2nd Semester over – Summers ahead

Just finished with my 2nd semester. I don’t know yet, how well it went. One of the ways of assessment can be based on the GPA that I score, which is awaited as of now. I don’t expect much either. Alternatively, I can comment on my research progress and judge based on that.

Well, for me, research just kicked in. I have been assigned my potential phd project right away when I returned back from India in January. I am making good efforts to grasp all the things that have been discovered by my seniors regarding this project. I must say, it’s one of the difficult and almost a dreamer for a manufacturing guy, in this time, when people are going berserk to realize features size in nano-scale.

The end goal for this project (based on my understanding) will be able to machine (using milling processes primarily) parts with feature size as small as 1 micron, repeatably and on different kinds of available materials. Sounds good!? Just to give an idea of the efforts involved, it will take approx. work of 4 phd students to realize this dream (4*4=16 years of work) I am just hopeful to reduce it to 3 ppl (third one being me..:))

PS: No, I don’t have any plans to live phd life for more than 5 years (Just clarifying). I said I am hopeful!

Made few good friends, RP- was my buddy for this full semester. He just graduated, I wish he finds a job soon. TT – my lone female friend; she’s a nice company, we hung out more than a couple of times in Pittsburgh.

Commenting on future – summers ahead – most of the friends will go away – intern, home or job. So, expecting some lonely times ahead. Well, I have planned a weekend trip to NY to meet old pals Mital and Harshit.

Let’s see how everything goes!!

-SN

Intern updates - Part do

Hello again,

here I am reporting directly form Micromatic Grinding Technologies, Ghaziabad. About one and a half month had been passed here. Now the things are really getting serious. My first month was spent in playing TT most of the time, and rest of the time thinking that we have very little work to do in this intern [:)]

Soon, in our second month, when we met our supervisor; a couple of times more we found out that we got some more work to do, still manageable with in our projected time to finish the intern (obviously we want a few days to enjoy). Now the situation is demanding us to stay there over 50 days!!!! this is not fair......we are just internees after all!!!

We had no choice but to nod our heads in resonance with our supervisor. I will tell you why.......

A couple of week ago we were caught marking proxy for one of our friends. At that time we came to know the fierce nature of our guide. He straight away told us that he is going to mail this to our training supervisor. We were all psyched, me being most. Suddenly some bad feelings came to my mind, my journey of three years came in front of my eyes and then suddenly I felt my life as a degree extended student........................I was sitting deadpan all the day ................

The next day we thought we should plead in front of guide. Somehow we collected courage with in ourselves to encounter him and went to his small cubicle. We told him the consequences which will follow after he writes this little mail castigating four of us. Somehow we were successful in diverting wind in our favor.

We end up in completing the project successfully and the company staff is happy with us and our work. We did talk with HR informally in our last few hours settling our accounts and finally I got my first paycheque .....................:)

Intern updates - Part ek

hello to all, hope my batchmates are enjoying their interns. Mine is at Micromatic Grinding Technologies, Ghaziabad; about 8 kms from my home.

A little introduction about the company: this company mainly manufactures cylindrical grinding machines in both modes, i.e., hydraulic and electromechanically, driven by CNC. Besides this they also make special purpose machines as per customer requirements. The company claims to have over 50% market share in thier segment.

Moving on to some raunchy news and happenings inside the office.....

We are 4 people doing intern there namely madhur sahu, vaibhav gupta and akash khandelwal besides me. On our first day at office we were welcomed by HR girl there, sangeeta. And probably this was the only day when we came on time i.e. 0900 Hrs. She told us some rules and regulations which we have to follow during our training peroid. She also acquainted us with some of the facilites which are available to us like: a limited 2 cups of tea (tastes like soup with no content in it), a lunch containing mere 4 small round containers, approx diameter 7cm (one for each rice, dal, chapatti and vegetable) and we all always in search for some morsel of food while sitting at canteen.

Well talking about me, I love onions and a handful of them will do for me.................and look what we discovered at canteen; the company's guest house serves some of the employees thier lunch and it contains a box full of onions and one caserol full of extra chappatis beside regular lunch boxes. We decided to come for lunch a little late, when majority of employees had finished their lunch so that we can take onions and chappatis to satisfy our stomach needs.

We drinked soup-tea, ate lunch and now it's high time that we should move on and to do some big stuff that we are known for and for which (I Guess!!!) the company had hired us....................... WAIT a minute, just hold on for a sec............... look, people people, while roaming in the company we found out T.T. room which is located in a corner and we can only access it after crossing seminar hall. And there, it was written as a guideline, "Playing tt is permitted only after office hours". What!!!!, we didn't see that and we went to play .....................yipeeeee!!! So, each day we play on an average 1.5-2 hours and I only hope that no one knows.

"Now come on yaar, it's enough, let's do some work..........", nice thought from one of us. We went according to out training schedule, meet the guy listed and listen to it and ask appropriate questions just to make sure he is happy with us..............that we are seriously doing some work[:P].

We finally started to accomplish our assignments, day by day assignments became voluminous and we have to stay longer and longer at the office, I mean upto the office time; earlier we used to leave at 1600, a 1.5 Hrs earlier....:P:P:P

Due to our sincere behaviour, the HR girl, which I mentioned earlier in the post, getting rude with us day by day. We used to psyche madhur 'sahu' in her name because her name was sangeeta 'sahu' and to a coincidence she sometimes favors madhur, be it at taking tea from her card or any thing we used to ask...........:D:D

Recently our supervisor Mr Sanjay Kumar was out on leave for 6 days, we thought what a golden chance to grab some holidays. We didn't ask Mr Sanjay directly, after he left, on other day we told to another guy in office who was under Sanjay that, " since Mr Sanjay is not here, out work is at a halt, so we though if we could also get a leave of 4 days". He tried to call Sanjay but finding no response from his side, he granted leave......................... nice holidays :):):)...... enjoying it!!