I am not a frequent flyer and the very thought that i had to take 4 flights in a span of 30 hours across time zones was the first hurdle. I started off from Chennai on my 21st birthday and i was really overwhelmed when all of my friends came to the airport to send me off. Hats off you guys! At many places i didn’t know what to do but finally managed and completed my immigration in Chennai. I had to take a connecting flight to Mumbai and waited there for few hours. I did get some travel company and so it went on pretty well. The Airbus which took me from Mumbai to Chicago was massive. Almost 900 passengers in a single flight! One good thing about traveling in Air India is that you get some decent food but in flight entertainment- NIL! I did finish reading a book in the journey and it was after a long time i read something.

There was a transit in London Heathrow and it is a very beautiful and huge airport. The worst part is we had to walk all the way through the airport, do the security check again. The biggest nightmare was waiting to meet me in O’ Hare Airport in Chicago. I had to take a connection flight from the domestic terminal and there was a three hour gap in between which generally is more than enough. The immigration took close to two hours and with an hour left i had to find my baggage and move to the domestic terminal for which i had to take the transit. The baggage check in machines conked off when i was looking at my watch every 30 seconds. Fortunately the flight got delayed and i made it!

There was Chinese guy waiting at the local airport at about 12 in the night holding a Virginia Tech board and it was a big relief.  After an half an hour’s drive the Indian seniors helped us to get set. The first few days i was awe struck seeing the beauty of blacksburg and the campus. The University was on vacation and there were hardly people on campus. The international center did an awesome job and every day they arranged some activity to keep all the international students engaged.

Cascade Waterfall Hike

There is a beautiful waterfall near Blacksburg and some 40 international students decided to venture out in the woods. The place was so pristine and i enjoyed the 4 hour long hike.  Virginia Tech has a very diverse culture with people from across the globe. In the group of 40 i guess there would have been people from 20 different countries.

Campus Legend Tour and Scavenger Hunt

Every campus will have its one history and myths. Like where the ghosts are, where the secret passages are,  where people make out and so on. Virginia Tech is a little ahead with all these stories and they were damn interesting. Jonathan from Cranwell Center took us for the legend tour and i was impressed on hearing those stories. Vt has lot of underground steam tunnels and there are people who explore those tunnels. The police get behind those guys but still people do it. VtUnderground.com has lot of information about those tunnels. I am planning to make a site for VT Legends along with Jonathan. Should be interesting!

The scavenger hunt is one thing which i was longing to do and finally i did it. Although we didn’t win we completed majority of the 30 crazy tasks and it was absolute fun. the first two weeks on campus was total fun with lot of dinners, hikes, movie night, swimming, club house, library, ultimate frisbee,shopping etc etc. Classes have started and in a week from now i guess it will get hectic. I also managed to get a job in the food court although i am not going to take it! Interviews, online tests, training session for a server or a cleaning job is too much!

Virginia Tech is one of the top college football(American) teams and the people here go crazy about it. The stadium is huge and i heard the home games will be beyond imagination. Hope i get a ticket to sit in one of the loudest stadiums in the country. Before that i am trying to figure out the rules of the nasty game!!

War Memorial. VT is a military school and lot of alumni have lost their lives in the World Wars.

The Torgersson Bridge. There are 8000 outdated ethernet ports and 80 miles of copper and optical fibers in this stretch.

The Newman Library. This is where i work from when i am on campus.

Computer Science Department

Ultimate Frisbee in the drill field. I did play along with the University team once and made my team loose two points but scored one! The guys are super cool and they do pass to me! Hope i will get better at this game.

Check out more pictures from Virginia Tech HERE

Two years in this beautiful place is good but i don’t know how effectively i will tackle my courses. I have put most of my savings which i earned during my final year of UG in this course and hope i don’t screw it up! Looks like all the guys in my department get funded from the second semester but it involves lot of hard woork and research commitment! I can also do a paid summer internship and make some money if i don’t opt to do research. The spirit of the people is too high! The people at Virginia Tech are called Hokies and every single day you can see this word at least a thousand times on hoardings, buses, tshirts,and where ever. I am wearing a Hokie Tshirt too! Feels good to be a Hokie!

