Journal- May-August 2020
Hobbies, activities, experiences, pandemic, lockdown, journaling, food between May and August of 2020.
Hello guys, I am back with your favourite - the Journal part, where I pin down my experiences, how all my days went and the lessons which I learned and which through sharing may help you. And of course, I do give a shoutout to everyone who has helped me throughout that period. Let me keep aside the politics, technology and information parts of my blog.
Last Journal stopped in April (Read here)
Meanwhile, I am delighted to inform you all that my article on How I spent my lockdown days has crossed 140,000 views and is still growing. Also, for the past six months or more, I was able to publish one article every week and also start my own telegram channel. Thank you all so much for all the support you gave me.
Read it here if you haven’t-
I pretty much know that you all are stuck in homes and not being able to anything different. The case here is the same too, but I took everything in the positive sense which makes me happy. I try to take advantage of what all I could have done at home.
Link to my Telegram Channel
Journal begins
The month of May began with Unnati MUN hosted by Abhishek Premnath where I was invited as an EB member with ROJIN K SAJI. It was indeed a wonderful programme for first-time hosts. I also completed my Digital marketing Internshala course in the first week. It was one of the best courses I have ever participated in. On the 5th of May, just as I mentioned before, I started a telegram channel to share my articles. So please do follow my telegram channel if you haven’t yet.
In the subsequent weeks, I had the opportunity to be the EB as PM for ACMPM of MEC MUN Society presents E MUN. In committee, I was accompanied by Abhishek Premnath and Rahul Ramachandran Menon who was also the first time EB member. Hon Minister V Sunil Kumar was the Chief Guest and money collected as fees were handed over to CMDRF.
I thank Niranjana, Alan Antony and Sandra Sam for inviting me as the as well. I am also thankful to Adil Rafeek, Aswathy S and Malavika Rajesh Vikraman for their respective contributions to the event.
Next week I participated in two weeks long St Alberts College e-Quiz, which was indeed an incredible experience. Almost all domains of GK was covered. Despite all efforts, I didn’t make it to the finals. I started reading an eBook on International Relations which was fine, although I won’t say its quite high level. Since 10th May was Mother’s day, I and my brother took charge of the kitchen to make special food for my mother. We made Veg samosa as the evening snack and for dinner- Naan with Paneer Tikka Masala.
13–17 of May was Reachout event, which was a crowdfunded event to help needy and helpful during this lockdown. I took a ticket to support the initiative with my own money. On 16th I published the article on Indian Foreign Policy changes towards the Islamic nations. This was one of most hard-worked, researched and interpreted article. I got immense satisfaction in publishing this article.
On 23rd we visited Ancestral home near Fort Kochi, and before we returned back home, we ordered food from MeltyWay Cafe there, which is 100% vegetarian; selling snacks, bread, fries, pizzas, burgers, melty pockets etc. I would 100% recommend this shop. The food gives you a feel of Dominoes, Pizza hut, Burger King and Mcdonalds combined.
On 24th, Abhishek of Vaagmi (name changed from Unnati) contacted me asking if I could be the part of MUN faculty for the app he is going to develop. I gladly accepted the offer. 25th May was my brother’s birthday. I made him a hand-drawn card to cheer him up. As special, we ordered food for dinner from a nearby restaurant. Meanwhile, on 26th, ASWIN SHANIL got in touch with me and asked if I could help Deny Davis in an environment-themed MUN. First I hesitated but considering that it was a rare opportunity I agreed. I was made the Secretary-General of Green MUN.
There was a competition held by the IEEE LINK called Eco-frame Technical Article Writing competition based on environment theme. I wrote the draft and submitted it.
30–31 May was Unnati MUN 2.0 where MHRD was the simulated committee. I was the Minister, with Nakul Pramod and Abhishek. That week I also got a piece of horrible news that Online classes are scheduled to begin. That put an end to two months of fun. On 1st of June, Sagar Suresh Kumar informed me that he wanted to start a new interview series on his channel and that he would interview me on International Relations. We completed the recording via Zoom.
Along with the month of June, my online classes began on 2nd. Classes were from 8:30 am to 1:30 am. There wasn't any break in between. This almost continued for three weeks. As per the invitation of ROJIN K SAJI and Neil, I was invited as EB for Legatus MUN on 6th and 7th. On the same day, IEDC MEC had game development seminar which my brother was also interested and he also took part in it more actively.
