Wavez of change

More than three decades ago Prof.  Salters discovered the way of converting wave-power to electricity and in 1973 the first simplified wooden device to produce energy was created. A decade before that the offshore-oil-industry was getting in full swing and the journey towards dooms-day had found the shortest short-cut to the armageddon. Humans love short-cuts and forget about all the wolves standing in the way.

Now when we are nearing the perils we realize, rather too late, that it was a mistake and the point-of no return is now.  Our planet is dying, everyone’s watching that happen, some-talk about it, a few listen anda handful of us are actually doing something about it. I am not in that list yet. Sorry, I am(was) on the other one. The oil one. I build the biggest/finest machines for the purpose of drilling oil and making the world a bit less livelier place min-by-min and sadly I am as good as they can be in doing this  job.  Suddenly, I don’t feel proud anymore.

But all is not lost.

It’s not hard to believe after knowing and understanding the Indutrial technology the way I do that the predictions of the weather guys about the increasing environemental pollution had always been an understatement in-spite of all the tampering of the results we generally do to make them look more horrendous than the reality. The reality today is even more catastrophic and calamitous. Yes, we are heading towards the dooms’day may be not in 2012, but I bet at this rate there will be no 2112.

For once, I want to lose that bet. Al-gore is going crazy out there trying to tell people and goverments and everyone to stop killing the climate.  Using less power is a great way of saving earhth but eliminating the necessity of doing that is a much better, but tough, option.

There are many-forms of renewable energy sources and none of them alone is capable of controlling/let alone reversing the damage that had been already caused. The only one I am capable of contributing is wave/Tidal/Current power. There is plenty of it.  There are efforts going in that direction. Mediocre but there.

I want to add my hand to those efforts.  I always(almost) believed in my capabilities and it’s about time I use them where they matter the most.  Saving my home.

Finally I find mental peace from the question erring me from the day i got my first job-offer. Is this what i really want to do!!

Any suggestions and references/contacts to wave/tidal/current/ocean thermal energy projects and teams working around the world are most welcome.

Thanks to all the friends, family and everyone who kept me motivated to think beyond a regular-paycheck. I will keep nudging you for the rest-of-the-life too

Introspections….

A lot have changed in the past few months and I haven’t given myself enough time to absorb and understand everything that’s going around me. I mistake I decided to avoid long back to avoid making. It’s almost 4 months since I have stepped in the corporate life and most of the time had been sadly spent in bickering and mockery.

Let’s have a What You Wanted and What You Got Approach on that :

What I wanted :

Joined the present job after weighting it against the 3 other options that I had and the primary objectives that I wanted to accomplish from this Job were Money, Exposure, Guidance , personal life, Tag of the company and make some contacts. All in all to get a firm foundation.

What I got:

Money – Primary requirement of any fresh graduate. I am not really satisfied with the pay as i feel I am much more capable but have to understand it from the Industry’s point of view that in the end I am just a fresher.As far as the company is concerned most of them feel that they have done a huge favor by giving a job to a fresher and we are of no use except for the dirty jobs. The pay is as good as any good job in good times back in India but still pained by the fact that every tom, dick and harry makes double the amount that I make for doing the same job that I do, but that’s OK. I knew that beforehand  anyway and was always prepared for it. As far as I am concerned I am better off than I could have been in India in this department It just took three months to settle all the loans I took for dad’s accident and to pay for my initial expensed for settling in Mumbai and then here in Singapore. I wanted to buy a lot of stuff as I mentioned in the last post which slightly pisses me off a bit but that’s just being desperate without any concrete reason to be.So, all in all not much concerns here. A few more cash won’t hurt though >:)

Exposure - Couldn’t have been better. Straight out of the college I am matching node-by-node and graph-by-graph the results of the best consultants in the field of ship design. The experience in double-sided with both hydrodynamics, Structural and to add cherry on top mooring analysis. The three top-sort-after skills in the field.

I am working on Billion dollar projects with a quarter year of experience and the scale of the work is just mind-boggling which is helping me to get a hang of these big numbers. I am working with the tools I used to dream about using a few months back in college. As per the feedback from friends and classmates about the things they are getting to use I can say I am a million times better of because these people have the luxury of money to be able to spare such expensive tools for my learning leisure. I can select any kind of work and the technical managers here are very encouraging If I am interested in learning stuff.

