Who am I?

I am definitely not spiderman….hehe…though that would have been really cool…!

I am Vinay Raveendran and I was born in our very own cochin at about 8 am on Aug 24^th 1983. My aunts tell me that I was an absolute mother’s delight(i am pretty sure my mom will have something else to say...i wouldnt actually knw ;P)… no fuss whatsoever….always ready to eat….actually very quiet too…

Since dad worked in Dubai, I was brought up there and did most of my schooling there, other than a year in kerala for my 11^th everything else from LKG to the 12^th was in the U.A,E..

I was never the most hard-working student in school…I have a very short attention span, I get distracted very quickly and I used to daydream a loooooootttttt….was very quiet and kept to myself …which I now find through correspondence with my old school mates that they thought I was very studious…hehe….I guess another factor that would have led to this insane idea would have been me calling them up the day before an exam and asking them about the important portions in the subject….(always looked for the easy way out..easy peesy.. ;p).

Anyways as soon as I got done with my 12^th, I had taken science as then the only jobs I usually hear around me are doctors or engineers(ignorance is never bliss, I had to suffer for this later on..)….and for that you need to take up the Science stream….since I had no intention on being a doc(you have the responsibility of handling life n I am not someone you can trust with a scalpel..no way!)…I took math with comp science…anyways back to the subject of matter(got a little deviated talkin abt science n all) , even before the results came out as usual as was and is the practice amongst most parents who want their kids to become an engineer or doctor…ENTRANCE COACHING time….!!

Since I did my 12^th in the U.A.E, I couldn’t start with my entrance coaching 1 year earlier as is the norm usually in India(phew escaped…..would have been bored to death…) and had to do with a crash course of a month in cochin….(spent most of that time sleeping…., I guess it was somewhere around this time or after my 10^th (grueling time,,,I actually got distinction for my 10^th boards…yey!!) that I got hitched to dozing off in class…haven’t actually shaken off that habit n have actually become a PhD in it….seriously…expert…sensei…wateva…) Back to the topic, after the entrance exams…all trial n error methods….tick…tick…n tick…got done with 3 entrance exams….CUSAT, Tamilnadu n Karnataka…then comes doomsday No.1 (there are more than one…more to follow..)in the form of CBSE 12^th Std Results……! I didn’t have the basic eligibility score in math….entrance scores flushed down the drain… what to do….??? That was when my late Grandpa advised me that there are countless different courses I can take up…its not the end of the world to not become an engineer!. So packed up went back to Dubai and lazed off and by the time a new academic year began joined the BBA course (affiliated to Manipal Academy of Higher Education) at AGU(Al Ghurair University, Dubai)…university…hmm…you couldn’t actually call it a university then…it was relatively new and was actually in essence a big car showroom converted into an institute and another building added to it….this was in the Sh.Zayed Rd….though now I hear there is a bigger and better campus elsewhere…anyway I have very fond memories of AGU…made lots of friends…drove a lot of their cars… ;-) n overall had a pretty good time….but between all this my dad n mom would once in a while keep reminding me that all my former school classmates had joined for engineering and that if I had paid more attention to my studies, I could have joined for engineering too…!. I was also given the option that if I wanted dad would have got me a management seat.

Six months go by and 1 semester later..now comes Doomsday No.2, my little sister had just got done with her 10^th and my parents tell me that my mom and sis are shifting to Kerala to continue her education there as dad is contemplating retiring in 1- 2 yrs time….now this is the year 2002 and he has been working in Dubai since 1970.. and they ask me what I plan to do…now I find myself in a dilemma…the BBA course in dubai is of 4 yrs duration..(they follow the American system there..all degree courses r of 4 yrs duration) and I am not even finished with 1 year...there is also the matter of residence visa as its a rule there that boys above the age of 18 cannot get a residence permit under parents sponsorship…(shitty rule I say…gals r allowed….i plead sex discrimination…) and I had been studying at AGU by showing the ministry that I am a student at AGU and they keep renewing my residence visa for a period of 1 yr. and if dad leaves too… then I would have the problem of lack of accommodation…in order to avoid all this hassle my stupid ignorant mind blurts out “I am coming to India” and to top it off when my parents ask me if ill continue my BBA in manipal I say “No ill join for engineering”!! (factors contributing to this decision being, doing a 4 yr bba course in manipal, while normally BBA courses in India are of 3 yr duration and in addition my parents disappointment in me not taking up engineering) .. There have been numerous instances in life when I have repented for that moment in my life…but as they say “no use crying over splilled milk”.. Sooner said than done, my parents call up my uncle n aunt in cochin and get them to book a management seat in mechanical engineering (I actually wanted Comp.Sc., but everybody convinced me that comp boom has gone down and mech will be evergreen..blah..)at SKCET, cbe (Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore).

4 yrs n a couple more later(back papers galore..;P, more on that later..) i am finally done and am undergoing training as a planning engineer at a well-reputed construction company(delhi based) in cochin..looking forward to goin to Doha in a months time….

P.S. : I am sure that this post has turned out to be an essay…but hey it’s a fun read…pls do let me knw what u think….more to come… ;)