Couple of things I should have mentioned before:

1) My project sort of worked on the day of the demo. It almost worked on the day before but we ended up scewing the microcontroller. So I had to rush to Mercy Electronics and get a new one. Of the 300 Rs we had remaining from our budget, 269 was spent cos of the micro :-(. All visions of hogging with the money after the project sadly vanished. On the day of the demo, we were all pretty nervous. We blew the fuse 4 times because one of the relays got jammed. After that, the project actually worked! The micro switched off the induction motor and resistive load when we overloaded them :-). The external didnt ask too many questions. My so called viva was limited to " what was your contribution to the project? ". He asked us questions as a group and it was mostly limited to VB programming

2) We had the comprehensive viva exam. Imagine being asked questions from 4 years of engineering! Other than Bharat and Pradeep, both GATE genies could answer well, the rest of us were totally blank! I answered every 3'rd or 4'th question only. I spent most of the time grinning stupidly at the external examiner each time she asked a question.

3) I should have mentioned this a long time back, I participated in my first bodybuilding competition in college :-). I didnt win and there were times when I wondered what I was doing clad in nothing but my undies in front of a large audience. It is an experience though and its taught me a lot.

I went to college and headed straight for the gym where I found some other participants working out. Until then I always thought I had a good physique but when I saw them, I was shocked! They had absolutely amazing bodies! ( No, I'm not gay ). Then the PT sir came and I asked him if we should wear shorts on stage. He gave me a disgusted look and said
" Yenna shorts? Jetti than! ".

As I was warming up, one guy comes up to me and asks " Why didnt you shave your arms and legs? You loose points for body hair! ". Actually,I knew that but I didnt have the guts to shave my legs the day before. Every guy has to have hair on his arms and legs, its a guy thing!!

Then everybody started oiling up, qute disgusting to watch. The stud from the mechanical department actuallly had people rubbing him with oil and colour! I put on some oil but I didnt want to overdo it. Everyone else had an oil bath.

We went on stage wearing nothing but our undies. We even had to pin our numbers to our undies.

We had to go through all the mandatory poses. It was my first time so I flexed too hard and my whole body started shaking with the effort. One mistake I shouldnt have made :-(. It was so exhausting. We had to stay flexed for almost an hour and half! Posing by itself is an exercise!

Luckily no girls were allowed into the auditorium. All my class girls wanted to come to make fun of me but thank god they werent allowed inside! Bharat, GP and Prabhakaran came to watch for a while. I couldnt notice them because I wasnt allowed to wear my glasses. Everything looked kind of blurry.

I didnt win, but I've learnt what areas I have to improve on. My chest and legs need a lot more work. My only consolation was that I had the best biceps and triceps there.

Right now, I have a new pupil, my friend Kumar. He's really skinny and wants to put on muscle. Considering I was super skinny once upon a time, I know just what he feels like. I'm going to make sure he gets a super bod. I've been pushing him hard at the gym for 3 days now.

Whew! Thats one long blog entry! Will write more later.