The Interview-"I like Painting and drawing”

It was in the second last semester of my engineering,the time when Big Companies come to recruit from Campus. In Kerala we had a recruitment agency,which mainly dealt with engineering recruitment. They call different big shot companies every week end and conduct interviews, which would be attended by almost all the eligible engineering students in Kerala(5k + students). Most of us used to go for those interviews just for meeting up our old school friends who were spread out in the different parts of Kerala for doing their B-Tech

L&T was the first company for which I could clear the written test and extempore to reach the technical interview. I was an average student. First day of the interview session ended up finishing the written test and extempore.On the Second day, I was called for technical Interview early in the morning at hotel Abad plaza in Cochin. I reached Cochin railway station at 6am with my best friend, who is still and always my strength. I had a bath at the station restroom, wore the interview -special Shirt and Trouser (formal dress) which indeed was my first formal dress, as because those days my dressing sense was worst than a klutz .
 
I was called for the tech-interview . Inside the room was a senior man. "Good morning Anoop, how are you?" he said in a pleasant and cheerful voice.  I was quite nervous, I wanted to show myself  cool, which I could not, so I said "I am a bit tensed". Interviewer, understanding my comfort level, started with some personal questions, like where I lived, about my family, my strength, my weakness , which I expected in an HR interview. Then he asked about the projects which I did, Which I could explain better. Then comes the most awaiting difficult part- the technical questions. I proved the night before, that in a single night one can finish READING C-Programming by Balaguruswami. I made my self strong in C, C++, Java, UML and Microprocessors, but did not touch DBMS.


Surprisingly the first question asked was "Anoop, could u please explain me what's DBMS ? " I was like gone~~~.....I thought I would be benched! ....I replied with a lame smile "Data base management System"...  Then he said "Very Good Anoop I was not asking you to tell me the full form, well anyways you can explain it to me by differentiating it with RDBMS..."  I had no clue.... When I dint know how to explain DBMS how will I compare it with RDBMS????? During my Engineering DBMS was one of the worst classes which my class mates and I used to attend. Miss X used to teach us DBMS so badly(I am sorry Miss X). She used to come to the class everyday dipped herself in coconut oil,wearing a lot of ornaments and laughs at her own poor jokes ha ha ha (which the whole class used to listen with high tolerance). Then she starts with the same scenario, Bank account DBMS with the same branches PTA, ADR, KTR, KLM, which were her virtual banks, the short forms for the neighboring towns from our college. It really was too boring. Those days  PTA, ADR, KTR, KLM were like nightmares for us. This is the reason why I hated DBMS.


Coming back to the interview, I really was at the end of the rope, and still I don’t know why I replied “I like Painting and drawing”, knew I was goofing up, but luckily things went fine.I succeeded in deviating his brain from DBMS to Engineering Graphics by hearing drawing.... Then he drew something like, as show in below and asked me to express my views on this diagram in an engineering point of view. My answer had gone off the deep end.



I replied ... " It can be :

The plan of a Cylinder kept on the top of a square prism
or a plan of a Sphere kept on the top of a square prism
or a plan of a Frustum kept on the top of a square prism
or a plan of a Hemisphere kept on the top of a square prism
or a plan of a Cylindrical hole drilled on the center of a  square prism
or a plan of a Hemispherical hole drilled on the center of a  square prism"

Finally I said "the same can be applied for a Cube if its replaced by the Square prism.": He offered me water after this statement... I could see a positive vibes on his face.

He said "Anoop, you can wait outside for the HR interview!!!" YaaY.... Finally on Aug 15th 2005 I got the confirmation of my Job appointment with L&T.