Last Minute - Last one - Why it happens to me everytime???? - Part 2

okay u heard me clear and loud in my prev blog !!!!

That was a typical college life happening. youthful and colourful. They say life gets serious in work life. and it usually does.

IT DID !!!!

move one step, outside the college and land up in the wonderful world of a chemical engineer. yes, six months into a chemical engineering job can ensure adequate doses of delusions. that of tripping extruders (plant lingo) and hammering pipelines with steel rods ( yes, one of the major skills a chemical engineer in a polymer plant shd possess) all thro the night ( shift).

add to it an endless rotating shift life (morning, afti, night shifts cyclically) - 24 hrs running plant - work for 16 hrs (double shifts) occasionally - sleeping for 16 hrs straight- breakfast at 5 PM - being drowsy most of the times - parents mistake u to be an inveterate drunkard ( from the way u attend to their calls) and the like.

To cut a long story short, my chemical engineering life was chemically choking, mechanically mocking, electrically shocking, instrumentally locking and biologically blocking!!!!

and it makes sure u get all the driving force to determine the easiest exit path! only if exits were so easy. not so easy if u want to put a big kumbudu to chemical industry and remove the tag of a chemical engineer........yeah i was kind of Tagged!!!!!!!

In this country they say, if u are not gud at anything, try management. all u have to do is to do some showbusiness, pick some weird jargons, speak in a semi american accent (lucky for a call centre exp guy) and u've almost made it big in life. so tried my hand at the obvious. koncham seriousness reqd to clear admission process.

The 'last minute...." syndrome ( btw i had started to develop an affection for it lately) was to catch up with me (just like death catches up with survivors in the final destination).

FMS exam: Timing - 2 PM : venue bombay. common sense tells in bombay u have to keep a 1 hr margin for any journey u undertake. that is if travel goes smoothly. and without any surprises. had to travel from vashi to VT. a typical 1 hr journey (if u go by train). that is only the active travel time ( taking into account the walking down, up catching auto etc.)

nice breakfast at chithi's place. aracha kozhambu and saathumudhu ( thair is ofcourse always there). but that was never going to be enough.

and they say u have to chill just before exam to crack a gud paper. but i have a knack of overdoing things ( in my spl own way).

now how to chill????

"Enakku 20 Unakku 18" film ( meaning I am 20, You are 18) . nice dvd print. that was to be the final touch to the exam prep. Romba thevai!

started the movie at around 9.45 am. by the time the movie finishes, its already12.15 PM. okay cool it, i am the master of trainodynamics in bbay, i assure myself and leave for the exam finally.

12.30 pm i am at teh vaashi station.

now what? the coolest thing that can happen when u r on ur way to a competitive exam!
The local trains - the lifeline of bombay - specifically the harbour line ones - the ones exactly between my examination centres ( exactly, again by DESIGN) have been cancelled! oh boy, all my travel calculations were created on a basis that has just disappeared into thin air. that is the proverbial weakness of engineers. they are analytical not creative, to imagine of situations like these!!!!!!!!! if anybody has a different view, atleast these are true of me!

now the beauty is , all buses outside stn are jampacked, thanks to cancellation of local trains.

and due to my extraordinary luck then, i had no single bus to get to my centre. worse still, i barely knew what buses and how to get to my exam centre.

i can hear u all. height of irresponsibility and frivolity even in a career defining stage.

all i cd do is wait and then manage to just get one hand and one toe ( not even a foot) into a bus, which i had no idea where it was going or where i had to get down. after all, for a start i atleast needed to avoid seeing the damn vashi stn atleast. i never got so sick of that station in my life.

had to change buses midway. and reached somewhere close to VT. and then a taxi to get to the centre. once in the centre, had to search for classrooms endlessly ( screw the college. it was more like a jigsaw piece of architecture).

