| Note: The email addresses have been modified a little to provide some protection from spam. You should replace all "/@/" sequences with a simple "@" before mailing. Note1 (Mon Jul 21 2003): Recently, all Madras telephone numbers have acquired a leading 2, making them 8 digit numbers. Not all numbers below are updated to reflect this change. |
Mon Sep 01 13:3:14 2005
Updates for Ayya, Madan, Chari, Raman, ThangaWed Mar 09 17:11:14 2005
Updates for Ayya, Koorai, Muddle, Mulla, OGB, Ponns, Raman,
and Sox. Also check out snaps from
Ponns' wedding. In particular, you may not want to miss
out looking at this
snap, the significance of which has been explained in
the appropriate forum (or shall be done shortly, depending
on when you read this).Tue Jul 20 11:53:56 2004 Updates for Ayya, Bals, Chandy, Chari, Goodhai, Gump, Koorai, Lsu, Muddle, OGB, OP, Perusu, Ponns, Raman, and Sox Thu Jul 24 15:07:30 2003:Check out the wedding photos from Bals, Lsu and Madan. |
| Ayya completed his M.Tech in chemical engineering from IITM and joined TCS in 2000, and has been with them since, working from their Ambattur office. |
| Tue Jul 20 11:30:14 2004: He is now in the US on his third visit to the same client's office in Texas. Ayya adds: 'My hobby is to stare at the night sky in all my free time. My long time vision is to buy a telescope. Sponsor me if you can'. Please don't. |
| Wed Mar 09 2005: Ayya has now moved to Chicago to work with another client. |
| Bals completed his M.S. in mat. sci. from the University of Florida, Gainsville during the summer of 2000. He currently works for a company in Boston (anyone know the name?) On June 20, 2002, Bals became the first guy in our batch to get engaged and also the first to get married. Aparna and Bals got married in January 2003 at Madurai. Before the marriage Aparna has an MBA in marketing and was working in MusicWorld, Bangalore as merchandising manager. They are now in Boston. |
| Tue Jun 15 2004: The small company Bals was working for was acquired by Chevron-Texaco. Shortly after the acquisition the small office in Boston was shut down and Bals relocated to Chevron's office in Houston. He currently works in Hydrogen fuels and stuff like that. |
| Mon Aug 01 2005: Bals and Aparna are expecting their first child in September. Good job Bals & Aparna!! Bals is also starting on a part-time MBA at The McCombs School of Business at UT Austin. |
| Chandy completed his M.E in chemical engineering (!!) from IISc. in 2000, and joined Infosys, and has been with them since. He is based in Bangalore. |
| Tue Jul 13 2004: Chandy got married on June 6, 2004 to Arundhati, his colleague in Infy. |
| Chari went to the Utah State University, Logan, Utah to work towards a Ph.D. in chemistry. After a year of troubled relationship with his over-bearing boss, he took a transfer to the University of Kentucky at Louisville, where he became the first among us to the see the innards of an american courtroom after his neighbour sued him for creating trouble at night. One of the allegations was that Chari purposefully flushes the toilet multiple times in the middle of the night with the sole intention of disturbing the petitioner :) At last contact, he had joined "a small company in Tuscon, Arizona". |
| Tue Jul 13 2004: Chari is currently back in Louisville, trying to wrap up his PhD. |
| Ducupy went to SUNY Stony brook, to pursue a Ph.D. in mat. sci. He has been assidiously pursuing this goal, while finding time to visit the statue of liberty a zillion times and generally acting as a free tour guide for folks visiting the Big Apple. |
| Tue Jul 20 2004: Ducupy piranthe dinam pathaavathu maasam pathinaintham naal. |
| Deepa went to Texas A&M to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry. In January 2001, she became the first in our batch to tie the knot. (What's his name) works for US West (?) and lives in Colarado (?) |
| Doddai went to the University of Southern Florida at Tampa Bay, and managed to graduate with a M.S. in Civil Engineering (!) His prof liked his research on corrosion so much that he almost refused to let doddai go. After using a lot of his spare cunning, which he was once so confident would take him to the top of the FBI, doddai managed to wriggle out; and continuing to perform the unlikely, found himself a job in a small town in Montana. Rumour has it that he is the only non-caucasian to have ever set foot in that picturesque little northern town. (What's the name of the company). His current favourite pass time is to drive across montana to the Washington border to visit the nearest desi grocery store and stock up on puli and rasam powder and also meet up with OGB who comes from Seattle just to meet doddai. |
| In May 2003, Doddai got engaged to Niranjana and they tied the knot on July 9 in Madras. Anxious folks may rest assured that our dearest doddai has not changed one bit and retains his old grace and poise in dealing with ottals :) |
