Eccentricity Three Dot Zero

Aussies-Deadlines-Ponnappa-ToI. Change.

2010-10-17T01:42:00.007+05:30

Australians, notwithstanding the unrelated fact that they are bad losers, have implemented the two-innings-in-a-limited-overs-match format, the advertisement for which proclaimed the beaten-to-death cliche of "the only constant is change".

Ofcourse, things change. For starters, I am writing again. I am not 22M anymore, as the badge on my blog currently claims. I am 23M and firmly on track to hit 24M soon. I don't even stay in Chennai, fortunately or unfortunately. I stay in Bombay now, fortunately. I am not reachable on Facebook, as I was for most of the last year or two in college. My roommates have changed. I am earning - that is a welcome change. I am not my own boss anymore - I have a real boss, one with flesh and blood. The deadlines are not flexible, infact, they are as good as engraved in stone. Most of my clothes are clean as are my utensils. Oh, I have utensils too. Women around me cannot be referred to as chicks, females or girls anymore. They have to be referred to as women - sometimes out of compulsive polity and other times due to the organisational policies. Bunking the 8 'o clock classes is not an option because there are NO 8'o clock classes anymore, there are only 8'o clock reviews, the kind your boss would not appreciate if you miss. On another note, 8 AM in India is not just 8 AM in India anymore - it is 10.30 AM in Singapore and 3.30 AM in London. And it is 15 minutes away from the first daily submission routine, at 8.15 AM.

Apologies are now apols, presentations are now presos, "dude" has now become "mate", and "Fuck you" has now become "Sure, Sir". Change can be good and intoxicating. This change, from the wilderness of a student life to the almost artificial, perhaps farticifial, and forced-discipline of corporate life has been good and intoxicating, both, and promises to be better.

That India could get 101 medals in any sporting event is a change that is hard to believe. Much like the fact that they let someone like a Kalmadi take charge, in the first place. And when at it, Lalit Bhanot, too. [Lalit Bhanot and Kalmadi warrant an entire blog, not just blogpost, on them - they are a writer's dream]. The Games did much good. The opening ceremony, the unprecedented medals tally, performances in track and field, young sportsmen from the lesser known places of the country, the amazing victory in 4X400m women's relay, Saina Nehwal and Ashwini Ponnappa, the closing ceremony - indicate a welcome and a long, long overdue change.

One thing, though, has not changed and that is the ever-so abysmal quality of reporting by M/s Times of India. That their headline article could actually say "2 parts to Hindus, 1 part to Muslims" - in big bold letters on a day that could have left the nation torn just goes to show that someone very high up in that organisation is either deranged or just plainly incapable of being at the helm of the mouthpiece of a progressive nation. Somethings, after all, never change.

A post on the blog after such a long break warrants an explanation on the underlying motivation. Much thanks to Archana for pepping me all the time, to mom for candidly admitting that she missed my blog, to sister for blatantly admitting that she missed my blog and to a few others who did mail and "facebook-message" me prompting me to write. What tipped it off, though, was a rather unexpected fan mail (Fan mail!!) from Divish, from IITD. Thanks, Divish. :-)

Wiki - the super tripper

2010-03-27T03:00:00.004+05:30

On this Friday night at exactly 3AM when I was incessantly clicking the 'random article' link on Wikipedia, I realised the immense trip value embedded in it.

I started off with the Kardashev Scale -

"The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement... The scale has three designated categories called Type I, II, and III. These are based on the amount of usable energy a civilization has at its disposal, and the degree of space colonization. In general terms, a Type I civilization has achieved mastery of the resources of its home planet, Type II of its solar system, and Type III of its galaxy."

Then came Mr. Arthur C Clarke, with his three laws of prediction:

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

And his fourth law:

For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.

Parallel to this is Gibson's law:

For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD.

In between somewhere, I jumped to "Star-lifting":

Star lifting is any of several hypothetical processes by which a highly advanced civilization (at least Kardashev-II) could remove a substantial portion of a star's matter in a controlled manner for other uses.

Finagle's law:

Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment

Remember Mr. Murphy?

Hanlon's Law:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Sturgeon's law (and without meaning disrespect, infact as a matter of offering my respects, I think Mr. Sturgeon was a seasoned stoner):

The first is: "Nothing is always absolutely so".

The second, and more famous, of these adages is: "Ninety percent of everything is crud." (The last word is typically misquoted as "crap".)

Occam's Razor, now famous thanks to Dr. Gregory House: entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.... Occam's razor may be alternatively phrased as pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate ("plurality should not be posited without necessity").

Hofstader's law (he could probably be the only guy who beats Sturgeon):

Hofstadter's Law:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

And to end this post, the Drake's equation:

"It is an equation to organize our guesses about the potential number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is used in the fields of exobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)."

And well, just as a reassurance, the Mediocrity principle:

The assumptions of mediocrity principle is the notion in philosophy of science that there is nothing special about humans or the Earth.

That one blemish in Sachin's career

2010-02-27T00:30:00.011+05:30

At the very outset, I wish to reassert my loyalties towards the country. Although, I would not mind Rahul Gandhi becoming the Prime Minster of India in the near future and would like to see Pakistani players being included in IPL, I am NOT a traitor. In fact, although I cannot remember very clearly what was my opinion on the Sonia-Gandhi-was-not-a-born-Indian-but-wants-to-be-PM issue, I think I would not really have opposed it tooth and nail.

But I am not a traitor and neither should my opinions in this post be used to judge my patriotic feelings.

That being said, let us talk about Sachin Tendulkar. Undoubtedly, he is the man of the moment. He is the favorite son of the nation and has successfully and deservedly captured the imagination of a billion minds. What he could do at 36 is a testimony to the character of the human being within Sachin. Never the one to be involved in a controversy (unless it's the Shiv Sena, which harps on dragging celebrities into controversies) nor the one who's commitment and love towards the game can be doubted, Sachin's knock of 200* at Gwalior is a stamping of his supremacy on the game. This knock has most certainly taken Sachin into a league of his own, perhaps a league into which even the all time great Sir Don Bradman would have struggled to make it.

The only milestone I'd love to see Sachin conquer is a triple ton in Test matches. In about a year, he'll be playing his last World Cup and a player of his calibre and a man of his virtues does deserve a share in the highest cricketing honour. As rightly pointed by Harsha Bhogle in this article, he could plan for it but he doesn't hold the key to a win in a team sport. It must happen, he cannot make it happen.

So, we can only hope that his 36-year-old body and his teammates ably support him in this endeavour. I'd also love to see Sachin leave a un-erasable mark as a match winner. Sachin is still not in the same club as the likes of Steve Waugh and Brian Lara. Steve Waugh, who is not as gifted as Sachin, has won matches for his country and at times single-handedly. It probably helped that he had a team which could ably play around him. Lara, a genius by himself, has certainly taken the West Indian cricket to new heights. Given his talent, combined with his deadly aggression, he has batte(re)d innumerable oppositions out of the match. Lara did not have the same cushion of a talented team as Waugh. Lara, in my humble opinion, is the greatest match-winner of the past decade.

Sachin, on the other hand has come dangerously close but never made it there. During the period which was till now being referred to as his prime - the '99 Sharjah innings against Australia - two back-to-back centuries that helped India clinch that series, Sachin was at his best ever. My memory of Sachin as a match-winner deserts me there. Perhaps, his performance in the 2003 World Cup is worth a mention, where he hit the likes of Shoaib Akhtar and Andy Caddick for towering sixes. Sachin getting the better of Shane Warne during the home series of 2001 is also a showcase batting performance of the era.

That said, Sachin has got India mindboggingly close to epic victories: The '99 Chennai test against Pakistan where we lost by 13 runs after a heroic knock of 136 by Sachin. He had gotten India close to victory, where there was none to be seen. He got out with India needing 18 runs and 4 wickets in hand. We lost. Another instance is the recent 175 against Australia at Hyderabad. The whole nation was on its knees reeling under the brilliance of that knock. Chasing 351, he got us there, almost.

The Gwalior innings and his performance over the past year has certainly made people rethink. Sachin is one of the greatest ever sportsmen in this era. I would love to see him end his career as a match-winner too. I wish in the next few months upto and including the World Cup, Sachin erases that one blemish I see in his career. He can certainly do it - one billion people can't be wrong!

----

There is an interesting discussion on my Facebook profile (oh yes, Facebook can be used for constructive discussions too!) - on whether Anwar's knock of 194 at Gwalior was better than Sachin's 200 at Gwalior.

The facts of the case are:

1. Anwar had a runner through-out the innings

2. Sachin had 20 overs of power play which Anwar did not.

3. Anwar had just returned to ODIs after a 4-month injury break.

4. Anwar scored it at Chennai in May,which is much more testing at 40C than Gwalior at 29C.

5. Anwar scored it on foreign soil.

6. Sachin scored it at the age of 36, while Anwar did it at 29.

7. Anwar's bowling attack had Kumble & Prasad, Sachin had Steyn and Parnell.

8. Anwar's opposition had a weaker fielding attack than South Africa.

9. Gwalior ground was smaller compared to Chennai.

10. Pitches during Anwar's times were not designed for ultra-high scores. Gwalior was.

(With inputs from Archana and Shankar)

My personal opinion is that Anwar's innings ranks higher than Sachin's. What do you think?

