Yes, I’m terribly shaken after the accident we had yesterday. (Not at a loss for words though )

So we bought a Chevrolet Spark last year, just before diwali. Though my mother and I weren’t very keen on buying a car then, we’ve had a very good run with it. We have been going around TN atleast once in a month or so, and each trip has been a very memorable and comfortable experience. And somewhere along the way, I learnt enough to drive it on the highways (but changing gears and starting using gear 1 are still a problem for me). My father has also improved his driving skills and for the past 2-3 times we have been driving it ourselves in long distance trips.

Yesterday being Diwali, we decided to visit my grandma who is living at Trichy. It was supposed to be just an overnight stay there and a ‘good’ driving practise for me. After our share of guests from Diwali had left, we started at around 4 o clock (and post accident we have agreed we shouldn’t have started this late or atleast hired a driver for night driving). At around 5.30 I took over the car from my father (I don’t drive anywhere even in the suburb of Chennai ) and continued at a little over 90 on NH45.

My father started to relax and put in a hindi song cd in the car’s (dabba) player. I kept pestering him to put in a tamil cd for a long time. This started a speech from my father on the importance of knowing hindi to survive anywhere in India. All this while I was driving on the rightmost lane, on the 5th gear and at > 90 kmph (all of these things I have never done before). Then started a session of learning the meaning for some hindi words I have heard often (eg: ‘Junoon’ – the soap on DD i remember being addicted to, ‘Anjana’ – while the player was playing ‘Tere mere beach mein’, etc). Slowly my concentration shifted to re-collecting hindi words rather than the road.

I only remember the next few seconds as few stills from a thriller movie’s trailer.
Out of nowhere a median came into view – my car was moving so that the right tyre would definitely hit it. My father shouted out and I steered the wheel completely to the left – the car turned a full 90 degrees to the left (I was in the rightmost lane – so now I was effectively blocking the whole road) – Before the car had even finished turning, I realised I had done this without checking if a vehicle was coming up from behind on the next lane, so instinctively, I turned the wheel to the right again (towards the median)! The car turned more than 90 degrees to the right, so it directly hit the median (all this while still going at 100km – it never crossed me mind to hit the brake).

The car hit the median and my mind went blank for a second (actually everyone in the car went silent). The front tyre on the right, under the driver came free of the car, complete with a huge spring and ran away in the darkness into the opposite side of the road.
My mind was slowly coming back to senses – my train of thought was : “why is the car jumping up and down – something is wrong – what is it – why are there plants appearing right in front of my car the headlights – oh no, half of my car is running on the median – wait, someone is shouting – its my father – he asks me to slow down – yes, where is the brake?’ – I hit all three pedals one by one while I waited for my mind, which was in a ‘this is definitely some scene that I’m seeing on a 3D screen at an amusement park’ attitude, to decide on which pedal the brake is. I finally found it and hit it hard. The car veered off the median and with a lot of sparks, came to rest almost in the middle of the road.

The door on my side was damaged by the impact and took some time to open. While I tried to, a lot of sparks were flying out of the place where the wheel had once been (that part had dragged on the median for such a long time) that I thought the car had caught fire.

In under a minute, many people came onto the road to help us (of course, you will know that passing cars wont stop, except to just get a good look of the damaged car). We were told we were on the bridge on River Kedilam (of Ponniyin Selvan fame), 24 kms from Villupuruam (and it seems this bridge is actually known for accidents since its the narrowest stretch on the whole chennai – trichy route). We also realised that had I not turned my car sharply the second time ( after I had realised I had blocked the road at 90 degrees), if we had taken any amount to time to hit the brake, we would have jumped right into the empty river!

After some calls to nearby mechanic shops and a tow-vehicle hiring shop, my father and I rememebered to ask my mother if she was ok. Both of us sitting in the front were completely unaffected, except for the shock, but it seems my mother had been thrown against the doors, each one at the two sharp turnings I did, and she had a terrible pain in her right arm. One of the locals brought his wife and mother-in-law to the spot and took my mother to a nearby hospital with their help. My father and I waited with 3 other villagers until the tow van arrived.