| Gidu went to the Iowa state university where he is working to get a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. It is gathered that his stay in the US has been very exciting thus far. Sometime in 2001, I believe, he became the first guy in our batch to contract a communicable disease (chicken pox) while in the US. In another, unrelated, incident one random american teenager, after he totalled gidu's car and drove away said he ran away because Gidu looked like a middle eastern muslim and that that terrified him. |
| Sat Jul 19 2003 - Gidu graduated from Iowa State in early 2003 and moved to the bay area where he is a post doctoral student at the Chemical Engineering department of Stanford University. Boy! there are now more batch98'ers in bay area than anywhere else in the world! |
| Goodha went to work for Hyderabad batteries in Hyderabad. After three years there, he joined the MBA program at RECT. He has a job offer with the Forex dept of Andhra bank, and our man is all set to go back to Mana Naadu after the completion of his course. |
| Tue Jun 15 2004: Goodha started work at SEBI and is now based in Bombay. |
| Govalu went to IIMC and specialised in systems and finance. He was heard saying that he found the cut-throat competition and the things that go with it to be stiffling and anti to everything that our b.tech experience was. After graduating from IIMC he joined INautix. He spent nearly 12 months in New York City completing about 15 months with the company. While in NYC, he was witness to the collapse of the WTC towers. He recently returned to india and joined delhi-based EvaluServe. After a short stint he quit that job and has just accepted a position with Infosys, Bangalore. Whatever it was in Gurgaon, it must not have been good... |
| Tue Jul 13 2004: Govalu is keeping busy visiting outax places in the middle east. I believe Chandy and Govalu were sharing a apt. until Chandy got married. |
| Gump went to cecri US division in south cal. He is working on his Ph.D. in electrochemistry. Gump is one of the first to defend their PhD thesis (it is not very clear who was first - Gump or Ponns) |
| Tue Jul 20 2004: Gump finished his PhD in mid 2003 and worked for a while at UTC Fuel Cells, Hartford, Connecticut. He is currently back in South Cal's dept. of Chemical Engineering as a Post Doc. |
| Kamule appears to have had the most colourful after-CECRI life. After B.Tech Kamule went to symbiosis to get an MBA, and finished in 2000. On graduation he worked for eight months in the Sales team of Global Tele System, Madras. He then moved on to selling hardware for Wipro, Coimbatore - for a full 45 days, before moving on to Ernst & Young's eCommerce consulting division in Bangalore. While in this job, our man saw the dotCom bubble burst but somehow hung on to his job by "repositioning" himself as an IT risk management consultant. He has miraculously held this position for 2.5 years now :) |
| Tue Jun 15 2004 - Kamule was last spotted in Ponns' wedding. He has not changed much; he now gets paid for dumping random managment fundas on unsuspecting listeners. |
| Karra went to the Univ of Utah to work on a MS in chem eng. About 3 semesters, 4 chem eng courses and 6 comp. sci courses later his chem eng. prof decided enough was enough and cut his funding. After a couple of nerve-wracking funding-less months he obtained admission into the MS program of the comp. sci dept. in spring 2000. He completed his masters in comp sci in the summer of 2001, after which he returned to India. He was with Prodapt solutions Ltd, a software services startup based in alwarpet, Madras, for all of four months before quitting. He is now with HCL Technologies, Madras, working in their Networking Products Division. |
| Tue May 24 2005: After 3 long years at HCL Tech, Karra decided to go to B-School. He will be joining IIM Kozhikode next month. |
| Koorai completed his M.S. in chemical engineering after 2 years of general fooling around in IISc with chandy. He too joined Infosys. He is based somewhere in the north; he is currently on a client assignment to the US, where he witnessed live, the collapse of the WTC towers from his Goldman Sachs Wall Street office. He is scheduled to return sometime soon. |
| Tue Jun 15 2004 Koorai returned to Madras in May after a longish stay in Toronto. He believes he will not be put through the torture of further extendended onsite visits for some time now. |
| Wed Mar 09 2005: In late Feb, Koorai finally got out of the Goldman-Sachs project and moved to Madras. Karra, Koorai, Lsu and Raghav celebrated the occasion with dinner at Eden. |
| LSU went to IITM where he attempted to get a M.Tech in chemical engineering. The profs liked him and his work so much that they retained him (and his project mate) for a few more months so they could interact with them on a more personal level. Amidst all this he managed to take up a developer position with Next Set pvt ltd. where he worked for two years. After two years of Lsu, the company is now almost bankrupt and essentially on its deathbed. Lsu shrewdly made the jump to neighbouring Isoft ltd. for whom the countdown now begins :) |
| Tue Jul 13 2004: The past six months were fairly hectic for Lsu, when he changed three jobs across two cities. For the past 3 months, he has been with Komodo systems, a british network security products company. |
