Après la Pluie

Well, everyone had their way to enjoy monsoons . I have my own too.. and so do the team here at Formula Manipal.
Here are a few words by Heerak Thakar, Vehicle Dynamics on his first stay in summers at Manipal.


After six months of "Engineering" , vacations are only thing worth waiting for. 

We were instead waiting for the exams to end, so we could actually sit up and work in the workshop for as long as possible rather than having the fear of missing classes. It was the beginning of sleepless nights. There was no going back before 3 am and everyone was back there at the workshop at 9, next day. The team was waiting for these vacations to begin since the winter vacations in December were spent in the learning process. Now a full semester gone, the team was done with all the research and designs had begun to get finalized. The upcoming times seemed to be full of testing times wherein all the reading which had been done till now would be tested.

Summers began with trips to Bangalore for manufacturing . The geometries were still being iterated ,with chassis team facing difficulty with the mounting of the engine and differential. That was surely a tough task.

June and July is the peak season for Monsoons in Manipal. The atmosphere gets "chilled" out. The rains make work very tough but relieves you from the scorching heat on previous sem. Management Team had their own troubles, since rains made it difficult to move about and to avoid the ECU to get roasted, we preferred to avoid testing in this unpredictable weather. On the other hand it was very pleasant for the people working in the otherwise hot workshop. The first set of rains was enjoyed thoroughly by some team members by getting drenched in the rain but we had our mood swings often , since after sometime you get bored of water water everywhere..haha..!!

Summers also welcome the upcoming batches in MIT for their counselling. Since our workshop was in the vicinity of the counseling venue, it made most of the freshmen to drop in with their umbrellas and off course their parents. This meant keeping workshop cleaned at all points of time and making sure that we maintain the name of FM.

As the saying goes, that ‘All work and no play, makes one a dull boy’, we took our time off  to relax and recuperate, so that  our minds don't get coagulated. This called for new ways of relaxing and team building, which were found in playing games such as Cricket and Soccer. And of course a couple of parties to drown into. To make sure we deserve the free time, we used to slog the whole week, kept up with the deadlines and made sure work was efficient.

All in all, the Summers 2012 surely was an amazing time spent at Formula Manipal. The rain drops falling in front of the workshop made working even more pleasing. And as we say, work doesn’t remain just work at Formula Manipal, it becomes a part of you. You do it as you feel like doing it. 

Heerak Thakkar
Vehicle Dynamics

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