If you dint know this before – there are solar-powered emergency phone booths all along the way on that highway. You can ask for assistance at the press of a button. One of the villagers called the highway patrol from this phone and they were on the spot to assess the damage in minutes – THAT WAS QUICK. The patrol folks arranged for a red signals to be put up. They had a digital camera (of a higher range than mine ) that they used to take pics of damaged vehicles. He showed us pics of accidents that had happened just 1-2 hours before us – one even had a picture of the driver lying in a pool of blood. We were all continually reminded by them as to how lucky we really had been – no other vehicle had come up threateningly close behind us – else he would have hit us when we steered off the median and probably sent us flying down the opposite lane, we had steered back toward the median from the left end of the road, otherwise we would have gone flying into the sand bed (making this kollywood style accident into a hollywood-styled one!) Soon after the patrol, the tow vehicle arrived and so did my mother. We decided to tow it to Pondycherry (1 hour from that spot) so that my uncle there could help us repair it. He was actually at Trichy when this accident happened, and waiting for us, so we made him come to this spot to pick us up. One by one, the villagers took leave, once again reminding us of our good luck. And every single one of them refused to take any money in return for their help..!!

After our car was towed away, we waited at a nearby bus stop for my uncle (the place was 2 hours from Trichy). Three people sitting in an unlit area, on a piece of median called a bus stop, with a lot of luggage – it must have really been a sight. And to pass on time, my father spoke on astrology and how jathagams are calculated, how this accident might have been foreseen, how his chadrastamam the next day may have been the cause, etc etc

The accident happened around 7.15. We reached Pondycherry at around 12 midnight and returned to Chennai today. The car will be at Pondy for some more time – poor thing.

Whatey night and whatey diwali! I have been advised to drive ‘carefully’ next time – seriously folks, its going to take me years to recover from this thriller of a ride and hold a car steady.

It is ironic that on the way, I was actually thinking that I hadn’t posted in a long time and that I should probably be writing about these nice car trips (‘Chevy trips’ I call these). I had even thought of saying “Its a year since we bought a car and I have learnt to drive on the highways, only the city of Chennai is left for me to learn to drive, but I’m not too keen.. blah..blah..”

Whew! Lucky stars or lucky angels (I even had a ‘lucky hanky’ when I was in my ninth standard) – whatever it is, now I know I have them in plenty!

At long last, my biggest wish has come true…. we always travel a lot during summer.. but this time its an escape to the scenic and serene city of Edinburgh

We started on may 25, sunday on the 8am BA flight and after an uneventful flight (in which I watched The Reader and The Curious Case..) we landed at heathrow at around 7pm that day. London was beautiful from the skies, with almost all houses of the same dimensions and neatly arranged in semicircles and large patches of green everwhere. We also flew over Dubai around midday and that was again awesome from the skies.. the whole area had a lot of rectangles without even a single green speck. The coatlines were again so beautiful to look at from the top. It’s a pity I dint have my camera with me then.. my #^%&^# cell phone has no bluetooth, no slot/cable to connect to a pc and not even an expandable memory, photos just overwrite the old ones without even prompting me. Pshaw!

London airport was a bit eventful At security check, everyone had to remove boots and belts, but a few had to remove more than that I escaped with just removing my belt, but still.. And then we went to a coffee shop and had english tea (it tastes much worse than I one I make) for £1.x… my mother has vowed not to drink tea at any shop in England after seeing the bill )
The London-Edinburgh flight was again an beautiful one, we flew over land and water alternatively. Edinburgh’s airport itself is located amidst mountains and is a very green and windy city. I have just gone to a couple of markets and some walks in the neighbourhood and so far its been a peaceful city.. every house has a neat garden with beautiful flowers like we have seen at our own kodaikanal flower show..