Like I said at the beginning of the post, I am not a traitor and neither should my opinions in this post be used to judge my patriotic feelings. :-) I love Sachin as much as you all do!

How 'engineers' get to screw the nation and notes on IIT degree as an 'investment'

2010-02-26T03:16:00.009+05:30

It is 3:15 AM. I just got back from an energetic and engaging discussion with a bunch of friends. That discussion has prompted me to write about the most-favourite topic of mine. The IITs. The discussion was more general in nature, talking about the education system as a whole.

Let me start with a brief incident that I encountered on a Sleeper Class coach when I was travelling from Pune to Bangalore.

Two railway employees were talking about their kids. One of them mentioned that both his sons got into IITs this year. The younger one ("woh bade wale se zyada hoshiyaar tha") joined IIT Bombay and the elder one joined IIT BHU (sic). (The whole discussion on whether BHU is an IIT at all, is something I have already ranted about here). He went on to explain how much he spent on the studies of the two kids and it obviously ran into lakhs.

He seemed to extremely pleased with his 'investment'. Paraphrasing that gentleman's comment, the gist of what he said is this - "If I had invested the same amount of money in a plot of land, it would have given me certain returns after a few years. Instead of that, I have invested that in my kids and since they have gotten into IITs, my investment is worth every penny and the returns that I expect are much more than the returns I'd have gotten on the plot of land."

This gentleman had just put words to the feelings of lakhs of middleclass Indians. Thinking about it, it makes perfect business sense. For a middle-class Indian, it is a gamble. 'Invest' in your kid's JEE coaching and hope to reap benefits of the investment. It is, without doubt, a high-risk-high-return game. 2% of investors get the desired returns. 98% are forced to write-off the investment as non-performing asset(s).

Well, strictly speaking, of the 2% who ultimately make it to the IITs, a considerable fraction don't end up being 'high performing assets'. Indeed, of the 98% too, a considerable fraction turn out to be 'high performing assets'. That's their good fortune and hard work. But what irks me is the fact that an entire generation of 'Engineers' are being misled into Engineering and Technology courses, primarily driven by peer pressure and false information. The premier newspapers of the nation leave no stone unturned in this regard. The much-hyped, but utterly sub-standard Times of India comes out with articles that are factually incorrect and ones that are meant purely to capture the imagination of the populace. Many a articles distort the information in a manner that will ensure that the copies sell, compromising heavily on the fundamental spirit of journalism. This article in the Economic Times is a stand-out example. An IIM degree might fetch you a 1.5 crore job. But is that the point of the MBA degree?

To the Indian middle-class bystander, such articles fuel his desires to be rich. They force him to rethink the path that he had set out for himself. In that article, he sees himself as the protagonist. He'd do a quick cost-benefit analysis - If I spend a year preparing for CAT and then another two years at IIM, at the end of it, I'll be earning 1.5 crores an annum. Tax deducted, I will still be able to earn about 8-9 Lakhs a month. Oh, that is sweet. Let me chuck whatever I am doing, let me prepare for CAT!

There! thanks to some masala-journalism, you have a miserable victim. Now, multiply that by about 3 Lakh people, and you have the state of today's management aspirants. Please be careful to note that nowhere in his thought process did the bystander include anything about becoming a good manager, which is what the MBA is supposed to do, I think.

As it turns out, that front-page news article on ET was false as per this blog post by IIM Ahmedabad.

Pan across to the undergraduate engineering scenario: You have 9 Lakh such engineering-aspirants, who are being misled into pursuing engineering degrees (as opposed to becoming 'Engineers') simply because at the end of the dark tunnel, after enduring 4 years of whatever they throw at you, you will land a job in an MNC. Oh, and congratulations, you are an engineer too!

When I take a step back, I realise that an entire generation of people has no idea of why they are doing what they are doing. 9 Lakh people X 4 years = 36 Lakh man years. Discount that by about 10% - I'd like to believe that atleast 10% of the people are doing what they are doing because they WANT to do it - you still have about 32 Lakh man years being utilised sub-optimally, that translates to 8 Lakh man years being utilised sub-optimally every year in a country like India, that prides itself on being young and resourceful. You do not need to be Paul Krugman to identify that should these 8 Lakh man years be put to 'better' use, the overall efficiency would drastically increase and the country can actually benefit immensely from being 'young'.

The media has a major role to play in how a country shapes up. Everybody joins the IITs assuming they have hit a jackpot. At the end of four years, irrespective of what you are and what you do, you'll have a heavy wallet. If you are lucky, you will end up with that 1-crore job, about which your news daily had reported just days back. Is this not what they think?

And that has as much basis in reality as Avatar! Reality is vastly different. But reality is boring. And hence, reality doesn't sell. Consequently, reality is hard to find. As long as the Indian thought process and decision making is based on fables and wishful thinking, our populace will never take a moment to THINK. They will instead race with the other rats of their generation towards the jackpot which, I suspect, is just an illusion. Twenty five years hence, when we realise this, I can only wish it would not be too late.

A post for the times when I did not post

2010-02-23T11:27:00.003+05:30

I must admit I have not been too busy. On the contrary, time has been rather generous on me. Blogging, I realised, is just like my dual degree project - DDP - (it is a year-long project that one needs to finish in order to graduate and redeem the times spent during college) - when you start your DDP, there is a lot of motivation to keep working every day and finish it bit-by-bit. After a fortnight, it is "there is always a next week".

Nonetheless, I am thankful to three specific people for rekindling the blogging energies in me - Archana, who for reasons beyond my conscious understanding, likes my blog. Laddoo, who had the time and inclination to remind me, from halfway across the world, that my blog "needs attention". And my Mommy dear for diligently following my blogs without any attempts to 'censor' them to make it suitable for all ages. The tipping point, though, was this blog - one of my faculty member's blog. If a professor can find time to write a blog, so can I! For those who have read my previous posts, the same professor has been referred to, in a couple of previous posts too, albeit not in the most recommended manner - atleast not for a final year student with an incomplete DDP.

To be blogging on a Tuesday afternoon is sure sign of atleast one of the two things: an uncontrollable desire to write OR an outlet to kill time. I suspect it is a holy combination of both. My guess is that it'll stay this way for the better part of this semester - until May, or until I finish my DDP, whichever is later.

Why PPTs are important to attend

2009-09-29T21:41:00.005+05:30

The resume and the interview process form a very integral part of the corporate recruitment process. No wonder, then, that you'll find every Harry and his kin writing books on self-improvement, developing communication skills, resume-writing and even interview-dressing. End of the day, it is about marketing yourself. Ofcourse, some may debate that it is about selling yourself. I believe marketing would be more apt.

The best form of learning is hands-on. Is that not why they say you need to have industry exposure before you do an MBA? In case of a resume-submission process, there might not be much room for error but there definitely are opportunities to learn from your immediate surroundings on how best to market yourself and how best not to.

Take, for example, the Pre-Placement Talks (PPTs) that are currently happening on campus. The idea is that each company will speak to final-year students and market themselves with the objective of luring students to join them. It's an exercise to impress (of which, another form is the recruitment process of resume-GD-interview).

The students read about the company and it's karma on their website and if the company is particular good or particularly bad, they read about it in the newspapers as well. So, when a company comes on campus to talk to the students, they have an hour or two to impress the panel - which in this case, consists of the students. The standard trick is to get a few recent graduates and ask them to talk about the company, get a hot-ish HR chick to run through the "what we are looking for" slide and get a couple of guys, who can talk. And talk in a manner that can save their lives if it comes to that.

And when you sit through these presentations every other day, bartering a considerable amount of sleep, it is hard not to make a mental note of best practices and worst practices, which is why I love attending these PPTs.

A few things that a company just MUZN'T do are:

Paraphrase the sentence "We are the most awesome company in the world and we kick ass!" and repeat it every other minute. The rationale is: If you are so awesome, it is likely that we know it and anyway, saying it a trillion times doesn't make you more awesome, it just gets onto the nerves of people. [Resume tip to self: Do not SAY you are confident, smart and a team-worker; SHOW it through activities]
Open the presentation with a guy who has no clue of how to keep an audience engaged. And worse, one who reads out his slides and carries a heavy Indian accent. It is like GMAT or GRE, your "level" is determined by the first few questions you answer and then it gets progressively difficult if you do well. [Resume tip to self: Highlight your best on the front page. By the time the resume-reader reaches second page, he would have already decided]
Start at 5.30 PM and go on till 8.00 PM. What's that statistic about attention-span of human beings - 20 minutes at the most or the like. So, two and a half hours is 8 times of that! We hardly manage to pull through our 50-minute classes, how are we expected to sit through for over two hours and not loathe the speaker(s). [Resume tip to self: Keep the resume short and sweet. If you don't have anything to say, then don't.]

On a somewhat unconnected note, it reminds me of a quote by the marketing guru, Seth Godin "You can't fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience".

The 9th Sem and the protests

2009-09-28T00:54:00.005+05:30

It's been quite a while since the last update. It is possibly because of the "9th semester syndrome."

Perhaps, it is that time of life when you reimburse your time and energy spent in the IIT system. Those who think IIT is a "necessarily evil between JEE and GRE" have started being nice to their profs to ensure a couple more adjectives in their reco letters. While the ones who use their IIT-degree as an envelope to mail their cover letter in to a company have started reading The Economist and the Economic Times. Then there is the parallel race for the IIT-IIM tag which involves sitting in a classroom and learning basics of grammar. There is also the segment which values the IIT degree at 15 crore during dowry negotiations who are beaming with a million-dollar-smile. Three million, to be precise. True or not - it makes for good blog content!

