The First Node!

Day 1

June 1st, 2011

We had an early start today. Vijay woke up at 5.30 am and I woke up at 6. I hoped for a better day in Chennai than yesterday. My leg had begun to swell for reasons unknown. The team met up at Indiranagar Railway Station and we headed towards SETS campus nearby. We thought we would be doing our intership in IITM campus. But this was different, and better! We met Sudarshan there and he welcomed us with a big smile. He introduced us to Srinivasa Ramanujam sitting there on an elevated platform. We then went into the building took a look around the workplace. It was the best thing ever!

All 7 of us then left for Ginger, the Tidel Park Restaurant. We had some coffee and Sudarshan briefed us about what we'll be doing for the next two months. The briefing was quite inspiring. It motivated us a lot. We then headed back to SETS and pondered upon some of the classic problems. It started with the maximum sub-array sum. It was noon when we were done solving the problem. So, we headed out to lunch. I had a nice hot Masala Dosa there in the cool A/C restaurant.

After we came back, Prof. Pandurangan gave us an amazing talk on network theory. He is a very jovial, down to earth person. He says he knows Kannada a *bit*, but I think its a lot more than a *bit*. He narrated a incident he had with an Auto Driver in Bangalore. His after-lectures are most interseting and funny ones. He asked which branch we all were from. Me and Vijay answered CS, and the remaining answered IS. He heard it as IT and that led to a great deal of confusion which later lead to the dialogue "IS?? Its worse than IT!!". We got to know that there were 3 classes of computing sciences in Chennai: CS, IT and IS. I guess thats why he(and we) got confused. Next, we had nice sessions on a Prediction Algorithm, Birthday Paradox and Appointment Problem. I knew some basic pyhton and Vijay knew a lot more than that. The two Shruthis and Nikitha had to learn python from scratch. From what I've seen, they've learnt it really really fast.

They left the place around 5 and me & Vijay left around 8. We went to our PG. On that night, dinner wasnt prepared for us. So, we had to go out to eat. By the time we came back, the gate was locked. I jumped the gate and told Vijay that I would get the key. We live on 2nd floor and PG owners at the ground floor whooshed out and start talking with in an irritated mood to Vijay. He somehow managed to make out that they were telling that the gates would be locked by 9.

Phrase of the day: Saapad Sooper!