Hyderabad trip - A nerds story

Hyderabad trip

After a very very long time, my family decided to go together on a trip. My mom gets LFC refund for distant travels from bank and we really needed a break from routine.

Reason for choosing Hyderabad:

· We had relatives in Hyderabad.

· The weather conditions were similar except that it was slightly warmer.

· We had heard from a lot of people mostly family and friends that Hyderabad was one of the must see locations.

We decided to go to Hyderabad by Rajadhani express, a very famous train known for its speed and service. While on our way to Hyderabad, we had one more person in our compartment, his name was Puneet and he was an entrepreneur of the shoe brand VIVA from Delhi. He did not speak much but I did get him to speak a little with me.

As we entered the city by train, the site of several mosques by the side of the train it was only later that we realized that 40% of the population of Hyderabad was Muslims and was on the rise.

Anyway, on all the days of the trip i hoped to get  a chance to say ‘Hi’ to a class mate in Andhra Pradesh, because most of the guys in my class spoke Telugu; however, during the trip i did not come across any of the class mates, which is most likely because they had joined either Infosys or CTS or Wipro... however enough of this madness and lets get into the details of the trip.


We had booked a holiday home from State Bank of Hyderabad. We stayed there. The chefs there were very good and the rooms were fantastic.

Places we visited on the trip:

Day 1:

· Salur Jung museum
· Charminar
· Golkonda fort
· Lumbini Park
· Birla mandir

Day 2:

· Ramoji Film city

Day 3:

· Snow city
· Birla Planetarium
· Birla Museum

We reached the Secunderabad station of Hyderabad where my uncle Ananth came to pick us up. We reached his place, got ourselves refreshed and set to have a look at the different places in Hyderabad.

Salur Jung Museum:

            A must see place if you ask me. This museum is really huge so don’t expect to get out any time before 4 hours. In fact the museum is so magnificent, you can visit it at least over 3 times to get a sense of satisfaction of exploring it. to It is a 3 floor museum. Its the third largest museums in India. Yes it is an art museum, but It’s got so much of variety you will get lost in admiring the beauty of most of the artifacts in the museum.

Note the usage of multiple If statements in this map written in red text.

Some of the most remarkable things I have seen in the museum include,
1) Viel Rebeka – one of the most beautiful statues in the museum. its a marble statue and looks life like.
2) Musical Clock – A real mechanical clock marvel with the functionality still intact.

3)     Ivory carvings.

4)     Miniature paints.

5)     Carpets from Egypt and china.

6)     Chinese porcelain wares.

7)     Carvings from Buddhist and Jain era.

8)    Large display of weaponry.
9)     Miniature statues that display war preparations in different countries.
10)  Ravi varma paintings
11)  Paintings of Flora and Fauna
12) Items made from jade and semi precious stones.


Charminar:

A very majestic site. We went to the top of the charminar. It was a beautiful view. All around the charminar, you can see people selling a lot of stuff such as samosa (delicious), bangle shops, little toys and common house hold items.

The structure is approximately 6 stories high as per the number of steps there. There is a very narrow spiral stairs to the top.

The walls have been completely mutilated by random writings by people.

Golkonda Fort:

The heat had given all of us head ache by the time we reached Golkonda fort. We hesitated appointing a guide, but regretted it later. The fort itself is a marvel. It appears somewhat like our chitradurga fort. On the way to the fort, we can see several cannons.

While walking within the fort i witnessed a guy killing a chicken with his hands and my heart went all panic panic!!!

There are very few guards at the fort, and the visitors have totally dirtied the whole fort. There is a Ramdev temple to the midway to the top and one more temple at the very top of the fort.

Unlike Bangalore, people there don’t cherish tender coconut. After we got back down, all of us had icecream in the park. Then we left the fort.

I suggest that you take a guide if you ever decide to go to the fort.


One of the funniest thing we see there is the sign "Way to UP" everywhere. As if we can go to Uttar Pradesh (lolz).

Birla Mandir:

Birla mandir is a some-what different temple in the sense that it is built in a modern architecture. Its got lots of carvings from different religions. The Idle of the lord is very beautiful. It started raining heavily by the time we entered the sanctum and as if my miracle, the rain slowed down just as all of us had reached the exit of the sanctum of the lord.