Lately, we have been in the news for reasons not particularly pleasant. Why'd you want to get up in the morning to the news of your teachers fasting in protest? On the other hand, it is pleasurable to wake up to news of mass-casual-leave protests. It is not often that your professor mails you saying "tomorrow's class stands cancelled" and wears a black band as a mark of protest. As a sidenote, the day the 9-to-9 fasting was held, the running joke in the insti was: "Aaj main apne do profs se milne gaya, dono ne bola ki lunch ke liye jaa rahe hain, baad mein aao.. ha ha".

The protesters argue that without quality pay, it is difficult to attract quality talent that is crucial for the IITs to sustain their edge. I find it a rather hollow argument because academia will never be able to match the salaries of the corporate world. Clearly, non-monetary incentives are what are needed.

A start would be to attract quality masters and doctorate students. It doesn't give me much hope when I see a PhD student googling for "how to find centre of mass of a thin plate" or when a faculty member tells me, what translates to: "In India, if you have a masters and you can write well, you are God". So, Mr. Sibal and the faculty association might want to try and address more fundamental issues than pay-hike. The faculty is also involved a plethora of consultancy projects, which from whatever little I know about consultancy, should be paying them in multiples of their salary.

Somehow, the administration (be it at the national level or the institute level) always tries to get rid of the syptoms than the disease itself. Why? Because it is far more easier: It is easier for the institute to kick people out of hostels for "ragging" than make a conscious effort to talk to the senior students, year after year. Because it is easier for the institute to increase minimum attendance requirement to 85% (which I must tell you is ridiculous and almost statistically impossible to adhere to - definitely not in the final year) than make the whole teaching experience in class better by investing in faculty training. Because it is easier to blame the poor communication skills of students than introducing compulsory "pesonality development" courses in the curriculum. Because, the administration has no freaking clue of what to do when the water reaches their nose.

What we really is need is a bunch of dedicated staff who can disentangle the threads and repair the system, which reminds me of the McKinsey partner who (in the pre-placement talk) said that they are working with IITB to improve the management of the institution. THAT is a good start. Late, yet, good.

What is a Writer's block anyway?

2009-08-04T07:28:00.003+05:30

**Hiatus** is a word that comes to my mind. **Long** is an adjective that I may add to make it sound more attractive. **Writer's block** is a term that puts a nice cloak around my sudden loss of enthusiasm towards blogging and makes it presentable.

But, 10 days later, I am back on my blog. :-P

Oh, and a "define: hiatus" in your Google search window throws this up: "suspension: an interruption in the intensity or amount of something" - which, makes sense. Also, James Wales gives me a beautiful explanation of Writer's block. He/It says

Writer's block is a condition, associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task in hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked" writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers.

So, the next time you are looking for a reason, use the above one.

To move over the inertia, I wanted something motivating to get me back to blogging. And it is here. The new batch of kids are here on campus. Anxious, nerdy, proud and day-1-arrogant freshers.

And here's a (new?) hypothesis I float: Freshies, by nature of their being freshies, are DUMB.

I wake up at 7 AM and drag myself to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and I find a guy happily staring into the mirror with a toothbrush in his mouth, while the water tap underneath is open and flowing. And at a volume flow rate good enough to force me to blog! This is not a one-off. Hopefully, the freshies will not disappoint me and provide enough evidence over the next couple of weeks to prove my hypothesis. Shall update here.

PS: Hypothesis: a tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena; "a scientific hypothesis that survives experimental testing becomes a scientific theory";

Dangerous political fantasies, and the whore called education

2009-07-24T08:50:00.004+05:30

I can't help but cry foul over the setting up of so many new IITs. Yes, again.

Check out what today's edition of Economic Times has to say under the title "Losing sheen: Over 500 students say no to IIT"

Very recently, IT-BHU was in the fray to be an IIT. If you are a supporter of that move, you would not want to check this. A few days back, I read about a new IITB that is coming up! Hold your breath, it is not an abroad campus of IIT Bombay (which could be reality in a few years time), but a new proposal for an IIT at Belgaum, Karnataka.

What could be the reason? Karnataka, as opposed to many other states in the country has no IITs. Hence, setup an IIT there! Then, there is a demand from Kerala also to setup an IIT there for a similar reason. A very deplorable situation - the fundamentals of the education system of a country are compromised for mere political mileage. I suspect, Arjun Singh can take the entire blame and Kapil Sibal can consider himself equally guilty.

So, what does the ET article say?

As many as 505 students, who got an opportunity to study in these premier technological institutes, did the unthinkable this year; they refused to study in an IIT.

The reasons varied from ‘‘not having confidence in the new IITs’ ’ to ‘‘ getting allotments in not-so-popular streams’’, IIT officials said, adding that this experience might force HRD minister Kapil Sibal to do a rethink on his expansion plans for the IITs.

Does it take anything more than common sense to foresee this situation? I will not involve myself in the same old conversation again. The most frequently used rebuttal for the argument against, and quoted by ET in the article, is:

‘‘There were several parents who were not comfortable sending their kids to an IIT without a campus currently; few realised that all the old IITs, too, started from temporary campuses,’’ the head of one of the new IITs said.

In 1950s when the IITs were setup in temporary campuses, there were hardly ANY engineering institutions in India and there definitely were not 400,000 people taking the JEE. Now, there are. In India, "engineering" has ceased to be a discipline, it has become an obsession with students and parents alike. The reason - IITs. In such a sensitive scenario, screwing around with the system will leave irrepairable scars in the fabric of education.

Two decades hence, when the "engineers" - thousands from the IITs and lakhs from other engineering institutions - take up the mantle of powering the economy, the repercussions might be severe. For, we will have a whole generation that had forayed into a career, just to live someone else's dreams and follow someone else's footsteps.

The parliament of India, meanwhile is busy creating an uproar over the body-frisking of a former President. The power of democracy. The voice of the people. Whatever.

More "females" at IIT Madras: Naya batch, nayi umang, nayi taazgi

2009-07-15T19:14:00.013+05:30

I am suffering from home-induced boredom. I am currently reading a book called Flying High in a Competitive Industry, about the airline industry. Coincidentally, the book is co-authored by Uss' uncle (Really!) and offers amazing insights into the industry.

My daily allowance of milkshakes and "maa ke haath ka" khaana is directly proportional to the number of hours I devote to teaching my sister and inversely proportional to the volume of hair on my head. In such a scenario, my usual day is spent reading and re-reading the two newspapers at home; watching the 24X7 news channels and their unbelievable coverage of why Kambli is weeping (again) over Tendlya and how Rakhi Sawant's Swayamf**kingwar is moving ahead. Ofcourse, the odd metro bridge that falls in Delhi and Bangaldesh beating WI in a test match are news news.

My trustworthy BSNL (oxymoron?) internet connection is the only possible outlet where I can control what happens to me. Naturally, I am addicted to Gmail-Twitter-Facebook-Blogger in that order.

Facebook, notwithstanding the chutiatic quizzes it hosts, is a good way to keep a tab on friends and your distant relatives and their relatives. I was, as usual, doing nothing on Facebook when I noticed Gayab's status message. And since a picture is worth a thousand words, here goes:

Further to Kuju's instigation on Facebook, I thought I should articulate here :-)

So, I did cross-verify and found it to be true - IIT Madras will see something unprecedented and it will surely make Sibal happy: The number of girls in the incoming batch is 83, which is about 80-90% (spare me the math please) higher than previous year and I can safely say is the highest ever for my beloved insti. The number of boys in this batch is 590. Avantika, in the meanwhile, got out of her twitter-dormancy to remind me that it is "despite the contribution of MAs". Indeed, how can we/I possibly forget MAs. Mea culpa; so add another 20 girls and 10 boys (2:1 = wtf, I know).

Therefore, 103 girls and 600 boys. It is 1:6. I have learnt to put things in perspective, so the perspective is this: In my batch, there were 45-odd girls and 500-odd boys -that's a straight 1:10. It hasn't dramatically improved over the last three years, infact, I doubt if it has improved at all! So, this 1:6-ness is pretty amazing! Kudos to Sibal for rigging it and us for a stellar counselling performance. :-P

Interestingly, when I checked out the CCW website for the list, it was funny to find the "JEE 2009 HOSTEL ACCOMMODATION IN SHARAVATI HOSTEL FOR FEMALE". I think there is a serious need to sensitise the administration. I mean, how derogatory is it to say 'female' when you really mean 'girls'.

Some other things I could note:

ED has 4 girls in this batch - that is an all-time high. The counts in the previous years beginning my year have been 1,1,0,3 and 4! (I think the total seats increased from 30 to 45 too)
Alak has 60 freshies! Yay! That translates to a modest 2 Basera-trips-per-freshie-per-sem, which is absolutely not violating any human rights.
There are no freshies in the new hostels - Tamby/Mahanadi et. al. So, for all the enthu that Gayab and Kuju put, the only tangible benefit for them is the increase in the Sharav 18-year-olds. Ofcourse, it benefits the whole institute and improves the ambience of the place. Not too sure whether fifth-year is the right platform to leverage it though :-P

To a bright new semester :-)

How stoichiometry problems expose the Indian education system:

2009-07-14T03:05:00.006+05:30

The past couple of days I've been at home and have been teaching my sister some of her class XI science and mathematics. So, while I juggle among molarity, molality, dimensional analysis, significant figures (?!) and the likes, she keeps barraging me with random questions - most of which I could answer thanks to my JEE preparation. Whether she does this out of curiosity OR whether to verify my JEE rank credentials - I don't know.

