the littlerocker - we, the alumni

Devina and Vincent

2007-01-01T13:05:00.000+05:30

The cupid struck following a 'date' arranged through their parents who also happen to be family friends. And Devina Mary Quadros ('00) is now to be married to Vincent Saldanha on Jan 14, 2007.

[ Click for a larger version ]

Devina is a 2000 batch student, who since graduated from Bhandarkar's Arts and Science College, Kundapur with a Bachelors in Business Administration. She has since been working as a Customer Support Office in Kuwait. Devina's twin brothers Denver Quadros ('98) and Denveer Quadros ('98) are also Little Rock alumni.

Vincent Saldanha, a native of Andheri, Mumbai works in Kuwait as a Systems Engineer.

Congratulations ! We wish Devina and Vincent a happily married life.

Silver Jubilee Celebrations - Photographs

2006-12-27T23:55:00.000+05:30

The Silver Jubilee reunion finally happened, after several months of uncertainity earlier in the year about whether there will such an event followed by a few weeks of uncertainity about when exactly the celebrations would be.

We have no reliable estimates of the attendance at the event. Informal estimates put it at 250 alumni attendees.

I have created a website that could be a central repository for all alumni reunion pictures. I have uploaded the pictures I have received so far here for your viewing/saving/printing pleasure. More expected in the coming days.

http://picasaweb.google.com/littlerock.at.25

If you have pictures from your camera, please email them to me at the highest possible resolution. Attach a file to littlerocker@gmail.com. If you have used picasa before and/or would like to upload pictures yourself, pls. write to me for the account password.

Here are some media reports.

[ This happens to be the 100th post on this blog. Thankyou readers (for putting up ??)]

- Sharath Rao ('97)

Official invitation ( and a clarification )

2006-12-13T07:15:00.000+05:30

Little Rock has put up formal invitations on its website pertaining the Silver Jubilee function.

Please read them here. And here.

Note : Here is a clarification about the invitations above. Both of these have a note that says that "Photography and Videography is prohibited". We contacted Prof. Ninan to obtain a clarification on this announcement. Prof. Ninan wrote back confirming the following :

As is the usual practice at Little Rock, this restriction applies ONLY to stage events. This is to avoid having scores of attendees walking back and forth throughout the program causing discomfort to the audience and/or performers. ( Little Rock is arranging to photograph and video-record the performances and you can request the CD. )

So do not hesitate to carry your cameras and camcorders. Just shoot it !

- Sharath Rao('97)

Heads up !!

2006-11-30T01:50:00.000+05:30

Little Rock has posted updated information on the schedule for the Little Rock Silver Jubilee Alumni reunion scheduled to be held on campus on Saturday and Sunday, Dec 16-17th. We hope this will help those who are attending plan their schedule. Also if this can help those who currently think they cannot attend, review the circumstances and perhaps change their decision.

Just a reminder - alumni members, irrespective of your plan to attend the reunion, please register here.

Dear students,

Our website sees new registrations of our alumni every day. A vast number of old students are planning to come for the Alumni Reunion on December 16 and 17. I find that there are many coming even from distant cities in India, and some even from foreign countries to be here on this historic occasion. We are really overwhelmed by the response. We are indeed proud of our old students, much the same way as you are proud of your Little Rock.

Let me give you an outline of the programme.

Saturday, December 16 : 3 pm to 6 pm Get-together and tea party

Sunday, December 17 : 2 pm to 2.45 pm Fellowship

3 pm to 6 pm Formal Function

Mr. Justice Santhosh Hegde N, former Judge of the Supreme Court of India, and presently Lokayukta of Karnataka will be the guest of honour on Sunday. We are fortunate to have such a great personality to be with us. Justice Hegde wants to interact with the present and past students of Little Rock. He will not merely make a speech, but will have a question answer session with the audience.

After the formal function, we will have around 1 hour’s entertainment programme. The present students are preparing to entertain you with a few items for about half an hour. Old students who are talented and would like to present some items are welcome to do so. They must however inform us about it within a week of this letter. The item must be of high standard, suitable for a school audience (remember we are still a school) and very brief – lasting 5-7 minutes only. No elaborate skit, drama or orchestra is possible.

We will give this opportunity to earlier batches – up to 2001-02. Those who have definite plans must inform us by email clearly what they are planning to do, and get the approval of the entertainment committee. Since we have to plan every minute detail, as is our practice always, we cannot permit impromptu presentations. Please do understand this. The programme must end by 6 pm on both days.

We look forward to meeting the largest congregation of our old students right from the early days of the school. Alumni meet is not necessarily only for those who completed Class X or XII from Little Rock. Anyone who has studied here will form part of the Little Rock Alumni. It would thus be a great occasion.

Please register in the website if you haven’t done so as yet. We will try to send invitations to those whose addresses we get. We will also announce in local newspapers. Please consider this letter as an invitation and come even if another invitation doesn’t reach you. I hope you will do it.

Thanks,

Mathew C. Ninan,

Principal

Delta is not just a Greek letter anymore !

2006-11-05T10:52:00.000+05:30

As we write this, Ramyaram ('97) is taking the Delta Airlines flight from JFK, New York City to Chatrapathi Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai, her first flight as a flight attendant !

Sitting in her New York home contemplating her next career move with the GMAT examination due in a week, she suddenly chanced upon a advertisement. One thing lead to another, a month long training in Atlanta later, she is onboard. She says the move to shift from Computer Engineering which is what her undergraduate degree is about to a flight attendant's career was entirely unthought and unplanned.

She is seen here in her Delta Airlines uniform, a picture shot in Pittsburgh ( Courtesy : Sadiq Sherieef ('97) ).

Ramyaram was at Little Rock from UKG-III (1986-1989) and V-VI ( 1991-93). Since then she has lived and schooled in Oman, Bangalore, Hongkong, Melbourne and is now based in New York City with her parents and sister, Rashmiram ('00), who is a graduate student studying psychology at the New York University.

We always knew Ramya was a high-flyer !! Congratulations and wishing you more miles and smiles !!

Case Study - Class of 1997

2006-10-22T11:22:00.000+05:30

Little Rock has released a book bringing together some article contributions from students/teachers/alumni /parents and memorabilia from the yesteryears. Okay, no electronic version unfortunately. But those attending the 25th anniversary alumni reunion will be presented a copy !

Ashith and I sent a contribution which we are putting up here for the benefit of interested alums. Its an article providing some data of what the Class of 1997 has been upto since 1997 ! We talk about what they are doing, what areas of study have people pursued, how have boys and girls differed in the choices they made and where they are right now. Here is an extract. You may download the complete article here.

At 25, we are comparatively a young school. This is therefore best time for Little Rock to start such an exercise i.e. to commit itself to tracking the progress of its alumni members as they graduate from school and step out of that 30 acre-campus into a world which doesn’t bend over backwards to accommodate them. In order to help Little Rock with such an exercise, we have compiled a limited set of statistics of our graduating class – the Class of 1997.

It is hard to put an estimate on the size of this batch since several students joined and left at some point in time. Specifically in March 1997, this batch was about 144 strong – 82 boys and 62 girls. However, including the many students who were around after or before Class X, the potential size of the batch is likely around 225. Of these, we had access to data from 157 students i.e. we know where they are, what they are doing and we have the means (phone/email/local address) to reach them. This is the sample size of the data we used to compile the statistics we present in this article. Since the size is rather small and since the data we compiled were not through personal interviews but from our own knowledge and that of others, we suspect that there may be an error of less than 2-3% in the figures we present. In short, these figures are meaningful and say a story.

- Sharath Rao('97)

(A) Litle Rock in the Deccan (Herald)

2006-10-21T05:14:00.000+05:30

A well-wisher friend sends an article from the Deccan Herald about Little Rock. It says :

From a small school in 1982 to its present size of 3180 students, 145 teachers and 65 non-teaching staff, Little Rock Indian School is perhaps one of the largest schools in Karnataka with only English medium classes.

You will have to click the image for a larger view or save it on your local machine to read through.

Alumni reunion - dates finalized

2006-10-15T19:01:00.000+05:30

We are finally there. 60 more days to go and countdown has begun. A few things of note.

1) Dates and registration :

LRIS alumni reunion dates are officially and finally fixed for Dec 16th and 17th, 2006 - a Saturday and Sunday. This has been done in keeping with the preferences of alumni that were sought couple of weeks back through email - an overwhelming majority of alumni chose the weekend - no suprise. Venue is ofcourse the campus !!

In order to plan the event better with respect to chief guest, program itinerary and exact arrangements on campus, Little Rock is asking the alumni to officially register at their website. Please visit this link and fill the form to officially register. Please consider this as very important and register even if you are unable to attend the event - it helps Little Rock update their alumni database for future communication.

2) Silver Jubilee T-shirt Design :

A T-shirt is being designed to mark the occasion and Little Rock is inviting designs from the alumni. Artists and creative guns out there, its a privilege to you to have your design worn by hundreds of students and alumni. While no deadline has been mentioned, you are better off sending your designs ( an image file format through email to litroc77@sancharnet.in will do ) at the earliest. Earlier the better.

3) Program Itinerary :
If you have suggests on specific events/programs that you think should be included, please mention them in the registration form. Solo music/dance/other performances are particularly encouraged. Group performances if you can manage the logistics of forming a group/pratice etc., you may contact LRIS in this regard.

4) Silver Jubilee Project :

We talked about this here. Please contribute - you can now do so online !!

Please ensure that this information reaches as many of your friends as possible. 60 days is not too many, especially for people who have to plan leave and make travel arrangements etc.

Welcome the Fulbright Scholarship at Little Rock !

2006-10-11T19:19:00.000+05:30

Congratulations to Ms. Bindu Jose and Mr. Shaji Phillip, it just couldn’t get better than this !

This is one of the rare feats that very few individuals have the privilege of achieving and we should be really proud that this year 2 teachers from Little Rock have gotten there. A first time achievement for Little Rock and coming in the Silver jubilee year, it really is a achievement that is hard to beat.

As most of us know, Little Rock won national recognition when it received the best school in Computer education in Karnataka State back in 2002. This achievement goes one up bringing international recognition to Little Rock.

Here is a report from a local news website that the Little Rock website links to.

Little Rock Indian School, Brahmavar in its silver jubilee year has a bonanza in the form of two of its teachers selected for a Fulbright Fellowship to teach and study in designated US universities and schools for a period of six months. They will also visit Washington, D.C. for their orientation and closing seminar.

Of the five teachers selected from South India for this International Educators� Program of Fulbright-India, Shaji Philip and Bindu Jose are the two teachers of Little Rock selected for this rare honour. They also happen to be the only two teachers selected from Karnataka State. To quote the words of Jennifer Gibson, Chief of the Teacher Exchange Program of the US Department of State, �The fact that you have been chosen for this award is a testament to your dedicated service to secondary education, and is international recognition for your excellence as teachers�.

The Principal of the School, Mathew C Ninan in a press note has expressed his hope that this will be a unique experience for the two teachers to visit many institutions in the US, and interact with outstanding educators from around the world. They will be able to discuss and learn best practices from many institutions while they teach in US universities and schools of repute. On behalf of the School, Prof Ninan has congratulated Shaji Philip and Bindu Jose on having come out successful in the tests and interview, and wished them well in their endeavours.

Here is a note on the Fulbright Scholarship.

The Fulbright Program aims to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries, through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills.

The United States Congress created the Fulbright Program in 1946, immediately after World War II. Senator J. William Fulbright, sponsor of the legislation, saw it as a step toward building international cooperation. With this as a starting point, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 255,000 participants—chosen for their leadership potential—with the opportunity to observe each others’ political, economic and cultural institutions, exchange ideas and embark on joint ventures of importance to the general welfare of the world’s inhabitants.

While overseas Little Rockers await the arrival of the fulbright fellows Ms. Bindu Jose and Mr. Shaji Philip to North America, the littlerockers congratulates them, wishes them the very best and hopes that they can make the best of this rare opportunity.

See our previous post on Ms. Bindu Jose.

Kudos to Julie Lewis

2006-09-23T23:09:00.000+05:30

We are late, but we shall post this anyway since its unlikely most readers are informed regarding this.

Julie Esther Lewis, geography teacher of early and mid-90s, Head Teacher of late 90s and early 00s and currently Kindergarten principal has been featured in the local media. Daljiworld.com says :

Julie Esther Lewis, principal of the Kindergarten section of the renowned Little Rock Indian School at Chantar near Brahmavar here is a shining example of determination and grit. Despite her busy schedule and demanding responsibilities, she has achieved something, which only a few have managed in the past. The ever-smiling Julie has obtained the first rank in the MS Exams in Counselling and Psychotherapy conducted by the Kuvempu University, Shimoga.

When asked as why she made a choice to study this and how useful the study will be for her present profession, she gave a candid answer. She said, "In the present times, children face a myriad of problems that come in the way of their learning and balanced growth - attention disorder, learning disabilities, conflicts with peers, anxiety, stress, just to name a few. A course such as Counselling and Psychotherapy equips teachers with the basic skills to identify early symptoms in children and help them out through counselling."

Julie says she owes her success to the unflinching support and encouragement from her husband Walter Fernandes and daughter Venessa. Of course, she does not forget to acknowledge the support and guidance given by principal Mathew C Ninan.

In my experience of 2 years of Geography (1993-94, 1996-97) and economics (1996-97), I found her to be one of the most organized teachers at Littlerock. Her classroom sessions tended to be absolutely non-chaotic. She managed to control the class without appearing too stict or loud or violent. And no suprise, course syllabi were invariably completed in time !

Congratulations teacher.

- Sharath Rao('97)

Piled higher and deeper @ Graduate School*

2006-09-23T22:32:00.000+05:30

Here is an update on some of the Littlerockers that we know of who started their Masters program at American universities this fall.

Smitha Suhas('97) started her MBA program specializing in project management from University of Northern Virginia. Smitha and her husband are based in Asburn, VA. We covered them here before . By the way, she is our new blogger that adds to our previously compiled list of Littlerocker bloggers .

Varsha Rao('97) started her Masters in ECE at San Diego State University this Fall. Coming on the heels of this good news is also the reason Varsha moved to San Diego, CA from Edmonton, Canada. This July Varsha’s husband Dr. Praveen Rao took up employment at the famed Scripps Research Institute located outside San Diego. Scripps is one of the premier research institutes, one that is home to 3 Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry and medicine. Congratulations Varsha and Praveen. We covered the couple here.

Gautam Philar('97) is joining Masters in Information Systems Management program at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, PA. That makes him the second littlerocker at CMU. With 90% of the students from this program getting Fortune 500 offers, we hope to see Gautam at one of these companies in 18 months from now. He joins Sharath Rao('97) who is a second year Masters student at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. Gautam is a graduate of RV College of Engineering, Bangalore.

Aaron Fernandes ('98) and Gautam Nayak('98) have started their Masters in Computer Science programs at the University of Southern California. Aaron and Gautam are both Computer Science graduates from MIT, Manipal.

How is life going to be for these guys ? Well, enough has been written about the life of a (American) graduate student. This is a serious take . Here is a humorous take . Here is an graphically humorous take - a cartoon strip based on the life of a graduate student.

* - is probably a trademark of somebody here .

Manali gets All that she wants !

2006-09-05T08:14:00.000+05:30

Yet another wonderful singer from the batch of '98,was Manali Hazarika, the bubbly girl from Manipal. Manali would very often be seen singing away on stage, winning many a Western vocals competition, and entertaining us all at those unforgettable Family hours that we miss so much now.

Well, it sure seems like Manali got all that she wanted in her husband Dr.Rohit Singh, who is an ENT surgeon at KMC Manipal. The two got married on 12th May, 2006 at Ranchi, following which there was a reception at Valley View, Manipal on 20th May, which was attended by many batchmates and juniors from LRIS.

Manali was so busy preparing for her PG Entrance exams that when contacted for sending her wedding snaps, she asked us to wait till November, a good four months away ! :-O But we are thrilled and grateful to have them so much earlier than promised. :-)

(L-R) Lali Madam, Prof. Matthew C.Ninan, Shalini Matthew

( L-R) Diana D'Souza, Veena Kesavan, Rohit and Manali, Geetha Vaidya, Namratha Shetty, Smitha D'souza

( L-R) Fazil Haneef, Rithesh Shetty, Abhishek Gurumadhva, Rohit Pai, Laxmi Shetty and husband

A mini LRIS-reunion at her wedding, a home in Manipal near home, a Doctor as a husband ... Seems like one couldn't ask for more ! We wish this couple a great life ahead, and Manali all the best for her examinations.

- Aswin D'Souza ( '98)

Online payment options NOW !

2006-09-03T23:26:00.000+05:30

We have some update on the payment options for the Little Rock Silver Jubilee Project.