Lumbini Park:

Its a children's park with boating and lots of rides. It is situated on the tank bund of the Hussain sagar lake and a very famous tourist destination. Since we reached late we missed the laser show.

Ramoji Film City:

            I believe that Ramoji Film City is Among the places a person must visit in India. Some of the wonders and displays of the film city seem too good to be true.

As soon as you enter the main gate you get to see the enormity of the place.

The staff at the ticket counter are very friendly.From there you board a bus and it takes you to the place where the majority of the events take place.

The road to the place is very beautiful. And at one point there are different lamp decorations for different streets.

Places to visit at Ramoji Film City:

· Wild Wild West Show: An act that shows how synchronized the sequences in a movie are supposed to be.

· Borasura: It is a house of horror (supposed to be :P) very well build.

· Ramoji towers: A place where you sort of experience the apocalypse.

· Fundustan: A place where there are fun rides and circus acts for children.

· Eureka entertainment: A place where we can see staged acts of different cultures, different themes and people of different ages.

· Movie magic: this place had several life size models of famous movie starts including Jachie Chan, Sylvester Stanoe, Merilyn Munroe, Charlie Chaplin, Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Heman...

· Action: A place where we get to learn several aspects of movie making and how we usually tend to take a narrow perspective of a movie.

Snow city:

            If you have never seen snow then this is the place where you get to see it... its a theme part with a huge slide, a place to dance, a merigo round in snow, snow tables, you can see ice stalactites, play air ball basket ball, throw ball with lots of fun.

The temperature inside the place is at -5 degrees and we really enjoyed it.

Since we did not have time we did not go to the go karting, living dead, ocean part, tropical fauna regions of the park.

Birla Planetarium:

If you have been to the planetarium in Bangalore then this planetarium is not worth the visit. Me and most of us there fell asleep by the mid of the show.

Birla Museum:

Yes compared to the vishveshwaraiah museum in Bangalore this museum is very ameture, but the museum is very good in the sense that you get to learn and understand science practically.

There is an art museum at the bottom floor of the museum.

A dinosaur museum with a very large dinosaur skeleton and the pillars have impressions of pre historic flora.

There is a relay museum which is intended to teach satellite communication, but most of the equipments there are not well handeled.

The museum and planetarium are surrounded by beautiful park which have several idols from different excavation sites in India.

Hope you all get to go and watch there places some day. (TY)

Surge of IDEAS

Regardless of where I go or what i see, I find that there are so many things that are out of place.

I see the world in way that so one in this world would ever have, yet I keep most of it to myself and here are some of the cool ideas I have had lately.

1) Recently i had been to the tailor. Me dad and my brother go to the same tailor, when we go there, the tailor first examines the clothes, then he takes measurements, and after 2 or 3 weeks we get our clothes and end up paying the tailors fee...

Here is the catch, in our last visit, I saw the whole process like a way I had never seen before. I thought, what if i make a device that takes my clothes as input, then i feed in the measurements so that all the inputs needed by the device are filled in. That day I came home just thinking of a whole new league of designs. I was afraid to jot it down on paper, but for your satisfaction, i can say that the design was similar to that of a HP printer.

In fact I think I will see this device in my life time and might as well take my time to build it myself.

2) Visit to the barber. Yes i was again at it, sinking deep into my own world! that morning at the barbers store, for some reason, the pointless talk going on between the other customers and the barber did not seem to interest me.

I was thinking of proximity sensors that can detect when an object comes within a few millimeters, "WALLA" I thought, why not have a machine that will cut all the hair bigger than a few millimeters so that you can get your hair cut when ever you want, and can customize it as per your interest.

I mean think about it, if you can configure such a machine, i mean fine tune it even further, you can have a device that you can use to shave as well as get a hair cut. YES I am aware of the trimmers available in the market.

But by using those you can't expect a cool look. It would be a sin not to mention that i remember seeing a cartoon of the jetsons where Elroy get different hair styles using an automated hair dresser.

(TY) Post me if you have any queries...

Unforgettable IISC - The Final year project.

All Engineering students have to do a final year project, and mine just happened at IISC-Bangalore.

8th semester engineering is the best part of engineering. And what makes it really special is the final year project. Most of you reading this might be wondering, whats so special about dedicating a blog to our project, or wondering whats so special about IISC, or some even might be looking into the details of my project, while other might be looking for something to read on the web. Let me tell you, i have not included any details of our project over here.

