Workshop Woes

I spend my time in Bangalore at the Indian Institute of Science, designing a micro air vehicle. A large part of the design is complete, and I'm getting a prototype fabricated at the workshop under the Aerospace Department.

It's a miserable experience, a real pain up the rear end. Now the workshop has a foreman and under him machinists. The foreman, Mr. Govindraj, is tied up with other items to be fabricated, so I have to settle for one of the machinists. They aren't half as good.

The guy is about to make a drill hole using a lathe*. He puts the job* in the chuck*, and the drill bit in the chuck fitted in the tailpost*, and is about to drill. So I remind him " Centre hole?" And then he removes the drill bit and replaces it with a centre drill, so that the spot to be drilled is marked before drilling. The centre ( a cone shaped depression) created serves to guide the point of the drill to the correct spot to be drilled. It was terrible.

I mean, that's the most obvious thing to do before drilling. I feel helpless. This guy is almost as old as my Dad, and has been a machinist for as long as I have lived, and he acts like this. I don't feel I have the right to yell at him, so I don't. He rushes through everything, fumbling occasionally because of that.

The drill bit is vibrating. That means I will get a slightly larger hole than the drill bit is meant to produce. The best part is out of one of the four times he drilled a hole, he could get it to not vibrate.

I felt miserable... he had no love for what he was doing, no understanding of why he was doing it. It was just a job. He was to make parts that the Aersopace Department needed, and would do whatever it takes to finish the part. Accuracy, function, tolerances, finish could all go out the window. I wanted this and this process, he'll do it superficially and it doesn't matter that he gives me a freely sliding fit when I wanted a tight fit.

I wonder, why on earth does he have this work ethic? What is it with these people? Is it apathy due to experience? Boredom? His expression showed he hated doing his job. It's not like he has to repetitively make the same parts. It's always a specially ordered part. Machining is an art. Yet he hates it.

I guess that a lot of people feel that way... it was kind of depressing. Maybe you don't get to do the job of your choice in life, but every job has something that's interesting.

Lathe - a machine that spins an object at high speed, so that it can be easily cut by cutting tool.
job - the article to be machined.
Machining - removing material from an object.
Drill chuck - used to hold a drill bit
tailpost - used to hold the end of the job not in the chuck, or a tool.

Home... Again

It feels great to be home. I've been taking it easy since I got back home, not rushing through anything. The ride home was bumpy, espacially because I was sharing the berth with my guitar and laptop. My back hurt all night and to top it all some insanely chatty couple was across the aisle talking as if they were on honeymoon on some mediterranean island.

I reach Bangalore by around seven in the morning and it takes them two hours to drop me near home from then on. Mom made breakfast after which I had a nice hot bath. Been a long while since I did that, like a month.

My Grandmom's come down from Mumbai. Sat down and chatted about my family for a long time. It's great to have her down in a way, inspite of her conservative outlook, 'cos I learn a lot about what the others are doing, especially my cousins.

Meanwhile there are a lot of small chores to be done, like unpacking, cleaning out the cupboard, dishwashing etc. For some reason I don't hate doing all that as much as I used to. Apart from that I strummed the guitar. Fingers were really feeling loose for some reason. It was nice, could really pick up some speed while maintaining clarity. Not too fast, beacause soon I start hitting bum notes. Picked up a few notes from a Dream Theater song, not completely accurate. Need to do a lot to train my ear.

Now its the afternoon. Think I'll go get my bike out of the garage, or maybe just sleep. Will go out and catch the jazz/blues/rock stuff supposedly happening at Prominent Cafe Coffee Day outlets.

My Seventh Sem Exams

So this year I had a simply great time during my exams,

It starts with a trip to Gokarna. Read all about it in the previous post. I got conned into it by that usual go-with-the-flow live-in-the-moment philosophy and all. In any case since It was only the beginning of how I decimated any chance of a 9 GPa this semester in hindsight it wasn't a big thing going for it.

So meanwhile I had made a kind of pledge that I wouldn't watch a movie till the hols. Should have kept it. It all started with Cinema Paradiso, touted by Brat for a long time. Curiosity got the better of me and I got down to see what all the fuss was about. Once the pledge lay in tatters a flood followed. I watched on average three movies a day till my exams got over. Not to mention finished a few series here and there.

Luckily the exams were fairly simple, so I could survive with a possible BB in most.

I didn't start MEMS until 12 midnight, and the exam was at ten the next morning. At nine I find out that the news was a mistake, the exams already started! I rush to the exam hall and nothings begun, except the appraisal form. Anyway it was a patheticly simlpe exam so I was happy my goofing off didn't cost me. Well it cost me a possible AA to a BB maybe, because in simple exams I do unnnecessarily badly compared to others. Anyway... as long as my grade doesn't turn off potential admissions to US unis, I couldn't care less.

The last exam was Finite Element Methods, which was basically a stick up my rear end. I suppose by the law of averages it was bound to happen sometime. Apparently it was a uniform phenomenon, so I didn't feel guilty of the three movies last night.

You see, when I prepare for an exam, I don't aim to max the paper or anything. Those days are gone forever, like school maths. I don't even want to beat everyone else. I just want to be able to attempt the paper in a decent fashion, I shouldn't be caught unawares. That amounts to a casual once-over of the notes/text and maybe a sum or two if I have the josh. A nd yeah, I do worry about grades, I just don't want a 7, that's not healthy for applying abroad. I can't be motivated enough to aim higher, it just doesn't work... I lose interest very fast in exams, and end up leaving marks purely because I couldn't be bothered to break my head over a memory-based question. Or a sad paper. Sure, this is a cocky/costly/foolish attitude but that's who I am.

I'd rather watch a movie :)

In seven days:
A Scanner Darkly
Amores Perros
Cinema Paradiso
Black Hawk Down
Kingdom of Heaven
Torque
X Men III
Road Trip
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Dazed and Confused
Secret Window
Malena
October Sky
Pyaar ke Side Effects
The Skeleton Key
What Women Want
Amelie
Chasing Liberty
Eyes Wide Shut
Trainspotting

Beta

Alrighty then,

After many moons I decide to log into my blogger account and I find that they have an old and new type of blogger. Their little mind game works and so I decide I might as well see what happens, even though I hardly use blogger.com never mind any of the new features that Beta is supposed to be worth shifting to for.

In any case its christmas and New Year season, so first let's all forgive me for all the times any of you checked my blog and saw it in the same old state, and then I'll resolve to maintain this thing I've started a bit more regularily.

In case you're curious, you'll find all my old stuff here.

Cheers.