Engineering Brains (Oh yes!) # 3

BEAUTY AND BRAINS

It was during the college fest 2007. More precisely, during an event named Mr. And Miss Engineer. On another evening I might have preferred to be on the hostel terrace with a can of chilled beer but this particular day I couldn't resist the temptation of getting to check out the flock of non feathered birds expected to gather in the college premises.

The shortlisted candidates upon the ramp were supposed to be judged upon parameters like intelligence, personality, confidence and their overall outlook.I'd excused myself for a couple of fags while all the Mr.'s were proving their prowess in front of the judges and just when I'd returned to the scene of action, there was this very pretty girl dressed in an impressive red outfit just stepping upon the ramp. She walked over to the mike and introduced herself in the following words " Good evening everyone, myself Sonam (name changed) and myself very pleased to be here"

(Oh yes, "MYSELF" is very glad to have met 'YOURSELF"!)

After the very short (and obviously "sweet") introduction, the first judge presented her with a question that went something like "William Wordsworth said that the child is the father of man. If that is so, who's the father of that child?"

"I think", replied this beauty, " the father of that child is the father of that child himself!"

(Oh yes, that interpretation is even more metaphoric than what that moron Wordsworth intended it to be!)

"What, apart from your stunning looks, do you think sets you apart from from everyone else?", asked the second judge.

"Well, I think", mused the beauty again, " it's my brains that sets me apart from all my colleagues!"


(Oh yes, how very true indeed! No one could be possibly any dumber!! And thanks for making my evening so worthwhile. I don't miss my beer anymore!)

Engineering Brains (Oh yes!) # 2

DAMN THE CONSUMER FORUM

It was yet another march and the heat was on. And not just literally! It was time for campus recruitment and every deserving candidate was busy buying formals (or borrowing them), shining up their shoes, shaving off their prized goatees and chopping off their their ponies, the manifestation of a year's hard work! And for the rest of us, who hardly met the eligibility criteria and had all the time on this earth, were trying to keep ourselves busy and content with the mock group discussions and mock interviews organized by the college's training and placement cell. In one of these mock G.Ds, we were given a certain case to study upon and discuss our views.

The case was somewhat like:

"A detergent company reduces its prices to compete against the launch of a similar product by a rival company. As a manifestation of this, the consumer forum launches a case against the company for fleecing customers all this while. The court rules the case in favor of the company but all the publicity creates a negative impact upon the customers. So as the brand manager, what would you do to revive your product in the market?"

All of us were inputting our ideas and it was just about turning into a stimulating discussion when a certain student stole the show with the brightest solution one could possibly come up with! " The consumer forum tried to defame us by filing a case against us.", started this young lad, "So why don't we file back a case against the consumer forum?"

(Oh yes dude, that's exactly what we should do to get our consumers back....file a case against them!)

Engineering Brains (Oh Yes!) # 1

TOO MUCH WATER

It was sometime in February 2007 i guess. We were a group of 30 students from our college on an indutrial visit to the Indian Petrochemicals Corp. Ltd. (IPCL) that had just recently been bought off by Reliance India. It was our first opportunity to actually witness something which we'd only read in our textbooks so far, so quite necessarily we were all pretty excited! Ok now, whom I kidding, we were all pretty excited about the 2 hour bus journey and the free attendance but we were all excited nevertheless!

The 2 hour bus journey, in spite of being pretty bumpy, was real fun courtesy the 'antakshuri' initiated by the girls. I mean come on now, how often do you get to hear such wonderfully fresh covers of Himesh Reshamiyya when the likes of Jim Morrison and Pearl Jam have polluted the whole music scene!

I wouldn't waste precious time now explaining you folks all that we learned during the whole visit but it was kind of o.k actually. At least initially it was! But as the day progressed and the Nagpur sun started bestowing all its generosity upon us my attention span was gradually fading when something so exciting happened that all my sleep vanished into thin air!

The IPCL employee was explaining to us something like how the polymers were cooled using water as a coolant when this one very curious girl (undoubtedly from Computer Science) inquired about what these guys did with all the residual water.
"The residual water being of no industrial use to us is simply used to water the garden and sustain the fishes in our giant aquarium", answered the employee to all of our satisfaction. But as you can bet, this girl was still not satisfied!

"Sir", went on this very bright girl, "if the water's of no use to you, why don't you simply evaporate it?"


(Oh yes, that's exactly what they should be doing sweety...spend a fortune installing new boilers, get some new employees for looking after it, spend another fortune maintaining the boilers and simply evaporate the water that was earlier serving some constructive purpose!!)