| Tue May 24 2005: LSu is back in Bangalore now working for PI Corporation. Let's see how long this one lasts :) |
| Madhi spent some time in anna university before joining the phd program at Univ of Georgia at athens in fall 2000. He is still working on his thesis. |
| Mama worked a while in madras and then joined the phd program in chemistry at the univ of georgia, athens. Mama has the distinction of being the only one among us to own a bike in the US. Mama Lives with Madhi. So, home address is the same as Madhi's. |
| Muddle got a MBA from RECT, and joined Iflex solutions, bangalore; where she is reportedly having a nice time with Thommai and Kandy. |
| Tue Jul 20 2004: Muddle quit Iflex sometime back and is currently in the Fellow program of IIM Bangalore. |
| Wed Mar 09 2005: Muddle got married in December 2004 to Arun Raghavan, who works for Progeon in Bangalore. In typical style, one whole side of Muddle's wedding invite was devoted to some poetry-ish stuff by Khalil Ibrahim that no could make head or tail of. Karra, Raghav, Lsu and Ponns made it to the reception; but no one got any photos. |
| Mulla went to south cal where he is still working on a Ph.D. in electrochemistry. Lives with GMP -- look there for Home numbers |
| Wed Mar 09 2005: Mulla is apparently keeping himself busy touring the states with his music troupe. It is not really clear if he has formally given up on his Ph.D. :) |
| Muthu went to Stanford to pursue a Ph.D. in comp. sci. Shortly thereafter he started BharatPlanet.com in madras along with a couple of cecri seniors, while continuing to work on his thesis. He recently finished his Ph.D. and is looking out for a job in the industry. On April 7th, Muthu got married to Kavitha, who is from Madurai as well. |
| Tue Jul 13 2004: Muthu joined the faculty of Industrial engineering at Purdue in Fall 2003. One of the first classes that he taught was in Engineering Economics. The strong foundations we received on the subject from Mr. John Berchmans came to his aid, no doubt. ONIS. |
| OGB joined the University of Washington, Seattle, where he is still working on his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. |
| Sat Jul 19 2003 - OGB graduated in mid 2003 and is in the Bay Area, working on building programmable robots that perform chemical analysis and such. Another change is that he has taken to signing his emails as "Arvind (once upon a time aka OGB)" :) |
| OP completed his M.S. in bio medical engineering from Case Western. and joined Zyomix, a biotech startup in the San Francisco bay area sometime in 2000, and has been with them since. He says he will go back to school and get his phd some day :) |
| OP went back to CWRU for his PhD around end of 2003. |
| After cecri, Perusu joined Shriram Pistons and Rings in Ghaziabad, near New Delhi. He was so succesful there that his nick was temporarily changed to "Piston Perusu"; After a while he could not take the strain of being away from home and returned to madras to work for clicktickets.com. In April 2000, he joined Muthu and Co. at bharatplanet.com as "domain architect". He currently leads the tech team at bharat planet. Perusu got engaged to Anita in June 2002 and is schedule to get married in May 2003. Anita is a second year MCA student in Madras. In March 2003 Perusu left Bharat Planet and joined Polaris in search of the stability that big companies supposedly provide. |
| Tue Aug 19 2003: In May, Perusu and Anita got married as scheduled. I note, with great regret, that these major events in his life have not changed atleast one thing about Perusu. He continues to be in the "shoot photos and keep it to myself" mode that he first entered in final year of college. Folks are still waiting for the release of photos he took in Bals' wedding (January 2003). The fact that he used a digital camera this time around haven't helped things one bit. |
| Tue Oct 26 2004: Perusu is currently onsite in Germany, thoroughly enjoying his first overseas trip, and blowing hard earned money on anything that sounds remotely like electronics. Anita joined him on completion of MCA course. |
| Ponns went to the U of Mich, Ann Arbor, initially to pursue a Ph.D. in corrosion at the nuclear engineering dept. After two semesters he transferred to electrical engineering and is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program, where he works on cutting edge MEMS technology. By some accounts, he is the most travelled of our batchmates what with 3 trips to europe, visits to hawaii and the like - all in the name of conferences and presentations. In late 2002 he successfully defended his thesis and now is all set to move to the west coast to take up a research position with Sandia National Labs. |
| Ponns has moved to the bay area now. After staying with OP for a while, he has now moved out and shares an apt. with his old friend GP. |