We’ll be going to a a few castles and glens around here and then London next week.. but I think we wouldnt be able to make it to the Loch Ness…

I’ll finally have some time and am planning to catch up on topcoder, my google reader stuff and do something for my mentor meetings at work…. ha ha, did I say I’m on vacation here?!!

cheers,
anusha.

Had a memorable evening at MIT on Friday – it was our Graduation Day, our turn to wear that yellow robe

Preparations for a bash at convocation had begun much early Trust us witches to use even the smallest opportunity to show our gethu ) After the er, slightly disastrous comments for the ‘uniform’ we wore last march (an older post has the pic), we took some care this time to choose a better dress. We spent some time on this hunt when a few of us had gone to visit the Bangalore witches last december. Needless to say, a lot of heads turned this time too (though not many negative comments about our selection this time.. or was it that no one was interested? ). And fortunately the ‘concerned’ people forgot to discuss the weight loss challenge between chennai and blore witches )

Coming to the event, I joined the witches at MIT (after a  *lite* breakfast that other witches will attest to ). We managed to escape the rehearsal session and visit their canteen. But then the main event also turned out to be such a bore that we could have safely stayed away from that hangar. We were given our certificates rather unceremoniously before the event started. Worst of all, they actually gave a printed copy of the chief guest’s address to the audience, before he event started talking.

Met a lot of folk at MIT and of course, heard a lot of gossip too.. it did go well, though I had this feeling of not having done better at college – for someone who has regularly been in the proficiency prize queue at school right from 4th standard to be nowhere near it all at college.. sniff !

=))

As an aside, I have been reading a highly interesting “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. My first book outside fiction and am enjoying it thoroughly.

cheers,

anusha

Hello There !

Back after a loong time (yeah, I’ll blame that on my work as always, and not on my laziness) . It’s that time of the year (once again!) where you suddenly wake up and realise you havent done much for having so loong on this planet.. and take the same resolutions you took last year (and the year before) with gusto.

Erm.. those two lines are pretty depressing But then, 2008 has been anything but that for me.. its the year I matured (now, did I?)  from a ‘college-kid’ to (ahem) professional =)) .. the year that saw the Witches in FULL form (more on that later.. it would take a bigger post to do justice to those doing ).. and the year that has been many things to many people

A small recap of 2008, for my friends, fans and foes (he he )..

January -

Its been a ‘buggy’ year for me and the bugs began in Jan with Kurukshetra =)) ‘Spot the Bug’ is , well, the thing that laid a strong foundation for the witches in our class [ I wonder how many hate mails I'll get after this post )] To be brief, we ‘participated’ in the debugging event of Kurukushetra, while our college was the host.. ‘participated’ not for ourselves, but to ’spice’ up things a bit for our class. Well, well, what a success it was ) I’ll put up the pics too, later

And we, team Chocolat (in programming circle – Aruna, Shanmuapriya and I) , got to visit IIT Karaghpur for an overnight programming contest – What fun it was! Surely, there cant be many places colder than that one! We had wrapped ourselves in a couple of tee shirts over our salwars, one or blankets, socks and mufflers. We took a pic of that ‘get-up’ but thats sure to put any horror movie to shame, so that wont appear in this blog

Most of all.. that thing called ‘fyp’.. That was the only plague in those wonderful last few months of college life We had our first review in Jan.. and not surprisingly we had to redo it! well, you do have to pay at sometime if you spend all your time in canteen / coffee shop and call that ‘working for fyp’ )

February -

Techofes !  Stayed overnight at hostel for a few days..only the scond time in college, after my first year. Though we were punished with ‘Bheema’ the events after we returned to hostel more than made up for that!! You’ll never know how a simple ‘truth-or-dare’ game would reveal soooo much! of course, that was beacause one of the participants in the game went overboard with their honesty!! )

Feb 2k8 also saw the Witches hunt for the one salwar that all of us would buy a piece of.. More of that in march!