In the letter on the website, Little Rock says they accept money through cheques or drafts. I wrote to Prof. Mathew C. Ninan requesting him to make available on online option to make our contributions arguing that the ease of payment can have a positive effect on the response they receive. And yes, we have it !

Prof. Ninan got back to me with how such a mode of payment is possible. You may send the amount electronically to the following account.

Bank Name : ICICI Bank
Account holder name : LITTLE ROCK INDIAN SCHOOL
Account number : 007201016385
Branch : Extension counter, Dr TMA Pai Hospital complex, Udupi.

As the website says, in addition to the amount, you are required to inform Little Rock of your own details in your covering letter if you are sending a draft/cheque. If you are however making online remittance, you may send an email to litroc77@sancharnet.in. Please mention:

Your Name
Years of study at Little Rock
Full address, phone number
Email ID ( which ofcourse is a part of your email)

For those of the overseas Littlerockers who arent aware, you can use the money2india option available with the ICICI which allows you to send US dollars/Euros etc. directly with no extra charge whatsoever. I have used this before and found it extremely convenient - so if you are in the US and have difficulty, send me a mail at raosharathonline(AT)yahoo(DOT)com.

Alumni members in India who havent electronically transferred money before might enquire at your nearest ICICI branch to know more.

If you are sending an email, you might also want to mention any identification number/tracking number and date that ICICI provides you when you make the remittance so that Little Rock can map your identity to your payment.

So folks, its probably time to put our money where our mouth is !

The Silver jubilee project at Little Rock !

2006-09-03T21:49:00.000+05:30

Little Rock has announced the Silver Jubilee Project involving construction of landmark structures commemorating the 25th anniversary of the school this year. In a letter released on their website, Prof. Ninan has called upon old students, in addition to current parents and other well-wishers to contribute to the Silver Jubilee fund that can be used towards the project.

Two projects stated are –

a) Construction of a science library block of nearly 8000 sq. ft area (that is roughly 8 times the area of a typical 2 BR flat in Udupi region (not Bombay!) and

b) Silver Jubilee indoor auditorium cum Stadium. Each of these projected to cost nearly 50 lakhs.

Further, the website says the names of those who contribute Rs. 5000/- or more shall be inscribed on marble plaques in one of these buildings and thus casting in stone your contribution for a foreseeable eternity ! In fact such a plaque already exists in the Decennial learning center built to commemorate Little Rock’s 10th anniversary.

The letter goes on to say - “Surely there are many of our old students who are capable of contributing this amount or perhaps much more. If God has blessed you materially, please do contribute liberally to this project. We would like to inscribe many such generous people’s names in marble.”

Yes, we agree. All over the world, educational institutions – schools, universities, museums and other non-profit organizations depend on voluntary contributions of alumni, well-wishers and the sometimes, charity foundations. In our own country, the IIT foundation and other such organizations have pioneered the idea of raising funds for developmental works at the IITs. The IIMs are now following suit.

Further, this is one of the best occasions to make a contribution for two reasons. Firstly, for symbolic reasons, this being Little Rock’s Silver jubilee anniversary. Secondly, and more importantly, we want the hard-earned money to go a worthy cause where there is a definite plan of the end to which the funds will go and that is exactly what Little Rock has provided us - very clear, tangible plans on how the funds shall be utilized.

We hope that this fund-raising drive at Little Rock turns out to be an unqualified success!

Update : Online payment options have been made available. Read more here.

The CPC - 100 days old

2006-08-19T07:48:00.000+05:30

First, a visit here or or perhaps here is in order !

Its 100 days now since we announced the Class Photo Collection (CPC) on this blog. We invited the alumni community to contribute their class photographs towards this collection. Our ongoing goal in the CPC has been to build and maintain an online repository that contains a picture of each and every section of every class of every single batch that ever went to Little Rock.

The response to our request has been quite overwhelming. When we announced this project on May 9th, 2006, we had only 18 photographs. At the end of 100 days, we have procured 128 photographs from 9 different batches so far. In most cases we contacted our contributors personally and in some cases, where scanning was issue, Sandeep Kamath('97) personally met them in Bangalore/Udupi, obtained the photographs and scanned them for us. Great job as usual Sandeep.

[ Click for larger version ]

We would like to use this post to thank all the contributors - there are over 25 of them who have contributed different number of pictures. The list below shows the original owners of the photographs (not those who sent us) and the number of photos they contributed to the collection. Some alumni members have collected photos from their friends but havent mentioned to us their friends' names - that explains why these numbers below dont add up to 128.

Abhishek Phadke('00) - 1

Angeline Periera('96) - 5

Angelo Periera('93) - 5

Anjali Krishnan('99) - 3

Ashith hegde('97) - 7

Ashmitha Hegde('00) -12

Athith Rao('04) - 14

Austine DSouza('98) - 9

Bharath Rao('94) - 3

devina Quadros('00) - 1

Kavya Shetty('99) - 6

Srinivas Patil (Staff) - 1

Ramyaram Pasapula('97) - 2

Rashmi Shetty('95) - 2

Rohit Nayak('00) -1

Sadiq Shaik Sherieef('97) - 1

Shaimaa Munir('97) - 1

Sharath Rao('97) - 8

Sheetal Maiya('98) - 1

Shilpa Acharya('97) - 6

Shilpa Udupa('97) - 3

Shruthi Reddy('97) - 1

Soumya Priya('99) - 3

Soumya Suvarna('97) - 2

Some noteworthy effort :

There have been some efforts that stood out and we shall mention a few here.

That comparitively extraordinary number of 41 photographs from the Class of 2004 is due courtesy Athith Rao('04) who voluntarily took up the responsibility of contacting his classmates and is responsible for singly contributing 41 photographs ( including 14 of his own ) - nearly 33% of our entire collection ! Angelo Periera('93) got his family from New Delhi to send his and sister Angeline's('96) photographs by surface mail to Texas, USA which he scanned and sent over. Ashmitha Hegde('00), on her trip to Brahmavar/Kokkarne from Bangalore collected pictures from 3 of her friends, in addition to hers and Ashith's and sent us in all 37 photographs. We are touched by this effort !

Non-uniform representation across batches:

The above graph that shows the contribution of different batches to the collection is a little disappointing in the sense quite a few batches have gone underrepresented or in many cases, unrepresented so far. We are exploring possibilities that this collection can be included as a part of any electronic (CD/DVD) souveneir coming out of Little Rock on the occasion of the Silver Jubilee. Especially for this reason atleast, we hope that in the weeks to come, we can have more contributions from underrepresented batches. Please see this post for details on how to send us the photographs.

So people, keep them coming. There are hundreds of you out there and consequently hundreds of photographs too. We just need some of you to take an extra effort to locate your photographs and contact us.

Littlerockers' (who) B.L.O.G !

2006-08-13T06:10:00.000+05:30

Ever been curious enough to invade Angelo Periera's( 93) virtual space ? If not, how about lending your ears to Ranjeeth Shetty('97) here or perhaps conversing with the devil that is Dhiraj Krishnakumar('99) . Ever think about listening to Arjun Zakariah's ('97) dangerous confessions or having a candid conversation with Malavika Prasanna('98)? Why not have a walk in Aswin D'Souza's realm of randomness , or simply find out what Karthik Ramkumar's ('98) confusion is all about ?

While Mukesh Nayak haphazardly accumulates his thoughts here, Krishna Ramkumar('00) never fails to entertain. Bharath Rao('94) reserves his judgements here,Aparna Rajagopalan('99) seems sure that its an abyss out there. Letters from Sharath Rao('97) flow on and his broadcasts wont cease either. Atleast as long as Ravikanth Somayaji('97) keeps blinking!

If you have survived the above prose, welcome. And if you did click through a link or two , you probably already know what this is about. Yeah, there are a lot of blogs out there and apparently there are 2 news ones starting every second. Among these millions of bloggers, we reckon, atleast a handful might be LittleRockers.

This post has been an attempt to compile a list of littlerocker bloggers. For littlerockers who have known the above authors - and that includes some of their former teachers who read this blog! - it might be a good way for you all to keep in touch or perhaps the blog is a source of infotainment. It might also be a place to know them better. "You dont know a person until you have read his/her blog", says a quote I just made up ! For an outsider, its a sneak peak into a littlerocker's world or perhaps a lazy afternoon read. If there are current littlerocker bloggers out there, their blogs might one day be a source of LRIS gossip and some scoops on the daily goings on at school. We cant wait to see some such blog !

The blogs listed here shall be always be accessible through the blogroll on this blog. We really intend to keep this list as current as possible and shall include new blogs as we come across or hear of them.

The best way though would be inform us if you start a blog. Please write to the following ID should you start a blog or should you come across a blog authored by a littlerocker.

- Sharath Rao('97)

Chura Liya Hai Tumne !

2006-08-08T05:47:00.000+05:30

Sonia Rai will be best known in our batch of '98 as the girl with the melodious voice, who simply loved to sing... Family hour, Eastern vocal competitions, Last day of school ... we would all be graced by her melody.

One of the songs we would often hear her sing was 'Chura Liya', and it comes as no surprise to us, then, that indeed, her heart was eventually 'chura liya'-ed by a handsome Shaokat Ali, a Software Delivery Manager at ACS ( Affiliated Computer Services ).

Sonia, also working for ACS, met Shaokat at a cultural event at work, and as destiny would have it, they got married in Bangalore on December 30th, 2005, with a reception at Adarsh Palm Meadows. Coincidentally, this is just one day after the other Sonia ( Sonia Olivia D'Souza ) from the batch of '98 got married.

We wish Sonia and Shaokat a wonderful life ahead... one that is full of joy, laughter, and of course - music. :-)

- Aswin D'Souza ('98)

Mushtaq and Isha - Happily Married

2006-08-06T11:49:00.000+05:30

Mushtaq and Isha, Moodubidri, July 10th '06

Mushtaq Ahmed ('94) got married to Isha in Moodubidri, a town near Karkala on the 10th of July '06.

Mushtaq was at Little Rock during 1991 -1996 i. e. from class VII to class XII. He then joined R.V.Colleege of Engineering, Bangalore and graduated in Electrical and Electronics in Sep 2000. After a brief 6 month stint in a Mumbai company, he moved to Abu Dhabi to join his parents and has since been working there. Currently, he is a Projects Engineer at Bahri & Mazroei Techinical Systems Co. He can be reached at mushtaq,bmtconline or mushyahmed,yahoo.

Isha a native of Moodubidri completed her Bachelors in Electronics & Communication from P.E College of Engineering, Mangalore. She was scheduled to join L & T Infotech as a software engineer but is now happy to join Mushtaq instead (!) at Abu Dhabi.

Dr. Mohamed Ashraff('93) & Mushtaq with their wives

The names of Mushtaq and his brother Dr. Mohamed Ashraff along with Sabu Phillip('93), Nishchal Shetty('95) , Arjun Tholar('96) and Marcus DSouza('97) would figure prominently among the memories of the glorious sports days and the bitter sports rivalries of early 90s.

littlerocker wishes the couple great times ahead !

Sonia D'Souza ties the knot

2006-08-05T03:03:00.000+05:30

Sonia D'Souza ('98) got married to Patrick D'Souza on Dec 29th, 2005 . The happy couple is currently residing in Houston, Texas, where Patrick works as Associate Business Development Manager for the US Super-store, HEB.

After her 10th std at Little Rock, Sonia completed her PUC from SMS College Brahmavar, and subsequently attained her BSc Nursing degree from Dr. MV Shetty College in Mangalore. Following a year of teaching as a lecturer in Udupi College of Nursing, she moved to Houston with her husband and is currently preparing for her 'Registered Nurse' examinations. She hopes to get her Green card for her stay in the Unites States soon.

We wish Sonia good luck with her exams and wish this beaming couple a very happy married life !

- Aswin D'Souza

Prof. Ninan's message to the alumni

2006-08-04T10:31:00.000+05:30

The LRIS website update says it all. Prof. Ninan has posted a letter addressed to the alumni on the LRIS website. You may download the letter here.There is more information in there than you will imagine. Please circulate this information/link to ur friends ( and foes alike ) !

We keep our fingers crossed to hear more on the preparations for the Silver Jubilee celebrations.

Alumni footprints

2006-08-01T20:56:00.000+05:30

The school's alumni are a galaxy of socially conscious, confident and brilliant men and women who are adequately equipped to face the challenges of the new millenium.

So says the "Footprints" brochure coming out of Little Rock. Wow, we are impressed ! Thank you Prof. Ninan !

"Footprints", by the way, is an international symposium hosted at Little Rock on effective schooling and effective leadership (in education). It will be held between Oct 16-18th on campus. Page 5 of the brochure boasts an executive committee with individuals from 6 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. A previous edition of the conference was hosted in April 2004. We wish the conference success - in terms of participation and meaningful and lasting effects on the ground.

- Sharath Rao('97)

Pradeep and Roshni vow to take vows

2006-07-28T03:47:00.000+05:30

We have news from our very first batch. Pradeep Kanchan ('93) is getting married later this year. He got engaged this April to Roshni in Udupi.

Pradeep with Roshni, his parents and brother Prakash
[ Click image for larger version ]

Pradeep is currently a lecturer in the Computer Science department at the St. Joseph's Engineering College, Mangalore. He earlier completed his engineering from NMAMIT, Nitte in Jun 1999. Roshni, a commerce graduate currently working with Nokia distributors in Mangalore. They got to know each other through their parents' common friend. In affirmation of his belief in the 'arranged marriage model' as Pradeep says in a mail to us, they were engaged on Apr 23, 2006 in Udupi.

Extraordinarily affable and soft-spoken that Pradeep was at school, it would not be an exaggeration to say he could well have been one among every junior's favorite seniors ! Pradeep's brother Prakash Kanchan ('99) , who may well have compensated for the above ;-)) , finds an earlier mention here.

In the meantime, we await an invitation to his marriage in mid-December.

- Sharath Rao('97)

"This is London"

2006-07-20T11:14:00.000+05:30

London, July 18, 2006 : Harikrishna D, Lali Mathew and Mary Joseph

[ Click images for larger versions]

There is something noticeable about these pictures. Firstly, it appears our Vice-principal Lali Madam has, for a moment atleast, kept aside what is arguably the best saree collection I have ever seen over the years ! Secondly and somewhat less obviously so, this picture was shot in London.

Vice Principal Lali Mathew, Biology teacher Harikrishna Sir and Head Teacher Mary Joseph have been visiting the UK in connection with a conference. And 3 littlerockers - Raghavendra Hegde('97), Naveen Srivinas('98) and Vineeta Rao('00) were able to catch up with them over what appears to be a cup of tea and with things littlerockish.

Earlier as a part of the sightseeing, Dr. Jeevan Crasta('94) who is studying in Liverpool took the guests around the city while Naveen took them to a tour of Oxford and London - the Buckingam Palace, Tower bridge and the Madame Tussad's museum. ( see picture below) . On July 18, they met up with Raghavendra, Naveen, his sister and Vineeta in Canary Wharf, London's new financial district. Later in the evening, Vineeta had dinner with the visitors at an Indian restaurant. So there it was, a tour of some things interesting courtesy the littlerockers. In an email to us, Vineeta quoted Lali Madam's parting remark - "There was a time when we used to look after our students and now our students look after us."

Harikrishna D., Lali Mathew and Mary Joseph with the wax models of Aishwarya Rai and Amitabh Bachan at the Madame Tussad's musueum in London.

The story of how this meeting itself happened is interesting. It is an example in how we littlerockers have exploited technology and alumni networks ( social and electronic ) to enable the otherwise unthinkable.

Mary Teacher's daughter Anusha('00) casually mentioned to Ashmitha Hegde('00) about her mother's presence in London - a fact that she conveyed to her brother Ashith. Ashith, again in a mail to me made a casual mention of this. Since I have been in touch with Raghavendra and Vineeta, I shot off a mail to them making a mention of this and asking them to perhaps contact Prof. Ninan through email for details. Vineeta wrote to Prof. Ninan who told her that the visitors are being hosted by Jeevan, a fact Vineeta conveyed to me. I told Bharath Rao('94), my brother and Jeevan's classmate to send Jeevan's phone number to Vineeta. Vineeta contacted Jeevan who gave her Naveen's number which finally set the meeting up.

Naveen S, Harikrishna D, Lali Mathew, Raghavendra Hegde, Vineeta Rao, Mary Joseph

And all of the above happened within 48 hours across 3 continents, and at a negligible cost not within a team that already existed in place but involving a bunch of loosely knit individuals some of who dont even know of the other's existence.

Moral of the Story :
The network is everything !

Naveen, by the way, has put together a collection of pictures shot with the guests. You may view them here.

