News and Pictures from August 2001

Hello again to all of you there.
I'm back with some more news and as promised earlier, with some pictures.
First of all my sincere thanks to all of those who replied to me personally. This makes me feel that the
earlier effort didn't go waste. In fact the earlier update was a joint venture between me and my class/roommate Aditya Nataraja. He needs some back patting too guys!!!. Mail him at adi_lambu@yahoo.com or aditya_nataraja@rediffmail.com
The campus weather is somewhat hot and somewhat cold since the even semester exams have begun. Labs are already over and theory starts from Aug 1st. The even sem was very beautiful with all students
were in the ethnic/formal/black & white dresses on respective days. TechNIEks this year was not
outstanding atleast. It was OK. Even this time it ended sharp at 6:00 PM inspite of repeated request
from the students. However this year even Jaciyana failed to attract even the homecrowd let alone the
crowd from other colleges. A matter of slight relief.
One popular joke making the rounds here goes as follows. A pair of roommates at the JCE hostel is
notorious for getting up late. But one day to the surprise of one of the roommates, the other is already
up early in the morning, washed, is wearing track suite and tying the laces of his jogger. Astonished,
the roommate asks drowsily " where are you going?!!". Pat comes the reply "TechNIEks".
 

OK some official info:
Dr.M.S.Shivakumar is our new principal. He took over the office a couple of months ago. It is too early to see any changes he brought for the better or worse in the college.
IT slowdown HAS affected NIE. The visible impact has obviously been on the placements. While BPL revoked its job offers, many other (supposedly big) companies such as Wipro, Sasken, Mindtree, Lucent, Tata infotech, Satyam etc. have sent a non-committal letter which reads something like " your offers would be reconsidered in Feb 2002". People are reading between lines and the general feeling is that a
reconsideration is as good as a job gone. According to grapevine, deferment orders in the pipeline from Infy, Sonata, Motorola and Cisco. The placement for batch of 2002 also does not look very bright since many companies declined to come for campus this year stating their problems. Of course there has been one positive side to this. Seeing the slowdown of the job market, many students have decided not to join their jobs (i.e. if they still have the offer by the time they pass out) and to study further.
FLASH NEWS: ITC Infotech has sent deferment orders today. The candidates are expected to wait till Jan. The long-time-closed high voltage lab is open to students again.
For the first time, Mechanical Engineering Association (MEA) conducted a one-day city level paper presentation contest "Cogniscience". E&E Engineers Association (EEEA) soon followed suit and had an
intracollegiate paper presentation contest. Both evoked good response.
NIECEFEST conducted by E&C association was a success and was conducted on a fairly grand scale.
MEA now sells Drawing sheets, lab Journals etc with NIE logo. The items are prized on par with the market price to earn a small profit to the association. We also sold T-shirts bearing royal-mech name. T-shirts still available for Rs.150/-, shipment charges we aren't sure, but it surely costs extra! Interested
mechies e-mail us with ur postal address and the number required.
We also had a cricket tournament which turned out to be a huge success last academic year. This time it was more of a personal ego clash and it ran into some rough weather just because both the finalists were
final year mech A and B sections. We had offered an aggregate prize money of Rs.3250/-, which was unheard of hitherto.
SJCE had conducted a state level inter engg collegiate cricket tournament at their own grounds.
The finals was between SJCE and NIE, in which NIE beat the pulp out of JCE. Three cheers to NIE cricket team!!!
We also had a movie day. On that day all the final year students went to watch "Lagaan". It was great
fun. Imagine 100 people of your own in the theatre screaming, shouting, cracking loud jokes and laughing
all the way through the brilliantly made movie. Three cheers to NIE and Aamir Khan!!!

We have been receiving many enquiries about the college from you people. We have answered them here (unless they are too personal) since answers to your questions might be news to others.
 