| Tue Jul 13 2004: After his visa conversion (to H1-B) took longer than his employer (Sandia) was willing to wait for, Ponns decided to look for academic positions in Canada. He is currently scouting for oppurtunities while based in Madras. In the mean time, he got married to Meenatchi, who has just finished her MBBS and looking to start her MD course shortly. |
| Wed Mar 09 2005: Ponns made the move to Canada in January 2005, and I have just heard from him that life has settled into a good rhythm. He will be teaching Mechanical Engineering subjects to undergrads at McMaster University. By some strange coincidence, Nandakumar of the class of '96 is currently doing a post doc at McMaster. |
| After CECRI, PV went to FMS, Delhi. He graduated in 2000 and joined Dabur, where he is busy becoming "under se strong" by downing kilos of chawanprash, to compensate for his new found love for products from ITC. |
| In November 2003, PV left Dabur and joined Madura Coats. After a brief training period in Bangalore, he shifted to Jaipur. In a private communication PV suggested that my earlier reference to his 'new found love for products from ITC' is inaccurate, in as much as it is incomplete. Thus I am obliged to add that our good friend is a passionate consumer of offerings from UB distilleries, Mohan Meakin and other related businesses. |
| Pambu spent a little time at home and then joined CTS in madras. He has been with them since, working out of their cathedral road office. |
| Raja joined the electroplating division of TVS; he was posted for a while in Hosur; his current coordinates are unknown. |
| Raman was the first of the trinity to join the department of chemistry at U Georgia, Athens, where his excellent work paved the way for admissions for mama and later madhi. He is winding up his Ph.D. in chemistry. Raman holds the record for taking the longest time to make his first visit home after going for his Ph.D. (4.5 years). In April 2003, Raman successfully defended his thesis, graduated from UGa, and moved on to accept a post doc position with Arizona State University. |
| Tue Jul 20 2004: Raman is now in North Carolina State university's Electrical and Computer Engineering. |
| Wed Mar 09 2005: As of November 2004 Raman moved to Portland to work for Intel. He is supposedly having a nice time, what with a 6 month comfy training period and stuff. KSK, who also works at the same facility, was down in Madras for his sister's wedding (Chander of the class of 2000 is now KSK's BIL. You may recall KSK got married to his B.Tech classmate Sirisha. Isn't there a limit on the number of B.Techos in a family before there would be an implosion due to too great a concentration of gray matter? Anyway...) and when questioned about Raman's recent move, expressed grave concerns for the future of Intel. As things stand Raman goes by the title of 'Packaging Engineer'. I am sure it means something other than what you think it does. |
| Sox went to the Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah where he is pursuing his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at a rather leisurely pace, while thoroughly enjoying the good life scenic Utah has to offer. The dry desert like utah weather has suited sox particularly well, and appears to have solved his painful asthma problems. Between frequent visits to the Delta center and Karra's apartment in Salt Lake City, Sox managed to get some research going on the combustion of rocket fuels. He expects his work to eventually land him a job with ISRO or DRDO. This is, after all, just rocket science, says the ever humble sox. |
| Tue Jul 13 2004: Sox finished his phd around end of 2003 and is continuing as a post doc. in the same departtment. |
| Thanga joined the electroplating division of TVS at Hosur where he did his bit in making TVS Victor the successful bike it is now (and saved "a few crores" for TVS, in his own humble words :). After two years of impressive work, TVS sent him to the University of Warwick to work on a Masters degree in industrial engineering. He completed his degree and returned to work for TVS in september 2001. |
| Thanga was last spotted at Lsu's wedding reception. He continues to work at TVS, now as Assistant Manager, Painting. |
| Mon Aug 01 2005: Thanga got maried in mid-2004 and has been absconding ever since. If anyone spots him and reports his whereabouts to the batch, he/she is guaranteed a spot prize!! |
| Zangaru got a M.Tech degree in chemical engineering from IITM, and joined PWC, calcutta as an IT consultant. He quit his job in June 2002 and decided to go back to school. He is now in the second semester of the M.S. Business Administration programme at the Business School at UMCP. |
| Mon Jul 21 2003 - Zangaru is now in the MBA/MS programme at UMCP. By his own admission he hasn't "moved an inch (maybe grew a couple though)" |
| This document was generated by taking a raw XML file containing all the info and applying an XSL transformation on it. The raw XML document itself was generated from Karra's BBDB database using the bbdb-xml-print.el package, which had to be hacked a little to work with recent BBDB versions. If you are interested in that elisp program, chances are you would find this dtd, written by Norman Walsh, useful as well. |