Also there is additional pressure  sometimes to do stuff you didn’t knew rat’s ass about in a very short span of time which is totally welcome as that’s the best way to get my lazy head working and I learn things that I would have taken months to learn or never learn in matter of days and sometimes hours!!!

Guidance – Very Bad. But that was never an issue. There is lot of old data to refer to and learn which pretty much makes up for it and then for the issue that whether the procedure is correct or wrong for which there are a lot of past results to verify with. In a way if there was guidance then It would have actually taught us the standardized procedure of doing things in steps rather than going around the system a few times over and trying to make sense of everything and in the process learn a lot more and get a deeper and broader understanding of the concepts involved and techniques used which boosts the confidence by leaps and bounds.

It gives the confidence – See boss, I know how to do it right. I take the responsibility. Too much to ask after a quarter year of exposure but right now I feel that confidence fuming out of me. I can do things MY way. It matters a lot to me because that’s how I had to do things all the times. I never really had much guidance anyway, so I don’t really care i there isn’t any here too Just makes me feel at home.

Personal Life - This is the part that’s most messed up. Really messy. I am pissed(again). I already wrote the last post describing the part I am pissed off due to the accommodation. I have somehow come on terms with that giving myself time till the probation period gets over and it becomes clear what the company has in store for me. But I so hate the lame excuse of recession for having studied it already so closely and knowing the fact that a lot of companies are just using it as an excuse to save a lot of cash which they couldn’t have otherwise.

Another part is I miss my friends and college life. Heck the best possible life. The fact that I miss the most is that there was always someone who was ready to go to the beach, or the pub or cycling a few km’s, or hiking, or go for a walk at 4 o clock in the night or just listen to my ramblings about this monster of the world. Life was a party. It’s different here.

I have managed to make a decent number of friends and I already enjoy the company of a few here in office and outside office too. But the things that is missing is the extreme understanding and intimacy. I know it will take time to bring that feeling of closeness with the new friends but I still miss it everywhere I go and in everything I do. I never though i was so attached to those lunatics back in college. Love u guys. I love the fact that I am visiting a new country something that I always wanted to. I am learning a lot about the world and watching all the colors of the world with my very own 6/6 eyes but I wish if there were the college friends also here to make it a whole lot more interesting. But, I guess i will have to pacify with the fact that one can’t have it all at the same time, but hey I can always dream right

The another thing that I strangely love is the fact that IITians are not the HOT thing and OMG he is from IIT he will have the 30 pound of brains and all that. I know that feeling is now decreased quite a lot in India too but here it’s just totally different. ball game. you are just an engineer who got lucky and landed here in Singapore and trying best to make the most out of it in terms of money and career both. There is no advantage of being an IITian and also the pressure of high-expectations of  being the IITian . I see both of them to my advantage. It sheds of the additional wings that gets attached to us living in the virtual-world of IIT and is acting like a good wake up call to the reality. Also due to the not-higher-than-cloud-no.9 expectation I can actually breathe and at times say “I don’t know” and it’s OK to do that. your boss actually understands that you are just a fresh engineer and not a successor of Einstein

Issues - I still want to opt for a better accommodation but not able to as there are certain complicated and very intricately strings attached with the agreement which i can’t talk here about but that makes it practically impossible to act freely. Some of those strings can potentially ruin all that is going good. I might have to make a few bold moves along with a few planned ones to make sure that nothing that could really suck happens It can as well go very smooth too, but there are still grey-patches to be prepared for. Preaparing, something i am very bad at. I live on Instincts, but this time I have to learn to factor in some logical planning too. What a pain >:D

PS : Overall I am on the happier side of the line and as such nothing much to worry and whine about

!@#@#$@#$%@#$%#$@%@#%#@$@#(It’s a code)

A good coffee is totally worth a dollar especially when it comes with a good designer froth and that too at a time when one will prefer fighting a gorilla than wrestling with his eyelids which keep flashing the blackout signal every other second.

|| Feel like dropping a stone on my head to wake me up from my blabberwocky sleep talking? Please do. I am bored. I am tired. I am NOT freaked out yet (phew!). I feel like a robot. I am performing like the first alpha preview of any to be the ‘next big thing in the world’( though present vista is also a fine example ). Oh yes there is a term for that too IIGO ( Input In Garbage Out). I don’t know what I want to do but mostly I am sure that I don’t want to do what I am doing or what I think I should do. ||

Snapped! Read “between the Lines”

 

 

The space abover is to give you time If you are out of the previous loop then move on or hit the big cross on the silly corner of your browser ( if u know what a browser actually is, if not please press Alt + F4 and u will know). 

