakdown went down, Contraption going on in the inner room took centre stage (or the only stage if you will) and a team actually got as close as 29.88 secs to the set target of 30 secs! For more on the event click here!

I must thank all the participants of these two events and more so the committee members: Saurav, Preet, Arati, Meera, Prasoonna (Hope I got that spelling right), Pravin, Buddesh and Saklini, I remember none else.. I was however dumb enough not to take any pics of these events!!

That was supposed to be Day 2 for me, But sadly the news of the demise of Bijay Sandha (I knew him personally) in a train accident rocked us all as the "Final Year Jinx" continued for the 4th year (or so I know, none really keep count) in succession... Hum Yaad Rakhenge Tumhe, Yaar!

Engineer: Day 1

My day was spent mainly in front of a flat pc in an air conditioned room! Came to the college at 10 am and was busy making the final event of Breakdown with other people involved...

Noticeable, however, was the usual registration desk and this time the ENGI kit was in the form of a back-bag, the flimsy college variant of course! Lots of people coming here for the 1st time armed with digicams, were searching for scenes worth shooting and ended up taking pics of dumb notice board... I wonder if they didn't know of the beach/mangalore??

So far so good! I didnt get any chance to see even a single event but hopefully it will change from today. The prelims of Break-down were classified as a success as there were 41 teams participating and the quality of the teams was high. In case you dunno or are too lazy to click on the link provided in the last post, BreakDown prelims is a objective paper of Organic/Physical/Inorganic Chemistry and also Methods of Instrumental Analysis.. The finale will be a lot more challenging I can promise that!

So the top 12 were selected based on marks obtained (Total of 75 questions, 1.5 hrs) and these will participate in the finale today afternoon. Got a lot of calls late night from guys who didnt get the result (IT'S ON THE SITE AND IF YOU DIDN'T GET THE RESULT THEN YOU HAVEN'T QUALIFIED!!) Also on the cards today is Contraption, a event which draws a lot of attention too. 

Hopefully this day goes well...

Engineer is upon us!

Today is Feb 12th, 2009 and apart from my friend Manoj's bday today will be more known for the start of Engineer: The techfest of NITK, Surathkal. Of course some online events have already been held and they have given an indication of the popularity of this fest. Take online sudoku for example where people from over 44 countries spread across 6 continents participated in full measure.

Have a look here for full information on what Engineer is, and here is the list of events for the day, click on the links for details on the event:-

1) KPMG Six Sigma Workshop: 1 pm to 9 pm

2) Ad-Venture: 3 pm to 8 pm

3) Marathon: 3 pm to 6 pm; 7 pm to 8 pm

4) Mind-Bend prelims: 3 pm to 5 pm

5) Nirvahana: 3 pm to 7 pm

6) Automata prelims: 4 pm onwards

7) Guest Lecture by Tim Poston: 4 pm to 6 pm

8) Perfect Machine prelims: 6 pm to 11 pm

9) Student Innovators: 4 pm to 7 pm

10) Rectify prelims: 5 pm to 6 pm

11) Break Down prelims: 6 pm to 7 pm

12) Science Quiz prelims: 8 pm to 9 pm

13) Biz Quiz prelims: 9 pm to 10 pm

14) Video Conferance with Dr. Lutz Richer: 9 pm onwards

15) Geodesica prelims: 5 pm to 7 pm

So what is in it for you? Well I say go for BREAKDOWN! That's my event and I promise it will be worth every second of your time and more... But thats true of all events at Engineer, so why are you still here? Engineer is upon us, Are You Attending???