[ BBC World Service radio listeners will recogniz the post title. "This is London." is what the newsreaders say half past almost every hour (IST) with that clipped accent that is unmistakably British ! ]

- Sharath Rao('97)

Vinaya and Sandeep

2006-07-17T07:50:00.000+05:30

Vinaya and Sandeep, Manipal, May 12, 2006

Vinaya Pai('99) got married to Sandeep Nayak on May 12th, 2006 in Manipal.

Vinaya, now Sanjana, was at Little Rock from 1994-1999 after which she studied at Malnad College of Engineering ( Electrical Engineering ). She has since been with Infosys Technologies in Bangalore.

Sandeep, also from Malnad College of Engineering is well, also with Infosys, Bangalore. He is currently though in Boston andVinaya is expected to join him soon.

Wishing this couple a very good married life.

- Sharath Rao('97)

The Class of 2000 reunion

2006-07-06T08:11:00.000+05:30

Class of 2000 - A little get-together, June 25, 2006, Udupi
[ Click for larger clearer images ]

Folks at the Class of 2000 had a reunion - a first for their batch - couple of weeks back on June 25, 2006 at the Udupi Residency.

We received a few pictures and some notes from the event - courtesy Akshatha Manjunath('00) - current final year MBBS student at KMC Mangalore. ( So, a "Dr." prefix to her name is in order ). Thanks Akshatha.

At 22, the turnout was not at all bad. If you are from the Class of 2000 and didnt attend you should know who did ! Nishka, Nancy, Elvina , Suman, Shwetha, Akshatha, Amrut , Nishant , Kaushik , Oliver , Siddharth shetty , Siddharth kamath, Shuaib ,Dhanraj , Shrinath , Girish , Sandeep patil, Tim , Faiz, Ramnath , Prajwal , Rakshith Nayak.

And what did they do ? Catching up 6 years since most of them left LRIS - old friends and new acquaintances recalling tales from Little Rock with Gilbert Sir, Ramakrishna Bhat sir, Sitaram sir being primary targets of immitations ( no, they were not present ! ) and ofcourse Vasudev Bhat sir too.

Oh yeah, and they posed for pictures - the ladies here.

The gentlemen too.

Some food. Some conversation too.

Some dance ....

and dramatics too !

Expectedly this first of its kind for the Class of 2000 has done much good not just in terms of a few hours well-spent on the 25th but also in helping reinforce old bonds and what we hope in bringing more alumni into the fold.

Contact points for readers who are from the Class of 2000 ( or who need to find someone from there) are their online groups that exist here (on Orkut) and here (on Yahoogroups ).

- Sharath Rao('97)

Know thy campus

2006-07-03T07:01:00.000+05:30

We have a picture here courtesy Wikimapia from Roohi Zain ('97) that shows how campus "Little Rock" looks from up above. So if there are readers here who havent been to the campus in a long while, maybe there is some information for you in the picture, for the rest, there is some thrill !

Ashith worked to mark 3 landmarks within the campus as you see in the picture below....and no, you get nothing to identify these, trivial as they are ! )

"The Little Rock Campus" - From up above the world so high !
[ Click for larger version ]

What would be rather nontrivial is getting someone to identify Class IX E in March 1996. Dont even try - not only would it be non-trivial but it would infact be impossible - for, Class IX of those times had only 4 sections A-D.

For those who are deficient on the "LRIS campus quotient", we give the answer to the original question anyway. The smallest square box to the left is the dining hall, the longish box on the top is the main academic block which has housed a majority of the classrooms in Little Rock's history and the only one thats left is the beehive ( that came up in 1992 ).

- Sharath Rao('97)

Class of 1993 - a retrospective

2006-06-25T11:48:00.000+05:30

Girls - Class of 1993

[ We always mention this and we will do so again.
Click on images for larger, more clearer images. ]

Circa 1989, 1990. There was a time when LittleRockers were taken on school trips to distant places - Ooty, Mysore, parts of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Those were times when classes were smaller, there were fewer than 5 school buses, Rajiv Gandhi was still around and it took 1 year and a deposit of Rs. 5000 to get a phone connection. Woeful times those - for littlerockers though, they must have been fun times.

To put it in perspective, the first batch of LRIS had 2 sections all the way from Class I - X. About 50 students wrote the first board exams in March 1993. Compare that to over 210 students who wrote exams this March. That is what perhaps made it feasible to have class trips in those days. Maybe LittleRock has just become more risk-averse and doesnt want to take up the responsibility of taking around 200 odd students. Or maybe there is no obviously irreplaceable value from comes from a class trip. Or perhaps doing it for the first time ( as was true with anything for the first batch students ) was fun but not anymore.

We managed to get our hands on these pictures from sources that prefer to remain anonymous. That though doesnt prevent them from making for good viewing. We arent really certain but they appear to be from around 1991-92. We arent even sure where they were shot either. If you have an idea, please leave a comment.

Boys, Class of 1993

If you are from the Class of 1993, ofcourse you would be either be present in one of these pictures or atleast recognize most of them. What about students from other batches ? How many of these first batch littlerockers can you name ?

( It is likely that some of the readers were not born around 1991-92. - you are certainly exempted from this (somewhat) demanding exercise ! :-) )

Finally, a gem of a picture.

Date : Feb 1993.
Location : The Beehive
Event : Farewell, Class of 1993, the first ever !

Virtually everybody seems delighted - possibly because they all got their fair share of bonda/vada/burfee/cake/coffee. Afterall why else would each of them sport that satisfied/excited chuckle/grin when it was time to leave Little Rock !!

Or wait a minute, was that the reason ! Hmm..hmm..good question !

Its raining littlerockers on Orkut !

2006-06-17T10:29:00.000+05:30

As most readers know, a community exists on Orkut.com whose membership is open to any LittleRocker, irrespective of any batch, any duration of study pursued at any time in the history of Little Rock. Infact, this by far is the only such forum - with other groups/communities catering to special interests - mainly restricted to specific batches.

[ Before you read further, if you are unaware of orkut, please send us a mail here. ]

This post is about how meterioc the rise in the membership strength has been - something that has taken us by surprise. It took the community nearly 1 year to grow from zero to 50. However, in the last 3 months itself, the membership has more than tripled as shown in the figure - rougly adding 2-3 members every 24 hours !

With the increasing membership, the activity in terms of messages posted, newly initiated threads has also significantly increased in the past 4 months - a rather encouraging trend. Topics have ranged from rather hot and burning issues of the day to recollections of hostel life to more casual discussions - a recent one on the World Cup football !

Although the growing membership is more than a welcome development, the growth has not been representative across batches. The exact count is not quite available - but a ball-park estimate of the members prior to and including Class of 1996 is likely to be as low as 25. Most new members appear to be from the more recent batches at Little Rock - Class of 2000 and after - with a good helping of current students as well !

In addition to the above - what one might call the flagship/umbrella community, communities dedicated to littlerockers of different batches have sprung up in the recent weeks. There are quite a few members who are part of these smaller communities but arent registered in the umbrella/flagship community. Thus, the current size of 363 as of June 17, 2006, is likely to be an underestimate.

Several alumni members whose presence in Little Rock was rather brief or years ago and who had since completely lost touch with the Little Rock ecosystem have suddenly appeared and found themselves amidst their classmates thanks to Orkut !

In any case, orkut has been tremendously effective in bringing together the Little Rock alumni community. Its all happening here on Orkut ( Tony Greig cricket commentary style ;-) ) and Little Rock, please take note !

[ Note : All forums/online communities that we are aware of have been linked to from this blog. ]

- Sharath Rao('97)

"Email IDs - we need them !", sez Little Rock !

2006-06-12T23:30:00.000+05:30

Karthik Hebbar ('05) , a current Class XII student at Little Rock on the Little Rock orkut community

Well I'm currently studyin in Little Rock
(12th std.)

It seems that school wants to collect the email IDs of as many alumni as possible.
So plz send me your
Email iD
full name
and which batch did ya study
And i'll make sure they get it.

IF some one's wondering who am i
I'm Karthik Hebbar C

Little Rock wants our email IDs !! So, we are seeing the first signs of an official initiative from Little Rock with respect to the silver jubilee celebrations tentatively scheduled for mid-Dec 2006. Heartening development indeed !

In response to the above message, I am sending a list of email IDs to Karthik. Even though some of your IDs may be in the list ( you can check below if you wish ), readers feel free to send Karthik a mail at his email ID ( hebbav,gmail.com).

These are the lists of IDs I have sent to Karthik. List 1 List 2 List 3

Members of the Yahoogroups - Class of 1997 are exempted since I positively have your email IDs.

- Sharath Rao('97)

Kishori D'Mello - a proud mom

2006-06-03T01:32:00.000+05:30

Baby Sian - 2 days old

[ Click on images for larger versions ]

Introducing baby girl Sian, daughter of Kishori D'Mello('97) who became a proud mother this March.

Kishori was married to Santosh Balli on May 15, 2005 in Kundapur. A littlerocker of 12 years, she studied architecture in MIT Manipal ( 1999-2004).

Kishori with Santosh, Marriage Day, May 15, 2005

Kishori announced the good news in an email to the Yahoogroup - Class of 1997 on May 4, 2006 :

"hi everybody,i hardly get time 2 check mails and reply 2 them these days, a busy mom now. MOM??????? yes u read it right, i'm the mom of a swt lil 56 days old baby girl. well i know its a real surprise. baby's name is Sian, a hebrew name wich means graceful gift of God."

Sian, in one of her recent pictures. 3 months old

The earliest picture we have of Kishori herself is from nearly 20 years ago - a UKG A class photo of 1987. Marked in the picture, Kishori is seated first from left.

Seated first from the left, Kishori D'Mello, Circa. 1987

[ Click images or go here for larger versions ]

At Little Rock, Kishori was (ironically) talked about for being one of the most silent students in the batch. As per the laws of compensation, we hope Sian is blessed with a gift of gab that will more than make up for those silent moments thanks to the "consummate practicioner of silence" her mom was in her schooling days !

Samarth@IIT

2006-06-02T09:02:00.000+05:30

Littlerocker Samarth Kudalkar('04) has cleared the IIT-JEE 2006. We learnt this from 33rockers - a blog maintained by Standard XII batch of the Class of 2004. ( we have a permanent link to this blog on right hand side )

Congratulations Samarth - a splendid achivement !

This is a typical time of the year when Class X and more so, XII students are in exam-writing, result-waiting, future planning, mode. Good luck folks ! We expect to hear of many more achievements from the Class of 2004.

Fortunately, most exams are over by the time its World Cup football ( starting June 9th ). It could be worse though - around this time in 1999, when the Class of 1997 wrote their exams and/or awaited results - India was at war - in the mountains of Kargil and in the cricket grounds of England.

How to become a doctor

2006-05-22T02:50:00.000+05:30

The chart was sourced from here. Apparently, it is from the British Medical Journal.
[ Click for larger images ]

In more news from the medical front, Sanjeev Bhat('97) is joining Sri Devaraj Urs Medical College, Kolar as a PG student in Microbiology. We featured Sanjeev in detail here.

In a lighter vein, we used the chart above to find out why he chose to be a microbiologist ( possibly the first for a littlerocker, certainly the first for the Class of 1997 ) - in the company of microbes, germs and diseases or so atleast laypersons like us think. As you will notice, this chart didnt help ! Sanjeev, maybe you can improve upon the chart ;).

In an update, Shaimaa Munir('97) is joining College of Dental Sciences, Davangere for MDS in Periodontics. This is a change from her earlier choice.

Apparently, nobody has yet written a chart as a guide for the dentists in helping them in making career choices. So, why are you waiting ?

And what about one for the rapidly growing breed of the software engineers ? :)

We are an year old

2006-05-19T06:09:00.000+05:30

We are a year old today. On May 18, 2005, the first ever post was made on this blog. We shall use this post to put on record a few words on this occasion.

Over the past year, we have strived within our limited means to bring together people under an umbrella, give them a place to come and read about their batchmates and schoolmates. In addition to this conscious attempt at reporting stories and updates, we realize that we are progressively building up a permanent electronic archive of events, achievements and happenings associated with the littlerockers – something that will only get more valuable over time. Moreover, although we here at the blog haven’t helped people directly interface with one another, we hope that we have, atleast indirectly brought long lost classmates together.

The past year has since tremendous progress in the direction of establishing a comprehensive alumni network infrastructure and we are happy to see this rapid development and only hope the pace is accelerated. (A separate post is dedicated to the alumni activities.)

The blog was born out of a need for providing to the public – mostly littlerockers – a peek into the going ons in the Class of 1997. Within days of opening the blog however, this mission was expanded to include other batches too. However, we were also aware that of the limitations of getting several people from different batches to work together and remotely on an venture like this. Finally, we decided that to the extent possible we shall welcome information from all littlerockers we personally know and from those who are willing to inform us of the developments on their end. A separate website was established to facilitate this. Given our inherent limitations of time and resources, we have to a reasonable extent succeeded in involving updates regarding littlerockers from batches other than the Class of 1997 as well.

Its interesting to see that the blog has a significant audience – more than we expected – and growing. Since Apr 5^th, 2006, when we started logging the blog statistics, we have received nearly 1800 hits all over the world. The chart on top shows unique ( on a daily basis ) visits from the top 7 countries.

On that note, may we take a moment to pat our backs ;) and you guys, keep coming back !

P. S :

For a year now, we have been faceless and nameless. When we said “we” or “thelittlerocker” it was never obvious who we were. Ofcourse, those of you who knew us knew that we maintained the blog but there was never a covert attempt at stating who worked behind the scenes. That now changes as you will have noted in the profile section.

Little Rock everywhere !

2006-05-19T05:26:00.000+05:30

Note : Only batches for which reliable figures are available have been included. Error unlikely to exceed 5%. Also, potential strength varies among different batches. For eg. Class of 1993 has a potential maximum strength of about 80 whereas the same for Class of 1997 is nearly 200.

Over the years, several developments have taken place in the direction of establishing a self-sustaining alumni network infrastructure – by self-sustaining we mean something that is not baby-sitted by Little Rock management or any individual. Instead, these are autonomous groups who manage their individual batch networks themselves.

Our estimate is that at this point in time, nearly 500 littlerockers from the last 12 batches out of LittleRock are networked in a formal setup – in other words, nearly 500 unique email ids of unique individuals exist. This number does not include informal channels of contact such as neighbours, common friends, telephone contacts etc.

Here is a timeline of everything that happened and the individuals who to a large extent have driven this effort.

Little Rock and the Yahoogroups

May 24, 2003 - Govind Diwakar starts a group lrx2003 for the Class XII students of his batch - Class of 2001. Current membership – 26

Nov 30, 2003 - Ashith Hegde and Sharath Rao start off the Melting Pot - for the Class of 1997. Current membership – 128

July 25, 2004 - Sharath Rao starts off the Little Rock group on Orkut – any student from any batch of Little Rock. Current membership – 268

May 24, 2005 - Deepak Bhandary starts off the Yahoogroup for the Class of 1998. Current membership – 71

On the same day, Dhiraj Bhandary starts off the Yahoogroup for the Class of 1995. Current membership – 39

A day later, on May 25, 2005, Anjali Krishnan starts off the Yahoogroup for the Class of 1999. Current membership – 47

A day later, on May 26, 2005, Padmala Bhandary starts off the Yahoogroup for the Class of 1996. Current membership – 50

On the same day, Vineeta Rao starts off the Yahoogroup for the Class of 2000. Current membership – 25

A day later, Govind Diwakar starts off the Yahoogroup for the Class of 2001. Current membership – 12

Jun 7, 2005 – Bharath Rao starts off the Yahoogroup for the Class of 1994. Current membership – 7

July 11, 2005 – Pradeep Kanchan starts off the Yahoogroup for the Class of 1993. Current membership – 9

Aug 29, 2005 – Vinayak Kamath starts off the Yahoogroup for the Class of 2002. Current membership – 19

Jan 13, 2006 – Divya Rao starts off the Yahoogroup for the Class of 2006. Current membership – 26

May 13, 2006 – Some unknown benefactor starts off the Yahoogroup for the Class of 2005. Current membership – 8

Little Rock and Orkut

In the meantime, several groups have mushroomed within orkut dedicated to different batches –

Jan 24, 2006 – Shuaib Shukur started one for the Class of 2000 on Orkut

Mar 29, 2006 – Reesha Carol starts off Class of 2002

April 4, 2006 – Anjali Pai started off with one for Class of 2003

May 16, 2006 – Prakash Kanchan starts off one for Class of 1999

Meanwhile, the Class of 2004 has a Team blog - 33rockers – consisting of the Class XII students from that batch.

Other initiatives

The Little Rock page at Wikipedia came up in Nov 2005 by an anonymous contributor and has since been continuously updated.

Sharath Rao and Ashith Hegde launched a Little Rock foto album initiative. This is to collect all class photos from all sections and classes of all batches that ever studied at Little Rock. You can read more about it here ( Please do ! ).