That week, I also got a call from my MEC seniors of the Illuminati Quiz Club, saying that the club will have core handover online via video call. I was given the post of Chairman, which is indeed a tough position of responsibility as it was one of the most legendary clubs in MEC and it also conducts important quizzes like TIQ. The editor of Paperkin, Ema Arungot in touch with me, asking to publish a lockdown special informative article.
The next week was pretty boring and dry as it was only Online classes. On 12th we went to the ancestral home and returned back on 13th June. On 13th evening Sagar Published my interview with him on IR and I shared it on all social media platforms. I received really good feedback from everyone and I am grateful to him for giving me that opportunity.
Nearly at the same time, the results for Eco frame was published and I got the first prize, this was something which I never expected. My family took it as one of my big achievements and started to circulate it like haywire. Amidst all of that IETE MEC SF put out their technical article competition. Unlike the previous one, we could choose from given three topics and write a 2000 word long article, which is fairly too long for a technical article. I was confused between Optical circuits and Organic electronics. Thinking hard for quite a long time, I made up my mind to take Optical circuits. I started to research, that too quite deep. I had made up my mind that I couldn't give and I need to draft a proper article. 14th June was the birthday of Donald Trump and I put up a sarcastic birthday wish as my Whatsapp status. A piece of bad news came out that day saying that the exams will be conducted online for us from 22nd June.
15th June was my birthday since it was a Monday it was so sad that I had to attend online classes on my birthday as well. I was overwhelmed by the number of wishes I got. It was indeed a good day to remember. For dinner, my parents surprised me by ordering from Dominoes which was one of my favourites and I got to eat it after a long time. 15th June was also the birthday of Chinese President Xi Jinping. It was ironic that Trump’s and Xi’s birthdays happen to be on consequential dates.
I completed my IETE article a day before the deadline and submitted it, only to know that the date was extended and I never knew about it. Despite that, I was confident that I had done quite well. On the 16th Night, we hear a piece of bad news regarding the incident which happened on 15th night between PLA and the Indian Army where 20 soldiers were said to be killed in a skirmish followed by hypothermia. This happened amidst the fact that tensions between the two nations were rising so much for the past month. I personally felt quite sad to see two growing nuclear superpowers had skirmishes on its border. It was also quite astonishing and hilarious for me to see people calling for all-out war, fear-mongering that China has invaded and taken away our land etc. The truth is that most of them don’t even know about the history of LAC, Ladakh, Tibet, and the exact cause of the violence but still throw out whatever comes out of their mouth without a second thought.
On 18th June, Rohith Krishnan of MACE, a friend of Kavith Viswanath invited me and him to prepare for a podcast on Foreign Policy. I agreed to it and started to prepare for 19th which was the date of the recording. The podcast covered most of India’s Foreign policy with immediate neighbours and the skirmishes with China. I am adding the transcript and the links to the podcast here.
Also on 18th, Paperkin published my article with respect to online safety and cyber laws.
On 20th and 21st June, Green MUN to place. The programme went quite smooth. It was curtain down to a month-long hectic preparation. At Green MUN I also got to meet Hemanth Kumar J. I thank Arpith S and Bestin for their help with Graphic Design for the event. Ananda Sai A, Hemanth and Rojin helped with Delegate Affairs. Megha K was the MC and handled the anchoring part well.
Due to the lack of interest of both students and teacher, online classes were put off and self-studying and preparation were back on cards.
From 22 to 27, we had the offline series exam. I was pretty m, such thank full that the university exam never happened because no one was prepared well and the subjects like Compiler Design, Algorithms and Networks was very tough and challenging. The only relief was Principles of Management. On 27th, VAAGMI announced the release of their MUN app and also posted a wonderful faculty poster.
26–28 June, I was part of XEMUN EB for IP. Aaron Thomas was my co-chair.
On 28th, as the Editor of MUNner’s daily, it was my pleasure to announce and let the world know that it was our first anniversary, so I wrote an editorial article for MUNner’s daily. Photos of all those who contributed were made into a collage and posted on all of our social media handles. Read it here.
On 30th I had registered for SAP scholarship exam, which was quite hard for me and it was the first time, I was writing such an exam.
On 1st July the results of the IETE competition were announced and I got the first prize. I have delighted but not shocked, since I was confident this time. On 2nd July IETE SF MEC published the article on their page. (Guys do check out their page, they do have an incredible set of articles on science and technology)
July 4 and 5. I had the CUKCC MUN, where I was invited by Dheerajmpradeep to chair AIPPM. Abhishek, Ashraf and Rojin were my subordinates. With that, I formally stopped chairing E-MUNs due to its tiring set-up and also due to wastage of time. I started to focus more on learning and doing certificate courses. Also, the month of June was quite hectic for me and I had my lessons learnt.
