Television Repair

"ENGINEERING has been chosen as the TOUGHEST course amongst all other courses including BCom, BCA, BSc, MBBS & on: by the Guinness Book of World Records, on 18 Aug 2010. There are 58 university examinations, 130 series examinations & 174 assignments within the span of 4 years i.e maximum of 750 working days."

This was a facebook status, updated by my friend and I stumbled upon it. I'm none to debate on the authenticity of this statement. All I want to do is to disclose a funny experience of mine. After waging a great war against Kannur university for a four and a half years, to be exact, yours truly became a Btech degree holder in Electronics & Communication although I didn't know what those two words really meant!

One fine day, I was at my home and something happened to my TV set. Well, my father called in a specialist repairman. And that happened to be the lab attender working in my mother's school. He found that the trouble was with 'LOT'. I was watching over these proceedings. Suddenly my father asked, "what is LOT"? I didn't know what to answer. Suddenly he explained, "it is a flyback transformer (FBT), also called a line output transformer (LOPT) which was primarily designed to generate high current sawtooth signals at a relatively high frequency. It was invented as a means to control the horizontal movement of the electron beam in a cathode ray tube (CRT). The voltage and frequency can each range over a wide scale depending on the device. For example, a large color TV CRT may require 20 to 50 kV with a horizontal scan rate of 15.734 kHz". Hearing this my father asked, "what did you learn in Btech"? I answered, "I'm still trying to figure out".

Tales of MH 1 - sasi p..

We all might have heard of wildlife sanctuaries to protect a particular species. India has over 551 animal sanctuaries, referred to as Wildlife Sanctuaries (IUCN Category IV Protected Area). One of my classmates Subin P (aka Sasi) planned to create a similar one in his room, 306 in MH-1 The species he tried to protect were Aedes aegypti and Anopheles mosquitoes  which causes chikungunya and malaria. They way he protected them was unique. He never used repellents in his rooms. In fact, he never permitted his room mates to do so. He would have his mosquito net filled with young mosquitoes, give them enough blood from his own body, protect them from the cruel human beings like us. All those who read this post may think that my dear friend is mentally deranged. But he can quell our doubts with his super human thinking. My friend, Subin was one of the immensely talented classical dancers in our college. He was also a gifted dance teacher. The company of mosquitoes would help him learn new moves during night. This knowledge, he'll impart to his students. I'm eagerly waiting for 'Natyashri' Sasi P's new book, "Nrithavum kothukukalum", in which he'll explain the obstacles he had to overcome to create a modern 'Natyasastra'....

Dedicated to my buddy Subin P.