Oooof…that was tiring !! Its indeed commendable that every bit of work that’s gone into anything stated here above has come out from the students in a sort of a bottom up structure. This is in stark contrast to most schools and colleges that have a top-down approach to alumni network building.

Kudos people and keep at it !

All play and no work at the Niagara Falls

2006-05-16T22:32:00.000+05:30

Nadeem, Sharath, Ashith and Sunil ( partly seen ) demonstrating the capabilities of Supreeth's Canon EOS Rebel 350 D, Lechwood Statepark, NY, May 13, 2006

[ As usual click on pictures for (much much ) larger versions ]

Six is a small number but it possibly was the largest number of littlerockers meeting outside Swades !

So it was no coincidence when 6 littlerockers found themselves at the Niagara Falls. 3 graduate students - Sunil Borkar('97) @ Syracuse, Ashith Hegde('97) @ Buffalo and Sharath Rao ('97) @Carnegie Mellon with 3 professionals - Supreeth Kini ('97) @TCS, Chicago, Poornachandra Aithal ('97)@ BearingPoint, Virginia and Nadeem Mohamed('97) @Infosys, Philadelphia got together for a 2 day trip to the Niagara Falls near Buffalo City, NY.

From Left : Sunil, Poornachandra, Nadeem, Sharath, Supreeth and Ashith in the Niagara River with the Niagara falls in the background

Watch a short video (Courtesy : Nadeem )

Seen here in the Chevrolet minivan we rented enroute to Niagara from Ashith's house. Ashith, inspite of warnings, turned around to pose for this picture as the car sped away at 60 miles/hr. Thanks to him, soon after this photograph we found ourselves inside the back of a 20 ton container truck driving just ahead of us !! Okay, okay. Just kidding.

This was just outside Ashith's house -minutes before we set off on the road trip.

At one of 3 waterfalls in the Lechwood state park in upstate NewYork after an hour of trek through virgin forests, waterfalls and a river flowing through gorges.

Seen here at the University of Buffalo Campus with the bull ( the one in the middle by the way ! ) - the bull that is symbolic of the institution and not having a picture shot here would amount to sacrilege or atleast that is how Ashith induced guilty into the rest of us until this shot was taken !

Poornachandra and Nadeem with Sharath at Sharath's house at Pittsburgh, PA before leaving for Niagara Falls - a journey that included a phone call to Rajaram Kamath('97) in distant Mangalore and murdering an animal that in return ripped off the front guard off Poornachandra's near brand new Honda Civic. :(

And yes, we managed to lose our way several times - inspite of the above !!

Mission sumary :

Who : Sunil Borkar, Ashith Hegde, Poornachandra, Supreeth Kini, Mohamed Nadeem, Sharath Rao
When : May 13-14th, 2006
Where : Niagara Falls, USA
Why : Nonstop fun
How : Anything but an accident
Success/Failure : Next question !

- Sharath Rao ('97)

You have what we want !

2006-05-12T03:06:00.000+05:30

Consider this.

Think about that littlerocker who you know by name, but don’t remember by face. Or maybe, the other way around. Or perhaps she/he was in your section and you have lost the class photograph. Or worse still, she/he was not even in your section. Even worse, she/he was either your senior or a junior.

That’s probably when you wish there was one single repository of all class photographs from school you could look up without having to scramble for it with friends or contact the hapless Mr. Jayaprakash at Little Rock or look up an old yearbook where its hard to recognize oneself and anyone can pass off as anybody else especially from days when photographs used to be printed in B/W and near stamp-size.

We think we can solve this problem but we need help. We have started a website where we are in the process of uploading a picture of each and every section of every single batch that ever went to Little Rock (and came out !). As you see, this is not a problem of ‘smoking out’ that one person who has all those photographs –for no such person exists. These photograps have to come from you.

Before you read further, you should visit us here right away. Each of the pictures here currently has been tagged by Class and Section, Year, batch and the person who we got the picture from. (yes, we are poor people - all we can afford to give you in return for sending us the photograph will be a name-tag alongside the image and a "Thankyou" email ! ). If any of the pictures you have are already present there, its okay. If you don’t find them or you have a better quality picture ( some up there are understandably slightly damaged), please do send it over to us.

Here are details on how to send us the pictures –

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please include following info. with each picture -

Class and Section
Batch - what is a batch ?
Year - Usually shot in the March of every year.
Class teacher ( Optional )
Source of picture ( Optional - In order to credit the source )

If you can label, people you know by names, there is nothing like it – but we know that may be asking for too much.

Please use the best possible resolution your scanner can handle when you scan the picture. If you do not have access to a scanner but have the pictures, please contact Sandeep Kamath(’97) at "9342748608". We have made alternate arrangements to procure them.

Scanned images may be sent to this ID.
Use the same ID for any questions you might have. Or post a comment on this blog.

Website where the picture you send will be uploaded - http://www.flickr.com/photos/thelittlerocker/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As you realize, this is quite an ambitious task – we have to receive no less than 600 pictures considering an average of 50 photographs per batch. And we are currently on 18. Hooh ! Its going to take us a while. But we will give it a shot anyway. If we succeed, there is nothing like it. If we don’t, this post will be a testimony to what happens to posts we read and ignore, to what could have happened but didn’t.

Without your help, we cannot succeed. With your help, we cannot fail !

We are waiting !

P.S : We aren't good artists - forgive that image. We know the quality of the class photographs will be better ;-)

Another alumni initiative. Another manager

2006-05-08T01:33:00.000+05:30

Yet another batch has taken initiative to bring together their batchmates in an online setup. And this happens to be the Class of 2006 - the batch that completed Class X at Little Rock only about a month back. ( What does Class of YYYY mean ? )

Divya Rao('06) started a yahoogroup to bring together the 200+ strong batch and we congratulate her on taking the intitiative. It would be quite a task indeed. If you are a member of the 2006 batch or wish to help Divya by informing her regarding classmates you know of, you may send a mail to littlerock_2006-owner[@]yahoogroups[.]com ( replace the square brackets around the "@" and "." - format to prevent spam ). Or you may leave a comment on this blog.

As far as our knowledge goes, this means that there currently exist an online forum of some nature ( either at Yahoogroups or Orkut ) for each of the batches from 1993 to 2006 baring 2004 and 2005. If members of 2004 and/or 2005 already have a group or anyone wishes to start a group, please do inform us of your initiative or seek any form of help.

We have placed a permanent link to the Class of 2006 group page on this blog alongside links to other groups.

~

In other news, Ajay Pai('98) is joining TAPMI, Manipal for his MBA program. Nearly 10 years at Little Rock ( 1988-98), he joined Computer Science at MIT ( Class of 2004) , Manipal after Pre-university at Hubli. He is currently at HP GlobalSoft ( which he will leave shortly to join TAPMI ) after 6 months at HCL Technologies.

Hridayram Shenoy('97), as we reported earlier, is currently a student there, while Kathik Kamath('97), graduated from TAPMI in March, 2005 and is now working for Infosys Technologies in Bangalore.

Congratulations Ajay.

A doctor a day keeps....

2006-05-06T22:01:00.000+05:30

That inconsistent, inadequate, arbitrary, corrupt, arguably discriminatory and unarguably hypercompetitive higher education system in Karnakata ! And inspite of it all, it has thrown up individuals who are not only survivors, but achievers as well. We note their achivements here.

Roopa Kalgujjikar(’97) is joining Ambedkar Medical College, Bangalore for MD in E.N.T. We featured Roopa here before.

A fabulous Rank 5 (effective) in the MAHE entrance exam means Sushma Sureshchandra(’97) is joining MD in Paediatrics in KMC Manipal. Sushma was at Little Rock from Class I-XII after which she completed her MBBS in KMC Mangalore in Jan 2005 where she counted Roopa and Ajay Kamath('97) among her classmates. Sister Sahana(’99) is finishing B.E. from KVG College of Engineering in Sulia and is scheduled to join TCS thereafter. Suhas (’03), the youngest of the siblings, started his B.E. program in Biotechnology at PESIT, Bangalore. At KMC Manipal, she will count Ajay Kamath(’97) and Anup Joseph(’96) among her collegemates.

Anulekha (’97) is joining SDM College of Dental Sciences, Dharwad for her MDS program in Prosthodontics. She was earlier at the same college for her Bachelors in Dentistry where Rachana Kunder(’97) and Kiran Kumar K.S.(’97) also studied.

Shaimaa Munir('97) is joining MS Ramiah for her MDS program in Periodontics. She is currently a Staff member at Yenepoya Dental College, Mangalore after graduating from the same college in Dec 2004. Now that also happens to be Sampreeth Mathew’s(’95) alma mater. Shaimaa’s sister Shada Munir(’99) graduated from PA College of Engineering in Mangalore and is now with Infosys Mangalore.

Sucheta Hoblidhar(’96) is joining the MS program in Obstetrics and Gynecology program in KMC Mangalore. She was earlier at JSS Medical College in Mysore for her MBBS. Her sister Jayagowri Hoblidhar(’97) is currently with Sapient Technologies, Bangalore having completed her B.E. in Computer Science from NIE, Mysore followed by a 2 year stint in Syntel Software, Pune.

And so it goes on - Little Rock being what it is – one single post and links thereof can eventually expand to involve the whole Little Rock community by way of siblings, batchmates and collegemates !

Congratulations survivors - we are referring you all here - that should be your next stop.

(This post took regular visits to the dictionary.com in order to get the spellings for the medical terms right.)

No more confusion !

2006-04-30T06:43:00.000+05:30

And we hope this post goes a long way in clearing the confusion over which batch/class who belongs to.

Class of 2003 on Orkut and Generally Electric !

2006-04-30T04:46:00.000+05:30

Anjali Pai('03) has started a new Orkut online alumni group for the Class of 2003. Orkut is an invitation-only setup ( you require to be 'invited' to be able to join the group). If you belong to the Class of 2003 ( find out here ), but you are not a member of orkut, you should be writing to Anjali at [ still_alert, hotmail.com ] - ( replace the comma by '@' symbol - spam free format ). If you are already on Orkut.com, you may contact Anjali here.

A yahoogroup for the Class of 2003 on the lines of those for other batches is in the offing. Once created, relevant information shall posted here.

Anjali is currently a first year student of Biotechnology at NMAMIT, NITTE. With the formation of this group, there now exists an online alumni forum for every single batch of Little Rock - from the first one that finished Class XII in 1995 ( Class X in 1993 ) to Class of 2003 that completed Class XII level in 2005. Links to each of them can be found on this blog or here.

~~

Sunil Borkar('97) pulled off two commendable things within days - landing an internship offer from General Electric and earning a scholarship in form of tuition waiver at Syracuse Graduate School of Engineering.

He starts work at GE Corp. on May 22nd, 2006 as an intern in the process safety management These 3 month summer Internships are valuable options for Indian graduate students who dont take classes in summer - they not only significantly supplement one's income but also help job prospects on graduation. A tuition waiver means just that - save on thousands of dollars on tuition per semester.

We featured Sunil in detail in an earlier post here.

Another Little Rock Visit

2006-04-29T08:39:00.000+05:30

We are posting a few pictures from a visit Anjali Krishnan('99) paid to the campus in Aug 2005. Anjali is PhD student in Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Dallas, Texas. A student at Little Rock from 1990-1995 ( Class II-VI ), she studied Chemical Engineering at Sathyabama Engg College in Chennai. This visit was made just before she left for Dallas to start her graduate studies.

Anjali is the founder-moderator of the Class of 1999 Little Rock Group.

Note : Click on pictures for larger views

Seen here with Gladice D'silva, Irene D'lima and Mr. Jayprakash.

For someone who has been at Little Rock for over 20 years, Mr. Jayaprakash is arguably the least photographed person on campus ! Here to you Sir !

For those who are not aware of the latest changes in the uniform shades and designs, here it is. This also by the way is the computer centre ( First Floor of the Decenial Learning Centre ) - its come a long way since 1996 - nearly 100 machines in a single hall, students gaining more effective hands-on experience. ( Note the LCD projector projecting on the screen in the far side ) .

The LittleRock Computer Centre ( rechristened ALPHA computer centre )

And since the above picture doesnt quite provide a complete picture (!) of the uniform, here is another one ! So there it - pink checked shirts and khakhi shorts. Apparently 5 different days of the week require the classic cream and brown, this 'new, improved' combination and the sportswear. Some effort for students and their parents to keep track ! Good luck folks.

Seen here with Shaila Crasta. Note the bus numbers in the far left corner.

And finally a classical Little Rock. For people who visited campus since 1998, this is a big big change - an entire new block come up. And this picture ofcourse is taken from the newest block of classes - behind the Beehive, a block that came up in 2002.

Panorama another, Little Rock

Thanks Anjali for permission to blog the pictures.

Readers, please send in pictures ( along with possible descriptions if you wish ) that you consider relevant to the blog. Send them to the Gmail ID mentioned on top of this page in the description.

And they mean business !

2006-04-21T23:39:00.000+05:30

Two students - Prahlad Tantri ('97) and Rajaram Kamath('97) are heading to business school.

Prahlad alias Peru alias Pera alias Perale ( Kannada word for Guava !) is joining Symbiosis Institute of Operations Management, Nashik for his Masters in Operations Management. He was earlier at the Manipal Institute of Technology where he studied (B.E.) Industrial Production. Over the past 6 months, he had been preparing for exams and attending interviews at a scary pace and it looks like he is finally settled :-) !

Other notes : Prahlad's sister Rashmi Tantri('96) was also at Little Rock. Rashmi is schedule to be married on May 18, 2006. We should bring you details shortly.

Rajaram is joining the MBA program at the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies(NMIMS), Bombay starting June 14th. You can find his brief bio in this post.

Currently, he is not working, not studying, not applying or writing exams either. Since his results have come in, he has basically been doing nothing - hours asleep, hours on the phone/roads/internet and (outside) the "couples-only coffeeshops" in the Mangalore-Udupi-Manipal area. ( Okay okay, we just made up that middle bit !)

His legendary inability to control laughter is captured in this picture shot at the EndPoint in Manipal on Jan 2, 2006.

Congratulations Prahlad and Rajaram. You will manage well !

And the exodus continues !

2006-04-20T13:06:00.000+05:30

The exodus of Little Rockers from India continues - in the past 2 weeks, 3 of them - Sandeep Bhat('97), Nadeem Mohamed ('97) and Nifila Ashraff ('97) have left Indian shores.

Sandeep is in Toronto at a client's office ( AON, a Canada based insurance company ) from Infosys onsite for a minimum duration of 6 months. Sandeep was in Little Rock for just an year but is well networked and is deeply involved with alumni activities among the Class of 1997.

Nadeem is here too. He is at Philadelphia again on behalf of his Indian employer Infosys, Mangalore for his client IKON Solutions ( those in the US would recognize the copier stores !). A Little Rock veteran of 11 years, he went to RVCE, Bangalore for his Mechanical Engineering along with other Little Rockers - Eshwar, Sujan, Raghuraj, Mahesh and Sarfraz - all from the Class of 1997.

An authority on trekking sites and avid scenic photographer, this man Nadeem ( here in the picture in a children's park ( whats he doing there ! ) who has virtually combed the Udupi-Mangalore-Madikeri-Bangalore area over the past 3 years, is now looking in the Philadelphia, DC and NYC area for trekking hot-spots !

And finally, Nifila - littlerocker Class I-VIII ( 1987-94 ) is in Ireland ! She is there in order to appear in an exam that will enable her to serve as a practising dentist in Ireland. She went from Little Rock to Toc-H public school in Cochin and then went on to study Bachelors in Dental Sciences from Dental College, Trivandrum. Nifila's brother, Naufal Ashraff('93) was the first batch student at Little Rock - who is now working in Ireland after completing his MBA studies there.

Cheers and wishing you some experiences and memories away from mom-land !

As good as it gets

2006-04-12T12:16:00.000+05:30

For Kavya Shetty ('99), all roads lead to the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

And to the best of our knowledge, she is the first ever alumna ( or alumnus ) from Little Rock at any of the IIMs. If there is another Little Rocker who fits that description, most likely that is one of the better kept secrets. For, no informal survey or not-so-intensive investigation has thrown up another such person. That means ( baring a highly unlikely miscalculation from our side ), after graduating 7 batches with nearly 800 students ( counting at Class X level upto the Class of 1999 ), we have graduated an 'IIMian' - a word we just made up. And therefore, we have successfully reduced Kavya's achievement to a mere statistic. Q.E.D.

Apologies. it surely is more than that !

Now here is what some might think the 'boring' part that the we post for the record.

Kavya went to Little Rock from 1994 to 2000 - Class VI-XI. With a CET rank in the sub-100 range, she was then at KREC Suratkal ( now NITK Suratkal ) at the Dept. of Information Technology as an undergraduate student. She graduated with a B.E. in May 2005 and since then has been a systems engineer at Intel India in Bangalore.

