By-Two Kaapi in an oilfield

What an end to close to 7 weeks of interning in a VLSI firm - UISDL here in India's own Silicon Valley.

Started off with a project, I had absolutely no clue of. Read voraciously the first week, and slept through the next two (for reasons, I dont want to make explicit), finally woke up to reality...I saw potential, I saw light at the end of the tunnel. Slogged for almost a month, with that faint hope of seeing that light - hoping that it is not the light of an incoming train. And finally it took 2 cappcucinos and Sarkar to call it a day.

Our project was down in the drains in the last week. The whole architecture we had developed was working fine until the big day, when all major test cases failed. Just the previous day, I had spoken to my PL and he was excited that we are completing it in time. And now, the dark clouds had descended from the heavens. The light had faded, and all I could say to my project-mate was

"At times in life, you've got to accept defeat and quit."

But, then I realised, how pathetic a hypocrite could get by uttering those words. I proclaim that 'defeat aint a word in my dictionary' out here, and out there I preach about accepting defeat. Exactly one and a half days to go, I stumble upon a new architecture, one that would take a week to implement, but if done, then probably could solve all the glitches. And then we made the plunge. For 2 days, we did nothing but sit in front of a anti-glare screen coding or grab a cappucino and discuss the intricacies of the new architecture. The desgin names we tried had the names of all movie names/characters or fictional characters we admired. Started off with Anniyan, on to Morpheus to Neo to Aragon to Legolas to Godfather to DonCorleone to AgentSmith. And finally the one name of the design that worked - flawlessly - was 'Sarkar'. 13 Jul - it works flawlessly and then the bad news on 15th that it isnt as fast we designed it to be. Heartbroken, but then analyse it with a couple of design engineers, get some tips on how to improve its speed, and finally say a big goodbye to U&I.

An experience I shall treasure for years to come. I must say, it was -
A tribute - a tribute to 'individualism'.
A reassurance - of the fact that 'Its all about passion and hunger'
A spanking - to all those 'yet-another-trainee's
A directon - to the 'rainbow in the dark'