The NIE FAQ :
? Are TRS, BKS, LK, Datta, Sadanand Rao, Sampath Kumar, TNS, Achyutha etc. of mech. still there?
* TRS has retired as the principal last year. He is now the principal of a newly opened engineering
college (Golden Valley College of Engg. or something) in B'lore. MPN also retired last year. NVR is doing
his higher studies at IISc. Shyamsundar had been to Germany for higher studies and is back now at NIE. BKS has established a center for materials research (CMR) with UGC and CSIR aid worth nearly Rs.22 lakh. LK and Achyutha are also with CMR. They handle six project batches under them. (It is a different matter that many of these batches have had a very hard time finishing their project). All other lecturers
mentioned above are doing fine and I have conveyed many of your wishes to many of them.

? How the CS dept and its staff doing?
* Information Science and MCA are integrated with the CS dept. Devaki, Raghuveer and THS are still here and doing fine. There are separate labs for CS, Info Science and MCA. All labs are adequately equipped. However, we still can not work at hours of our convenience.

? Is there an official presence of NIE on the net?
* There is some good news and some bad news. Good news is that a site www.nie.ac.in has been in
operation for some time and attempts are on by 6th Sem students to develop this site further. The bad news is that this site is hosted on the college server which is shutdown at 10:00pm IST everyday and is booted up only in the next morning. Many attempts by students to host this site on an offshore server have been turned down by the college. The principal has promised that in next couple of months the server hosting nie.ac.in will be kept connected 24/7, students still have their own doubts about the bandwidth available from the existing connection.

? How is dating/flirting going in NIE?
* We must say that dating/flirting culture has been picking up steadily at NIE. Considerable number of
pairs are seen at any given time near the new canteen, or just outside the college or some famous joint in the city. Though most pairs are intra-branch, many a few are breaking the rules with inter-branch pairs (how else would you think MECH guys can survive?).
Pair count is peaked by branches such as EE and IP followed closely by CS, E&C and Civil. (Wondering
where did we mech. guys go?). One important issue this year has been of attendance.
Since the batch of 2001 is the last batch of Engg. affiliated to Mysore University, there were practical
difficulties against detaining students for shortage of attendance. (WOW students' heaven). Obviously
students never attended classes. This made the staff very angry because they were helpless to do anything.
Frustrated staff of many departments didn't turn up to 'thanks giving' parties of students. This batch has
had a bad reputation in staff's view in that aspect.

Pictures
1. civil-pg.jpg This is the new PG(postgraduate) block for civil engineering. It also serves as a second
stage during TechNIEks. CART is now hosted in this building.

2. complab.jpg This is the computer science lab. (Now renamed software lab). You can see the Principal (then HoD, CS)Dr. M.S.Shivakumar standing in the control room. This lab has a UNIX network. A similar section extends to the other side of the control room. It has a Windows NT network.

3. new build01.jpg A view of the new building.

4. entrance.jpg The good old building's majestic entrance's side view.

5. quadrangle03.jpg Notice the lawn.........:-) Hope you like these photos. Sorry couldn't send
beautiful interiors of the new building and other good photo. It costs a lot to scan these images here. YOU can have some more images when OUR pocket money permits.

For those of you who liked to know more about us:

Shastri: I am in 8th Sem Mech. (or should I say I was in...?). I have been place at MICO, Bangalore in the
campus placements. I am form Sirsi (North-canara) and had my education in many places in Karnataka. I like reading English and Kannada. I sing (though Aditya does not agree that the sound I make sounds like
singing). I also like to know more about everything. I love to make friends with all.

Aditya: I too am in 8th mech. I am from Hyderabad and am a true Hyderabadi by heart. Cricket is my first love and Sachin is God-like to me. I listen to Hindi, Telugu and Tamil music and admire AR Rahman a lot. Planning to do my MBA. Placed at Sonata Software (not received either appointment or deferment order!). Shastri and I were the leaders of MEA. For those desperate about hostel information, we are
very sorry in this regard. It is exam time right now, so not this time about the hostel.
That's all from our side till our exams are over.Pray for us. We didn't attend classes.
-SHASTRI and ADITYA
 

[ Webmaster comments - Thanks guys, for the great information ]