A stupendous CAT performance in Nov 2005 catapulted Kavya into the 99.99 percentile range - roughly putting her into the top 20 among the 160,000 odd applicants. Early Jan threw up all 6 CAT-calls ( yes, thats actually what they call it ! ) for interviews held subsequently in Feb-March. With the results announced yesterday, she has decided to join IIM-Bangalore, other significant offers being from Calcutta and Lucknow ( yeah, some city names have changed - institute names haven't ! ).

We contacted Kavya to send us a picture for this post - an exercise that was apparently doomed to failure from the beginning - what with a recent laptop burglery that deprived her of her picture collection ! We then resorted to some ill-informed searches on Google Images - some of the pictures returned as far from truth as this. Finally though, we did manage to receive one in time for the post. In the picture above, Kavya is seen with a chair !

This is one small step for Little Rock, a giant leap for the Kavya. IIMB is known, among other (more important) things, for the best food facilities ( mess, canteen ) among educational institutions in the country. Here is wishing Kavya pounds....er...of best wishes for two rewarding years at IIMB and more thereafter.

Kavya can be contacted here ( if you are on orkut - we said 'contact', not stalk ;-) ) or in the comment space below.

Face the music !

2006-04-12T02:35:00.000+05:30

Prakash Kanchan ('99) is on the guitar here with some of his own compositions. You can download them or stream them from here.

We asked Prakash to write in about his interests in music to put alongside this post here and he, very reluctantly, spared us this little piece. With no editing whatsoever, we post it here.

"Well here goes nuthin..

My passion for music started off waaaaay back in class 2...i still remember singling do-a-deer in class...then it kinda stuck around in the back of my head and resurfaced in class 6/7 when i started learning instruments here and there...played in a couple of school programs ...and enjoyed the feel of being onstage :)

But things really started going somewhere, when i met this un-believably talented dude Aswin, my one year senior in 11th....and when i realised that we share similar tastes in music....thus began the number of recording sessions, some in his place, some in mine...with guest appearance by Erwin in some songs

Then another amazing singer joined along - Jiju from my class...and the 3 of us recorded quite a few songs, but unfortunately the recording qual sucked :)...

i remember our recording sessions alternating between our homes...and then our final refuge - Sona teachers home, where we met up just for a chat, or a break, or C++ doubts or anything and everything....we recorded a few songs there too...

this is how the recording bug hit....and once college started, the 3 of us never really got the time to join in and record something seriously....but the recordings on solo kept continuing, and im sure Aswin (an amazing singer+guitarist) would have his own collection of songs ...

somewhere along the way, it hit that i cant continue copying ppls songs all my life and its time for originals ...and thanks to the long study holidays we got, and the boredom of studying (which unlike the months of preps in LRIS, happened just hours before the exam) , out came originals...again with unfortunately bad recording...

so to end this unnecessarily long writeup, i wanna make sure that one thing happens the next time me, aswin and jiju meet up....book a recording studio for a week or so, and shell out some neat numbers... :-)"

Send feedback to Prakash here ( if you are on orkut ) or leave a comment for him down there. It ain't just software engineers and doctors that Little Rock churns out - we have musicians too ! ( Okay, Prakash is an engineer too ! )

Does Little Rock have a website ?

2006-04-07T20:39:00.000+05:30

This post is in response to a few mails from interested alumni asking – “Does Little Rock have an official website ?” The answer is both Yes and No. Yes, because it indeed has one – infact we have posted a link here to the right side of this page. No, because Little Rock insists its under development – so you may not find what you are looking for.

As many of alumni members would be aware, from mid-2000 up until mid-July 2005, Little Rock did have quite an elaborate website (broken link !) – especially with a guestbook and the alumni register. But just like that in mid July 2005, the website ceased to function. We mailed Prof. Ninan and he replied that technical and administrative problems have led to the discontinuity in service and that a new website is in the offing.

In mid-February 2006, we heard of the new website and that its only under development (roughly “beta” in software lingo) and in response, we sent our list of recommendations (see earlier post) arguing that the website was an immense opportunity for Little Rock in more ways than one.

The old website had over 200 entries from the alumni in form of a guestbook or an official alumni register. You can no longer access them but for the nostalgia-greedy - you are catch a glimpse of a page or two from the google’s cached version here. (Note : all links are broken from that point on !).

As of April 7, 2006, the new website does not yet have the alumni registry or the guestbook, although once the full-fledged version appears, we hope that it will be restored. Its indeed been a valuable resource for us and we have a list of (almost) all email Ids registered until June 25^th, 2005. You can download them here. This list comes with two disclaimers - Firstly, several email IDs are decidedly defunct and are not in use anymore. Secondly, only email Ids are present – they have not been mapped to names. So if your hypothetical friend Praveen Adiga has an ID that goes praveenadiga@yahoo.com, consider yourself lucky ; on the other hand, it happens to be iamgoingtolasvegas@mail.com, you may be barking up the wrong tree.

Best Wishes in your search for your ‘lost’ batchmate, who probably is equally convinced that you are ‘lost’.

2006-04-02T23:29:00.000+05:30

Smitha Suhas (’97) was in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband Suhas visiting Sharath Rao(’97) and Sandip, an ex-colleague of Smitha’s from Robert Bosch India currently based in Pittsburgh.

A Saturday well-spent is chronicled in a few photographs here below ( click for bigger, better views ) . A trip that included a visit to

(a) the Sri Ventakeshwara Temple ( fully owned subsidiary of the Tirupati Temple ! ) :

(b) rounds of the Carnegie Mellon campus, seen here near the CMU fence - apparently, the world's most painted upon object !

(d) a walk by the river Allegheny in Downtown Pittsburgh - here, looking at 2 of the over 1400 bridges in the larger Pittsburgh area.

(e) finally concluding with a visit atop Mount Washington – a view that looks down (!) on Pittsburgh City center.

Scattered among these were attempts at some funky photographs like this one outside an Udipi Restaurant

and not to mention obscene, shameless hogging of Indian food - morning, noon and night -like this (somewhat) mighty Masala Dosa and "after-such-a-long-time" Mango milk shake !

Heres to the indomitable spirit of LittleRockers making an effort to meet up anywhere in the world !

North American scoops !

2006-03-30T12:35:00.000+05:30

It hasn’t exactly been a quiet time this March for the Little Rockers in North American. Ashith Hedge (’97) was on a 3-day holiday to Washington D.C. visiting Smitha (’97) and Suhas, while Poornachandra (’97) joined them from neighbouring Virginia. A photography freak, Ashith found more than enough time for pictures – here are just two of those.

Smitha, Ashith and Poornachandra, Downtown Washington D.C., March 17th, 2006

On the way back home from Washington to Buffalo, Ashith dropped in for a while at Pittsburgh meeting up with Sharath Rao (’97). In Ashith’s own words, “…meeting 3 great pals of my school was like recharging my battery which will keep me going for next couple of months…”

Johny ( Ashith's friend ), Sharath and Ashith, Pittsburgh, March 18, 2006

In other updates, Mohamed Nadeem(’97) has set foot on the continent ! He is here in Philadelphia on deputation from ( ‘onsite’ in Software Engineer’s lingo J ) Infosys Technologies, Mangalore where he had been working since March 2004. Another Infoscion Sandeep Bhat('97) is expected in Toronto, Canada in early April.

In the meanwhile, Shruthi Reddy ('97) has finally ( after her PG final exams, visa etc. ) located to Boston to join her husband. Mid-February wasn’t exactly the best time to arrive in this part of the country from tropical India. However, to her good fortune, Boston has apparently had one of its mildest winters in years.

Doctors tie knot

2006-03-30T11:54:00.000+05:30

Roopa Kalgujjikar ('97) and Rajesh Nayak were married on Nov 20th, 2005 in the coastal town of Ankola in North Karnataka.

Roopa, a littlerocker, studied at Little Rock from Class VI-X ( 1992-1997). After completing her Pre-University from Bhandarkar's college, Kundapur, she joined KMC Mangalore in September 1999, from where she graduated with an MBBS in May 2005. Engaged on April 17th, 2005, she got married on Nov 20th, 2005 in her native town of Ankola.

Now, this is interesting - we know very little about Rajesh. And since we havent heard from Roopa on details in this regard, we are posting whatever little we know. Rajesh is a dentist who completed his Masters in Dental Science from Bapuji Dental College and Hospital. We are sorry Rajesh - but for now this is all we know :-).

This picture was taken at the reception in Kundapur on Nov 27th, 2005. Little Rockers in attendance - Aneesh DSouza ('97), Dr. Anjali Bhat('97), Sujan Manohar ('97), Dr. Sushma Sureshchandra ('97) and Dr. Savitha S ('98)

The couple is currently based in the Union Territory of Chandigarh !

Ofcourse, Roopa is the twin sister of Deepa Kalgujjikar ('97)- who was also engaged and married on the same day to Mr. Satyajeeth Nayak. Picture and details have been posted here. Now, just to put it all in perspective, we post another picture !

littlerocker wishes Roopa and Rajesh a happy married life ! And apologies to Rajesh for what is evidently incomplete information. :-).

In cream and brown

2006-02-23T09:45:00.000+05:30

In response to a suggestion from Ranjeeth Shetty ('97), we thought we could maybe try a color combination that approximates the "trademark cream and brown" ( in Ranjeeth's own words ). Now, this blogging service doesnt quite have exactly what we were looking for ( the only LittleRocker at Google, Erwin D'Souza ('95), please take note :-) ) .

This new template is the best available approximation, and an approximation it is in a queer sense - the 'cream and brown" worn in the morning takes on this look - 'brown and more brown' - by the time you reach home, especially if you have had a "P.T. period" that day. :)

As an aside, Little Rock has a new color combination for its uniform now - pink check shirt and brown trousers - its not clear if that is the primary combination or merely meant for particular days.

Never mind the details, here we are in the vintage cream and brown !

Poornachandra at Bearing Point

2006-02-21T10:55:00.000+05:30

Ashith Hegde ('97) and Poornachandra Aithal (’97)

No, they are not married ! Read on :-)

Poornachandra has moved. He has joined Bearing Point as a consultant starting earlier this month. Here is a brief bio :

Poornachandra was at Little Rock from Class V to X ( 1991-1997). After completing his PreUniversity from MGM College, Udupi, he joined KREC Suratkal in Sep 1999. He graduated with a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering in May 2003 joining Infosys Technologies in Aug 2003 in Mysore. From June 2005 to Jan 2006, he was on deputation from Infosys in the United States serving in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Houston over 7 months.

In Jan 2006, he joined the "Public Services, Oracle International Practice" division at Bearing Point, one of the big 4 consulting companies. He is now based out of Mclean, Virginia.

This picture here was taken in Charlotte, North Carolina when Ashith Hegde went visiting him over the NewYear break.

We wish Poornachandra the best in his new job !

Little Rock at 25 - a new website !

2006-02-21T08:34:00.000+05:30

Little Rock is in the process of developing a new website. You can view it here.

Ashith Hegde ('97) and Sharath Rao ('97) have made a list of recommendations to Little Rock in connection with the website. Here below is the text of the 'report'.

Little Rock @ 25 - Where do we go from here ?

- A case for an elaborate online presence

Sharath Rao & Ashith Hegde

What a website can do for Little Rock or for that matter any educational institution can hardly be gauged in real terms – but there is no denying that substantial progress can be made in the direction of making the website an integral part of the Little Rock community. We are attempting to enlist some of the possibilities in terms of the role that the website can play in the context of Little Rock.

_{1. Website as a source of information:}

Very often the website is seen as a public relations exercise – this would typically mean that it’s built up with all necessary ‘information’ regarding the institution and then left to itself – it is then rarely updated or maintained. This misses the point that information about the school is not static and new and useful data is constantly being generated – there is nothing more frustrating that visiting the website after 2 months only to find that nothing at all has changed.

Although, the website is indeed public face of the school, we argue that it must in fact be more than that – it must be a vital source of information for the stakeholders - students and parents (both current and prospective), the faculty, the alumni and other well-wishers. As a matter of fact, for people staying far away from Udupi district, like parents of hostel wards and the alumni, the website is often the only source of information.

This information itself may be of two types –

a) General information about the school – mostly static or at least that which doesn’t change on a regular basis – e.g. Infrastructure related details – this is currently present on the website.

b) News and major events: This is by nature fast changing and there may be something coming up every week or so and may vary in profile and importance – e.g. Science/Book exhibition, some speaker coming over to give a talk, our students winning prizes in inter-school competitions etc.

c) Regular functions and competitions: School day, Sports meets, other literary and cultural competitions – they might come more so in the category of announcements and the like.

At present only the information in category A finds mention on the website (including past website ) – we must make an effort to make available information and news belonging to category B and C as well. Interestingly, much of the above actually already finds a place on the notice board – these notices are generated in the electronic form itself – so there is really very little effort/costs involved in uploading the document online.

Often this will reduce time spent clearing the same clarifications from parents/students and will certainly reduce the number of phone calls that office staff need to answer each time the results are announced or a holiday is announced due to flooding etc. We must reach a point where we can point people to the website except while handling exceptions.

2. The website is about people - they must find representation

It’s not all about administrative issues as they often tend to be - very often websites tend to be just an electronic version of the prospectus/notices, announcements and things so administrative in nature that students, parents and other visitors do not feel encouraged to visit or spend time on the site. Therefore, it is not just the look/layout of the site that matters, but the content and manner in which it is presented that can potentially make it effective in encouraging the community to use it. There may be several ways to present the same very thing.

For example, 2 students win the Rural IT quiz and 2 of the common ways to recognize this achievement are thus –

a) A bland two line announcement of the event mentioning the names of students, quiz, location and date of the event.

b) In addition to the above, a few more details from the quiz, the number of rounds, the turning point in the quiz, the lead over the closest team – this may be stated directly or perhaps in the form of a short interview with the students and the faculty member who accompanied them.

The second option is understandably not suited for a notice board, but its just ideal for a website to host. Much of the work involved can be done by the students themselves (dealt with in detail later).

Such a thing in fact helps build a sense of belonging among the students/parents/faculty towards the website in particular and the school in general. This sense of belonging may take a few months to develop, but it lasts long. What goes online is generally forever, reaches a wide audience and there is no underestimating the pride of the students, their parents and teachers to see that an achievement of theirs being acknowledged on the school website – it is arguably a greater honor for the student than the prize he/she won !

Thus, in reporting achievements of students and teachers, there is a need to travel that extra mile (after all it’s our own students!) in addition to quoting newspapers or issuing a two-line communiqué.

3. Multimedia is king

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a thousand pictures. With the kind of infrastructure Little Rock has, there should be no difficulty in having a large database of pictures online. Here again, pictures/videos into different sections –

a) Mostly static in nature – video covering parts of the campus – a kind of a virtual campus tour– this is infinitely more valuable than just reporting that we have a campus of a certain size and in a certain location. Very few campuses pay attention to the aesthetics, the gardening and general neatness and we should leave no stone unturned in highlighting this. Several pictures of different parts of our campus must be made available.

b) Pictures/Video of events and functions - these can be extremely valuable. Little Rock witnesses some of the most exciting sports competitions – the 100 mts race, the 4*100 mts relay on the last day of the sports meet are as exciting as it can get – and we need to preserve these memories in the best possible form. There is nothing like a a 15 second video of the 10 mts race made viewable online!! Prof. Ninan’s eloquent school day addresses, some of the farewell speeches by our outgoing batches must find a place on the website and must be archived.

c) Class photographs – present and past must be made available online. It is hard to say what tangible gains such a step might have, but it’s a form of representation for our students and faculty – the pictures in the yearbook are limited by size, costs etc. No such constraint exists in the electronic world.

Some of the above already did exist on the old site. However, unfortunately much of it wasn’t organized, annotated or labeled. Consequently, much of the material on the old website led an unfortunate haphazard existence that reflected poorly on the otherwise impeccable professional administration at Little Rock.

4. Website as an archive:

Another aspect of websites that is seldom realized is their value in the long term. Text, images and other material that is regularly updated not only has its utility in the current scenario, but over a period of time assumes importance for its archival value. This might seem rather far-fetched but we have grown 25 years old now and I am sure we have accumulated a good collection of photographs that have an archival value.

During the upcoming silver jubilee celebrations, it would be a great experience for attendees if we can have an exhibition that takes people through the last 25 years. Let’s say - the first class photo of the first batch, pictures laying foundation stone of the main building, how parts of the campus looked so many years ago and how they look now - these are all an integral part of our history as an institution and we must do everything to preserve it. Here again, we might not get started should we ponder over the tangible/material benefits of such an exercise, but there is no denying that these are gestures that generate so much goodwill and endear the students, parents and the alumni (staff and students ) to their institution.