March -

Isn’t a pic worth a thousand words – here’s the big thing we did in march -

Witches in a witchy gear

and then, the final internal review of our fyp came and went ) Its still a surprise to us on how we were given B in fyp )

April -

Interviewed with Amazon! Had a WONDERFUL birthday bash at Ascendas (it was on the day of amzn written, you know!) And yeah, we wore that witches dress for some exam ) Exams went well, as usual.. had to think so much to cook up some sensible stuff that I dint complete all the questions in many exams )

May -

Month of treats.. And the external review for fyp =)) What a tragedy comedy it was!! After college (I had no feelings at all then.. of leaving college.. that took some time to sink in!) it was the annual trip to sri rangam and then preps for joining amazon ) , followed by joining on may 26.

June -

July -

August -

September -

October -

November-

December -

Yeah, you got it – Life has been dreary, dull, boring, what not? December was a bit ok.. We witches met at Bangalore.. (which, If I take my resolutions seriously, stop being lazy, etc, would soon be a blog post) Had a wonderful  weekend there.. Followed by our first glimpse of corporate Christmas celebrations.

A Witchy retreat !

Here’s to a physically active (:D), successful and cheerful 2009!

Cheers

Dog’s Life. Hate it. I hate it very much. I am looking forward to the day I’ll retire from this job.

And now, onto the brighter side of things.. 
Just cant believe that its been around 95 days since i joined amazon.com.. time just flies. Come to think of it, havent learnt much (yet!) .. maybe we spend too much time on TT and vetti chat!
Only one line of technical stuff – Ruby seems to be a much better language than python..!! Been using that for tasks that could be done with the CL itself ) ( Ok, maybe I am not yet proficient in them )

The ‘Bangalore witches’ seem to be having the time of their lives (%$%$# !! *#$*^!!) from staying in the same house, cooking their own meals (though their experiments at kitchen doesn’t seem to have produced anything even ordinary yet!), city-(sight?)-seeing on weekends and first day shows of movies!!

Saw LOTR only a coupla weekes back and promptly bought ‘The Silmarillion’ at LandMark last weekend.. along with Tell No One and Twilight (yes, that novel many think is gonna beat Potter). Read Tell.., yet to  read the others..!

Nothing more to add.. though I always wonder on weekends on how that week had passed and what I had done besides staring at a flat screen for about 10 hrs a day, I get a fat pay and life would probably start rocking once I start managing time efficiently.

Hoping to find some time atleast in the coming weeks to write a meaningful post or atleast a lengthier post (like Birth of the Consortium, Feb 2008)

Cheers

hello world\n

Adieu Ceg ! -Stepped out of that wonderful college life some weeks back.. and got to see the Red Building in all its majesty bearing the blue ‘College of Engineering Guindy’ !! and what wouldn’t I we give to go back and – sit under tat dept tree (infested though it is – i have the experience of catching an allergy).. a cup o’ smoodles with someone with a lot of gossip .. sitting in beloved class 110 and working for project ..

an endless list, I’d better move on to other things.

Went to Srirangam and like the past 2 years visited as many temples as possible.. jus love that place and Lord Ranganatha!! And with all their blessigns, joined amazon.com on May 26 2008 .. Gonna ‘Work Hard, Have Fun and Make History’

Thats one reason I’m on cloud 9! the other – pics from one-day trip to hyderabad :

And Thats it, Folks!

The end (of this post)

Cheers

….someone’s house somewhere on this planet!! (yeah, this planet only )

back after a loong time.. plenty of things to talk about..!!

1. college has ended. I dint feel anything special about last day, last exam, etc.. dunno why?!! slam books are making rounds, but the feeling hasn’t sunk in yet.

2. next phase of life begins on may 26

3. we are bidding adieu to the necessary evil called fyp on monday, may 12, when our external review ends. #:-S

4. what was i in search of, today? or rather we.. Molly and I.. well, here goes.

so i had this crush on Y. Y this, Y that, Y all the time.

and finally i learned where Y lived.

what better thing to do in hols, than to go in search of that place, that street and that house?