Didn’t see any connection with the title yet! Read on….

On top of it I am damn sure of the fact that I am not the only one who is thinking/feeling/talking/writing this way at this very moment. I am sure of this to the point that I can happily bet my salary if someone is gutsy ( read stupid) enough to challenge me!!

If you are worried that what could have possibly driven me into this condition then please pick up the most rotten, PITA ( Pain in the A**) literature of ur interest a few times over and do nothing else except for filling different holes in all the different ways ( that too on a daily basis – exception this guy)  and after all that effort you are still at the same place where u started a million ages ago.

If you want to know how pissed off I am feeling then perform this little experiment.

Try pulling out one single hair from every hairy region of your body and then say to yourself it’s OK. Not pissing enough!! Then try finding the exact location where you actually pulled that hair from when the pain is still on!! Now multiply( I know all my readers are from that population of world) the feeling with any third order number of your chioce and try feeling it.

I am definately more pissed of than that or probably more pissed off than you are after wasting those not-so-useful minutes of your self proclaimed and universally ignored highly highly important and eventful life.

PS : In case u still didn’t break the code – please contact me. You need some urgent attention to the ”supposedly” highly important part of ur body :)

My First Job Interview

Yes, i have done three interns and an endless list of other things, but the closest thing to any interview for me is the Spons-pub coord interview in 1st year. I cleared that.

Tomorrow after 6 months of tough convincing of companies the day is finally here. The day for which me and a lot of friends have been preparing from last six years. Everyone thinks that you will get the job. I am telling you it’s a tough situation to be in, but gladly i have experience of that. The scene was almost the same when i was writing JEE.

Back then i was a bit confident, bit worried, bit unprepared but somewhere inside i knew that i can do it. That was the driving force. Another driving factor was that i just didn’t had the option to screw up. There was only one option – winning it. A lot depended on it. I had to do it, i did it.

It’s almost the same case tomorrow. A lot depends on it. I have only one option. Just the day before you think of everything good, bad & ugly that have happened in the due course of time. You think about the things you know, about the things you should know for the test/interview, about all those things that you think you have forgotten.About the competition for that one job, and mostly i think what others know and i don’t. Where i might screw up. Do i really know the important stuff. Am i ready??

I know somethings. Whether they will suffice or not is to be answered. What i learned from the last time i faced such a situation was that everyone needs revision, and control of emotions. It’s the emotional intelligence that matters more here than the purest geeky intelligence. I know a lot about the way companies recruit, what they are looking for. I have a lot of it in me. I know that, but the point is the prove it to them. What companies look for is a good overlap.

The thing that’s haunting me always it utter perfection and flawless control over a subject. I don’t have it. I know something about a lot of things. A vast array of things.  I know my shrtcomings and i know my strengths but i am not very good at expressing them. I never really had to. Now i have to. I am trying my best to do that. But i don’t know the best way out. At times like today when a lot is to be done in too less time i generally hit the panic button. I have this good/bad habit of trying to do things with least amount if resources and also the best way possible. I enjoy this exploration part more than the actual learning. I do learn a lot in the process, but it’s the process that i enjoy more than the results. It’s a method which is very very good in long run but it fails in the short run. I just cannot be mechanical, i have to look for that particular way that is better than the way i am doing it now. Believe me it’s a bad thing. It sounds good, but it’s bad when it’s the results that matter. But i can work hard to compensate for that. At times i do, that’s when the results come by.

I am not complaining about anything here. I completely love what i am now and the things i did in my 4 years at IIT. There were just too many awesome things to do here at IIT and for a guy like me it’s like heaven. I mean it wasn’t jsut possible to sit around and be perfect in one thing, i did that in Bilaspur where i had nothing much to do. I love knowing things. The amount doesn’t matter. There was no time to attain perfection. I wanted to know everything that i didn’t when i came in from my sweet little city in the woods.

End of IIT life is not the end of life, bit it sure feels like. It took quite a lot of time for me to realize that there it’s just another beginning after iit. I am waiting for it and excited about it. Another thing that i realized is that i am a BTech and not a PhD. I am supposed to know something about everything and everything about something.

Bingo!!!