And what we do store and manage well today will, down the years, be a valuable resource. Here is another example of how archival resource may be tapped into. Little Rock conducts literary and sports competitions every year – consider putting up online the list of winners in the elocution/essay competition every year along with the topics they spoke on, rules for the competition and the display of a prize winning essay etc. Students and competition organizers down the years will find this quite useful in knowing what has been done in the past and what is expected of them now.

Or perhaps the list of winners in the long jump event, the record length jumped ( I don’t know if Little Rock maintains any such thing as a “Little Rock record” on the lines of “national games record” or “olympic record” or such ….) – These simple details can make a big difference – a student participating a certain year is aware of what is the best jump been so far and these simple things can motivate children to better performance. On the surface they appear trivial, but great performances have found inspiration from least expected sources and we must leave no stone unturned in motivating our top performers to scale higher goals.

5. Website is about people - and there must be participation !

This is perhaps the most important section of this paper. Very few recommendations made here involve any extra investment by way of capital – what is required is participation – much of this effort has to come from the students and they must be well-supported by the faculty and the management.

Firstly, there has to be website team that manages the website – this might consist of our Computer Science staff and a bunch of students who can do a good part of the job. Among the students, there will typically be a small group dedicated to the technical part and another providing the creative input.

Students need no motivation for a task like this – Little Rock is full of enthusiastic geeks who would love to be a part of an effort like that. This is a win-win situation for both the students and the management. Students can gain some valuable experience – in managing real-world IT systems, an excellent exercise in creativity and lessons in team work. This is another effective way we can prepare our students for dealing with real world situations in addition to their valuable formal education.

Apparently, the Class IX students are learning web design as a part of the curriculum – so it should not be much a problem to find 5 students out of approximately 200 who can do a good job at managing the day-to-day workings of the website. Moreover, it’s hard to imagine a capable 14-year old who would not be proud of his contribution to the school website. Our students really are our greatest resource and that they often lay untapped is perhaps the greatest regret. In addition to this, there is no doubt whatsoever that Little Rock faces any dearth of enterprising faculty members who can contribute to this effort as well.

6. Other suggestions

6.1 A section in the website dedicated to the alumni

Often, the website is the only common interface for the alumni. The previous Little Rock website did a good job of bringing together a section of the alumni. This effort must continue – in fact this has to be encouraged even before the outgoing batches have graduated. I do hope that the email ID of the student is an essential part of the various forms that the LittleRocker needs to fill out in order to obtain his/her TC.

It is also necessary to explore the possibility of having a column by a member of the alumni on a regular basis – bimonthly/monthly or at a feasible frequency. They may write either about experiences on the job, at college level or feedback on their school days. This not only is another step in the direction of integrating the alumni into the Little Rock ecosystem, but it also is potentially useful information to prospective and current parents and students.

6.2 An online monthly newsletter

Unfortunately, for all the impressive English speaking skills of the Little Rocker, we fumble at the slightest idea of writing an impromptu essay (a 5 minute conversation with our English teachers can establish this). A once in a year platform in form the yearbook is not only insufficient but ineffective. An online monthly newsletter can go a long way in addressing this shortcoming. In addition to an online version, copies may even find a place on the notice board. We once did have something on these lines about 12 years ago (“Campus footprints”), though of course, the faculty/students were not a part of the effort.

6.3 Faculty roster

It would enhance the professional look of the website to provide a listing of all the faculty members, hierarchically categorized into sections they teach, subjects they handle along with a brief biography alongside a photograph. This kind of transparency is more effective and illustrative than a mere mention of the faculty size and other token words on their qualifications, as most websites often do.

6.4 Make available the school magazine online

This offers two advantages – firstly, it expands the reach of the magazine and reaches a broader audience. This is also easier to circulate and potentially generates enormous word of mouth publicity (which is after all extremely effective). Also, it circumvents the problem of having to distribute magazines to sections of the population like the alumni/past parents and well-wishers overseas. Since the magazine is presumably in an electronic format before it goes into print, this should not be much of an extra effort.

7. Conclusion

The potential of the website to create, perpetuate and preserve the brand value is immense – this is, however, not to suggest that we are a for-profit organization and are in the business of education. In fact, a better brand value enables us to attract the best students in our locality (which is after all one of the more educated parts of the state).

Equally importantly, it provides us immense leverage in inviting esteemed visitors and public figures to talk to our students and grace our public functions – its not quite the sizzle or the ‘celebrity appeal’ of it, but it’s a part of providing our students an experience and in some sense make up for how Little Rock sometimes loses out because of its distance from the metropolis.

In conclusion, any effort involving the website requires a dedicated infrastructure – technical and more importantly, in form of human resource. We have enough talent to make this possible – what is crucial will be the will on the part of Little Rock management in considering this as a worthy investment in terms of time and resources. We are aware of no other schools in our midst that have made a conscious effort to integrate the website into the daily workings of the institution. This however is no reason that we shouldn’t – if anything, Little Rock, with its distinction in education and more so, its leadership position in IT education, must take the initiative in this regard.

The possibilities are simply limitless!

We hope the issues raised and recommendations made in this document helps generate wide interest among the larger Little Rock community regarding how Little Rock must leverage its IT prowess in terms of establishing an effective online presence. This document has also been posted on the alumni blog http://thelittlerocker.blogspot.com/ in order to encourage a debate on this issue among the alumni.

A re-union on the other side of the world

2006-02-20T05:06:00.001+05:30

Erwin D'Souza, Nikhil Hegde, Karthik Ramkumar, Aswin D'Souza

Not your everyday re-union, this bunch of little rockers met on the other side of the Little rock world, in Tahoe, California. While Erwin works at Google, CA and Nikhil takes courses at Stanford, again CA, Karthik flew quite a distance, what with being based in Capital One at Virginia. Aswin took a break from Graduate studies at Texas A&M during Christmas vacation to join his brother Erwin and his two great friends from his '98 batch.

A 2-week road trip, these little rockers had quite an adventure on the West coast, hitting San Jose, San Francisco, Tahoe, Napa Valley, San Diego, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and even Mexico. "An unbelievable trip" as Aswin describes it, these Little Rockers hope to meet again before Nikhil heads back to Singapore to complete his degree. He is currently on an internship with Salesforce.

For more pics from the California trip, visit Aswin's photography blog

Adventurously yours !

2006-02-20T03:00:00.000+05:30

Dr. Deepa Kalgujjikar ('97) and Satyajeeth Nayak,
Kundapur, Nov 27, 2005

Deepa Kalgujjikar and Satyajeeth Nayak were married on Nov 20th, 2005 in the coastal town of Ankola in North Karnataka.

Deepa, a littlerocker, studied at Little Rock from Class VI-X ( 1992-1997). After completing her Pre-University from Bhandarkar's college, Kundapur, she joined Father Muller's Medical College, Kankanady, Mangalore in September 1999, from where she graduated with an MBBS in May 2005. Engaged on April 17th, 2005, she got married on Nov 20th, 2005 in her native town of Ankola.

Satyajeeth, a native of Ankola, is an Circuit Design Engineer based in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA. He got his Bachelors in Electronics Engineering from SJCE College, Mysore in 1996 and subsequently obtained his Masters Degree, studying in Chicago. For the last 4 years now, Satyajeeth has been with Analog Devices Inc. in Greensboro. Outdoorsy, he loves traveling and cant take his hands off the camera and an adventure freak that he happens to be, he has gone skydiving, river rafting and bungy jumping ( having done it from the place where it apparently all began - Kawarau Bridge, New Zealand ! ). And in Deepa's own words, more than just a a good cook.

Deepa is the twin sister of Roopa Kalgujjikar ('97)- who was also engaged and married on the same day to Dr. Rajesh Nayak. Picture and details should appear here soon.

This picture was taken at the reception in Kundapur on Nov 27th, 2005. Little Rockers in attendance - Aneesh DSouza ('97), Dr. Anjali Bhat('97), Sujan Manohar ('97), Dr. Sushma Sureshchandra ('97) and Dr. Savitha S ('98)

The couple is now based in Greenboro, NC. littlerocker wishes Deepa and Satyajeeth an adventoursly happy married life !

People at Little Rock

2006-02-20T02:22:00.000+05:30

Sharath Rao, from his recent visit to Little Rock on Jan 6, 2006 put together a collection of pictures for the blog.

Quoting Sharath Rao :

"Thats with - Bindu Teacher ( Calculus, Class XI-XII) and Sona Teacher ( Computer Science, Class XI and XII ). Note that right behind us is the Male restroom - this picture was shot by Mr. Harikrishna and when he brought attention to this seemingly disturbing anomaly, Sona Teacher insisted that it was a deliberate attempt at irony !

Mr. Harikrishna with his son, Shreyas at their house. Shot in the evening just before a sumptous tiffin - one of the best Puri-Bhaajis ever - courtesy : Harikrishna Sir's wife.

More Shreyas here !
Trivia : Shreyas was born on the Children's day, not bad for a child ! "

This was taken during a talk by Sharath Rao to the students to Class XI and XII. He spoke about their immediate and medium term concerns regarding career choices and presented an informal comparative analysis of Indian and American Education system. He also spoke on the effort by some of the alumni in bringing together the Little Rock alumni.

Permanence and Change

2006-02-20T02:11:00.000+05:30

Some parts of Little Rock havent changed for most of the last 18 odd years - class I section - except what used to host Class I and II now hosts only Class I with over 8 sections. This picture shows the side of Class I facing the rest of the school ( south ) and isnt hard to identify.

Its the second picture - tough nut to track. It is notoriously deceptive - to many who have seen this - in as to where in school it must have been shot. How well do you think you know your almamater ? Where do you think it was shot ? Leave your comments behind !

The smaller picture !

2006-02-20T02:04:00.000+05:30

Yet another development in the real of extra-curricula is the new "Art and Craft room" - its equipped with special tables that make things easy for the student artists. It also houses on a permanent basis some of the best works of the students.

An example exhibit.

Yes, quite impressive for a 10 year old !

The day is over for today !

2006-02-20T01:54:00.000+05:30

Quite a lot of trees have shaped and reshaped. They look good in their own way - seldom do we realize, just how beautiful the campus is, just how much attention is paid to the asthetics and gardening.

"The day is over for today, done our work and done our play." How many times have we heard this one ! And that sudden rush to the bus after the national anthem !

Its now sung in a different style though - with lines 'shared' between 2 groups of 'singers' standing in different parts of the school who recite alternate lines - hearing is believing !

The only downside of having 30 buses is the time it takes them to leave the campus ! A new development in this direction is that not all buses return to school - some of them park overnight at the staritng points.

Libraries and Computing Infrastructure

2006-02-20T01:43:00.000+05:30

More images going around Little Rock !

Quoting Sharath Rao,

"Taken at the senior library, its one of the best I have seen. For a school, the library infrastructure is as good as the best anywhere; the computing infrastructure rivals that of engineering colleges around Karnataka.

A new block with a library called the 'Science and Technology library", computer center called "Beta computer center" and seminar hall with an LCD projector of its own has come up behind the "Beehive".

And these corridors bustling with activity in the day fall deaf in the evenings. Its an amazing life a school lives !"

Kids will be kids !

2006-02-20T01:34:00.000+05:30

Whats a school without the kids ! A set of images that invited quite a commotion at LittleRock !

Quoting Sharath Rao, "It was about 4 pm, class I-IV students having called it a day ! and waiting to board the buses. I entered the Class I section with my camera and shot my first picture outside Class I D ( my classroom - 1987-88 ). What followed this was at once bizarre and baffling !

Tens of kids started following me, "Uncle, one more photo. Only one." Fearing collapse of 'law and order', I ran ( notice the shake ) and was followed like the Pied piper, "Sir, another one. Last, laaaast".

Quite a sight it was - with teachers running out of the classrooms and staffrooms to 'stop' the kids, as if stolen by a witch from a witchtale ; and the kids, who just could not have enough of the witch !

Moral of the story : Kids will be kids, yes, notwithstanding LitteRock's extraordinary emphasis on order and discipline."

Little Rock - Panoramic Views

2006-02-20T01:04:00.000+05:30

Here is a series of panoramic images from the visit Sharath Rao ( '97) made to Little Rock on Jan 6, 2006.

Little Rock has changed a lot over the years and nowhere is it more evidenced than in the physical structures that keep coming up ( and going down ). No visit is complete without passing by a construction site, yes, a construction sight !

For those readers who havent visited LittleRock in a long time, sports is now a big thing - we now have proper cemented basketball courts, coaching camps for different sports and regular participation in inter-school sports activities. Infact, LittleRock recently even hosted an inter-school basketball competition !

And yes, we now have 30 buses - Go LittleRock !

Bon Voyage and the Power of 10 !

2005-10-16T05:37:00.000+05:30

Southampton, United Kingdom often talked of in the context of her last voyage – yes, the Titanic’s last voyage. But we have better things to tell you about the city !

Raghavendra Hegde (’97) has joined the University of Southampton for his Masters program in Microelectronics Engineering. He was earlier at Wipro Technologies, Bangalore.

Raghavendra spent over 8 years at Little Rock. He joined MIT, Manipal in Sep 1999 and graduated with a Bachelor in Electronics and Communication Engineering in July 2003. In Oct 2003, he joined Wipro Technologies, Bangalore as a software engineer, a position he held ( applying thought ) until Sep 2005. He reached London on Sep 26, 2005 and with classes starting on Oct 10, he found time to write to his friends about his first impressions of the seat of the erstwhile empire which you can read here!

Littlerocker wishes Raghavendra the very best as he returns to his old avatar as a (sincere and hardworking) student, albeit now in different continent.

Joyas Joseph (’97) has moved. He is joining Force10 networks as a software engineer starting Dec 2005.

Joyas spent almost all schooling on the 30 acre campus called the Priority Highlands, Brahmavar, starting from June 1987 up until March 1999. Synonymous with mathematical ingenuity and programming excellence, it was not a surprise when he joined the Computer Engineering program at MIT, Manipal in Sep 1999. He graduated in July 2003 and in Sep 2003 joined HCL Technologies, Madras as a software engineer. In his mail to his friends, he said that he will be leaving HCL in Nov 2005 and joining Force10 soon after.

For stoically braving numerous hardships, most routine of them being the sweltering heat, the salty water, the belligerent rickshaw drivers of Madras, littlerocker spares no effort in congratulating Joyas and wishing him the very best as he joins Force10 !

Adarsh and Akshatha - in good health !

2005-09-27T09:19:00.000+05:30

Adarsh and Akshatha, Bangalore, Aug 28th, 2005

Adarsh Kamath ('94) and Akshatha got married in Bangalore on Aug 28th, 2005.

Adarsh was at Little Rock during the period 1994-96 when he was a part of the Class XI and XII batch. Following this, he joined S D M Engineering College, Dharwad from where he obtained a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering in Sep 2000. In 2001, he joined the Maharshi Institute of Vedic Management, Bangalore, from where he graduated with his Masters in Business Administration majoring in Marketing and International Business. From June 2003-June 2004, he was the Business Development associate for Infohealth Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a start-up dealing with Health information systems. Since July 2004, he has been with ISG Novasoft Technologies ( A K.K.Birla group company ) where he handles the sales for North Indian region. He can be reached at kamathashu,gmail.

Akshatha, raised in Bangalore, completed her Bachelors in Computer Applications (BCA) and subsequently her MCA from the Indira Gandhi Open University. From Feb 2004 -June 2005, she was with Zenith Software in various capacities - starting as a Trainee and subsquently promoted to Associate Accounts Manager, a position she held until June 2005.

littlerocker wishing the Kamaths a Very Happy Married Life !

Saniha, mom and daddy

2005-09-26T09:50:00.000+05:30

Sushma and Haneef

Here is Sushma Sardar ('97) with her husband Haneef and their daughter Saniha.

Sushma spent 10 years at Little Rock studying from Class I to Class X ( 1987-97 ). She completed her PU studies from Vivekananda College, Kota, Karnataka. She then took up vocational Computer classes and followed it up with a course in Fashion Designing. She married Haneef on June 4, 2001. Haneef works in Saudi Arabia. Sushma now stays at Tirthahalli.

Also shown here is her daughter Saniha born on April 19th, 2002. The name 'Saniha' (not to be confused with 'Sania' ), says Sushma, means "near to all" - sure she is !

Sushma Sardar is one of the pair of twins - Sushma and Imran Sardar('97) . Imran now works in Saudi Arabia.

Best Wishes to Sushma and family.

Good Job, people !

2005-09-11T10:34:00.000+05:30

The placements at Engineering Colleges all over India have been underway for sometime now. We have heard about the following alumni from a couple of NITs about their placement processes.

Aditya Banninthaya ('00) - with Analog Devices @ Bangalore. It is worth mentioning here that Aditya was the 10th rank holder at CET 2002. Currently final year ECE@NITK.

