Contact from Alma Mater

I couldn't make it to the commencement in 2003, I couldn't make it to the campus when I visited Chicago last November however, on Tuesday there was something interesting waiting in my email box. An invitation to CS/ECE Alumni reception at Hyatt Regency, Bellevue. I was really excited and decided not miss it at any cost. Unfortunately my car was not road worthy due to a coolant leak and I couldn't get a ride from anyone, either. By 4:00 pm I had pretty much given up all hope. Casually looked up the local transit routes and schedule and bingo ! found a bus that left from cascadia college to Bellevue transit center. One of my friend offered me ride till cascadia college which is about 3 miles from work. I took the bus and reached Bellevue transit center at 5:20, briskly walked to Hyatt regency and got to the Regency Ballroom.

I expected some kind of public meeting like setup but to my surprise, it looked like a wedding reception party. BTW, Hyatt has a 4 star rating, an Alumni meeting in a 4 star hotel ? I'd never heard of anything even close to that. I got introduced to Tammy (Associate Director of Development), it took a while for her to understand how I was really associated with UIUC, I kind of don't enjoy saying that I was an IMCS student, which basically means that I did the course over the internet. I gently hinted that I did the course from India and that Prof. Harandi was heading the initiative. Then with a bright smile she acknowledged that I was an I2CS student, whatever !

I happened to be the first guy to reach the venue bang on time at 5:30. Slowly some crowd started trickling in, I met this other guy from ECE who graduated in 2003. I had to strike a conversation with this guy for Tammy got busy with arranging the t-shirts and other give-aways for the occasion. This guy worked for Boeing in the Avionics division and was new to Seattle. I thought I should talk about something that he doesn't know so it started with the weather in Seattle and about the kind of food on the plate for the evening. Tammy dropped couple of drink coupons with us to start off; I was a little worried at this point. I don't drink so, with all hesitation I approached the bar and asked for some coke, the guy with a snicker handed me a glass of very little coke and a lot of ice cubes, perhaps was too used to making those cocktails on the rocks. That makes me comment on the whole drinking phenomenon, why should everyone drink ? I've taken some of my friends on the wrong side because of this but, I can't help it. Anyways, by this time there was a sizeable crowd forming their own little groups and we were like 4 people chatting, incidentally all 3 worked for Boeing. I was the odd man out, infact very odd that I walked straight out of work so was wearing a formal shirt, trouser and shoes while the others were hopelessly informally dressed. I didn't divulge into much details into how I was actually associated with UIUC until this chinky guy started asking me questions. I explained to them that I did the course from India over the internet, then this guy suddenly shot a comment "That's cheating". WTF, I was completely taken aback on hearing that comment; I felt like retorting in an equally putrid fashion but the pacifist in me stopped me and put an end to it with a repartee: "really, at least that doesn't make me the fool".

Food was simply not the type I liked, all I could eat there was fruits, salads and ice-cream the rest were all dishes made out of exotic non-vegetarian sea and land life forms. At around 6:25 Prof. Campbell and Prof. Kamin joined, I also managed to meet Raghavendra Prabhu who I vaguely remembered being our TA for 411(Kevin Chang's course). Tammy introduced me to Prof. Campbell and Kamin I displayed my reverence by shaking hands and even bowing involuntarily a couple of times in the Japanese style :-)

I wanted to ask Prof. Campbell few question on GAIA but eventually decided not to for that would have spoilt his evening :-) Prof. Campbell had this knack of completing a 100 slide lecture in 1 hour, he was the best at putting us to sleep within like, 10 minutes. Anyways, all those ridiculing apart, he has been successful in his own right, he has been supporting 2K for a while and seems would pay off in spades. However, GAIA and active spaces didn't take off after all that hype and funding it received. I knew Sam Kamin from the CS321 (Programming Languages & Compilers) course, couldn't see his face throughout the course only showed his hands on the lecture videos. He prefers to use those bulky overhead projectors with those transparent/erasable slides. I really enjoyed the course particularly, the introduction to functional languages like ML/SML, really helped. I am finding it very useful now when I try to understand Haskell. Most part of the course was handled by his R.A. Matt Beckman. I still remember this was one of the courses that we took in the first semester and struggled very badly.

Prof. Campbell and couple of others from ECE department talked about the research that is currently going in the respective departments, most of which went straight on top of my head. Some of the Alumni members talked about future meetings and events. I had already raised the point of off campus students not being able to participate in the campus job fairs, for which Tammy explained that all the job fairs can be attended by off-campus students and that she would help if there is any specific request. We were done with all the talking by about 7:00; it was time to get to some serious eating which I skipped. It was quite an interesting Alumni reception; I even got a complementary CS Dept. t-shirt only sad part was that only on reaching home I realized I was given a size XL. The shirt would fit me with a footfall shoulder pad on.