That same week, online exams for two series exams for Honours subject Mobile Computing was announced and conducted. The very next week, the Microprocessor lab exam was announced which made me sick because it was considered to be one of the toughest labs. Parallel to the preparation, we had to also submit the pending experiments written on the record. The exam was conducted on 13th July. Luckily no coding was there but just writing program on the paper. The viva was very hard though. Another good luck was that Network Lab exam/viva was never conducted. There was nothing happier about it since it was extremely hard for me to understand networking programs. On 17th July, we had Alum Connect which was conducted by Excel and MEC MUNSOC. I got the opportunity to host the session alongside Neetha Jayan. Watch the session on youtube.
Amidst the pandemic, the exam and everything, the cases in Aluva increased after the local market has declared a cluster. The entire town was declared a containment zone and we weren’t able to get out of the house for 4 weeks. I published a few articles, completed a few certification courses, watched movies, youtube etc. I had a couple of free time until classes for next year were announced to begin on August 17th. This was good news because S6 would have been really a tough nut if the university exams would have been conducted. I must say that we were lucky enough to miss that. I started a new course which was 12 weeks long on International Relations Theory by NRU HSE Moscow. I finished watching two seasons of Jack Ryan, which is indeed a wonderfully crafted one. I also watched Sully, Flight 7500 and read Ebook- Choices By Shiv Shanker Menon.
Even though it was students from S1-S6 who had the benefit of skipping the examinations, it was not the same for the final years. Also, many of my friends wanted me to write about it, as well as wanted to highlight about KTU, KEAM, JEE etc. I took up the challenge and published an article in the most generic way as possible. A new story broke up and shook the Kerala political landscape. It was the gold smuggling case.
On the August first week, I published my written Interview with Sagar Suresh Kumar since I always wanted to return the favour for what all he had done for me. On second August, Training cell had kept a mock interview for us. My friend Joel V Zachariah was in charge of interviewing me. He was chill, he asked me both technical and non-technical questions. He also made me do a question too.
That weekend, just after the containment zone was declared open, we went to Ernakulam/Kochi city to see maternal grandparents and stayed there for two weeks. I also had the privilege to attend an IP panel discussion on 10th as a journalist on Men: The forgotten gender.
I always wanted to do something different about something different. I don’t know where did that initial spark came in, but I decided to start a podcast series. The first episode being on Geopolitics during the covid-19 pandemic. I invited Suraj Menon, ASWIN SHANIL, Akhil Sreekumar and Akhil Sreekumar. The episode was recorded on August 8th. All the posters were prepared by ASWIN SHANIL and the technical side was handled by Abhiram Warrier. I am thankful to all of them those who participated and made it a success.
On 14th August, my family went to Fort Kochi home for a small function and see stayed there for two more days. On 15th, Paperkin published my Independence day special article on India: A superpower for the 21st century. A quiz based on the article was also conducted. I am grateful to the editors for the same.
I also had the opportunity to publish an article on the importance of learning soft skills and how to improve it just by sitting at home. Knowing my idea, Vaagmi was interested in being a partner to my article as well. My term at Onmanorama as campus reporter also expired. Read my Onmanorama articles here.
The very next day, my online classes began and that slowed me up completely. It's ridiculous how people have planned the schedule, with continuous five hours without any breaks. It was only during the 10 days long Onam vacation I could manage to have some rest and relaxation. On 29th August I announced my new podcast series and released the first episode. (Attaching the transcript and links for listening).
August 29th was our class celebrations and 30th was Onam. That was solely a private day for me, spending time with my family and relatives. Along with all the chaos, placement registration has also started. With that, I am stopping the narration of my journal. See you in 2021! with the next journal article.
Why do I do a lot of certification courses?
Many people do ask me that question. They also ask, Don’t you know that they don’t have much value. Everyone is doing the same thing, then why?
The answer is pretty simple. I don’t see why people are blindly against these now. Our college has sponsored a few of the courses, so we utilise the time with that. Also, I didn't start doing any course for the certificate value but for the exposure and knowledge. One’s who follow me on social media know what exact topics do I courses on. I’m not following the same path as everyone. It is also important we upskill ourselves to stay in the industry. These courses provide that. I even have exclusively started to maintain notebooks solely for courses. I am happy to waste time learning new things rather than spending time on anything else.
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