Ah..blessed be the department for the conduct of the online examination in Communication Skills Lab for the 3rd years and the final year students. Our CSE final year students served as our techhies and got us through the series of bugs in the examination software and helped us heave a big, big sigh of relief at the end of it all. The concept is all good and modern - the idea of an online exam. However, it requires the patience of a cow and the perseverance of a spider.
Students of course as ususal performed their role with verve. They really sparkled in the PPTs for the oral test. Though some might've developed a crick in the neck with their reading of the presentation there were many who performed splendidly and chose a variety of interesting topics.
Am waiting for the language lab to be set so that students can go in for language assimilation on their own.

GCE in the limelight for ...eh... a burgalry in the ladies hostel in the wee hours of the morning. At about three, a burglar got into the hostel by forcing open a grill door, the front gate, by scaling up the drain pipes.... everyone knows how rumors and stories fly around. Well, the fact is, he got in somehow, stole a few cell phones from some of the rooms whose doors were not locked and got into a room, switched on the light and held a knife to a girl's throat and threatened her. He took the chain from the girl and took her towards the gate. The moment he started fumbling with a latch, the girl pulled the knife from his hand. He then bit her and somehow managed to run away from the scene. Alarm was then sounded by the poor child who was scared out of her wits and the melee then broke out. Within half-an-hour police were on the scene, press was demanding its share of news and the girls were all too scared to go back into their rooms.
I'm surprised how this could've happened since the ladies' hostel is secure and we have high walls and fencing all around. In addition, we also have three security men guarding the perimeter of the hostel. The mystery will be solved only when the thief tells the story. Till then, we can only surmise and shake our heads.

There is another training programme on MATLAB, which is a compilation of toolkits which help you work on anything with the help of simple commands. I registered for the programme hoping that I would learn something about Data Analysis - in order to help me prepare graphs and charts in ppts. The first session was so technical that I was scared off by the technical jargon and the only thing that might've tempted me to sit through the rest of the sessions may have been the canteen lunch sponsored under TEQIP for the participants. :) To confess, it was a pleasure to listen to Dr.R.S.D.Wahida Banu who took a class and explained the concepts so well with examples easy enough for even lay people to understand.