When Hari meet Silly

'First Love' – the name itself sounds so beautiful. They say, you never forget your first love. They say it’s one of the best feeling in your life.

I was not sure because I was 5 year old. I didn’t know much about the pehle pyar ka ahsaas but it was surely different.

1992- summer vacation

I went to Jaipur. My aunt was there. Now they introduced me to some of the mohalle wale bache to keep me busy from bugging them. There I saw her for the first time. I played with her, I talked with her, I ate with her and I knew there was some connection between us. I don’t know any time in my life when 4 days passed so instantaneously.

I went to the market and got a pair of earring for her. My first gift to anyone on this goddamn earth (I was an expert back thenJ). She gave me a pencil sharpener having a shape of dinosaur or cartoon something.I came back and I kept that sharpener in my showcase for 3 years and as time passes by memories fade away.

1999 – Brother marriage

It was one of the most anticipated marriage I attended in my life. I reached jaipur again and try looking out for her. 7 years do a lot to your look, your physique. Mine looks got deteriorated, 27ml oil in hair everyday ensured black shining chipke hue baal but height was the same. I didn’t know about her. I scanned all the people and I was having doubt on 2 girls but didn’t have the guts to ask.

Day1 passed - No result

Day 2 passed - ZUKK!!

It was final last day. Last 8 hours in jaipur. Luckily destiny played its role again. One of my cousin introduced her to me. I asked if she remember me and she said ‘yes’. (In my mind: do you take pratik….’Yes’!!).

It was a long night. We spend the whole night together talking about everything what a grade 7 student know. (Damn! I knew so much less that time). It was farewell time. We said goodbye to each other. exchanged Postal Addresses.

2000 – My birthday

I received a card. Card saying happy birthday by spray painting. One of the most beautiful gift I ever received. I decided to send a thanks card. I learned spray painting and returned the favor in the exact same way.

2007 – Summers

My Brother got transferred from Jaipur to Hyderabad. He came to kota and we met. He told me that she is in Hyderabad now. She has become air hostess now. I thought I am doing graduation from IIT as well. Not bad a pair. (Still the Height was same) I was looking for an excuse to talk to her somehow. Suddenly my brother cell phone ringed and it was her call. I grabbed the cell from him and this time we talked for 2 hours straight. She was steward in Hyderabad-Chennai flight. I was studying in IIT Chennai. We decided to meet sometime in Chennai.

I was damn sure that she was ‘The one’ for me. Destiny is playing its role. ‘Aur Pratik ne pyar ke sunahre sapne sanjoye’

But it was me. Everything going normal doesn't seems normal to me.

I lost my cell while coming back to Chennai, so the number.

That Hyderabad Chennai Flight never came to Chennai and the Dream meeting remained a dream.

1 year later( 2008)

My brother called me .

Bro - hey wassup?

me - nothing much. Same ol' life.

Bro - Let me add some spice to it.

Me - Sure. Shoot

Bro - You remember her?

Me - oh yeah...that one. I remember ( yes yes yes bro, i do remember)

Bro- so take a good news. She is getting married in2 months.

Me - Oh really!! good for her. ( crying, crying out loud......)

Bro (cunningly) - you dont sound happy.

Me - Its just that your spice was quite a lot spicy for me.

Last week (2009)

I again got the call from my Brother.

Bro - hey wassup?

me - nothing much. Same ol' life.

Bro - Let me add some spice to it.

Me - No, not this time. Last time it was too much for me.

Bro- okay, then a good news.

Me - Sure, that sounds cool.

Bro- you are uncle now. She gave birth to a girl last week.

Me - Oh really!! good for her ( &*^^&& )

Anyways this is the story of my 18 year long love story. and SO NOW I KNOW – ‘YES, YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST LOVE’

PS: God bless her!!

Campus Placement Preparation Tips

This is part II of my promise which I am posting now. Placement preparation is the most important thing if you want to get placed in first few days. Many of us ignore this but I realized during the course of my placement that every single thing you prepare matters and the only thing which matters least is your CG. Lets go topic wise:

Company test: This is the most important part as 50-60% companies are open for all and they take aptitude test to shortlist the students. The best thing is to prepare for for cat seriously. In every college 30-40% people prepare seriously for cat and these pool of people keep getting short-listed again and again. So it’s better to be in the pool. All your preparation, interns, resumes, CG is a waste if you are not getting short- listed. So I will suggest start preparing for cat or atleast start giving some practice cat test to brush up your concept and increase your speed.