Anyway, at one point, she asked me a seemingly trivial question in chemistry and she was surprised at the ease of the solution. She later told me that her teacher told her that this is "high-level" and she cannot solve it. I am surprised because all that the question demanded was an understanding of the mole concept. A few other anecdotes from her and my own experience of the Indian education system lead me to a disturbing conclusion: The system is decaying, and it is decaying fast, and we are running out of time, and it won't fix itself, and they are not really bothered!

My sister has a good theory about why the senior secondary teachers suck at their job. Let me paraphrase her:

Most of the class XI/XII syllabus is "irritating" and requires sound fundamentals to grasp the subject. Most teachers prefer to teach class X-and-below because it is "very easy" in comparison to senior classes and students hardly ask (or are encouraged to ask) "difficult" questions.

The few who actually manage to master the syllabus never return to teaching because there are greener pastures for such people. So, there is a void created and this void gets filled with sub-standard (or, as she said, "bekar") teachers.

To think of it, she makes perfect sense.

Going through her NCERT books, I realised that class XI/XII is indeed demanding (and rightly so!). To teach the thousands of these students, we need teachers of the very best calibre and it seems not forthcoming. You know that the system is rotting when your teachers advise the parents to arrange for "coaching", even for basic school syllabi; when the school lets a professional coaching institute "counsel" the students and for all their queries, there seems to only one answer - Jay E Eee. (After the counselling session, the coaching institute offered the students a discount on their JEE-coaching program.)

While Pranab Mukherjee is busy alloting thousands of crores towards education, I hope he realises that there are serious problems with the Indian education system that cannot be solved by pumping-in cash. Perhaps, we need a revamped pedagogy - one which understands the changing needs of the students while still able to deliver quality input.

The IITs face a somewhat similar crunch - 20-30% shortage of faculty. But thankfully, they are not appointing bekar professors (or so I'd like to believe). There was/is an attempt, though, to bring in reservations in the faculty, which would undoubtedly lead to a compromise of merit. Last I heard, the IITs managed to deflect the issue for the time being but Sibal was vociferous in claiming that "IITs should learn to live with faculty reservation". Pure bullshit.

So, Pranab dada giving the IITs 2000-odd crores is great news but it will hardly solve any of the fundamental problems that plague the IITs - and there are enough and more. (If you a new joinee to IIT - too bad I am squashing your dreams so soon :-) some of my other posts might offer solace!)

I leave you with a question that often bewilders me:

Why does India not have a network of world-class government high schools which attract and train the best minds in the country? And how come we have the world-class IITs and IIMs without a sound higher-edu foundation in the system?

Reliance Fellowship for Stanford MBA | Summer Awesomeness!

2009-07-04T01:50:00.008+05:30

I think summers are a great time. Infact, summers are friggin' awesome times. I remember thinking last summer that things cannot get more awesome than they already were. This summer is slowly standing up to beat it!

A kick-ass coincidence is this: Three of us (I will qualify 'us' soon) had applied for a really amazing scholarship being offered by Reliance Industries called Reliance Dhirubhai Fellowship. It is an all-expenses covered scholarship to pursue the two-year MBA at Stanford University. It is not restricted to college students, infact most of the guys who apply are people with extensive professional experience.

So, of the 1500-odd applications (as of last year), Reliance selects about 50 fellows and then finally Stanford selects the 5 who will be offered the scholarship. So, that's a cool 80-odd lakh scholarship for two years!

The information page can be accessed here.
The list of fellows of last year is here.

Anyway, the coincidence part is this: Two of my friends...

- Gaurav Sapra - BITS Goa, just finished college this year - He is one of those 'childhood friends' that they talk about in stories and movies.

- Aniket 'Uss' Pangarkar- Insti fellow, going into final year now - He is my mentor, guide, chuddy-buddy etc. etc. He is also my partner in most, if not all, crimes in the insti. (They say gay-partner, but that's not true, trust me).

... and I had applied for this fellowship. And to our respective utter disbeliefs, all the three got through to the top 50!

So, while we reel under the sheer awesomeness (yes, indeed flicked from Kung-fu Panda) of the coincidence, those two have started preparing for their GMAT (provided free of cost by Reliance to the finalists) and I, having already taken my GMAT last month, am planning to write a book on how awesome summers, even summers like the ones in Chennai, can get! :-)

Mother

2009-07-02T13:16:00.004+05:30

A n amazing song by Pink Floyd called "Mother".

Captures the mother-son relationship in a very beautiful manner:

Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother, do you think they'll like this song?
Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Mother, should I build the wall?
Mother, should I run for President?
Mother, should I trust the government?
Mother, will they put me in the firing line?
Is it just a waste of time?

Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Momma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true
Momma's gonna put all of her fears into you
Momma's gonna keep you right here under her wing
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing
Momma's will keep Baby cozy and warm
Oooo Babe
Oooo Babe
Ooo Babe, of course Momma's gonna help build the wall

Mother, do you think she's good enough
For me?
Mother, do you think she's dangerous
To me?
Mother will she tear your little boy apart?
Mother, will she break my heart?

Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Momma's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you
Momma won't let anyone dirty get through
Momma's gonna wait up until you get in
Momma will always find out where you've been
Momma's gonna keep Baby healthy and clean
Oooo Babe
Oooo Babe
Ooo Babe, you'll always be Baby to me

Mother, did it need to be so high?

Lyrics courtesy: Lyrics007

On a related note, a stunning Gtalk status message of one of my friends some days back:

"If evolution is true, how come mothers still have only two hands?"

Of the woods and deer and why monkeys don't feature

2009-06-27T18:48:00.015+05:30

I am not a nature guy. Neither am I a photography guy. But, this post _might_ smell of those elements. Ignore such thoughts.

Of the many things that contribute in making IIT Madras "IIT Madras", one big factor is the ~~deers~~ deer and one relatively lesser but more prestigious is the blackbucks.

When I came here four years ago, I remember someone with the mike saying that there are 11 blackbucks on campus: 7 male and 4 female. I remember thinking then, that it pays more to be a male blackbuck in the insti than a male student. Damn you JEE! Anyway, the count of the ~~deers~~ deer, if I remember right was put at 40.

One fact that was said then but somehow gets lost in the woods often is that IIT Madras is the only university in the world to be in a reserved forest. (No, this post is not about IIT Madras and it's glory. Patience.)

Past month, staying here, I noticed there were many more blackbucks (and one whitebuck - too :P ) and ~~deers~~ deer than I had ever seen. It was a comforting sight because these animals were said to be on the brink on extinction and that insti is not a viable enough eco-sytstem for them. Armed with my phone - I did snap a few pictures. There is only as much you can shoot with a 2 MP camera embedded in your SMS-device! And while I was capturing the pictures, my friends found it to be 'amusing' and 'gay' that I, after staying here for four years, was taking pics of ~~deers~~ deer.

The following are the different pics I took at different times on different days. FYI, ~~deers~~ deer are the ones with the spots. Blackbucks are the ones without. Unfortunately, my photography has lead to spots on both.

IIT Madras has often benefitted from the legacy of the forest:

All our Shaastra, Saarang articles begin with "It is that time of the year when the woods are buzzing with [Insert Shaastra-ish or Saarang-ish word]". Most of our brochures, howsoever small the number may be, would mention "sprawling 650-acre campus set in the forests". The Director could make jokes about the monkeys - the ones living inside the room and ones on the trees. Our nature-conscious GATE-clearing students get to complain of dogs attacking ~~deers~~ deer in a mail addressed to all the 5000-odd people on campus.

Monkeys are not featured in this article. I am thoroughly pissed with them because they broke a wash-basin in the bog. It is a totally different issue that there has hardly been any water in the one that has managed to survive:

Quotable Quotes from my Viva

2009-06-24T22:53:00.007+05:30

Prof. A: "You know what? Vikas was supposed to get a Nobel prize for his ppt, but last minute he got pipped." (Prof. A to Prof. B, with all his sarcasm in the world, when I just entered the Viva room.)
Me: Sir... Err.. Umm.. Err.. Okk.. Sir

Prof A: "Ya ya, Vikas will make a good ppt. So be very careful!", throwing caution to everyone in the room, for no real reason.
Me: Sir... Err.. Umm.. Err.. Okk.. Sir

"Vikas, I don't want a sales pitch. Better show me some meat." Prof. C after looking at my first slide.
Me: Sir... Err.. Umm.. Err.. Okk.. Sir

"So, you are basically saying that if we decrease usage of vehicles, we can save energy. Thats all?" Prof. A after I had explained for over half-an-hour on how we can save energy in the transportation sector.
Me: Sir... Err.. Umm.. Err.. No.... Sir

Me: "Sir, there are two sides to the climate debate...."
Prof. A : "That everybody knows. Tell me what you have done." (It's unfair! It's not common sense!)
Me: Sir... Err.. Umm.. Err.. Okk.. Sir

Prof. A."You went and worked with economists and became one yourself. I wanted you to convert them to technologists!"
Me: Sir... Err.. Umm.. Err.. Okk.. Sir

Prof. C. : "What you said over the last 20 minutes is just common sense. Show me some mathematical models"
Firstly, it was NOT common sense. I swear by god. Secondly, and I quote myself "But Sir, my company did not want me to develop mathematical models, they just wanted a framework."
Prof A. : "But that is what I want you to do: change the way they work!"
Me: Sir... Err.. Umm.. Err.. Okk.. Sir

Prof. A.: "Just because you are thanking me, don't think that I will give you extra marks", when I was at the Acknowledgements slide.
Me: Sir... Err.. Umm.. Err.. Okk.. Sir

Prof. B : "You should put the source of data in every slide, unless ofcourse you deliberately want to confuse us.."
Prof. A : ".. which he is very capable of."
Me: Sir... Err.. Umm.. Err.. Okk.. Sir

***************
Well.. you win some, you lose some.

It won't be a herculean task to figure out who was the BOSS today in the viva committee. And who was looking like a big big loser.

