GaNitha

gaNitha means Mathematics.

Today I attended a special lecture on "Number partitions as an extreme value problem" by Dr. Rajesh from IMSc, Chennai, as a part of my Physics Minor course. It was an extremely interesting lecture.

Some how this made me look back and see how my interest in Mathematics grew and realized how blessed I am when it comes to Mathematics teachers. Since school (class 5th) I have always had really good mathematics teachers. This blog post to is dedicated to all my mathematics teachers.

I still remember my first Algebra Class in 5th standard by my Math teacher (Ms. Vasudha ?? Cannot recall her name now :( ). The way she introduced the concept of algebra was enchanting. I was so thrilled how we could solve for unknowns! Somehow the x,y,z s in the equations looked fascinating. Later I had Ms. Jayashree, Sister Royaline, Mrs. Cinthia D'souza teaching me Mathematics in school. During +2 I had Vasudeva sir teaching in the college (Pre-University college).

At the pre-university level, I had the opportunity to learn mathematics under HLS Rao sir. The most amazing mathematics teacher I have encountered till now. A teacher who can teach mathematics without writing a single word on board! The motivation that he gave us during those days is something that I shall cherish through out my life. I will require a full post dedicated to him.

Here at IIT Madras, I have been lucky to have really good Mathematics teachers. Prof. A V Jayanthan, under whom I did my first two semester Math courses (Calculus I and II) and also my Linear Algebra course and Prof. Natarajan who taught me Probability and Random Processes.

Currently I am doing Basic Graph Theory under Prof. Choudum. Another amazing teacher. Its a pleasure to do the course under him.

The frien(I)DLY dinner

We had a very Special Dinner on 24th of October, 2009.

I entered the mess ignoring the board which read Special Dinner. Over-estimating the level of my hunger, I ended up taking a plate full of variety of items (which looked weird). There were finger chips which were really over-sized, gulab jamun which looked unhealthy, something that resembled manchurian, some special rice and curd rice.

The dinner was being served by the mess people (generally we help ourselves). The man in-charge of serving curd rice seemed too stingy. Even after requesting twice, he was reluctant to put more than two spoons of curd rice. Fortunately(?), he had to leave the place for a moment and I was quick enough to make use of his absence to fill my plate with a heap of curd rice.

I went to a table and sat with a bunch of juniors. They started to laugh looking at my plate. I ignored them and started to eat.

The gulab jamun tasted idly-ish! Moving to the manchurian, it tasted idly-ish too. The finger chips was no exception and the curd rice was not curd rice! It was crumble idly mixed with curds. Everything was IDLY!!

So, it was actually a "IDLY" dinner! It was too heavy and of course tasted too idly-ish.


The Menu :

1. Idly Finger chips
2. Idly Manchurian
3. Idly Rasa Vadai (read Rasa as "Rasam").
   
4. Idly Briyani ! (Biriyani :-P )
   
5. Idly Usilli (we never figured out what this was.)
6. Idly Curd Rice(?).
7. Idly Gulab Jamun (Wow!!)

This was to our frien(I)DLY dinner menu.



My final Dinner :



Banana saved the day!



P.S : Thanks to Tejaswi and her camera for the pictures!

Disjoint

The last day of my fourth semester!!
I just cannot believe this. It means that I am half way through my life in IIT!!

Well. I have had a so called the "rod" semester. 26 credits it was!!! With no slots free, all afternoons occupied and yeah, with lab making you do extra work.
As a matter of fact, this being my first blog of the year, further proves my point.

No. No. I was not that busy! I just did not feel like blogging about anything in this semester!! I mean, nothing phenomenal happened in the semester. It was just another even semester, with of course few credits more. So, what did I do in this semester?

ABCDEFGS.
I have not forgotten my alphabet! The letters out there in capitals were the slots I had. Do not worry. I am not going to bore you to death with the description of each course in this post. It needs a new post and of course a lot more time!

The semester started and within no time Saarang came and went; followed by the Quiz 1. Before we could even get out of the trauma of the first quiz, the quiz 2 barged in and then there were the presentations, lab exams, lab projects and end semester exams and that was it! Oh my God, The semester just got over.

I had my share of fun with colors at Saarang. I spent almost all my time at Indraprasta (the place where fine-arts competitions took place), splashing colors around. I did face painting, glass painting and also made puppets!

As a part of Astro Club, International Year of Astronomy, we had theory and observation sessions quite regularly in the first two months. We met every Friday evening for theory session and had sessions on Friday and Saturday nights. I enjoyed them a lot!!

Then there was Boltzmann, a bunch of Physics enthusiastic students guided by Prof. SG . We just meet mostly on a Saturday afternoon, and discuss interesting topics. For the first time, I started attending the sessions of Boltzmann regularly. Yet times the topics discussed seemed a little over-head projection but they made me learn so much!

I broke my previous semester records and ended up watching around 25 movies! Of course, we had cute little birthday parties, treats, hostel nights etc., giving us an opportunity to enjoy the sunny side of life.

And there it ends!