I am a Hokie!

The tournament happened during the first week of July and the previous week i also got my visa stamped, so i was very much relieved. The tournament happened in a remote place near Bangalore and we started in the early morning and after grueling for about ten hours on unimaginable roads we finally reached the destination. Hat games, sleeping in the tent, late night talks, good food, the nail biting game between chennai and Bangalore, travel convos and many more. The two days was fun filled and i really loved being in the CUF gang. I got to speak with people who i haven’t interacted much and i felt good.

Check out the photos of Camp Shrishti HERE

Was back from the tourney and the preparations for the summer edition of Proto.in was in full swing. Had some productive meetings in Vijay’s office and those ones really were of good help. A few of us from the team started to Delhi a couple of days before the event to carry on the ground work. The event went off well, thanks to the amazing guys from Delhi who of great help. We stayed at a place called Heritage near IIT Delhi and it was really amazing. This was the first time peeps from Knowledge Foundation got to stay and work together and it was good fun and lot of lessons learnt. Met some very nice people like Shivaas, Piyush and they were with us throughout the event. Apparently Shivaas is also gonna be some where near Virginia and we have planned to meet up some time. It is always good to keep in touch with guys who have the entrepreneurial spirit running in their blood!

I loved Delhi a lot and the city is full of life (at least in parts!). At the end of the first there was a Proto.in Alumni Dinner and after it got over, good guy Shiv from Viewspaper took us to the India Gate. It was around 12 in the night and it was a splendid experience. We has Chuski near India gate and walked on the Raj Path! Shiv had a good knowledge about Delhi and he briefed us as and when some landmark passed. One funny thing is that the place where we stayed was inside a colony and the entire colony which spread about a few kilometers was locked! Every entry to the colony was locked except one. You cannot walk in after 10 o clock in the night. On the other hand there were families happily sitting and chatting near the India Gate at 1 AM!

The next day was when the presentations happened and it went on pretty smooth. After the tiring day it was all random talks in the rooms and i didn’t remember when i fell asleep. The next day we went to a place called Delhi Haat. The place had food stalls from all the states and we had a sumptuous lunch there. All this time we had this guy called VC Karthik along with us and he has a amazing sense of humor. He will keep the place lively with all his stories. We still had a few hours for our flight back to Chennai and so me, ravi and kau decided to travel by the Delhi Metro. We took an auto to CP and then went in the Metro. Impressive! Then we walked around the Parliament, Rashtrapathi bhavan and it was a short and good one.  Nothing can beat the in flight conversations because that is when you get bored to the core. Vijay was at his best throwing up crazy ideas and i added on. After some time we decided sleeping would be a much better option!

Overall a pretty good month and more than that feels good to blog. One more week to depart and i still haven’t got the mind set. Still lots of pending work. Hope i complete all those before i leave!! I have decided to blog regularly from now on and this time i guess i will stick to it! Looking forward to see the good old times of blogging everything i do!

Getting back to Tada, it is a wonderful place, full of greenery fresh water and close to nature. Mahen was pretty well versed with the route and after travelling by train and share auto we finally reached there. The beauty with Tada is that as you go higher and higher it becomes more beautiful, you get lost in the beauty and finally get lost! We took the wrong route while coming down but it was pretty adventurous and at last we found our way through. It was one helluva trip and one of the best treks i have ever done.

This was the initial rough terrain where we had to jog, run ,walk and drag for about 3 kms to see the first stretch of water.

The first place where we took a halt, changed , got wet and played ultimate Frisbee for some time.

Our “Typical” shot

Me trying hard to get on!

Bliss!!

After completing the tough stretch.

Check out more photos from the trek HERE

After Tada we had to face the final wrath of sitting for three hours in the same place and scribble some thing in a booklet. They do call it exams and we were do it for one final time. We didn’t complain. As usual previous day photocopying, over night stand and we finally did it.