Nishka K.S ('00) - with Oracle India. Currently final year ECE@NITK. Nishka is the sister of Dr. Kiran Kumar ( '97 ), a dentist graduate from SDM Dental College, Dharwad.

Shuaib Shukur ('00) - with Philips Software Center @Bangalore. Currently final year CS@NITK.

Chakravarthy ('00) - with Aditi Technologies @ Bangalore. Currently final year IT@NITK.

Abhinav Jagetia ('00) - with Vedanta Group of Companies. Currently final year Metallurgy@NIT, Jaipur.

There are obviously several other alumni who entered the BE program in 2002 and by now, must have landed in jobs.

Congratulations, although its sometime before your first pay checks !

A Tale of two cards

2005-08-22T11:23:00.000+05:30

Identity Cards and identities

Sharath Rao ('97) has moved from Boston to Pittsburgh, PA. He will be starting his Graduate Program at the Language Technologies Institute, School of Computer Science at the Carnegie Mellon University.

He was earlier at Boston University pursuing his Masters in Electrical Engineering.

Baring a 2 year period in Guwahati, Assam, Sharath completed most of his schooling at Little Rock - (1987-91) and (1993-99). He then joined KREC, Suratkal where he graduated with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering in May 2003. He followed it up with a stinct as a Research Assistant at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore from July 2003-June 2004. In Sep 2004, he started his Masters at Boston University. He has since transferred to Carnegie Mellon.

Here is a link to his webpage.

littlerocker congratulates him on this development and wishes him the best.

No missed calls for Raghuraj !

2005-08-22T08:46:00.000+05:30

Raghuraj in Boston, Apr 26, 2005

Raghuraj Sunderraju ('97) has moved to Nokia at Bangalore - the Indian subsidiary of the world's largest Mobile phone maker.

Raghuraj was at Little Rock from June 1995 to March 1996 completing his class IX and X. After completing his pre-university from Hassan, he joined RV College of Engineering at Bangalore from where he graduated in July 2003 with a Bachelors in Computer Engineering. Ever since he had been with Honeywell India Software Operations in Bangalore where he worked on software services for the Aerospace Industry. From February-April 2005, he was at the Honeywell HeadQuaters in Richmond, WA, USA.

The picture here, taken on Raghuraj's visit to the US East coast enroute to India in April, shows him standing on the Longfellow Bridge - a bridge over River Charles connecting the cities of Boston and Cambridge in Massachussets.

Some trivia : Nokia is also a place in Western Finland - a town of about 30, 000 people that engages in producing rubber and wood products.

Connecting People comes easy to Raghuraj and no wonder he is now with Nokia !

littlerocker wishes him the best and no more missed calls !

An L&T alumnus

2005-08-22T07:55:00.000+05:30

Rajaram seen here in an unidentified location in the Himalayas

Rajaram Kamath ('97) has moved. He had been working as Sales Manager, Larsen and Toubro (L&T) at Nagpur, a position he has now relinquished. Contemplating a career in Business Administration, he has taken this step in order to give himself time to prepare for the competitive exams later in the year.

Rajaram's complete schooling was at Little Rock, where he studied from June 1987 to March 1999. He then graduated with a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology in July 2003. He joined L&T on Aug 5th, 2003 at Bombay as a Graduate Management Trainee. After several sojourns in Central India, he settled down at L&T Nagpur in October 2003. At Nagpur he was the Sales Manager for Engineering and Construction Equipment division handling the sales for the Vidharba and Chattisgarh regions - a job that involved extensive travel into remote reaches of Central India.

Shown here in an unidentified location in the Himalayas, it might appear that he has left L&T and proceeded to the Himalayas. The truth, however is that having resigned from his job on Aug 6, 2005, he is now at Udupi pursuing his plans for higher education.

littlerocker wishes Rajaram the very best in his efforts.

Little Rock website is down !

2005-08-11T01:40:00.000+05:30

The Little Rock website is down !

For the last two weeks atleast the site has been inaccessible. This case of breakdown has been intimated to the Management in an email sent on August 1st,2005. Principal Prof. Ninan replied that the problem will be looked into. However, at the time of writing this article, the site was still not accessible.

This breakdown causes an avoidable inconvenience to a wide seciton of the Little Rock family, in particular, the scores of alumni who visit the website regularly ( the website receives nearly 1000 hits a month ).

Do you have suggestions on the how the Little Rock website can be improved ? Until the website comes up again, you can complain here.

Public archive and a new online group !

2005-08-08T03:19:00.000+05:30

Class of 1993 group

And finally a long overdue online group for the first ever batch of Little Rock !!littlerock_1993 - This group dedicated to the very 1st batch of LRIS ( with Pradeep Kanchan, Angelo Periera, Priyanka Shetty, Sachin Bhakta, Sabu Philip etc. ) has been started by Pradeep Kanchan. It currently has a current membership of 7. If you are a member of the batch or if you know someone who is, please contact Pradeep at mailto:iamcool@rediffmail.com or
\n\n\n\nlittlerock_1993-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Public archives

Some of the message archives of the Little Rock groups are available for public viewing.You can view them here.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/littlerock_1993/messages
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/littlerock_1994/messages
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/littlerock_1995/messages
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/littlerock_1997/messages
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/littlerock_2000/messages

You might find it interesting to look through some of the emails from school-mates that arent your batchmates !

Roshni with Sarin

2005-08-08T02:42:00.000+05:30

Roshni Mathew ('94) with Sarin

You would probably say this is late. But its never late for the littlerocker !

Here is Roshni Mathew ('94) and her husband Sarin, married on Jan 4, 2003.

Sarin is a graduate in Computer Science from NIT, Calicut, following which he obtained his Masters in Computer Science from University of Kansas.

The couple is currently settled in the Illinois area where Sarin works and Roshni is a pursuing her Masters in Paediatrics. In an earlier post, we featured an update on Roshni - you can see it Here

Here is wishing Roshni and Sarin a happy, even if belated, married life !

School Magazine and a Happy married Life

2005-08-06T12:56:00.000+05:30

Little Rock released its year book/school magazine earlier this year. The yearbook contains a secion that features write-ups by a section of the Alumni. In most write-ups the alumni have sent in their current contact information and (in some cases) a message for their school-mates and the Alma mater. Some of these write-ups have been accompanied by photographs as well. The purpose of this section therefore was to (rightly) provide recognition and representation for the Alumni of Little Rock.

However, sometimes interesting things happen ! Here is one.

Note : Names have been changed and some content may have been edited to protect the identity of the persons involved.

One Little Rocker Arpita whose profile appeared in the yearbook received this mail from Kavya. We have no information on Kavya - whether she has anything to do with Little Rock or otherwise.

///////////////////////////////
hello,

You must be wondering who is this

we have seen your details in little rocks
annual magazine

we are looking a girl for my brother .

are you a konkani ? if so and if your parents
looking for a boy can you e mail back to us
waiting for further reply

yours
Kavya
////////////////////////////////

Its interesting how information in its raw form can be used for a purpose ( in this case definitely meaningful ) altogether different from what it was meant for. We thought marriages are made in heaven. Now we know something more ! In this case, however, the proposal did not materialize. It so happens that Arpita is already happily married.

You now have one more reason to send your details ( accompanied by a picture perhaps ) to the Little Rock magazine !

Sunil at Syracuse !

2005-07-29T05:22:00.000+05:30

Sunil Borkar ('97) is on his way to the United States for Graduate studies at Syracuse University, New York.

Sunil graduated from Manipal Institute of Technology with a bachelors in Chemical Engineering in July 2003. Since then we worked as a consultant with Aker kvaerner India Ltd. - a global provider of Engineering and Construction solutions at Bombay. He will be starting his Masters program in Chemical Engineering this August. He is leaving Bombay for New York City for Aug 3, 2005.

littlerocker wishes Sunil a good trip and a great stay in the United States !

Sunil's brother Shankar Borkar ('97) is also from Little Rock. Shankar graduated with his Bachelors in Hotel Management and Administration from Welcomgroup Graduate School of Hotel Administration, Manipal. He is now planning on his masters in a related sub-discipline.

Its quite Patent, Sujan

2005-07-23T06:57:00.000+05:30

Sujan Manohar ('97)

Is he the first Little Rocker to have got a patent for his research work ? We do not know for a fact, but we suspect its more likely than not.

Meet Sujan Manohar(’97) from the ASIC Design Center, Texas Instruments, Bangalore who on July 14, 2005 was awarded a US Patent on his pioneering work on a "Low standy-by power flip-flop". ( see abstract below )

Sujan is a member of the Class of 1997 at Little Rock from 1986-1997. He went on to Bhandarkar's College, Kundapur for his Pre-university (1997-99). He graduated from RV College of Engineering, Bangalore in July 2003 with a B.E. in Electronics and Communication. He started off as a software engineer with Caritor (India), and joined Texas Instruments ( the world leader in semi-conductors ) at Bangalore in March 2004 where he is now an ASIC Design Engineer.

littlerocker congratulates Sujan Manohar on an exemplary achievement and wishes him the very best in his research work.

When we first contacted Sujan for a picture, he sent us this picture . He is seen here with a guitar. The other man in the picture is a fellow Little Rock - Mohammed Nadeem ('97) - an RVCE Mechanical graduate currently with Infosys. We suspect (and hope) that we are seeing a wig on Nadeem's head !

An abstract of Sujan's work :

The rapid increase in the number of transistors on a chip has enabled high performance computing systems. This has led to aggressive scaling of transistors, which causes tremendous increase in the leakage current. This is especially important for portable and wall-plugged devices powered by batteries, which get drained even when they are not in use. It means that even under static conditions the leakage power is considerable. So a novel approach has been designed to reduce the stand-by power of the circuit over the conventional existing designs.

Masters in Pediatrics

2005-07-06T00:29:00.000+05:30

In the news

Roshni Mathew ('94) - She has just started off with her Postgraduate (Masters) program in Pediatrics in Chicago, Illinois. She was a student of the second batch of Little Rock for 14 years ( 1984-96). She is also the eldest daughter of the principal, Prof Mathew. C. Ninan.

She completed her MBBS from JNMC (Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College), Belgaum in the year 2002. On Jan 6, 2003 she got married to Sarin. An engineer by profession, Sarin is basically from Trichur, Kerala and has been working in the US. In the US since marriage, Roshni obtained admission into the above program after clearing the required (and gruelling ! ) examinations.

littlerocker congratulates "paediatrician-in-the-making" Roshni on a not so kiddish achievement !!

Sthuthi Kishore is tying the Knot !

2005-06-25T13:56:00.000+05:30

News of engagement/marriage are trickling in every now and then. It is now the turn of Sthuthi Kishore ('95) to tie the knot !

Sthuthi studied in Little Rock until Class X after which she studied Commerce at MGM College, Udupi. Following her B.Com, she chose to study Chartered Accountancy. In 2000, she came to Bangalore join Ernst & Young, a financial services major, where she is currently employed.

During the study towards Chartered Accountancy, she also determined her life partner - Pramod. Pramod, also a chartered account, is a rank holder from his B.Com years at Mangalore University, is currently based at Bangalore and is with Accenture, a world-wide consulting major. He was previously with Ernst & Young at Bangalore.

The occassion that changes their lives is on 10 July 2005 at Udupi.

littlerocker congratulates Sthuthi and Pramod and wishes them the very best !

The Little Rockers were in it too !

2005-06-24T11:00:00.000+05:30

LittleRockers were there too !

From left : Sadiq, Prakash, Sandeep Bhat, Harsha ( Anjali's husband ) , Shamil, Akshatha, Sandeep Kamath, Sowmya Kamath, Anjali Bhat, Smitha, Suhas, Ashith, Raghuraj, Ranjeeth, Sujan and an ( as yet ) unidentified guest !

Several of Smitha's batchmates from Little Rock joined the celebrations. They presented Smitha with a classical piece of wood-work. You can see this and many more pictures here.

This marriage is being held at the time of drafting this report. Pictures from the scene are (anxiously ) awaited !

Smitha V and Suhas at the reception

2005-06-24T10:59:00.000+05:30

Smitha and Suhas at their wedding reception
Bangalore, Thursday, June 23, 2005

thelittlerocker promised you that the pictures would be here at the earliest and (for once :-) ) we kept our promise !

Several others pictures ( and the stories behind them ) from the reception ceremony can be viewed here !

An invitation - June 24, 2005

2005-06-20T13:27:00.000+05:30

Smitha ('97) Weds Suhas,
An invitation

One of these days after Smitha ('97) ties the knot, we will bring you more details !

It seems like the age of weddings. In only the last 6 months, over 8 alumni from the Class of 1997 alone have either got married or engaged !

Why doesnt littlerocker hear much from most other batches - about knots tied or jobs shifted or just about anything ! Its high time we did.

The fire, the fight & a happily married delight !

2005-06-19T21:16:00.000+05:30

Mumbai, May 19, 2005
Shalini ('97) and Sandesh

Shalini Kotianker ('97) and Sandesh got married on May 19, 2005 in Mumbai.

Shalini was in Little Rock during her Class IX-X ( 1995-1997). She studied science at Beasant College, Mangalore after which she did her Bachelors in Fashion Design at National Institute of Fashion Technology, Mumbai.

Sandesh, an alumnus of St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, graduated with a BE in Electronic Engineering from Malnad Engineering College, Hassan. He has since been working in Dubai, UAE in a fire-fighting firm.

They met through Vinaya Nayak ('97) who was Sandesh's neighbour. When asked about what is keeping her busy these days, she said she is still picking up cooking skills. littlerocker suspects Sandesh will have some real fire-fighting to do right in their kitchen !

littlerocker wishes Shalini and Sandesh all the very best and a Happy Married Life.

Little Rock - Class X and XII results

2005-06-17T06:15:00.000+05:30

The Class X and XII results at Little Rock arrived a few days back. Both batches have secured a 100% pass record; something Little Rock would be really proud of.

A reasonably detailed listing of results can be obtained here.

Top Scorers for Class XII : Suhas Sureshchandra and Sharon Flavia Misquith.

Suhas Sureshchandra is the brother of Little Rock Alumni Sushma Sureshchandra('97) and Sahana Sureshchandra (2000 ). Sushma graduated from KMC Manipal with her MBBS and is currently preparing for her post-graduate examinations. Sahana is currently a 3rd year BE student at KVG Engineering College, Sulia.

Top Scorers for Class X : Aadit Devanand, Kim Kurien Joseph and Sripoorna Bharadwaj

Ccongratulates the students on a splendid performance !

MD in Psychiatry and a new online group !

2005-06-12T09:20:00.000+05:30

In the news

Anup Mathew Joseph ('96) - Recently started his Masters in Psychiatry programme at the KMC Manipal. He previously graduated with an MBBS from Bapuji Institute of Medical Sciences, Davangere. He is the son of Mrs. Mary Joseph, one of head teachers at Little Rock.

As published in thelittlerocker Ajay Kamath ('97) is also in his Masters ( in Ophthalmology ) program at KMC Manipal.

Class of 1994 group

littlerock_1994 - This group dedicated to the 2th batch of LRIS ( with Roshni Mathew, Jeevan Crasta, Bharath Rao, Avinash Alva, Swati Rao etc. ) has been started by Bharath Rao on June 8th, 2005 and has a current membership of 5. Please contact bharathraok@yahoo.com or littlerock_1994-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

The Couple in Canada

2005-06-09T06:57:00.000+05:30

Varsha('97) and Praveen at Praveen's convocation ceremony at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

The littlerocker just heard from yet another couple !

Varsha Rao ('97) and Praveen got married on Feb 9, 2004 at Shamili Kalyan Mantap, Udupi. Currently, the couple is based in Edmonton, Canada.

Varsha Rao graduated with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from NMAMIT, Nitte, Karnataka. She is now taking courses at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Edmonton, Canada, following which she will look forward to work.

Praveen finished his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Alberta, Edmonton. He is currently a Post Doctoral fellow at the same institution.

Online groups galore !