I had been thinking about this for sometime, when along came Molly. For AI project. A deal was stuck – i’ll do AI with you.. we’ll go for a walk in this area!! We decided to do that not-so-stupid (or is it?) thing today. We went to Barista for lunch – supposedly my treat for job, but she ended up paying as much as me

And yes, this post is more about Barista and less about Y Y will kill me if Y finds out about this post. Even otherwise Barista takes precedence .

We went to this hangout after college today. And spent a good ten minutes waiting for someone to take our orders, before we realised it is a ’self-service’ center. Ha ha. Going through the list of drinks, i urged Molly tat it was my treat and she should get herself a good drink. I have the bills with me.. Molly had a “Barista Balst” while I chose a “Barista Cookie Crunch”. The latter order made him look up ad say: “I’m warning you. Its a strong drink. We use tubed-ice (tats what i heard). I’m telling you because customers should not complain later”. I wasn’t going to stop for tat, so we went ahead and ordered it.

Yuucckkk. Only the cookies on top of the drink were eatable. The drink was ^#$^%#. Be warned, dont try that drink ever. After finishing half of it, i was wondering how Molly drank without complaining. Cos i dint realise only mine was this bad. And when we excahged the drinks, Molly almost spat it out. She is of the opinion its an alcoholic drink and that is what the man at counter was trying to convey. And yessss, being the good girl i am i dint touch that drink after that. we decided to get something solid to eat, to come out of that taste of coffee for her and ’strongly alcoholic? drink’ for me. ‘Coffee and Almond Cake’ for her and ‘Chocolate Excess’ for me. Pics below!

Feast ur eyes!!

After chatting about nothing in particular for a while, we decided to hunt this landamrk X near which Y’s house is supposed to be. And X was very near this barista. Only we dint know where exactly Y lived. I knew where Y’s father worked but asking about that company’s quarters only brought blank stares in return. (Later did i learn that that company dint have a quarters as such. ‘What we find becomes quarters’ Y said. Good )

and Molly was more interested in seeing who this crush is, so she wudnt give up after that. We decided to turn back again and search on the other side of X. When Molly’s slipper decided to prevent us from going any further. sigh!! even after an operation with a safety pin, the slipper wouldnt hold, so we just had to hire an auto and go home.

and we haven’t give up on this quest. as yet. we’ll go back and find out where Y lives. even if its the last thing we do.

and Y (:x) if u r reading this.. unna pathi illa ithu unnai pathi lam ezhuthuvena, public a? blog la lam? chumma.. ithu vera yara pathiyo!!

non disclosure agreement (placement season la) : keep this secret to urself… shhhhhh!! thanks

]]> http://anushar.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/in-search-of/feed/ 11 anushar Chocolate Excess Coffee and Almond cake from Barista http://anushar.wordpress.com/2008/03/22/beach-escapade/ http://anushar.wordpress.com/2008/03/22/beach-escapade/#comments Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:13:39 +0000 anushar http://anushar.wordpress.com/?p=61 ]]>

[ An account of the wonderful (at least according to me) trip by 32 AB batchers to Mahabalipuram... ]

The background – my classmates had gone for a customary industrial visit in aug 2006 (i found a convenient reason to stay at home with my good old computer! ) and had enjoyed it thoroughly. Another IV was planned for the final year but there were no signs of it taking off.. so it came down to an one day trip to somewhere, sometime in april. Now this somewhere-sometime plan did take off and we were all informed just 2 days before the trip. Anyways, we witches are eager as always for an outing and in my case, more than other things, it was another-escapade-from-this-horrible-fyp Need say more?

