Coffee Shop

by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life, Linux, Placements, Servers, Victory

Rediff Interview

A few days back I got a call from an alumnus about a job opening at Rediff in my domain (server side craziness :P). Initially I was a bit surprised because I was not expecting something like that at all. After discussing a bit more about it, I returned to my room and forwarded the resume. Two days later while I was in RnD Showcase, I got a call from Rediff regarding the interview timings. It was scheduled on Saturday 21st at 1PM.

Saturday 21st

In the morning at around 9:40AM, I got a call from Sumit Rajwade (VP, Tech, Rediff) asking if interview can be conducted at 10:30AM. I replied positively. I got a bit nervous as I had to quickly arrange a place where we can meet. Arranged a conference room. At around 10:15AM, I got another call from Sumit saying that he was at coffee shop. I was deeply shocked. Coffee Shop :O I couldn’t really figure out what was going on. In my point of view, coffee shop is THE best place in IIIT Hyderabad. For me its a holy place 😛 When I reached coffee shop, I saw two guyz enjoying cold milk. Sumit said, “Whenever I come to IIIT, I always visit coffee shop. I can’t miss this cold milk”. I was still dumbstruck.

After brief introductions, interview started. He asked some NATing questions seeking answers at TCP level. I was able to answer those. Then we moved on to open source domain. Talked about Apache compression and keepalive for sometime. Then we moved on to squid and caching. I feel so good when somebody asks me something about caching/squid. Have been experimenting with caching/squid since last 1 year. Then we exchanged a few thoughts about our interests. Luckily there were no questions about printf statements. Then I briefed him about things I have been doing since last four years. After that he introduced me to the kind of work they are expecting from me. It looked pretty awesome and inspiring at the same time. Few more thoughts exchanged and it was all done. I was asked to take some time out to visit Rediff Head Office in Mumbai.

All in all, it was fun talking to Sumit. He has been hacking (here hacking means hacking and not cracking) open source softwares since years. Inspiring personality.

The most shocking thing to me was the coffee shop part of it. I never imagined that I’ll be interviewed at Coffee Shop.

 
by Kulbir Saini on LAN, Life

I want reservation

Well, enough has been said about reservation by millions of bloggers and other people who express their views on Internet either by blogging or forums or any other medium. And most of the people ( the ones who fall in the non-reserved categories and the ones who think its not a good idea) have opposed it. FYI, I fall in OBC (other backward classes), but I never used this because I had enough talent to defeat the problems myself.

We (the IIITians), time and again boast of no reservation at this holy place. And I am also proud of this as this brings THE talent to our institute which makes it THE place that it is. You might be wondering why the heck I want reservation??

Well, recent happenings have forced me to think in a tangential direction. The increasing number of non-IIITians at IIIT is one of them. Right now at IIIT, ratio non-IIITians/IIITians is more than 2. Here, I count IIITians as all the students who came to IIIT under UG, PG (excluding MSIT, check this. It doesn’t list MSIT in IIIT’s PG curriculum) and PhD programs. My friends’ requests for rooms in OBH have been denied because there are no rooms left. Rooms allotted to my friends (they were about to shift in a few days) have been given to outsiders without even informing them. One fine day they came with their luggage to OBH and found out that their rooms have been given to some other people (non-IIITians). All BC spots (Coffee Shop, NBH main gate, playgrounds etc.etc…) are now over-populated. These are just a few things to mention. The people living in the campus right now, know them much better. All resources (bandwidth is the one about which I am worrying the most) are now shared.

All this said, I want some reservation in IIIT for IIITians. May be I am being a bit paranoid, but I am serious about whatever I said.

 
by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life

Back to Life

Vacations have become much more enjoyable since a few days .. 2-3 days to be precise … atul and mahaveer is back and sambhav will be back in a few days … coffee shop @ IIIT is THE place that I’ll never forget throughout my life. there are a LOT of memories related to THE place 😀 Its one of the spots where we friends socialize 😛 Since last three days we are spending a lot of time out there … two days before yesterday 3 hours ( 9PM – 12AM)… day before yesterday 2 hours ( 10PM – 12AM) and yesterday 4 hours ( 9:30PM – 1:30AM) .. OMG .. it feels so good sitting out there and breathing fresh/cool air …

PS : Sachin is leaving today … a$$hole X-(