Father-Son Bonding; with a twist

I always feel that movies show an exaggeration of whatever father-son bondage they show, or may be my case is a bit different..

The usual way of projecting this is probably going together for a family outing, or may be a fun game at home.
Mine is not in that circle - our bonding is usually cleaning in and around the home, or arguing about some menial issue, competing to be the last one to take a bath on a holiday; accompanied by occasional scoldings !!

And in those dire situations - for instance when I am in Bombay, even our phone calls are very limited - maximum of 2 minutes (and so seems the fate of this post - going to be short!!)

But I am so used to him being subtle, that if he is oddly expressive - it feels weird :)

I wonder if I am running out of topics for this blog - or it seems that I am no longer observant about my surroundings as I claim in the blog note !!

Experience at "Alma Fater"(and what the term meant anyway...) CISCO

I was actually surprised that no one found out that the word Alma Fater was peculiar, may be everyone considered it either to be a spelling mistake for Alma Mater, or just ignored it to be yet another of my insignificant gags...

Anyway, lets get into the derivation of it - Alma Mater refers to the school you went into, where you gained significant wisdom and knowledge; and if I recall, it means second mother.
So, considering that your father is mainly responsible for providing you financial stance and exposure to the world, Cisco was a kind of "Alma Fater" to me, if such a terminology actually exists :-)

End of lecturing, back to narration(or more aptly 'reporting')..

Left home at 9 - and reached the campus at 12; call it nostalgia, or call it unchanging conditions, but it never improves!

Meet people within meetings - It was a day of meetings for most of my friends back there - team meeting, progress meeting, one-on-ones and what not.
I am glad they could make some time for me there.
I could relate most of their daily routines to that of my dad's split hours of work - it is seriously a bad thing to have you working in India, whereas a sizable chunk if your team working in US; you end up working half the day at office, and then attend calls in the late nights from the US!!
It was also awkward to sit there with a guest badge - and just watch people busy with their work lives, being the only "academician" around, (and sometimes searching for ID cards to get their names ;-))..

VTV delicacies - Had the opportunity to grace the occasion of gracing Shruthi's birthday celebration, and get a taste of the building's birthday mandate pastry.
Followed this up with Veg Biriyani from probably the same caterers, from the same canteen, with the same objectionable taste!
Alas, I realized much later that the main Cisco campus beside VTV had a brand new building, with a brand new, diverse and large food junction...
* VTV - Vrindavan Tech Village, the place where I did my internship

Building 16 - The new Building 16 is definitely a great add to Cisco, right from its food junction at the bottom, or the familiar games section, to the video games and self-massage chairs for stress busting, and the sitout/hangout area; it is certainly a nice place to explore.
If anyone happens to visit Cisco campus, do not miss out Building 16..

Climax - So was the whole day just about meeting busy people, and just a killtime ??
Not exactly..
It turned out that in the end, I got my much needed "enlightenment".

Final thought - I realized that its better to meet friends outside the corporate aura, specially if you are not a tekkie with a IT company tag hanging around your collar !!   

Yet Another Post Exam Realizations and Aspirations session

With the end of one more era of exams - time for yet another thought train on what went right, what went wrong, what could have been better, what could have been worse etc.

The very simplest of the realizations would be coming out of the three hour paper, and realize how you goofed it up completely!
And the most thoughtful of them would be to realize how you were complacent during the course - be it in classes, assignments, projects or exams - that has brought you into this stage..

Come to think of it - It amazes how fickle your mind is..
Just before exams, you try for futile prioritization of studies and revisions(if possible, and generally has a small success probability :D); but once you are done, you are so relieved that it did not matter much, you never had to do it :D

So here goes my list of resolutions for the coming sem, that have been in my favorite lists for quite some time:

• Concentrate more on studies, and reduce that careless attitude.
• Get motivated on things pertaining to coding and research.
• Spend less time online(Deliberately not specific here!!), and divert that time to something more productive - New favorite and Top 1 in the list !!
• Maintain regular wakeup and sleep timings(which I am not doing as I am typing it out *!)
• Get serious and focused on what next in life....
  <add any of your thoughts here>...
  .....
  .....

Knowing that most of the above wont reach their expected fate, it does seem to be a lame exercise to even consider making a list - but well, it does use some brain cycles to do some 'useful' work...

Now looking at the other dimension - Holidays.
This is a whole new arena - you plan, chalk out a strategy and workout the best possible and fruitful way of spending it - meet friends, do some next sem planning, catch up with family events, learn something new, practice a hobby and what not; but more or less the scene would be ending up a couch potato at home!!

But this time, things seem to be different - so would be the holidays...
Time to forget all these rants, and Move On !!