Well.. you win some, you lose some.

PS: Fellow mates can add their quotes in the comment section, or let me know so that I can add an _update here. :-)

PS2: An old post on quotable quotes from Inter-IIT Sports Meet 2007 can be accessed here

Getting the professors to meet

2009-06-22T05:55:00.007+05:30

It's 5:55 AM on my watch. And I am thinking about the following:

If two professors (generic term) A and B, and a student have to meet, how do they decide on a venue?

In my specific case, the details are as follows:

A and B are not from the same department
A is a senior-ish Prof., B is an Asst. Prof.
A and B do not know each other
The student (me!) has to set-up the meeting

I am dumbfounded on how to decide the venue. I wonder how these things work.

By the way, it's 6:01 now.

PS: If it sounds trivial, I'd suggest wearing my shoes for a while and walking a few hundred meters.

Father's Day: To the CEO of my life

2009-06-20T21:20:00.005+05:30

To my Dad, who has given me much much more than a middle name, here's wishing a Very Happy Father's Day and a lifetime of health and happiness!

To the CEO of my life, here's acknowledging his contribution in making me, me.

PS: I don't think I can ever pen my thoughts about my dad - it is just too pure, and yet too complex a relationship to be expressed through the mere medium of words.

Guns N' Cigars at Insti!

2009-06-18T21:41:00.007+05:30

Two photographs.

One. I was walking from SAC to ICSR after attending some counselling intro talk for JEE. There was this dude (to be on the safer side, let me call him uncle) who was showing off a *pistol* tucked in his trouser. You don't see such things often in the insti. I don't think you are meant to.
I reckon he was a parent who had come down for counselling of his ward. But, it was evident that he had no intentions of hiding his little equipment. Anyway, after a momentary shock, I thought I should take a pic and upload it here! :-) And so I did.

Two. No prizes for guessing where this second pic is from. Though, you may warrant a guess as to whose hand it is in the picture. And which new brand of cigarette has just entered the market. Looking at the pic, I could have written another article titled 'How cigarette is clogging our system', but I think I am about 40 years away from that. For now, it just amused me!

I think it is an amazing marketing strategy to sell black-coloured cigarettes. It is an instant differentiator. Perhaps, if it was not black - I would not have remembered it and the guy/girl in the pic who bought it would not have bought it in the first place. Will we soon see pink and yellow coloured cigarettes also? Or do we already have them in circulation?

PS: I am also wondering if I will be getting anonymous commenters giving me gyaan on how IITians are addicted to cigarettes and all that. And how we are plundering tax-payers' money. And how we are a burden on the nation. :-P

Ok, anonymous, CHILL. I am just kidding. .And no, ofcourse not, we are not arrogant and pompous. :-)

Climate Change Policy for Dummies: A primer on COP-15

2009-06-17T18:13:00.003+05:30

Following is an article I authored for the Energy Bulletin of IIT Madras. It is a beginner's guide to understanding the hype and the ballyhoo of climate change and green energy.

My previous article titled 'At The Crossroads: India's Energy Demands' can be accessed here.
---------

More than 10,000 people from about 200 countries of the world will meet later this year at Copenhagen, Denmark in what has been touted to be the most important meeting ever to address the growing issue of global warming.

Convention of Parties (COP) – 15, as it is called, is a forum where leaders and policymakers from all over the globe will meet and decide the future course of action on the impending doom of climate change. Kyoto protocol, although a significant legislation, never could satisfy the environmentalists and they complained of political ill-will towards climate change mitigation. The United States which is the largest contributor of greenhouse gases in the world, was never party to the Kyoto protocol. This fact is often used by critics to undermine the effectiveness of Kyoto protocol. China, the second largest emitter was not bound by Kyoto protocol to reduce its emissions. The Kyoto protocol covered countries responsible for only 29 pc of global emissions, leaving out countries like US, China and India. The very scale at which the treaty operates made tracking and verifying governmental actions and claims impractical.

The 2 degree Celsius barrier:

The academia is unanimous in its opinion that a more than 2 C rise in global temperature from 1990 to 2050 will have adverse effects on human population. Some scientists warn that CO2 levels must be kept below 350 ppm (or about 1.5 C increase in temperature) to avoid serious impacts. Current levels are around 386 ppm, growing at an annual rate of 2.1 ppm. 450 ppm levels offer a 50 pc chance to keep the temperature change below 2 C and scientists argue that a 50 pc chance is not good enough when dealing with climate because the effects could be catastrophic.

The current scenario: developing v/s developed nations

Optimists are betting their money on COP 15 to evolve a new consensus among the nations of the world. They are hoping that the Obama administration, along with the other leaders of the world, takes strong and concrete steps. But there are already signs of discord. Developing countries like India and China demand that the rich countries decrease their emissions levels 40 pc below 1990 levels by 2020. The rich countries, which benefitted from an earlier industrial revolution, should take more drastic steps than developing countries which maintain that strong climate change sanctions could hamper their economic progress.

Japan, a leading emitter or GHG recently announced that it intends to reduce its emission levels by 15 % in 2020 as compared to 2005 levels. Critics argue that this is not enough and such shallow commitments by rich countries will not drive countries like India and China towards stronger action. Japanese government, on the other hand, defends their decision by arguing that Japan is already a very carbon-efficient economy and any further increase in efficiency will be unrealistic. Japan emits less relative to other major economies. Though it has the second largest economy, behind the US, it ranks fifth in global emissions, behind US, China, Russia and India.

The European Union has committed to 20 pc reduction by 2020 as compared to 1990 levels and by 30 pc if other rich countries follow suit. The congressional panel in US recently cleared a bill that aims at a 6 pc reduction in CO2 levels from 1990 to 2020. Overall, the developed nations have offered to reduce their emissions by about 8pc to 14 pc, whilst a reduction of 40 pc by them is required to carry any real hope of mitigating the change. Clearly, the developing world is at loggerheads with the developed nations.

FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS:

Another important consensus that needs to evolve at COP 15 is the architecture of financial instruments needed to curb climate change. The Kyoto protocol adapted a cap-and-trade mechanism. Cap-and-trade mechanisms put a ceiling (cap) on consumption/production of a commodity and then the involved parties can trade the sanctions. Kyoto protocol imposed upper limits on carbon emissions for about 37 developed countries (called Annex-I countries). The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was the preferred cap-and-trade mechanism adopted at Kyoto which allowed Annex-I countries to trade Carbon Emission Reductions (CERs) with developing countries (called non-Annex I countries). A CER is a carbon credit which is equivalent to a reduction of 1 ton of carbon dioxide.

The Clean Development Mechanism and why it is not the solution:

The intentions of the CDM were noble – impose continually stricter sanctions on rich countries so that they shift towards a greener economy and in the process, the developing nations benefit from the green investments. In order to earn carbon credits, the rich countries would invest in developing countries, thereby enabling technology transfer. All the nations of the world therefore had economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions.

However, recent research suggests that CDM has been very ineffective in reducing carbon emissions. The market architecture of CDM stresses on carbon credits as a tool for mitigation. The private players in the carbon credit market have suitably taken up “low-hanging” projects to generate carbon credits – projects that are easy and cheap to execute but which do not significantly aid sustainable development. It has been reported that of the CER production, 51 % are from HFC destruction and N2O capture that do not deliver any sustainability benefits. Also, when developing countries themselves would have sanctions in the future, all the cheap abatement options would already have been exploited by the rich countries, leaving them at a disadvantage.

Interestingly, the carbon market is predicted to be the largest commodity market in the near future, slated to rise to $400 billion by 2012 -2015 from about $ 11 billion in 2005. Critics describe this as a “market for hot air” and accuse legislators of creating an artificial scarcity when none existed. With such a huge financial value attached to the market, industry lobbyists are working hard to retain the CDM. The CDM is particularly prone to manipulation by politicians and polluters. Also, given the advanced stage to which countries have committed themselves towards the CDM, it is highly unlikely that the COP 15 will see any major changes in the architecture of CDM.