On the day the exams got over a few of classmates started to a place called Veerapandi a small village near Theni district. We stayed at my friend Arun’s place and the four days i will never forget. The thiruvizha, the sweet and loving family, the farms, cows, the river, the palm trees, Arun’s grand father and many more. With all these the days went off with amazing fun.

The thiruvizha (temple fest) was SO massive and i never imagined some thing like that. There were about a lakh people from the surrounding villages and the city never slept for the entire week. Music, dance, religious rituals , shops selling unseen items and two eyes was not enough to see all those. The first day we roamed the thiruvizha and one thing which made every one gape their mouths wide was the death well or the Marana Kinaru. It was a 50 foot deep wooden well like thing and the stunt men rode cars and bikes on the wall. High point was there were 3 women in the team. Imagine a car running perpendicularly on a wall at 100 kmph and the man taking his entire body out of the window controlling the steering with his legs and hands partly! You have to see it to believe! But they were risking their badly…. i second mismatch between the vehicles , sure shot kabala moksham!

Indeed…A Death well!

The next day we spent it in the farms, the river and had nungu straight from the palm trees. Also learnt the art of eating it directly by putting one finger inside the soft surface. We then went to the river and dipped in for a couple of hours.

Natural Shelter to beat the heat!

On the way back we saw the die rolling game. (Recall the Pithamagan film where Surya cheats Laila). Some what same thing. 10 ruba vecha 20 ruba. One thing which is synonymous with villages is that there will be no pechu, only vetu , kuthu, kolai! One guy made a comment during the game and it turned to a big riot. Only thing which we did was ESCAPE! The next day we went along with many of the family members of Arun and had food in the farm. Veerapandi is one unforgettable experience and i has some good conversations with Arun’s grandpa. Hard to see a man like him. He would be some 80 years and was so passionate to take care of the farm and daily went and did the irrigation and stuff.

Theni is really an excellent place with a pleasant climate. It is centrally located between Munnar, Kodai and Thekkady. We decided to go to Kodai the next day and head to Chennai from there. Kodai was good except for the summer crowd. Lots of places to explore there but we just alloted one day and so we hired a cab and checked out many places. We went to boating when the sun was about to set and the lake was filled with mist.

Finally after battling in 4 government buses and travelling for some 18 hors finally reached home!

Not but not the least, yours truly is now an ENGINEER!
The final semester result was a pleasant surprise. Scored 85% which i never thought. Although not a big accomplishment feels good to be a first class with distinction grad!

The first of the three sundays was jam packed and good fun. Some of us met for the first organizers meet of Chennai barcamp 2 and after some heated discussions and vetti talks decided that we should chuck off Barcamp and do a Howtocamp. It will be happening in a month’s time in Chennai and is gonna be exciting. From there me Ganesh and swami headed to the Chennai Metblogs meet. I may be joining the Metblogs team shortly. Met some nice people over lunch and got some interesting inside information! The next destination was the Open Coffee Club meet at Amethyst. We both took an auto and landed some after it started. Hats off to Sid for starting the OCC in Chennai. No doubt it is one of the best ever meets and the attitude of the people who attended it was definitely matchless. I could see the fire in all of them! Good luck for all those future business magnets! Ganesh and Mahen left off in the middle to look at some art /chick exhibition where in girls would explain the intricacies in naked pictures. I preferred the OCC instead!

The next weekend i went to SASTRA univ for their cultural fest and it went on well. We as a team packed home with 8k in cash. Very poor judging in one other event we lost 6k. Anyways it was good fun. One of the best ever Dumb-C s ever and they had some super cool innovative rounds. After battling hard we beat the teams from NIT, SVCE, Sastra, JIPMER and bagged the first place. We have won more than 25 prizes in dumbc but this was one of the best. My quizzing skills went to an all time low. I sucked!

