Food @ ILP

People have major concern about the food when going to a new place. Every state in India has got a different style of food. In North, people eat more wheat, whereas in South, the intake of rice is more. My experience about food was not that great. But I’d like to share few points which can throw some light on this tasty topic.

Let me start from the breakfast. Everyday you have your breakfast in the training centre premises. Let me tell you that you need to pay for this. TCS provides it at subsidized rates. You get Idli Sambar, Bread Omlet, Puri Bhaji, Uttapam, Pesarattu, Tomato Bath, Maisore Bhajji, Pongal and some other stuff (I don’t remember all). Pesarattu was the most pathetic thing I’ve ever eaten (Sorry South-Indian friends, but personally I didn’t like it). Apart from this, you get fresh fruit juices and milk shakes like Mosambi juice, Pineapple juice, Watermelon juice, grape juice, mixed-fruit juice, banana milk shake etc. at Rs.10/- per glass. You have to get coupons for all this. You cannot exchange food coupons for juice and vice versa. You can also have tea/coffee any time of the day (coffee vending machine is available 24 hrs a day; the only constraint is availability of the cups :))

Some of the information about the food here can be specific to Hyderabad; but at all other ILP locations the picture is fairly similar.

You have an hour’s break for the lunch. We had to buy food coupons for Rs.23/- everyday (what an odd figure, I was frustrated to get those 3 rupees change everyday). Lunch was good. It contained roti, sabji, rice, dal, curd and some papad like stuff (we used to call it “Ponga Pandit”; don’t ask me why…). We required lots of efforts for eating those rotis. (They should have provided us with an axe along with the roti ;-)). Let me tell you that there is neither A.C. nor fans in the canteen. Most of the people (including me) preferred sitting outside on the rocks in the premises. (Note: “On the rocks” has a literal meaning here)

I must mention here about the evening snacks we used to have. In Madhapur (a place at 20 mins distance from our hotel), we used to go for having tea/coffee and some snacks. We found out a small hotel where we got delicious hot Bhajiya, Maisoor Bonda (a kind of Bhajiya only) and other good stuff. People going to Hyderabad for their ILP would like to go to this place. It’s opposite Madhapur petrol pump.

If you ask me about the dinner, you are free to have it anywhere you wish. You can have your dinner at hotel or you may hunt for good restaurants of your taste. I used to take my dinner in the hotel itself. First 3-4 days I went outside in the search of a good place for North Indian food, but alas! I ended up getting only rice, rice and rice. (Well, I don’t hate rice, but “only rice and no roti” brought me to the decision of having dinner at hotel). Hotel dinner was a bit better than eating only rice outside. But there also the problem was not over. The dinner contents used to be the same everyday. You can imagine consuming the same thing with same taste everyday without any variety. For a change, you can go out to a restaurant. In Hyderabad, there are nice restaurants around. Few of them are Angeethi, Keshav Reddy, Amaravati, Olive Garden, Ginger Court, Paradise, Panjab ki Rasoi, Hyderabad House, Chilly-Pepper, Chutney’s and many more. Well, you could have visualized our hunt for the food by now. Amongst all these, I personally recommend Angeethi. It’s a nice Panjabi restaurant with very eye-catching ambience. Service and food, both are good. Prices are affordable and they have buffet system, except for Sundays. Paradise and Hyderabad House are good for Hyderabadi Biryani. Chutney’s is an exceptional South Indian restaurant with scrumptious food.

Well, after so much writing about food, I’m feeling quite hungry :-) I’ll take a break here and wish you all very happy days for your taste buds during ILP.

A year after ILP...

Hi friends! It gives me an immense pleasure to acquaint you with the fact that it's been a year after I joined TCS.

The day was August 10, 2006, exactly a year ago, the first day of my ILP and the first day with TCS.

Two months of training called ILP – The Initial Learning Program of TCS is one of the most cherished parts of my life. As I had mentioned in my first post, the place of my training was Hyderabad. Till then I didn't have much idea about this place. In these two months, we explored Hyderabad and we all fell for this beautiful city. I wished they could have posted us in Hyderabad itself after the training. Every day of ILP in Hyderabad was bliss! (No offence…family members ;-))

I will publish more articles about my experiences and various aspects of ILP in subsequent posts.

