Sunday, February 17, 2008

The path to “Down Under”



Not a single soul knows this, but I almost owe my first trip abroad to Kislay – somebody so squeaky-clean –rather too innocent for a person like me who can be an opportunist if the circumstances desire. And the circumstances did desire for it – a dire need for some extreme action…..

Kislay had come asking to me how much 5000 Australian dollars converted to in Indian rupees expressing whether such an amount would be enough to fund him for a 12 week project in Australia. Frustrated with aping day-night for almost a month, the moment I came to know some professor has the money to call a student for a research project without even a moment of consideration for credentials, without asking the student whether he has a matching research interest, it was clear that here lies the golden goose – ready to be slaughtered. Although with the least of intention of harming Kislay’s chances, I too decided to find about this professor.

Australia had always been a dream destination for me to visit and I had left no stone unturned to find any vacant internship position. I had searched for every damn technical college in the country, mailed to each and every professor they employed but damn, all efforts in vain. Then how could a lazy ass like Kislay get some results…….Too bad, I must’ve missed something.

If there was ever a time to piggyback on Kislay’s finding, there couldn’t have been anything better than this. Trying to extract as much information as possible, I could just make out that this was some university which didn’t exactly seem like some technical university but more of a defense college something like NDA but had a technical school within its campus. In his excitement, Kisi also told me that the professor looked very young and that thing was the one which was appealing to him the most.

Combining this with the previous information I had, I again started to go through the database of all colleges in Australia looking for anything even remotely concerned with Defense. Luck couldn’t have shone on me any better – right there within the list stood out “Australian Defence Force Academy” housing the school of IT & Electrical Engineering…..

Opening the website was giving me immense pleasure in itself - My first step towards a fully paid trip to Ozzie-land and that too with one of my best friend. Going through the webpages of each and every faculty – I came to know about Dr. Mark Pickering – who almost matched the profile. It was almost confirmed by looking at the webpage of Summer Undergraduate Research Scholarship webpage that this guy indeed had loads of projects going on and was ready to dish out some great moolah. Bingo!!!

But I decided not to take any chances, and I applied for a position under each and every guy I could find – only to receive a mail next day from Mark offering me a chance to fulfill my dream – an offer of a 5000 dollar internship and a list of projects to choose one from.

I couldn’t have been any happier…..Love you Kislay!!!!

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