A Carbon Tax regime: advantages and bottlenecks

The cap-and-trade is a quantity-based approach. A large fraction of economists and environmentalists advocate the use of price-based mechanisms. Experts suggest the use of a “carbon tax”, as a pigovian pollution tax for a global public good. There will no country emissions quota, no trading and no reference period. It will be a tax on services and goods that will increase every year at a rate commensurate with desired abatement of emissions. Although the intricacies of this system are complex and need substantial discussion to be agreeable across the countries, it offers many benefits. Al Gore says “tax what you burn and not what you earn” – he advocates the implementation of carbon tax, while reducing other taxes so that the consumer has a disincentive when buying a gas-guzzling car or coal-produced electricity as against a hybrid vehicle or hydel/wind power.

There are two major roadblocks for the carbon tax. Most of the arguments against it have come from a “it’s a tax and therefore it is bad” crowd. Taxes have never been welcomed by politicians for a fear of backlash from the public. Secondly, it is the unwillingness of a consumer to pay a higher price for a product although it translates to an overall saving over years. Consider the incandescent light bulb v/s CFLs debate. Although the CFL offers a longer lifespan and consumes significantly less energy than a light bulb, people tend to choose the incandescent light bulb because of its cost, which is a fraction of that of CFL. It has been estimated that the average US household might need to pay about $ 1500 per annum in 2020 if the government imposes such legislations. The average consumer responds only to economic incentives. Governments, therefore, have a strong role to ensure that there are adequate economic incentives for the consumer to switch to cleaner and greener products.

India, for one, has fared very poorly in this respect. Reva, the revolutionary electric car from a Bangalore-based company emits about 60 pc less carbon per kilometer as compared to other cars in the market. It costs about Rs. 4 Lakh against a Maruti which costs about 2.5- 3 Lakh and the new Nano which’ll be around 1.2 Lakh. In spite of the lower cost per km and lower emissions per km, Reva has managed to sell only about 1000 cars in India. Interestingly, Reva has sold about 2000 cars abroad in countries, many of which offer incentives for such environment-friendly products.

Cheap GHG emission reduction possibilities:

McKinsey & Co. in a recent report has identified developing Asian countries to possess about 60 pc of the world’s cheap GHG abatement potentials. These measures do not require any substantial investment and can be met with existing technologies. Measures like improving vehicle efficiency, better building design and greener power account for about 70 pc of low-cost abatement options. These measures require involve very little technology (like those in forestry or agriculture) or mature existing technologies like nuclear power and energy-efficient lighting.

Continuing on the same lines, a substantial public investment by governments (as opposed to private investments through CDM) will intensify the action to implement clean energy technologies. Past examples in the US - the JFK Apollo program in the 60’s, Carter Energy program in the late 70’s and lately the investment in security after 9/11 have accelerated the developments in those sectors. Governments across the world have to invest massively in clean energy technologies because no effort to achieve emission reductions will be possible without adopting cleaner energy over fossil-fuel based energy and currently low-carbon energy is significantly costlier.

Conclusion:

The COP-15 should develop a robust institutional framework for mitigation and adaptation, with enthusiastic participation from countries willing to take bold steps and embrace ambitious commitments. The stretch from here to Copenhagen is difficult and uncertain. It is imperative that the leaders and policymakers evolve consensus on mitigation practices and policies. Countries like the US need to own-up for their previous actions and lead the world in climate change efforts, while countries like India and China has a major role to play in deciding the future course of action. Copenhagen, in all probability, offers the last chance for the world to design a greener tomorrow and in these designs lay the fates of millions of poor people who are the most vulnerable to adverse climate change effects.

*******
The ticker on the side panel called 'Countdown to Copenhagen' is about COP 15. Should you need references, I'd be happy to share.

Mommy's hint

2009-06-13T21:55:00.005+05:30

My mom mailed me this couple of days back:
I think I should take her hint.

JEE 2009 Counselling - I

2009-06-11T21:47:00.005+05:30

Of the few things that IIT Madras did not let me do in the past four years here, one was to let me interact with prospective students. But life came a full circle today. I am part of the JEE 2009 counselling here at the campus as a student counsellor - it is a true honour. And what an experience it has been!

So, there they were - hoardes of anxious students with the JEE counselling brochure.

What really struck me today was a fact that I had always known - the Indian higher education system, though extremely competitive and rigorous, does not equip you with decision-making tools. I could identify two very clear reasons. Firstly, parents are too protective of their children and essentially take all the decisions for their 'kids' even when they are 16, including important decisions pertaining to their careers. Secondly, the education environment does not encourage risk-taking, which implies that I would hesitate to take up an unchartered path.

Ofcourse, the students are not to be blamed. Atleast, not entirely. It has been going on for a good two decades that I have been orbitting the sun. Specifically, talking of the JEE - the system has been treated to be such a big monster to tame that once you clear JEE, most people think of it as an end. I did too, in all probability. Now here comes what I have believed to be the biggest drawback of the current JEE phenomenon:

The students slog their days away in their coaching institutes and burn the proverbial oil during the nights. For two long years. At 16, what you should really be doing is explore the world, meet new people, have newer experiences, learn the shortcuts of overcoming the vicissitudes, read books, play cricket, watch porn, ATTEND HIGH SCHOOL... these experiences equip you with tools to decide what your life holds out for you. They put you in a much better position to gauge yourself and take that extra step in the direction that your dad (and your neighbour and your distant cousin) would never approve of.

Unfortunately, we spend those precious two years - when our personalities shape up and our true character is formed - mugging derivations and solving the JEE 2001 10-mark questions. And that does manifest in rather unfortunate ways: your social behaviour patters tend to become obscure and in reality, you are ill-equipped to face the true world, outside IIT. (Ofcourse, the four years at IIT does offer umpteen opportunities to make amends).

Another striking realisation, rather re-realisation that happened today: there just is not enough information out there for people to take informed decisions. It is a very peculiar situation: you have to take probably the most important decision of your life and there just is not a guy you can speak to about it at length. Yes, the counselling is meant to dislodge this information asymmetry, but as a parent told me today "We have never heard of anything apart from Computer Science, Electrical and Mechanical, how can we then decide between Metallurgy and Naval Architecture." And ten minutes of talk with a prof or a student is just not enough! This leads to making the best of the situation - look at last year's rankings and decide. And because you hardly explore options, you fail to ask the right questions. Most questions tend to be: "Which is better, Mechanical or Electrical?" "What is the pay package?" and so on.

But. That is the stark reality. I do not see the status-quo changing any soon. So, while it is still possible, let me trip a little bit:

Highlights of the day:

A parent hinting to me if it is possible to get a seat 'through other means' - on the day of admission, if someone does not join, can you help me to get that seat.
A boy pops out from the blue with the Question of the Day: "Is Aerospace Nice?" Speechless at the amazing depth of the question, I stumble to my senses and ask "Nice? As in?".. then, he breaks all rules of logical argument and beats his own Question of the Day: "Is it easy?"
"Is IIT safe.. I mean.. security is good?" This was the point when my heart said "Ofcourse not, there are landmines all over the place; I just saw three people dying when I was coming from the hostel. And Al-qaeda is recruiting from IITM this year." but I ended up saying "Ofcourse Sir, not to worry" with a polite, plastic smile.
Most asked question of the day "New IITs or NITs?". Perhaps, the most difficult question to answer and I really do feel for the students - IT IS a tough one. I think they should give it as part of JEE. Too much choice has really spoilt the meal for these new guys. I posed the same question to a faculty member from IIT Madras who was representing IIT Hyderabad, his answer was "In four-five years, everything will become old".

In conclusion, (which is how GMAT expects you finish an essay) the experience was amazing - meeting new people, answering their queries and partaking in their decision-making process. But, saddened at the extremely passive behaviour of most students and because of which anxious parents take all the decisions for them - not a healthy sign. Nope.

PS: Saturday is the first day of counselling for General Category students and I am really looking forward to hard-sell IIT Madras! Will post soon.

Bengaluru v/s Chennai

2009-06-06T14:08:00.002+05:30

Manmohan's team

2009-05-29T14:00:00.004+05:30

The events unfolding in Delhi are very assuring. There is a lot of positivity emanating from this new government at the centre.

The biggest complaint that the Indian citizen had against national politics was that illiterate and corrupt people rule the roost whereas educated, honest and talented individuals are always biased against. The new cabinet, for starters, dispels this myth. I think there is a significantly high percentage of well educated ministers handling important portfolios. Let's have a quick look:

1. Manmohan Singh - The Man!

The highest educated PM of India ever. He has been the Finance Minister and Governor of RBI. He, along with Montek Singh (unfortunately missed out the Finance portfolio) is the one who initiated the '91 reforms under PVNR .

He holds a PhD from Oxford Univ, and is one of the most respected economists around the world.

2. P Chidambaram - Home. Harvard MBA.

3. Jairam Ramesh - MoEF. IIT Bombay Mech Engg, Carnegie Mellon, MIT.

4. S M Krishna - External Affairs, George Washington Univ, Fulbright Scholar.

5. Shashi Tharoor - MoS, EXt. Affairs. St. Stephen's, PhD from Tufts Univ.

Shatajit points out that he completed his PhD at the age of 22. It was unprecedented - a Fletcher record. He was also UN under-secretary general in 2002.

(Look at us, at 22.. struggling to get a B.Tech :-P )

6. Sachin Pilot - MoS, IT/Commn. Wharton MBA.

7. Jyotiraditya Scindia - MoS, Commerce/Industry. Stanford MBA.

8. Agatha Sangma - MoS, Rural Dev, Nottingham Univ MA. She's only 26!!!

I am sure this list is not exhaustive. The IITs could have done with a little more representation though.