2005-06-05T01:11:00.000+05:30

Over the past couple of weeks, several online groups have started dedicated to alumni of different batches of little rock. Here is a list of groups that currently exist and a note on how you can join them !

littlerock_1995 - This group dedicated to the 3rd batch of LRIS ( with Dhiraj, Stuti, Nishchal, Nitin Pai etc. ) was started by Dhiraj Bhandary on May 24th,2005 and has a current membership of 13. Please contact bhandarydhiraj@yahoo.com or littlerock_1995-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

littlerock_1996 - This group dedicated to the 3rd batch of LRIS ( with Ranjini, Conrad Colaco, Padmala, Arjun Tolar etc. ) was started by Padmala Bhandary on May 26th,2005 and has a current membership of 14. has been started by Padmala Bhandary. Please contact padmala_by@rediffmail.com or littlerock_1996-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

littlerock_1997 - This group dedicated to the 5th batch of LRIS ( with Ashith, Joyas Joseph, Shilpa Udupa, Sharath Rao etc. ) was started by Ashith hegde and Sharath Rao on Nov 30, 2003 and has a current membership of 110. Please contact raosharathonline@yahoo.com or abhegde@gmail.com or littlerock_1997-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

littlerock_1998 - This group dedicated to the 6th batch of LRIS ( with Deepak Bhandary, Aswin DSouza, Karthik Ramkumar, Manali Hazarika etc. ) was started by Deepak Bhandary May 24, 2005 and has a current membership of 30. Please contact bhandarydeepak@yahoo.com or littlerock_1998-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

littlerock_1999 - This group dedicated to the 7th batch of LRIS ( with Kavya Shetty, Anjali Krishnan, Pradyumna etc. ) was started by Anjali Krishnan on May 25, 2005 and has a current membership of 9. Please contact mailto:anjali_k83@hotmail.com littlerock_1999-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

littlerock_2000 - This group dedicated to the 8th batch of LRIS ( with Vineeta Rao, Akshata Manjunath, Abhinav Jagetia etc. ) was started by Vineeta Rao on May 26, 2005 and has a current membership of 8. Please contact vineeta.rao@gmail.com or littlerock_2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.co.in

little_rock2001 - This group dedicated to the 9th batch of LRIS ( with Govind Diwakar, Krishna Ramkumar, Shoaib Shukur, Kaustuba K V , Raksha Nayak ) was started by Govind Diwakar. Please contact little_rock2001-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

littlerockers_2002 - This group dedicated to the 10th batch of LRIS was started by Akhtar Hussain. Please contact littlerockers_2002-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

We will post more notes as other groups ( 1993 and 94 in the making ) start off !

Movers and Shakers - II

2005-06-05T00:45:00.000+05:30

Erwin DSouza ('95) is joining Google Inc. at MountainView, CA shortly.

He graduated from MIT, Manipal with a BE in Computer Science in June 2001. After a short stinct with Infosys Technologies at Mangalore, he joined North Carolina State University (NCSU) at Rayleigh, NC, USA for his Masters in Computer Science from where he has just graduated.

Sanjeev Bhat ('97) is currently a practicing doctor at NITTE Satellite Centre near Surathkal. This centre,where Sanjeev consults from 9 am - Noon, has been recently setup by the NITTE Trust to provide medical facilities in the area. From 4 pm-7 pm, he consults at another medical centre at the NITTE Engineering College (NMAMIT) campus. Although currently based in Mangalore where he stays with his parents, he will shortly be shifting to NITTE.

Sanjeev graduated with an MBBS from KS Hegde Medical College, Deralkatte, Mangalore in May 2005.

Best Wishes Erwin and Sanjeev !

Visa Power

2005-06-04T23:49:00.000+05:30

Two Little Rockers - Ashith Hegde ('97) and Aswin Dsouza ('98) are on their way to the United States for Graduate studies.

Ashith will proceed to the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo,NY for MS in Industrial Management starting Aug 2005. He is currently with Avsarala Automation at Bangalore after having graduated with a BE in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, Manipal in June 2003.

Aswin proceeds to Texas A&M University (TAMU) at College Station, TX for his Masters in Computer Science. He is currently with SAP Labs, Bangalore after having graduated with a BE in Computer Science from MIT, Manipal in June 2004.

Both Ashith and Aswin got their US Visas this week !

littlerocker wishes them a good trip and a great stay in the United States !

Akshatha Kamath's Wedding

2005-06-02T20:34:00.000+05:30

Udupi, Dec 19th, 2004
Deepak and Akshatha('97)

Akshatha Kamath graduated with a BE in Biomedical Engineering from KLE College of Engineering, Belgaum in June 2003. She has since been working with Infosys Technologies, Bangalore.

Infy turned out to be the lucky charm for her, as she got engaged to Deepak just two months after joining the company! Deepak works with the Infosys HRD.

thelittlerocker wishes Akshatha and Deepak all the very best and a Happy Married Life.

Dhiraj Bhandary's Wedding

2005-05-24T13:08:00.000+05:30

Udupi, Jan 2nd, 2005
Dhiraj ('95) with Deeksha

Dhiraj Bhandary and Deeksha got married on Jan 2nd, 2005 at the "Shesheshayana Hall", Udupi

Dhiraj completed Class X at Little Rock in March 1995, joining MGM college, Udupi for his Bachelors in Commerce. At MGM, he was the Students Council president, founder of the college newsletter and head of the organising committe that held the first Inter-College festival. He graduated from MGM with a B.Com in 2000 adjudged the Best Outgoing Student for the year 2000. He now works as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG, an international accouting major.

He met his wife Deeksha during their studies at MGM where Deeksha graduated with a Bachelors in Science. She currently is a teacher with interests in Computer Science.

thelittlerocker wishes Dhiraj and Deeksha a Happy Married Life.

Whos Who, where and why - II

2005-05-22T05:43:00.000+05:30

This is the second post in the series of Who's Who, Where and Why - where the whereabouts and whatabouts (!) of Little Rockers is made available. These are people who, ofcourse, were not covered in the previous editions of this series.

In the post titled "July 17, 2004 - a little get-together at Bangalore", quite a few of them infact were present at the reunion on May 1st, 2004 and they have been described in the part I of the same series, but are repeated for the sake of continuity.

Standing (L-R)

Mahesh Acharya - BE ( Electronics ) from RVCE Bangalore, currently with Socrates Software at Bangalore

Shaik Sadiq - MBBS from Bangalore Medical College, Bangalore, currently in preparation of his post-graduate studies

Nadeem Mhmd - BE ( Mechanical ), RVCE, Bangalore, currently with Infosys at Mangalore

Raghuraj S - BE ( Computer Science), RVCE, Bangalore, currently with Honeywell at Bangalore

Sandeep Bhat - BE ( Computer Science ) from MIT, Manipal, currently with Infosys Technologies at Bangalore

Shalini Kotainker - Studies fashion designing at National Institute of Fashion Designing ( NIFT ), Bombay and is currently in Dubai

Apeksha BR- BE ( Computer Science ) at Chikmanglur, currently with Infosys Technologies, Bangalore

Soumya Kamath - BE ( Info. Sci. ), Vidyavardhaka Inst. of Tech., Mysore, working at Mysore

Murtaza - Sowmya's husband - BE ( Mechanical ) from Vidyavardhaka Inst. of Tech., Mysore, currently an entreprenuer in Mysore

July 17,2004 - A little get-together at Bangalore

2005-05-22T00:19:00.000+05:30

Get together at Bangalore - July 17, 2004

Sitting (L-R)

Sujan Manohar, Joyas Joseph, Bhanuprakash, Sandeep Shetty, Sarfraz, Shilpa Udupa

Standing (L-R)

Mahesh Acharya, Sadiq, Nadeem, Raghuraj, Sandeep Bhat, Shalini, Apeksha, Soumya Kamath and her husband Murtaza

Missing in photograph : Sharath Rao

Movers and Shakers - I

2005-05-21T01:17:00.000+05:30

Three movements :

Ajay Kamath ('97) - Recently made it to the Masters in Opthalmology programme at the KMC Manipal. Supposedly started his programme sometime in the first week of May '05. He previously graduated with an MBBS from KMC Mangalore

HridayRam Shenoy ('97) - Made it to the MBA program at TAPMI, Manipal. This chap previously graduated from MIT Manipal with BE (ECE). Had been freelancing with the Indian Express and another News magazine at Bangalore

Anoop H.K. ('97) - Joined HCL Technologies, Noida. Was previously working as a project assistant at the IISc, Bangalore

Sadiq's Graduation - II

2005-05-20T04:44:00.000+05:30

Bangalore, May 12, 2005

Sadiq ('97) with his friend Vijay ( No LRIS connection ! ) during his convocation at the Bangalore Medical College

Samta and Sadiq at Graduation Day - I

2005-05-20T04:40:00.001+05:30

Bangalore, May 12, 2005

Sadiq ( '97 ) and Samta ('97 ) graduated with a M.B.B.S from Bangalore Medical College ( BMC ) after 6 years of back-breaking and mind-numbing hardwork !

Samta and Sadiq after their Graduation Ceremony.

Little Rockers at Anjali's marriage

2005-05-20T04:29:00.000+05:30

4 of us from Class of 1997 attended Anjali's marriage. Here is picture of Roopa, Ashith, Smitha and Deepa with the couple !

Anjali Bhat's marriage - I

2005-05-20T04:28:00.000+05:30

Kasargod, May 5, 2005
Anjali Bhat ('97) with Harsha

Anjali Bhat and Harsha got married on May 5, 2005 at the "Annapoorna Kalyan Mantap" at Kasargod, Kerala. Picture : courtesy - Ashith Hegde

thelittlerocker wishes Anjali and Harsha a Happy Married Life.

Whos Who, where and why - I

2005-05-18T04:41:00.000+05:30

Go back to the post titled "May 1, 2004 - The first reunion of Class of 1997 " and find out whos doing what ?

Bottom Sitting (L-R) :

Archana P : Finished MBBS from Yenepoya, Mlore.

Kishori DMello : B. Arch from MIT, Manipal, currently married and settled in Bangalore

Anita Nayak : Finished BE ( Biomed ) from MIT, Manipal

Swapna D'Silva : Masters in Social Work, Mangalore University - currently with an NGO in Bangalore

Anura Hegde : BBM from Micro Business Institute, Udupi

Shilpa Udupa : BE ( Electrical ) from KREC, Surathkal. Currently at ANZ Software, Bangalore

Bhavya Katpady : BBM from Micro Business, Udupi - since working in Bangalore

First row Standing ( L-R )

Sushma Sureshchandra : MBBS ( KMC Mangalore ) - currently preparing for PG Exams

Poorna Rao : BA from Bhandarkars, Kundapur

Roopa Arun Kalgujjikar : MBBS ( KMC Mangalore ) - currently preparing for PG Exams

Ramya : currently MS ( Biochemistry ) - KMC Manipal

Sowmya S : Masters in Social Work, Mangalore University

Shaimaa Munir : BDS from Yenepoya, Mangalore - currently preparing for PG Exams

Shilpa Acharya : BE ( Biomedical ) from MIT, Manipal, currently with IGate Software at Bangalore

Jayagowri : BE ( Computer Science ) from NIE, Mysore, currently Sapient Inc. at Bangalore

Sneha Shetty : Currently MSc ( Biochemistry ) from Mangalore University

Vinaya Nayak : BDS, AB Shetty Dental College, Mangalore

Mangala Prabhu : BE ( Electrical ) from MIT, Manipal, currently married and settled in California

Mildred Pinto : Masters in Social Work, Mangalore University, currently working in Dubai, UAE.

Smitha V - BE ( Electronics ), SJCE, Mysore, currently with Robert Bosch, Bangalore

Anjali Bhat : BDS ( AB Shetty Dental College, Mangalore, currently married and settled in Bangalore

Roohi Zain : B. Arch from MIT, Manipal

Shamil Kediyoor : BE, NMAMIT, Nitte, currently working in Bangalore

Top row Standing ( L-R ) :

Samuel Kalamati - BBM from Micro Business, Udupi - since working in Bangalore

Bhanuprakash - BE ( Info. Sci. ), Vidyavardhaka Inst. of Tech., Mysore, working in Bangalore

Sarfraz - BE ( Electronics ), RVCE, Bangalore, currently with Syntel, Mumbai

Sandeep Kamath - BE ( Mechanical ), MIT, Manipal, currently studying in Bangalore

Ajay Kamath - MBBS from KMC Mangalore, currently MS ( Ophthamology ) in KMC, Manipal

Sunil Borkar - BE ( Chemical ) MIT, Manipal, currently with Chemical company in Bombay

Balaji - Diploma in Electronics, MIT, Manipal, currently working in Udupi

Prakash Rao - BE ( Mechanical ), MIT, Manipal, currently with Infosys at Bangalore

Pradeep Hegde - BE ( Electronics ), currently in Bangalore

Sandeep Shetty - BE ( Electronics ), MIT, Manipal, currently with I-flex Solutions, Bangalore

Manjesh Shetty - BE ( Electrical ), KREC, Surathkal currently with a software company in Bangalore

Sujan Manohar - BE ( Electronics ), RVCE, Bangalore, currently with Texas Instruments, Bangalore

Nadeem Mhmd - BE ( Mechanical ), RVCE, Bangalore, currently with Infosys at Mangalore

Raghuraj S - BE ( Computer Science), RVCE, Bangalore, currently with Honeywell at Bangalore

Navin Dias : BDS from Yenepoya, Mangalore - currently preparing for PG Exams

Poornachandra Aithal - BE ( Mechanical ), KREC, Surathkal currently with Infosys at Mysore

Eric Pais - B. Com from SMS College, Brahmavar

Preetham Prabhu - BE ( Electrical ), MIT, Manipal, currently working at Bangalore

Kiran P. N. - BE ( Electronics ), RVCE, Bangalore, currently with Robert Bosch, Bangalore

Joyas Joseph - BE ( Computer Science ), MIT, Manipal, currently with HCL at Madras

Aneesh DSouza - BE ( Electronics ), MIT, Manipal, currently with Infosys at Mysore

Ashith Hegde - BE ( Mechanical ), MIT, Manipal, currently with Avsarala Automation, Bangalore

Sharath Rao - BE ( Electrical ), KREC, Surathkal, currently Graduate Student at Boston University

Anup HK - BE ( Mechanical ), Bapuji Int. of Tech., Davangere, currently with HCL, Noida, U.P.

May 1, 2004 - The first reunion of Class of 1997

2005-05-18T04:12:00.000+05:30

Udupi, May 1st, 2004
At the Class of 1997 reunion

Bottom Sitting (L-R) :

Archana P, Kishori DMello, Anita Nayak, Swapna D'Silva, Anura Hegde, Shilpa Udupa, Bhavya Katpady

First row Standing ( L-R )

Sushma Sureshchandra, Poorna Rao, Roopa kalgujjikar, Ramya, Sowmya S, Shaimaa Munir, Shilpa Acharya, Jayagowri , Sneha Shetty, Vinaya Nayak, Mangala Prabhu, Mildred Pinto, Smitha V, Anjali Bhat, Roohi , Shamil Kediyoor

Top row Standing ( L-R ) :

Samuel Kalamati, Bhanuprakash, Sarfraz, Sandeep Kamath, Ajay Kamath, Sunil Borkar, Balaji, Prakash Rao, Pradeep Hegde, Sandeep Shetty, Manjesh Shetty, Sujan Manohar, Nadeem Mhmd, Raghuraj S , Navin Dias, Poornachandra Aithal, Eric Pais, Preetham Prabhu, Kiran P. N., Joyas Joseph, Aneesh DSouza, Ashith Hegde, Sharath Rao, Anup HK.

Missing in photograph : Rajesh Nair

LRIS on orkut.com

2005-05-18T04:08:00.000+05:30

Little Rock has a modest presence on orkut.com - an online community with a current strength of 43 members.

If you have ever been in Little Rock Indian School, Brahmavar, India - ( yeah the same one with Lali Madam, the brown and yellow uniform and the only co-ed school with separate corridor for guys and girls ;-) ) , you ought to be on orkut.com.

Post a comment to this post and leave your ID. And you will receive an invite !

Well, if you are already on orkut, send invites to your batchmates and help expand the community !

littlerock_1997@yahoogroups.com

2005-05-18T03:34:00.000+05:30

If you are reading the first ever post in this blog, you are probably here for the first time. Now if you are are indeed from Little Rock, take note :

There is an online mailing group at littlerock_1997@yahoogroups.com. The '1997' refers to the Class of 1997 - by this we mean the following should be applicable to you :

* You, at some point, were at LRIS.

* You were in Class X in 1996-97 ; probably wrote the Boards in March/April 1997.

* Ofcourse, you may have left LRIS before 1996 or joined LRIS after 1997.

* You would count one or more of the following as your batchmates - Ashith Hegde, Joyas Joseph, Rajaram Kamath, Shamil Kediyoor, Shilpa Udupa or Sushma SureshChandra.

This group was started in Nov 2003. Since then the group flourishes with about 110 members, regular mails and one big reunion ( besides a few smaller ones ) behind us ( see picture above ). People are scattered all over the place - a big bunch in Bangalore, few outside Karnataka, few in the Gulf and North America; and this group brings the batch together and helps them stay in touch.

Mails consist of

* simple greetings
* catching up mails
* "my experience" types
* As people get married, invitations are posted before marriage and photographs after.
* and occasional mails about great days back at school.

If you belong to this batch and somehow escaped our tracking down exercise, please write to littlerocker AT gmail.com - as soon as you see this - yes, RIGHT NOW !

If you are from LRIS but dont belong to this batch, read post titled "LRIS on orkut.com" and leave a comment here. We will get back to you.