By the time I reached Chennai Sid’s sister who was bringing the Macbook from the US also arrived and the next two days went on playing around with the Macbook! Thanks a lot to all those who helped me in smuggling the Macbook to India

The next weekend i went to Chennai tweetup. i started using twitter after a long hiatus and now i am loving it. It is killing lot of work time and my productivity is going down!! The tweetup had lot of new faces and it was a welcome change. When ever something like this is organized it usually goes on like a get together for the TKF junta but this time it was different. Some ultimate mokkais did happen in the meet!!

Last working day of college happened and it was really a memorable. Farewell and Thanksgiving happened and hats off to the juniors for pulling it off in a great manner.

The following week we had the intra college cultural fest and we lifted the overall championship. We finally did it!! One of the most joyous moments for my department guys and the day will stay fresh for long. We ran around the campus carrying the huge cup and it was an amazing feel and much to the envy of other department guys! After two days 20 of us went to a restaurant and made the place galeej…. We were almost chucked out but we are dejent guys u see! We moved to another restaurant nearby and repeated step one! Guys also went for a movie and to beach the next day but i missed it.
I have cribbed a lot about my college in the past but definitely i am gonna miss it.

This sunday Me, Gapp, rupya and vicky met for deciding stuff for the How to camp website. The website will be up soon.

…..And finally i completed writing this post after four sundays!!!

I have made a half a million INR turnover this fiscal from blogging, domaining and other stuff. Happy that i hit the target which i set 6 months back. Some tough decisions to be made in the next few months and life is gonna take a new change. I am looking forward …..

After having 2 rounds of dried veg puffs we started of to Vittal’s place. We had to go to Mandaveli and all i knew was it was pretty far. After an hour of travelling we finally reached, got the keys from his aunt’ place who thought we were some goondas! To kill the time we both tried playing some sort of ping pong on a square table with a stress ball and it was good!

Then TUD and Syed came in. It has been a long time since we guys hanged out together. I badly miss the Roof Top Film Festival and mainly the Knowledge Foundation meets at Syed’s office! Me and Syed went out to pick some snacks and drinks. Then Mahen joined us.

When we returned back almost every one had arrived. Vittal came along with two of his other friends. Nandu and Gapp went and picked some movies from Tic tac. Initially we had some glitches with the projector but it went on well after some time. The idea of ditching the DVD player and projection on the wall turned out to be awesome.

It was all set…. Movies, Food, Booze and we started off!

The first movie was “Super Bad”
A pretty entertaining movie. Absolutely hilarious! A nice movie to watch with a group of friends.

The next one was Natural born killers By Tarantino. Unfortunately i slept off in the starting parts itself!

TUD has joined NDTV as a Assistant producer and Mahen is getting married in June. Both of them have agreed to give big treats. Congrats guys!

PS: Posting after more than 50 days! I have lost all my blogging skills!!

I booked this domain a few months back but lot of things kept me occupied over the past few months and that combined with laziness never gave a dawn for this blog. At last i thought i should do something meaningful and decided to start again on New Years day. The year was good for me on many fronts be it college, family, life etc. I could sense that there are lot of people who care for me. The North india tour with college mates was a very memorable one and i repent for not blogging about it!

My contact list got bigger and people started recognizing me!
“Hey are you the guy who makes hell lot of money!”
“Dei, Jump! Heard you are making shit loads of money”
“Bugger, I will leave the seat, pay me $20″

I did make good money this year and initially i was crazy and then i was greedy but now i am composed and i know what i am doing. Many people also asked me whether i will continue doing this without going for a full time job. I do make more money than what TCS will be paying me two/three years down the lane but one thing is what i do now is not sustainable over a period of time and am trying out something which is more feasible.

On one front i am very happy that i helped few of friends and they also made a few thousands dollars. Bringing in foreign exchange and increasing India’s economy;) I was also able to make an impact and currently there are around 25 bloggers in my class but most of them started with the sheer aim of making money and trust me they will miserably fail. Ok! No more lessons, here is what i intend to do in 2008. I don’t say it is my resolution!