I consider myself extremely fortunate that I got to do the project at IISC. IISC Bangalore is one of the most beautiful places in Bangalore. When the question of the project team came, it was decided that I do the project with my friends Abhilash and Gopinath. Since Abhilash's uncle knew people over there, we got an opportunity to do a project at the Micro-electronics laboratory at IISC.

Our project was on MEMS pressure sensor design for wide range application. MEMS => Micro Electro Mechanical Systems. The term Electro-Mechanical says that its part, electronic, part mechanical, since we were from electronics background "technically", we had to report to totally 4 guides at IISC.

The guide heirarchy was a follows. At the top was Prof. Jagadeesh, who was incharge of us submitting the sensor design to IISC as they were making the sensors for ISRO, testing it there. Then there was Prof. Gopal Hegde, who was the head of the nano science department, and was responsible for the micro scaled experiments. Though we were supposed to be mentored by him, we were supposed to learn whatever required from Vamsi sir, but since MEMS devices were modelled using a software of mechanical background (CoventorWARE) we were mentored all the way by Jayaprakash sir.

In short, first we report to Jayaprakash sir, then Vamsi sir, then Hegde sir, then Jagadeesh sir. But the funny part was, it was not as complicated as it might seem.

We needed to go to IISC only once or twice a week. Our teacher Jayaprakash sir was so co-operative, and foresighted and had done his Masters in IISC itself and was a 2008 passout, he made us learn the complete theoretical background needed for the project in lots of mini-assignments. Infact, we had so much material toward the end, that we did not have to worry about getting our reports done at the end of the project. While my friends doing the project at college had to go and report every day at college, spending their time on chitchat, and worrying about last minute report making.

Our Project was very very simple, infact we could have done the whole project in 2 hours looking at the manual. But the real catche was that it was a new field to us, something that was a thing of the cutting edge in technology. Our teachers had no idea about MEMS at college (he he he he). And we did not spend a Ruppee (Indian Currency). OH, YA, we had to spend on the report but thats not worth mentioning (^_~).

In short, we learnt a lot, had a lot of fun got to see a beautiful place, met a lot of intelligent people. And got through a semester as if it was a piece of cake. And got to eat delicious Pav Bhaji every now and then.

So What are the advantages of doing project at IISC apart from the above, well there are plenty and here are some:

1) You will be prepared for what ever viva questions your teachers can come up with, because you actually put a lot of effort once you are there, the environment is very conducive for learning.

2) You will get to know a lot about current sciences, for instance, when i did my project over there:

    i) It was the inaugural event of the particle physics department on the centenary of IISC, if not for the event, I might have never got the opportunity to attend the seminar on 'Asymptotic String Theory', by David Gross, the teacher of Ed Witten and Michael Green.

        ii) I might have never got to know about 'IISC Open Day', the day on which, all departments are open to common public, and it is traditional for various departments to exhibit several areas of their research.

(TY): If anyone wants details of any kind please feel free to post below...

Locked away ideas.

I believe that the mind is a maze. We sometimes are absolutely sure that we know where things are and this mind being a maze, we most often cant associate the exact thing that we are looking for. I like moments when i can be spontaneous and express exactly what i mean when i get an idea. But its almost an every day experience that we dont get to do that (-_-).

For as long as i can remember, i have had an ambition of becoming a world famous inventor some day. Quite often i find that people around me don't quite look at things the way i do. Unfortunately, when ever i get a cool idea, I find myself in the middle of something. I have never made an entry of any of my ideas, and even if the onlooker does not find it cool or to his interest, i still wish that I had made an entry some where or the other , just to get back to it later on.

When i was about 4th standard, I remember having a bottle in which i had added what ever powder i knew of just to see what it would finally look like it. I used to call it the Formula, a name inspired from watching "Swat Kats". 

When the other day i look at a guy selling the balloon, trying to blow the whole lot of toy balloon, i suddenly got a design idea in mind to automate the whole process. Also when i see a guy pushing the vegetable cart all the way up the Post office hill in Mahalakshmi Layout, I wonder why not add that thing a motor, you know... only to make the upward journey way lot easier.

I will share a whole lot more when i find more time... (TY)