2 days in Mangalore...

The planning for MSDN @ Campus started off even before exams and we had got the approval from Microsoft very early. After lots of mail exchange with Rohan and Anand Tirth, we froze the date for this event as 12th February. It was good that Kevin agreed to join us.

As soon as exams got over, we booked the tickets for Mangalore. The booking was done amidst the confusion of who is coming and who isnt and lots of such trivial issues. Finally it was 6 of us who went - Sabarish, Ghana, Sharath, Deepthi Rao and Yashaswini.

The preparation started very early but I was asusual late with my PPT. I had taken up CLR Internals as my topic and I didnt have any ready PPT that I could use. I started designing the sliedes on 11th afternoon. The bus was scheduled to leave at 10.30PM and till the last moment, when I had to leave to the bus station, the PPT designing went on. Thanks to Sriram and Manoj who gave me pointers to good resources for my PPT.

The luggage we were carrying was real heavy - cases filled with ARKs and other give-aways. He got it weighed and dumped it into the VOLVO's luggage space (which is very very huge). The journey to Mangalore was cool and we got to watch CD1 and CD3 of Godzilla (the conductor least realized that he was supposed to insert CD2 after CD1).

We reached Mangalore at 6.30AM and we were driven to the hotel, where we got ready quite slowly and finished breakfast quickly and rushed to Surathkal along with Kevin where people were waiting for us to arrive.


(Me doing CLR Internals@ MIT)

The sessions at Surathkal went on well. I was doubtful whether a topic like CLR Internals would make sense for a beginner audience. I guess quite a few would have got the content clear. We distributed ARKs after the sessions and moved to Udupi where we had a quick lunch and continued to Manipal. MIT has a real huge campus. Their infrastructure is good.


(Amit, another MIT guy (dont remember the name :-( ), Kevin, DRao, Yash, Sumeet, San and myself. Ghana shot this one.)


(A tree without any leaves during the sunset at End-point, Manipal)

After the sessions, the MIT guys showed us their campus and then we went to a place called "End-point", which was literally the end/edge of Manipal. We gotta to see a good view of the sunset and I took a few snaps in Sharath's camera. After this we went for go-karting which was a 15min drive from "End-point". The track was pretty good and had 1 high-speed corner. My description isnt as technical as Sharath can give. The price was really cheap (Rs.50 for 4 laps). As expected, the karts werent very good. When I was driving the kart, it felt like holding a mixer-grinder or a concrete-mixer in the hand. I could feel the surface of the track in my hand. Hmm... I dont think it had a shock-absorber. Probably it had a shock-amplifier-transmitter ;-) It was definitely worth the money. First 4 laps, Sharath, Sab, Kevin and myself raced and we couldnt time ourselves and hence no one won it. Next we went in for a 5 mins drive and Sab, Sharath and myself started off together. Sharath took the lead, followed by Sab and then I followed. Sabarish crashed into the tyre wall (he says that there was a tyre that was popping out, which he rammed into) and Sharath was almost going to throng into Sab's kart, while I was watching the fun and waiting to overtake both. Fortunately or unfortunaltely Sharath made a nice move and avoided Sab. errr.. I was laughing inside the dumb helmet I was wearing (I had got a helmet whose wiser always closed off when I speed up... I had to keep putting it in place throught the race.. err..). Sab resumed but couldnt catch up. Sharath finished 1st and I followed.

We were sweating heavily after the race. To cool it, we had ice cream and then went to a park where generally MIT guys freak out. It had a beautiful fountain and well maintained lawn. We drove back to our hotel and the day ended with much-wanted peaceful sleep.

Sunday is FUNday! We decided to go to the water park @ Pilikula (about 20 kms from Mangalore). We called upon Mr.Maxim (a gentleman who had been driving us to all the places) to help us out with the travel. We reached the water park "Manasa" and Mr.Maxim got us a discount for the entry. We changed over and dived into the water. There were quite a few water rides - Water Speed Slide, an open spiral slide, a closed spiral and many more. After about 3 hrs., we had lunch and went to Penembur beach where we spent quite sometime. The beach was clean and the first wave that came across when I landed into the water reminded me of "Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink...". The waves were normal and inspite of that they are so powerful. Poweful enough to pull you back. Now I can imagine the state of the people who would have faced the Tsunami!! After watching the sunset and playing around with water, we went to a much-hyped icecream corner in Manipal where everyone (except me - Thanks to my bad throat) ate icecreams.

Before going back to the hotel, Ghana, Drao and myself went and shopped for some sweets and papad that we could bring back home. We had dinner and started our journey back home.