-Become an engineer [first things first!:)]
-Enjoy max in the last few months of college
-Be more friendly and affectionate to people
-Set some personal targets and reach it in the intended time (Read it as blogging/Money)
-Create a flagship site for me.
-Stop missing Ultimate Frisbee and play regularly.
-participate in the International Cycle Race(ICR on ECR) (Self reminder: Moron! Buy a cycle this week)
-Go to Rajasthan/Nepal/Sri Lanka/Himalayan trekking
-Get a Mac book
-Get back to scouting and attend at least one camp
-Watch more movies, read books and do some quality quizzing.
- Participate in a marathon (At least register and start running!)
-Help people with the knowledge which i have.

I hope 2008 will be a great year too and i will be witnessing some remarkable turning points in life. For all those who have been with me all these days….”So long and thanks for all the fish!”
Wish you all a happy and a great year

PS: You can add this blog to your feed reader (http://ramanujam.net/feed/) and i hope i will keep updating. Also do remove my previously blogspot blog from your blogrolls and add this.

[Click to enlarge and select LARGE in the flickr page]

How do I make money???
Most of the money which i made from this blog is by writing sponsored content from PAYPERPOST(i.e) if an advertiser wants to create buzz about his product/software/website he requests for reviews from bloggers.What he gains is traffic and back links which gives him a good search engine optimization and in turn bloggers like me get paid for providing the content.

Can I also do it?
Yes, of course. If you have a blog and if it satisfies the conditions prescribed by the advertiser you can join the race. But beware if you write too much your blog will get spammed(Like mine;) and you may lose your regular readers.

What is the solution?
There are a lot of services from which you can get offers. Subscribe to all those and select the opportunity which will best suit the content on your blog. For instance you can very write a review about an Anti spyware software if you have a tech blog and it will definitely do some value addition. On the other hand it will be very lame to write about a credit card or a drug rehab service. Selecting the opportunity is the key.

Some of the Get Paid for blogging services
-PayPerPost
-Sponsored Reviews
-Blogitive
-Smorty
-Blogsvertise

Payments are generally made via paypal on a weekly or bi weekly or a monthly basis. It is also not viable to create a new blog for sponsored content. In my case i have shifted my personal blog to another platform which is the best i can do!

Any proof that you make money?
Here is one!!! Dont ask me put my paypal account screen shot!

Visit my PERSONAL BLOG!
[Free from all marketing!]

If you have any queries or if you want to know how to tweak your blog and make it eligible for writing sponsored posts feel free to bug me.

YM: ranuromeo
Skype: ranuromeo
Gtalk: mail.ramanujam

Podworks will be a workshop style unconference where all the knowledge needed for making a podcast will be imparted from people who have done it before and there will also be many hands on sessions, competitions and discussions. Podworks will be India’s Biggest Event on Audio & Video Podcasting and promises to bring the best of the podcasting/blogging/new media community together to learn, share, experience, and grow.

There will be a door donation of Rs.200 for meeting the expenses of the event and of course there will be some give aways which will help you continue your podcasting experiments from home.

Registrations for the event are open and rush up if you are interested as the number of participants for the workshop is restricted. Keep yourself updated about the event by joining the mailing list. If you are interested in volunteering go check the wiki and take up some responsibility

The first organizers meet for Podworks was held last sunday at CCD, IIT Madras and surprisingly 34 people turned up for the meet and offered to volunteer and take up various responsibilities. It was a very diverse work force consisting of students, journalists, software professionals, RJs,actors and a singer. Many remarkable decisions were taken in the first organizers meet and a lot of brainstorming happened so as to make the event a grand success.

Check out more photos in Chinmayi’s blog. As per plans we will be starting for the bigrace after attending the podworks as it sounds too interesting to be missed.

He has come up with this hilarious spiderman comic strip. One of his best works ever!!! It is fucking hilarious and i laughed aloud while checking it out. Sud is definitely making wonders with his mac. I loved the first two parts and I wanted to catch up with spiderman-3. Little did i know that peter parker was a homo. Go check that strip out! I bet Marvel is gonna hire Sudhish and gonna make him continue stripping Parker!!!