Well the final project (POST) has been done since last Thursday. I’ve done a few things since my last post which was the beginning of POST.
First off, POST was an interesting experience, especially being the PM. I was able to do a real project with 6 other team members in an 8 day period. The odd part was that it was finally like what Purdue University CS said it would be like, 80% documentation 20% coding. During the whole time of POST we only spent 2 days actually coding anything. It is funny how fast and smoothly coding can go when you have planned everything out thoroughly.
On the flip side of that is the documentation we had to do. True, it does make the coding much smoother, but in this case the documentation was hell. Given that it was 80% of our POST they didn’t teach us how to do the documentation one bit. I would say that if they were to teach that as a module here it would be at least a weekful of knowledge. Instead they just throw it at us and say do it. So the whole time we are writing over 100 pages of documentation not fully knowing how they want it done. In the end our time pulled through, got it done, and received an ‘A’ on the project. I don’t think I could’ve asked for a better team either.
I, and two other team members, did pull one shady move during POST though. I took a 4 day weekend right in the middle of it to go to western India to a state called Kerala. I visited a backwater town called Allapuzzah (also goes by Alleppey). During this time I and 7 others stayed on a house boat for 2.5 days. It was probably one of the most relaxing things I’ve ever done. It was nice having nothing to do but look at the scenery for that long. During the trip we had the crew stop at a little market isle and we picked up some prawn (jumbo shrimp). These, however, weren’t like any jumbo shrimp I’ve ever had in the states. We bought 1 Kg of Tiger prawn which were easily a foot long before being cooked. We also bought another Kg of prawn that were about 6 inches long. Our chef onboard cooked them to perfection and we all enjoyed.
During my time here I, along with a few others, have made friends with a man in the market named Adil. He is probably one of the nicest persons I have ever met and he treats us with the utmost respect. Since we have become such good friends he invited 5 of us over to his house for the end of Ramadan dinner. The his wife made was so much better than the food we get here on campus. One thing I ate, which I vowed I would never eat again when I was 14, was beets. It was a beet root dessert and it turned out to be delicious.
On a final note for today, I am leaving for Bangalore this Friday morning to finally start my career as a Software Engineer. Today was part I of our comprehensive exams and tomorrow is part II. I am actually kind of disappointed that I have to go to Bangalore as I’ve become very familiar with Mysore and know how to make my way around town on my own.
That’s it for now, time to go bowling once again. Oh, my new best is 207. I think I’m tied for third for the US batch high scores. Only 221 and 213 are in my way now.