The trip – The bus trip does deserve a mention – they brought to light the photographer in Karthika and my camera was in the limelight for some time!! Wat a pic!! Beats all the ‘thirutu’ pics we had taken in icpc s / abacus

We went to the lighthouse first. Whew! we girls are no mountain goats and we had a tough time climbing and sliding down those slopes. Weren’t the guys helping you out, you might ask.. no, as always And after this trekking exercise we went to the famed “Pancha Pandava Rathas” area. Photo sessions were on in full swing in the area. After many requests and threats, some ( not all, “Mind It!” ) ppl consented for a group photo and the result is here:

Grr. Horns on my head. x(

Lunch was good, the only time we spent under a roof. And the best part of the trip came after this. I thought we were going boating in muthukadu (at least that was part of the plan) but then, the bus simply stopped somewhere along the road, and there it was – the beach, a short walk through a “savuku thoppu” to the deserted stretch of sand.

We spent the usual half hour in the water with Maha staying on dry land as always. The boys had brought balls and bats and playing cards (yes, cards on the beach – tats AB batch guys for you ) . There were seven girls – 5 witches (madam greenie aka aruna had gone to Google Blore! ^:)^ ) and 2 angels (angels + witches = ab batch girls, and we are very much united, thank you!! ). we started with a game of dodge ball (reminded me of my ncc camp ).

Pics: Game in progress !

[ Photography : Mahalakshmi ]
We then had the time of our lives playing throw ball, lock and key It was nice to play these games after a long time.. the last time most of us had played was at school. And then it was time to drag Maha into the water.. she overcame her fear within seconds and started wading deeper in to the water, while we had to pull her back!! )

Not to mention the dance ’step’ and ‘music’ we learnt from hostellers and did a jig on the beach. And the ‘train’ we formed and ran around our very own treasurer of csea!! )

After beach it was a walk in to the village nearby in search of water. We started by around 6 and were back at the college by 7 p.m.

And the very next day, everyone was asking for that photo!! That sure was one of the highlights of the day..

My last trip with classmates was way back in 1998 to the same place – mahabalipuram. Had the same amount of fun this time too, especially playing those games on the beach!!

And yes, a special note of thanks to arun, from witches and angels alike, for staying back all the time to see if the girls are safe.

So when is the next trip? We want the ball this time too!!

cheers

anusha

.. and i hope atleast this year categories other than ‘general / musings’ get filled!! [:d]

A (not so) great end to our acm contests – The 32nd ACM ICPC at Amrita Institute, Amritapuri, Kerala, 2007.

Since we dint have the foresight to book tickets in advance during this sabarimala season, we had to go to Trichy, and from there to Ernakulam and (again) from there to Kayankulam by bus. But then the scenic campus and the (very) friendly volunteers more than made up for it. I could write a whole page on how well they did their job, how helpful they were and so on.

Coming to the contests, we did well in the first practise contest (as always) and sort of ok with second one. But the main contest was a tragedy – a tragic end to our stint with icpc. After 2 probs in the first half hour we were second place behind xtc++. But then , even after another 4.5hrs, when the contest ended, we had only 2 probs to our credit and ended up in 16th place – our worst in icpc. We felt the problem set was biased toward geometry. Tien-Ren-Chen and his ‘Colorful Bee’ of NTU came in first with CMI in second place.

My junior Vijay from MIT has blogged about his experiences here.

Some highlights -

Accomodation was not good. We had to walk a loong way to the ladies hostel which was with Amma’s Ashram, across the othe side of a backwater. And our room was on fifth floor in a building without lifts. And mineral water in bottles for boys? No such luck here, we had to walk down 2 floors to fillup our own bottles.

The food wasnt that good and the quantity was also not enough. And after five flights of stairs, I was hungry all the time.

The boatwater ride saw us being (literally) ragged by a third year boy from Erode – Jeeva. “Oru tamil paatu padungalaen.. fourth years a? Neenga podatha aatama.. “. Oora vittu ooru vanthu..

Volunteers were just great. They did everything with such enthusiasm, much better than last year’s event.
We wanted to come in the top five very badly. We did manage to come, but stayed there for only a few hours..

P.S. Mit Vijay was loitering around (among other superb costumes) in his TCCC 07 T shirt. I havent got it yet .. x(