2.05 PM, papers were already being distributed. and here i was, so late, as if I just had a major meeting with some damn diplomat.

well I am truly tired of mentioning the same result as in prev blog- somehow i cd feel jaspal bhatti, with his thick beard, roaring hideously right over my head.

sodhappal of a collosal kind uhhhh?????????

ofcourse in that year I managed to clear one exam but again due to lack of interview prep was chucked out in the final stage. i dont want to get into all those irrelevant things.

now for the mother of all episodes -

one more year passed by (yes painfully) and the ritual of application for MBA seemed to start. CAT was over. time for JMET ( for the uninitiated, that is the exam for mgmt in IITs)......

look at the sequence of events:))

1. Applied to jmet. but the hall ticket did not seem to come. finally exactly one day before i was to leave for bombay from gujarat, the hall ticket came knocking to my apartment. it was apparently doing teh rounds at bharuch town and in all the departments of my chemical plant complex, according to reliable sources!!!!

2. GOD'S GRACE, exam was thro. now time for interview. again the IITB interview call letter did not come (luckily three other letters did) . this one had gone all the way to chennai. how cd they send it there i thought. that too late enough. for an interview slated for feb 28th, i recieved the letter on 27th, at my relatives place where my parents had couriered.

3. interview over. after that realised that yet another year of hardwork was going to the dumps. results were out. waitlisted. that too reasonably far. The benovelent and benign seniors ( @ IITB) took enough care to assure me that it was impossible for me to clear such a high waitlist.

4. again GOD gave an opportunity by clearing the waitlist two months after the result had been originally announced. i get only the mail. my luck with call/offer letter had become so ridiculous that again no sign of the letter. still okay. i make a draft for the fee payment and decide to courier it. i manage to find a courier shop, not so popular. atleast it cannot be notorious i thought. had i walked 100 ft ahead, i cd have managed professional couriers. but then i am a resigned fatalist. my fate ensured that i dispatch my fee thro that courier shop.

5. that was on 24th july. 31st was the last date for fee reciept at IIT-B. after giving the courier, i try calling IIT every day checking out whether my draft was recieved or not. a day passed, one more, and one more....no signs of draft being recieved at IIT. it was 30th.now. sth was terribly wrong somewhere.

to get an admission after two years was itself painful. and now after that u are abt to get chucked because of some damn ( damn is one of my fav words in english) courier guy who cd never ever understand taht i he was screwing my life so badly without possibly knowing it....

6. i go back to that courier shop to check. he says all couriers were dispatched to some distribution centre. i go there with pink courier challan and accost that shop owner as to what fate they had handed out to my draft and to me. we pore over all records to find out the history and geography of my courier. he takes a close look at my challan and says it was a wrong challan they courier guy had used ( apparently a white one shd have been used for out stn couriers)....here i was holding a pink slip ( yeah i had resigned a nice paying job, for tis degree, and now holding a pink slip, exactly)

then we again drive back to the original shop. now i start to raid the shop as if i were from IT dept ransacking a bloody bureaucrat's apartment ( on the basis of a complaint powered by Right To Information Act).........only to find my courier absoultely safe....

where do u think?????

in a crude corner well hidden by a gigantic xerox machine. the last place u can ever find a letter of immense importance.......

i was too tired to start a brawl and too happy to complain....i cd not ever imagine to find my draft in this manner. anyhow hopped to professional couriers to send that draft.

the tricky part was the same day i was leaving for coimbatore from chennai for my cousin's marriage. if i ws not going to find the draft, i was not even in a position to think whether i wd have made it to the marriage, what with all my cousins and relatives rocking the whole house up and down.

checked with IITB next day ( the last date for submission) to find that the draft was safe ( for a change in the hands of the admin dept).......phew!!!!!!!!!

now what on earth can u call that kind of experience??????

btw this is B-136, Hostel 13, IIT Bombay reporting this tearful ordeal to u .

How was that??????

( i wish nalini chithi wd read this post, will ya plzzzzzzzz??????)