Hurricane evacuation

Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal,Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gustav, Hanna nothing was hitting us. You must be wondering about what those names might be, those are all Hurricanes in 2008. The next one in the list is Ike. As usual it was projected to come towards Houston, TX. And none of us really cared for it as already a few Hurricanes drifted from the projecte path without even touching our state. 

Days passed and still the projected path is towards Houston, TX. Only 4-5 days were remaining for the hurricane to make a landfall.  I've inquired a few people about the Hurricane which is approaching the Houston at the place i work (I meet a lot of people at my work place, so i know whats happening in their community) they said that it is all ridiculous, they never had hurricane in the past 25 years and they would never have another one in the near future. Some people decided to stay at their home places instead of evacuating. 

After one day, I've seen a lot of people filling up their gas tanks as the government has decided to do a mandatory evacuation at the areas near to the coast. Our area is also under the evacuation list, so, we had to fill up our gas tanks on the same day night. On the next day fear gripped all the people, all the gas stations were empty by the noon. It was hard to find a gas station with gas. But for us holiday mood has already started :). But the big question is how do we utilize all of our holidays. I say austin is a good place, some say Dallas and very few say San Antonio. 

After having a serious discussion on it we decided on going to Dallas. As it is cost effective, (coz my friends live there, we can live without putting much money in the motels :D). It was 3.00 P.M, we started to load our vehicles with all the luggage and grocery. I was the person to lock the door of our apartment for the last time i guess. We pulled our vehicles from the parking lot and set one after the another. 

My new Flex/Flash blog.

http://saipabbathi.wordpress.com/

Did i win the prize??

After giving the presentation in front of a few students and 2 judges, my friend and i came back and sat in our seats. VNR college is one of the famous college in Andhra Pradesh, it has organised an event namely Convergence 07 in 2007 year, and the turn out for the event was huge as expected. This is one of the few colleges which encourages web designing field i.e., the field in which i am proficient at. The Building is ofocoz very huge one, it is very confusing to move around in the college at the first time, but you wil get used to the maze like structure of the corridors from the second time.

The room at which we gave our presentation is a Computer Laboratory, About 30 to 40 computers were crammed up adjacent to one another along the 4 walls facing towards the center of the room. But it has very good ventilation and light as the walls of the lab were made with glass and one could see all that is happens around the room. The projector is place on one corner of the lab facing the projector cloth on the wall opposite to the entrance door. The judges were sittin perpendicular to the wall on which the image is being displayed, but in the exact center of the room. The projector cloth is in diagonal left to the judges table and the entrance door on their right. The people who has to give presentation should stand in front of the judges facing them and operating computer at the same time which is placed on their right.

We were sitting jus behind the judges i.e., on diagonal right to the judges, after we sat in our seats, i took chance to sneak from behind the judges to know our scores. It was a totall for 75. One of the judge has summed up the individual column scores and had put it in the last column. I couldn't see the total scores as they cleverly hid the score sheet both from the front and from back. I had to settle down in my seat when one of the peer organiser ordered me to sit in my seat. The presentations went on for another half an hour but my whole concentration was on to steal the marks which we got. Though my friend and i had learnt this web designing only two years back, we had won 2 prizes participating together. But they were second prizes, i had never won a first prize in my life. I have a bunch of second prizes starting from my school days. I still feel a little bit nervous to know my score and also to know the position at which i am standing among all the competetors.

Today's presentation had been a little bit devastating as we fumbled a lot while giving our presentation. We rehearsed the speech atleast 3 times after comming to the VNR college at what ever place we could find, either it be in bathroom or in corridor. I'd seen people looking at us strangely when we reharsed in the bathroom. Though their purpose on comming to bathroom was different, their concentration was completly on us. We were so determined to win the prize that that we did not bother to stop our rehearsal at any cost.

Coming back to the present, i was still making my vainest attempts to see the scores on the sheet. Till that moment our presention was some where in between good and bad when compared to that of other competetors, but the look, decoration and technologies(Used 8 different technologies) which we used to create our site had been the best. I had a hope of winning the prize till then, but not after the next or the last but one team started giving their presentation. They were from MJ college of engineering. They created a web site similar to that of Orkut but the look which they gave to it had been very good. Though they did not complete the whole site, the look was very good and more over they gave a superb presentation by which we decided to leave the room then and there itself and have a nice bed rest back at home. The gloomy thoughts started to spawn in my head.

At that same moment, Luckily or unluckily i saw the score sheet when raised high by the judge to sort all the papers on his desk. I saw our score as 33 and more over it is underlined. I saw that only one participant among the rest is behind us. The rest of them were having good scores than us, the teams had 45 35 28 36 37etc.., respective scores. the last bit of hope which i had previously is gone now. My heart started to pound with pain, and the day started to look gloomy. I told the news to my friend, even he was shocked. We planned to get off from the room and return back to our home place. But the gloomy thoughts did not make us move.

We sat there just staring at nothing. I started to curse the judges, i cursed myself for wasting a lot of precious time both in travelling such a long distance and even while preparing the site(We had an exam on that day). I glanced at my friend, even he was equally dissapointed. I dont know what he might had been thinking of, but my mind started to blame a lot of things which i had thought might be the reasons for the debacle. The whole last week my friend worked for 6-7 hours a day, and i worked for 14 hours a day for two days modifying the site which he gave to me. He did the layout of the site, collecting loads of information to from various sites. He did an exellent piece of work by adding difficult scripts and working on photo shop, i've done adding flash content and adding dynamic content for the site.

Actually i forgot to say, we've done 'Online GroceryStore site' for the competetion, where the person can buy goods online by submittion his creditcard number.

By the time i came out of he gloom, the last contestant was giving his presentation. Even his presentation was good. He did a discussion forum which is similar to the forums which you see at i20fever.com, needz.com etc., sites. But it looked as though he copied the code from some other site, but i was least bothered to argue on that. One of the contestant noticed that and started to argue or wat you call pointed it out to the judges. All the people who were present in that lab including the judges swarmed around the contestant who plagiarized. Some stated to argue by pointing at some traces of plagiarism, some were jus watching including the judges.

My friend am i were the only people who stayed back. Fortunately my interest to know how much each and every one scored has dragged me towards the judges table. No one was there near the table including the organisers, they were all busy participating in the conversation that is taking place at the dais. I jus pulled out the score sheet from the book which was meant to protect the scores from eavesdoping. I started to scan the last column from top to bottom. The scores were like this. 53 45 35 28 36 37 etc.., I rubbed my eyes and again and read my score. It is 53 and underlined. My eyes stated to dilate with exitement. What i read previously was wrong, it isn't 33 it is 53 and we are topping the sheet. I looked at my friend who was walking towards the judges table gloomily, i placed the sheet back into the book and dragged my friend out of the room and gave him a surprising news. Even he stated to jump with exitement. Our dejected day has dissapeared in a flash. That was our day!!! Happiest day of my life. I got my first ever first prize in my life. Only seconds later the peer organiser came to us and congratulated us for winning the prize. And asked us to collect the prize money and even the certificates on the last day of the Technical Fest.

Later we ran out of the room, jus to celebrate our victory....i felt asthough to hit a wall so stong to see my fist on the other side of the wall.ha ha...My first First prize at VNR college. That is it people..Have a winning life.