Resume: It took me 2-3 months to prepare my resume. Keep following points in mind:
1)Prepare 2 types of resume. 1 Tech oriented and other for general firms. Tech resume can be of 2 page with a greater description of departmental projects. But the general resume should not exceed 1 page.
2)Fill the space completely. Its either 1 page or 2 page. There is nothing like 1.5 pages.
3)See the resume in print format and 80% space of the page should be filled.
4)Once you are done with resume ,send it to your seniors and friends for editing and make necessary changes.
5)While describing your interns, projects, extra-curricular follow the order – Aim( what was given to you), your efforts( what you did for that/ what you learned and applied) Result ( what was the final outcome and its result on the company or in your festival) Example: I was given the responsibility of……I learned and applied……The final result was ……
6)Avoid objective, interest, hobbies…these are very generic. Try to save as much space as you can for relevant things.
7)You should be very sure and comfortable with all the things you are mentioning in the resume because all your interview is going to go around your resume only.
My resumes for references:
Resume for general firms- 1 page format
Resume for core firms- 2 page format

Interview: the best and the only way to do this is to make an excel sheet like this and fill your answers. Send it for editing and mug it completely. Its better not to trust that spontaneous answers look more real. Mug the pre-written answers and try to deliver them as if they are spontaneous. Speak in front of mirror, or ask your friend take your mock interview.

GD: get a group of good friend s who are seriously preparing for interview. Pick any random topic. There are many GD Topics on net. Try to have practice GD among yourself. The rules of GD are: speak more, try to dominate the discussion but don’t get aggressive with your body language. You should look cool but try to grab the most of the speaking times. Good points do matter but not much. The only thing I felt that matters is your cumulative speaking times.

Technical knowledge: Contact your seniors who have got placed in the companies you are targeting and ask them about the areas in which the respective companies were interested and start preparing on the same line.

The preparation is endless but the most important thing is not to loose focus and keep preparing constantly. So All the best guys!! May You score your respective Dream jobs.

Cat Prep Tips

I promised someone that I will blog about this issue long time back and finally I was reminded again so here I am, fulfilling my promise. I will start off with my scores and preparation. I prepared seriously for 5 months, joined couple of test series and attempted the material of TIME and CL. I scored 44 in quant, 46 in DI and 28 in verbal with the percentile 97.5(something). It was disappointing but I learned a lot of things about cat preparation which I want to share. First I will go by small things which we generally miss or we don’t focus

The most important thing is time management. You should have a definite strategy for 150 mins. I tried 40-40-40-30 and 45-45-45-15 where first 3 entries is the time given to individual subject and the last entry being the time left for going over to the not attempted questions. This is very important to figure out that which time distribution maximizes your score. And even more important is the determination to change the section when the time is over. I have seen people dwelling over a particular section for 60-80 mins.I will suggest, experiment the distributions for 3-4 test and then decide which one suit you best.

The second most important thing is the order of section. I used to attempt quant first because I was able to attempt decent number of questions in it and it gives me confidence, followed by verbal and then DI because I was good in DI and in last if time gets crunch, I was sure that I can wrap up the things in 30 mins also. Again try various orders for few tests and then fix an order and stick to it.

Now let me go subject wise:

Quant: The best way is to practice more. Practice and read the solution for the questions you didn’t get. It’s very important that you keep noting the good shortcuts and smart formulas in some notebook and mug them properly. This will give you atleast 2 additional questions in final exams.

DI: The smartest way to prepare for DI is to solve 10 years cat paper. There are very limited set of questions in DI. Let’s say 50. If you are through with the 10 years exam papers you will cover like 30-35 types and rest you can learn while you give test and prepare at room. Trust me this is the best way and you will see instantaneous improvement but just keep in mind to read the solution of not attempted/ wrong questions and learn the trick behind them.

English: to be very true I don’t have much of an idea how to improve this. The only thing I knew is you should be able to solve a comprehension in 6 mins and try both the way of solving comprehension i.e. reading passage first and questions later and vice versa. For me reading questions first and passage later was more helpful because in that way I can look for the required answers and keep marking them as I read. I will suggest you this wordlist to mug completely. This is the most comprehensive wordlist I go through. Just 800 words and trust me it covers like 70-80% of the cat words.

About the material: I found the CL material to be best but the TIME provided me with sample test in last moments which were also quite useful. Practice from CL, Practice room test from TIME. There are many things which you should kept in mind while preparing for Cat. Cat is not about hard work, it’s about smart work.