He started sending me some pics that brought back so many of the most 'cherished' moments from Yahoo!...
The one with the 'evil' horns above his head is Nam.
From left to right: Chad, Me, Ankit, Sudhir, Nam and Raghu
Oh my! we used to do so much of pubbing during that period... So much that bangalore was running short of beer :)
Nam's visit was both energising as well as disturbing. To me, work wise, it promised so many things. I was happy I was in Yahoo!, I was so glad about everything. Besides, Nam was such a cool guy. He visited my home and met my parents and all that :) I don't want to go into the details of why I ended up quitting. Maybe I should have exercised options of changing to other teams before I put my papers through. No point in
Over all the "pub sessions", we guys happened to learn a lot about Nam.
Nam was born in Vietnam, A brilliant kid. It would help to imagine the 70s Vietnam -- a war-ladden, "iron curtain" imposed country. "Red" is the colour that I can use to represent it. Not just because it was "bloody" and scary but also because Mr.Ho Chi Minh, the communist, ruled. The fact that he was in Yahoo! since the _beginning_ must tell you that he wasn't the average brained kid. He was about to represent Vietnam for Maths Olympiad... and then suddenly things changed. Being the impulsive kid that he was, he ended up bad-mouthing Ho Chi Minh on a graffiti in some school. He was sent out of school. Life suddenly seemed to have ended. Uncaringly, all he did was play soccer -- day in and day out.
In the meanwhile, the nation wasn't doing well. His parents decided to send him off to Singapore. When I say "send him off", its not like getting him a via and putting him into a neat flight. Remember, this country was in a war. He had to 'escape'. He was put with several other people in a motor boat.
Half way through the journey, the boat's engine failed. They were stranded in the middle of nowhere (and that's a god damn sea!). He said "I tried eating a raw fish. I didn't like it so I spit it out." :) After 13 days of being stranded, hope seemed to show up a bit. Or not. Some steamer came by. They stopped, took photographs and went away. This kept happening for a few more iterations and then finally, an American ship (or was it some ally of the US at that point? I don't remember) cared to rescue them.
Nam ended up in a 'camp' in Singapore. He was doing carpentry and very "primary" level of education. By chance, his teacher happened to see him work out mathematics and noticed that he is brilliant. She agreed to help him out.
Eventually, he ended up in the US of A, a good grad school, a job. He described his first employer as "at that time it was a small company that couldn't even pay us well". He is talking about Cisco :) and then eventually ended up in Yahoo!. There he was, as a Manager of Yahoo! Search (or maybe forgetting that fact, even?) narrating a story this intense, unassumingly.
Nam has written his own story in a site that is aptly titled Boat People.
update: I decided to make this a public post. Hell with privacy ;/
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My god! I feel so small :(
1. Ho Chi Minh could not have ruled over him in the 70's becuase he died in 1969.
2. The boat people exodus did not happen till 1978/79. The Vietnam War (second Indochina War) ended in April 1975. So he could not have escaped during war time.
It will be interesting to find out whether he was part of South Vietnam or North Vietnam during the war.
I believe he was in the South whereas his grand father was from the north and he even left home to go fight for the country.
I'm sure there are really amazing people around us. One of my best friends was the first in his family to become a literate. A truly inspiring story he has as well. :) I'm afraid I may not be able to write about it on LJ, though :) and like that, there are several such folks, all around us. :)
P.S
Girls being favoured by examiners, is really an academic myth......
Girls being favoured by examiners, is really an academic myth......
Yeah, probably. I don't know for sure. But I did see a marked improvement in my scores once I switched to a "girlie" hand-writing (a circle above the i, non-cursive hand-writings, etc.,.). I'm back to my "own" hand-writing these days, though. Nobody gives me marks for my hand-writing anymore ;)
Basically, the idea of the howto is to let people do other cool things while in college _without_ having to compromise on the scores. Believe me, some of my friends were taken aback when I scored like 85 and such (I even got a 91 in Power Systems, I think :D) _and_ I was also attending ILUGC meets and doing other stuff (like carving, sketching, etc.,.) that kept me happy :)
If you are still in the Univ, my sincere suggestion to you will be to take exams easy and look forward to "expanding" yourself in other areas. good luck to you! :)
Not really.
btw, one of my friends doing final year BE from here has got selected for yahoO! blore it seems... that guy is confused now to chose from yahoo or tcs...
But for those few great people, they know, we are all leaving in a shell called society with family and friends. Once we are out of that shell we are all naked with only our being "human being" alone can save us nothing else...
Sure. Anna University _campus_ has a good canteen. But the poor "juniors" of mine ended up eating in their own college canteens -- Anna University only decided their syllabus and Question papers. I heard, my "howto" was still applicable for the exams :)) so much for "moving" from Madras University to Anna University.
Talking about canteens... nothing beats the IIT-M canteen. :) How I miss school days! btw, which school did you go to? (don't tell me its a P.S.Senior). I went to Vanavani.