Manas Garg Speaks

I don’t even remember the last time I wrote in this text area! Somehow I’ve not got that itch I used to get every once in a while to write something down.

I’m missing all my pals in college today. Suddenly.

Speaking with Hari is always a pleasure – even if it is a small chat. He is one the the few guys on the planet who know (well.. almost) everything about me. It was fun doing those night outs in our Lab.

I miss Spider too.

And the recent news I’ve got about Spider is not all that great – the circumstances in college have become more difficult – Internet access to First year students is a welcome step, but it comes down heavily on the popularity of Intranet sites like Delta and Spider.

Then there was the deplorable decision of the institute authorities to totally disallow any form of interaction among the freshers and the senior students. The C course Spider taught was the *BEST* introduction to programming one can get. There used to be notable difference in the performance of students who used to attend the Spider C course compared to other first time coders.

And finally, all this has affected the enthusiasm of the team.

Bad times come and go, and even this one will. The Matlab course was a sweeping success, and I’m sure Hari and his army have something up their sleeve.

This post was supposed to be an explanation of why haven’t I been blogging (see the title :P). Emotion overtook me? Maybe.

I was very attached to Spider. I saw it as my own thing. It was very hard to give up too. After 6 months now, I’ve tried hard to detach myself – now it is only like a void left inside me, and I do miss its presence in my everyday schedule often.

I should stop. I dont think I’m going to write anything merry tonight.

(This post will make sense to you only if you were in NIT Trichy during 2006-07 or know me pretty well)

What is it about Spider that I’ve been trying to prove? Our supremacy? Intellect? Or plain addiction to work?

I don’t really know.. Never thought in these terms when we worked. It was a real morale booster to think about changing the ‘image’ of the group in the minds of the campus junta, and once that had been done, the next idea to motivate ourselves was ‘work harder than anyone else’ or to be the ‘best’.

But all this was only internal. Only to motivate ourselves. Why we do all this is still not clear to me. Maybe we just love working.. and want to create a breed that loves to work too..

Or maybe its the recognition. When people stop us in the middle of the road and say “Hey! you’re in spider right? I saw your photo.. you guys have done awesome work for 1st years!” It feels nice.

No. I don’t think any of these are real reasons.

Here it is: I feel immensely satisfied with myself when I go to bed late at night dead tired from working in our lab. I feel that the day was worth it.

I’ve loved working for Spider and I hope I’ll never stop.