Aside, Indian politicians on twitter: Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor), Rahul Gandhi (@RGAmethi) and SM Krishna (@SMKrishnaCong)

I am liking this!

PS: I would have loved to write a more detailed post on this topic, but am heavily cramped for time. Will try and post a more insightful and worthy article sometime soon.

PS2: Do let me know if I missed any more big names or any other folks on twitter.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/vikas_shenoy

Happy to lose to _my_ CBSE topper!

2009-05-26T09:31:00.005+05:30

For once in my life, I am conceding defeat with a grin from ear-to-ear.

Beginning today, I handover the tag of the 'smartest kid in the family' to my worthy opponent and fierce competitor, my sister for her amazing feat in CBSE class X. She has gone miles ahead of me by scoring a mammoth 94.2 % in her tenth.

My (paltry) 86 % is now put to shame - my days of glory are over :P

(And she seems to have better friends than I do. Most of her friends seem to be 90+, with one particular girl scoring a holy-cow 98.8 % aggregate.)

So, all my efforts (let me take some credit!) are worth it.

Here's to my sis: Take a bow honey! I am so so proud of you.

PS: Her Social studies score at 96 brings me to tears. How on this earth can someone get 96 in SSt!!

The new whiz-kid on the block! ISC Topper:

2009-05-22T06:55:00.006+05:30

"City boy tops ISC with 99.25 %" screams a TOI article. It turns out the city is Kolkata.

Disclaimer: You may stop liking me if you are one of those people who don't think evil people should exist on this planet. On the other hand, if you are one of my ex-es or their friends, you anyway don't like me, this post will give you one more reason.

Excerpts from the post:

Subhajit had succeeded in beating over 50,000 students to the top spot. With cent per cent marks in maths and computer science, the St Joseph's College student notched up 99 in physics, 94 in chemistry and 97 in environmental studies. He scored 98% in English and 92% in Bengali.

Surprisingly, the first look at the marks he obtained don't suggest they'll result in 99.25%. Indeed, (100 +100+99+94+97+98+92)*100/700 = 97.14 %.

Now, I wonder what's wrong. Am I missing something? Is there another subject in which Subhajit scored 114 out of 100 (which probably is not a feat considered worthy of a mention by TOI) so that the percentage makes sense? OR is it another of those TOI articles where they fabricate details/title to sensationalise the article? If it is latter, TOI needs to fire their chief sensationaliser. Notwithstanding that fact, 97.14 (or 99.25 as the case may be) is an amazing feat.

Subhajit Ghosh isn't the average nerdish topper. "He paid a lot of attention to what he studied, rather than how much. He spent time on solving question papers and also went through the study material other than his prescribed books. He only took tuitions in English and Bengali, the rest he prepared by himself," said father Subhashis.

OK, let me be mean. (Yes, you are welcome to leave those anonymous comments! :-P ) No one would come on national newspaper and accept that he is a nerdish topper. I was not, and I am sure neither were you! AND we all paid a lot of attention to what we studied, rather than how much. We all spent time on solving question papers and also went through the study material other than our prescribed books.

Tuitions! HAH. I did not take any tuitions, not even for English and definitely not for Bangla. Did you?

But here is the clincher:

The Kolkata boy is now looking forward to testing his academic mettle at the finest engineering institutes in the country. "I am looking at either studying aerospace engineering at IIT-Kanpur or mechanical engineering at BITS, Pilani. I've given the competitive entrance exams and I'm expecting to rank between 500-600 in the IIT-JEE," said Subhajit confidently.

This, IMHO, is the cue when we should all pray "Bhagwan iss ladke ko satbuddhi dena." If some dude (with a 99.25 TOI %) is getting a rank between 500-600 in the JEE, WHY, in this whole white world would he take Aerospace engg. There are no god-damn jobs in that department. And no Subhajit, you will not be working on Airplanes and satellites and shit like that. You won't even be recruited by Boeing or Airbus. I know you want to join NASA and emulate Rakesh Sharma but I doubt even if ISRO trusts an Aero engineer from an IIT. Next, Mechanical engineering from BITS Pilani? - IMNSHO - It will be a disaster dear topper. I am told their dream job is with John Deere. I'll leave the smart readers to figure out the rest.

And I almost missed this point: How can he so confidently suggest that he is getting a rank between 500-600 in the JEE. I am sure the JEE chairman himself may not be in a position to make such comments. Anyone who has written JEE can vouch for this fact. I think this is a result of all the fake ranks that the FIITJEEs and likes dole out on their website. But then, this guy is a whiz-kid, with a 99.25 TOI %.

Here's the wicked part of my post: (skip it to spare yourself the BP rise. If you are a faculty member in the anti-ragging department of IITM, you are prohibited.)

Here's my wish: I hope this dude comes out with flying colors and joins IITM and he gets Alak and he is in 357, (which will be empty next semester; I'll stay in 358) so that I can send him to Minar at 1.30 in the night to fetch Egg Biriyani! And r@g him till he breaks down.
MUHAHAHAHA. Worst case, if he joins IITK, I'll hunt him down in December during the inter-IIT and send him to their Minar!

[I used r@g because I don't want to end up in jail 'chakki-peesing' for ragging. What if the goons at MHRD have a Google alert for 'rag'?]

A letter to Shashi Tharoor (updated with his reply)

2009-05-21T10:22:00.003+05:30

SUB: Hearty congratulations Dr. Tharoor, kindly spare a few moments

Dear Dr. Tharoor,

Heartiest congratulations on being elected from Thiruvananthapuram. This is truly a remarkable moment in the history of India.

I am an undergraduate student from IIT Madras. I would like to just take a few minutes of your time and voice my thoughts to you, for I believe that you truly represent the changing times that I am part of. I realise you'd be very busy and will try to keep it to the point.

The amazing run of the sensex today is a true testimony of the country's expectations from this new government. After decades of coalition politics, which takes one step forward and two back, we finally seem to have broken the shackles. For an uber-optimistic youngster like me, this is a moment of reckoning. I have always, in the past 22 years of my life, believed that Indian policymakers have the capacity to deliver good corruption-free governance and a poverty-free society. But, somehow somewhere we seem to get lost on this path.

But Dr. Tharoor, you represent the new dawn. You and your being elected as an MP is the tipping point of our nation's growth. It seems surreal that someone of your calibre, charisma and capability is 'elected ' in India. But I have firm belief after Saturday's result that this surreality is the new reality in India. My knowledge about you is purely through popular literature and you are one of the finest that India has to offer. You give me a hope that you will finally get India to realise its true potential. While you may not be able to make significant impacts on the lives of the countrymen, but please trust me if I tell you today that the youngsters of the country look upto people like you. Your case gives us hope and lights a fire in us to join the otherwise-cynical and forgotten case of nation-building.

Sir, kindly do not misunderstand my letter to you. A 22-year-old college kid is no comparison to your stature and achievements. BUT, treat me like a young Indian citizen who has finally found a representative who truly represents him and to whom he can dare to pen his thoughts down. Sir, you have an enormous responsibility towards the youth of the country. You are our last straw of hope as a change-maker. If you too falter and follow the scores who've been in your position earlier, India will never ever be able to recoup. Please remember every moment that 40 crore of us are looking upto you as a role model to emulate.

That said, I wish you a very enjoyable time over the next five years. Hearty hearty congratulations again.

Thanks for reading through the long mail, I thank you for your time.

With warm regards,
Vikas Shenoy

Shashi Tharoor's reply (on 21st May):

Thank you for your support. I am truly humbled by the extraordinary level of trust the voters of Thiruvananthapuram have placed in me, and I am conscious that now is when the real work begins...

With gratitude for your good wishes and support, and hoping it will continue to sustain me over the next five years!

Shashi Tharoor

PS: I had mailed Dr. Tharoor on Monday, the 18th of May and he replied in three days time. That is pretty good response, considering the fact that his inbox would be at the peak of its activity now.

While I am elated that he chose to reply, I am disappointed by the standard copy-paste reply. But nonetheless, one step at a time - our MPs are now accessible. That's a first.

PS2: I am not personally in favour of publicising a conversation between two individuals, but I thought posting his reply would just let the readers know of the changing reality. Cheers to a new India.

Love Thy Neighbour

2009-05-19T11:19:00.003+05:30

Why is India called a peninsula? (2 marks)

Remember that question from your Class VIII Geography textbook?

Ignoring the obvious answer, I was thinking on other lines. India is also unique in its being covered by problems on three sides problems and well.. no-problems* on one side.

Think of it:

West/North-West:
Pakistan (By the way, NY Times has called Pakistan "arguably the most dangerous country on earth")

North/North East:
China - Inspite of being a huge huge country, they still want parts of Arunachal Pradesh. Sigh.

East:
Bangladesh, which is making every effort to emulate Pakistan.
Nepal - I mean what's with all the political instability - you have no Mayawati/Devegowda there!

(Sri Lanka is a spoiler though - If it was not for the LTTE , our waters would have atleast been trouble-free!)

And they say, Love thy neighbour.

I think I am in love..

2009-05-18T06:07:00.004+05:30

.. with her. Again. Hopelessly.

... when you bump into the engineer within you...