I would like to dedicate this article to all my colleagues, trainers and all the people who were there with me during ILP and who filled my life with the astonishing moments during these two months.

Thank you all for being part of the ILP Days…

Classroom Sessions @ ILP

Back to college days? Ohh yes. ILP is a mixture of fun@college and professionalism@work. Well, as I've mentioned in the comments to my previous posts, the classroom sessions are from 9am to 5.45pm. The schedule is as follows,

9am to 11am : First Session
11am to 11.30am : Tea/Coffee Break
11.30am to 1.15pm : Second Session
1.15pm to 2.00pm : Lunch Break
2.00pm to 3.30pm : Third Session
3.30pm to 4.00pm : Tea/Coffee Break
4.00pm to 5.45pm : Fourth Session


The bus comes at 7.30am sharp. You need to get up early in the morning, get ready and wait for the bus. The bus takes you to the training centre. There you have time for breakfast. The sessions start at 9am sharp.

The sessions can be divided into three broad categories - technical sessions, life skills sessions and foreign language sessions. Amongst these, life skills sessions are the most cheerful and enjoyable. In these sessions, they teach you about professional grooming, dining etiquette, listening skills, communication skills, group activities and many more things. You have a lot of case studies and role plays. Role plays are the most enjoyable part. They form the groups dynamically. Each group is assigned a subject/theme. Based on that, you need to perform in front of rest of the class. Dynamic group forming is done as follows - The process starts from the first person sitting in the first (or last) row in the corner. First person will say the number "1". The next person sitting to him/her will say "2", the next "3" and so on. The maximum number you say depends on the number of groups that need to be formed. For example, if 4 groups are required, then the number calling goes like this - 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1… and so on. Next, all 1's are made to sit together; same thing happens with all 2's, 3's and 4's. Now, the groups are formed, you are ready for the group activities.

Technical sessions are the most boring part of the ILP. But you have to attend all the sessions and can’t bunk any of them. If you miss 2 sessions, you are directly out of the ILP. It's that strict. As a computer science batch, we were expected to know the technical topics and hence all the topics were not taught to us in detail, but the sessions were interactive and we made to contribute our knowledge during these sessions. Non-comps students are not expected to know these subjects, so need not worry. They teach you C++, Java, UNIX, DMBS, Software Engineering, Testing Techniques etc. All the material will be provided in the ILP. For software engineering, the book they give you is "Jalote" (This is the author name). For other subjects, they have their own course material that is sufficient for passing the final test.

Foreign language sessions are equally entertaining as that of the life skills sessions. Learning a new language is too much fun. They also show you some videos/movies in that language. You have assignments, mock tests, conversations, presentations and lot more things. The foreign language for our batch was German. Our faculty was very good, her name was Shivani; very beautiful lady indeed. Since our batch was very small, she used to pay attention to each and every candidate in the class. Few of us were from Kolkata and had accent problem. We always noticed their Bengali accent while speaking German. But, Shivani ma'am made them change the way they spoke. We also had basic conversations from the German handout that was given to us. "Darf ich herein kommen?" well, this is the German for “May I come in?”. Whenever anyone used to come late for the German session, he/she had to ask this before coming in. I think this is one line we remembered the most. In these sessions, they also teach you the grammar of the foreign language, sentence formation and pronunciation. Fun filled sessions indeed.

During classroom sessions, nobody is allowed to wander outside (except CR of course ;-) ). You are supposed to keep the cell phones off during the sessions. Everyone needs to sign the attendance sheet for every session. After end of the session, you'll be given feedback forms that everyone has to fill promptly and return them to the CR.

Well, if you are just out of the college and joining TCS ILP, it wouldn't be much difficult for you. The only difference is, in ILP the things are stricter and you are expected to behave more responsibly and professionally. After all, we are going to be IT professionals and this is just the beginning, right?