2009-05-16T04:26:00.007+05:30

Strange things happen when you are enrolled for an engineering degree. Especially when you are neither particularly delighted about the field nor are you bestowed with the skills of Niccola Tesla.

Following is a Gtalk conversation with a friend of mine who is a complex function of engineering skills, innocence, intellect and disinterest. The background is this: he is supposed to stay back in Summer [yes, the mention of 'Summer' was warranted because its the Chennai summer that is being referred to] and finish his project which involves setting up two modems and making them 'talk' to each other.

No, he is not a technician at Devraj Computers. He is a pre-final year student in the Electrical Engineering Department at IIT Madras. Getting back to the project, he has to use two postpaid sim cards and insert them in those modems and make them work (if not in reality, atleast in his report). Among the other things that were a pain in his ass was the fact that his prof. forgets to get his ID card everyday AND/OR forgets to get photographs to obtain the sim cards. BUT, lets leave that there.

I knew that he was not particularly enjoying the work, so as a good friend I asked him about the progress of the project. Here's the excerpt :

me: dude, how is the project going?
him: pain
me: why what happened?
him: modem dude
one of them broken and other not working
me: ohh ok
him: with the working one, i actually called my cell :D
it was aawesome
me: he he.. first time felt like an elec engineer enh?
him: yeah dude
it was like magic!
no kidding
me: ha ha ha ha ha ha
ok ok.. :D :D
fack! magic it seems
him: yeah
me: trippy man.. trippy
him: anyway, if the modem gets repared i will be done with saarathi for good.
me: i will blog this!

This leads me to quote by Robert Heinlein, a famous Sci-fi writer. He said:

"One man's magic is another man's engineering."

There are indeed those times when we feel engineering is mythical and magical - those are the rare occasions when we - I am referring to the people in my boat alone - bump into the engineer within.

The first time I can recall it happened to me was when I first saw my name dancing and turning and twisting in rainbow colours in the screen saver on the 15" CRT of my first computer. (Yes, we've all done it! ) Ofcourse, this has got nothing to do with engineering!

The last time it happened at IITM was when a Latex code (non-pervert perspective at this juncture is appreciated) worked on my computer and did NOT work on my Prof's computer at the time of submission.

"Magic Sir", I should have said then, "Pure Magic!"

PS: If you bothered to click the Tesla wiki link and read about him OR you are one of those kids my mom talks about who knows everything about everything, including Tesla - and are even fractionally (?) turned on, then check this Bad Ass article about Tesla out.

Post Number 100

2009-05-16T02:20:00.002+05:30

Food for a week

2009-05-13T05:17:00.005+05:30

The plight of the under-developed nations in comparison with the developed nations is best illustrated by the couple of pics that follow.

Food for a week - Darfur refugees, Chad:

Food for a week, Germany:

I am sure the economic recession has no bearing on the people in Darfur, for they would not even know what a booming economy means.

SourcSlide 1: Peter Menzel, 2005.
Slide 1

Nano's the new Mega

2009-05-05T23:23:00.003+05:30

I am elated to see the Tato Nano making waves. That it found a mention in the NY Times blog was itself surprising.

They have received more than 200,000 orders within two weeks and what's more - only 20% pf the bookings are for the famous '$2000 car'! The Indian consumer now seems to exercise a lot of choices. And it is a sure sign of the new India.

The NYT article mentions that about 50% bookings are for the 'high-end' $3300 model. BUT here's the cherry:

The number of bookings is more than double what Tata is capable of building in the car’s initial production run. The first 100,000 owners will be selected through a lottery. Tata expected to start delivery of the Nano in July.

People's car. Indeed.

It is so heartening to see such a market response in India. On the one hand, you have the Chrysler - rather, had the Chrysler -bankrupt and left with their wounds to lick. And on the other you have the Tata Nano, unable to match production with demand.

The lessons from this are three-fold:

India has an amazing consumer base, hungry for innovations and willing to spend that extra buck for value-add. In the economists' words, the 'consumer confidence' is high.
In spite of the worldwide hit to the Manufacturing industry, India could be the least hit because there still is such a big void to fill. Our automotive industry is still in its nascent stages of growth. Here's the take-home: Indian auto industry is still a virgin industry whereas in the west, it is a replacement market.
On a slightly tangential note, politicians (read Mamta Bannerjee and the likes) can - howsoever hard they try -only hinder growth, but not stop it. And this perhaps is the beauty of a democracy - what West Bengal lost, Gujarat (and perhaps rest of India) gained. I doubt if this could have been possible in China.

Cheers to Nano, the new Mega.

What's with all the carbon talk?

2009-05-05T05:44:00.003+05:30

I have been reading a few articles and reports about the concept of Clean Development Mechanism - the use of financial instruments to reduce carbon emissions. A brilliant story, quoted to forewarn the stakeholders about the vested interests of the Wall Street is as follows:

For aficionados of offbeat road races, there are few events that top the Tour de Donut, a 30-mile bicycle race held every July in tiny Staunton, Illinois. In this belly-busting race, competitors stop twice during the course at break stations where they are offered glazed donuts. For every donut that competitors consume, five minutes are deducted from their scores. Thus, for even mediocre riders who also are really good donut eaters, the ride offers an offset structure that makes them champions. In recent years, with top competitors downing over 20 donuts each, winners have actually posted negative times, finishing their races—on the books at least– before they began.

The full article can be accessed here. The article goes on to mention why the CDM will be a failure and how the US government is playing into the hands of the rich and powerful at the Wall Street. According to them, Wall Street is trying to create a huge financial market which trades carbon-reductions as a commodity. Since the volumes will be low, the market will not actually possess all the reductions being traded - it will be hedged and re-packaged in futures and swaps. This could well be the foundation for another financial meltdown!

Reading the article and learning about the possibility of carbon-based futures/contracts and swaps reminds me of Enron - how the company used to hedge natural gas and oil and make money and finally ceased to exist. The carbon finance space seems exciting and should throw up a lot of controversies over the next decade.

Political debates and GRE/GMAT preparation go hand-in-hand

2009-05-01T12:27:00.005+05:30

Yesterday, I had a chance to be part of a 'TV debate' as part of the audience. It was a Doordarshan program called Janvani. Eminent personalities and VIPs were invited.

The underlined part was not mentioned in their invitation letter - so we happily made our way to the program. The 'eminent personalities and VIPs' part also needs an explanation. There were 8 people on the dias - ALL Tamil policians.. and I could recognise only one of them. I had not a clue who the others were and why they were there. DMK, AIADMK, BJP, Congress, CPI, CPI(M), BSP and umm... one more party. So, that's that.

Let me tell you why you should (NOT) be part of such debates if you are planning to write GMAT/GRE/CAT in the near future:

argumentum ad hominem:

In the GMAT, 'ad hominem' attacks tend to weaken an argument, hence considered as a fallacy of arguments. [ad hominem attacks a person's character and not his/her opinions]. All through out the TV debate, the members on the dias kept digging old stories - 'They are ones who put Vaiko in jail and now are talking about blah blah...' ' You are the ones who give out free TVs' and many many more.

Use of articles:

A, an, the. There was a BSP chap who was perhaps the most correct English speaker but for his use of articles. Examples "The China is not a threat to India." ... ".. a Sri Lanka..." and so on...

Wrong choice of words:

One of the speakers seemed to use the wrong word from the P-list of Barrons.. While she meant, 'it is the prerogative of the public schools', she ended up saying 'it is the prority of the public schools'

This is ignoring the obvious and blatant violation of rules of grammar, including - Parallelism, Verb-tense matching, consistent use of pronouns etc.

Other commonly found GMAT-errors:

Inability to differentiate between causaton and corelation. ["Terrorism increased after Congress came to power. Hence, Congress is soft on terror."]
Shifting the burden of proof. [To imply that a position is true merely because no one else has disproved it]

A few other things I could note:

Congress chap: The budget allotment to primary education in 2003 was 8000 blah crores... but we increased to 10,000 blah crores in 2005. That is an achievement.

BJP: You have not accounted for inflation in the increase!

(If you don't get this one, I seriously advise you on taking the course HS 109: Principles of Economics.)

***

The person second from left resembled our Chief Security Officer, who had fined me for 500 bucks for driving a bike inside the campus. So, I already had a bias against him.

***

The CPI fellow kept dozing off and would wake up suddenly and make out-of-the-blue statements like 'China is not at all affected by the US recession' and ' India started the process of liberalisation way before China (??!!!)' and go back to sleep.

***

The CPI (M) fellow would just shout in the mike to make his point. His lungs may not serve him well if he continues the same, considering that age is not on his side.

***

The BJP chap is not part of any alliance in the state - and hence not in the centrestage of TN politics but he would always catch attention by saying "The BJP would like to respond to that question.." OR "BJP can do it better..."

In essence, Indian politics, in it's present form is no more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. They hardly seem to care for the voter and the politicians are way off understanding the pulse of the common man.

BUT, that is not the point of the post. My sincere advice would be this: If you are planning to take the GRE/GMAT/CAT anytime soon.. please do watch all the political debates on national channels... they are perhaps the best example of what-not-to-do in your verbal section. Also, it is a quick revision of 'commonly found errors in [Insert your test name here]'

Do thank me if this post helps you ace the test. And yes, DO VOTE.

Slumdog Millionaire! :P

2009-03-23T12:35:00.004+05:30

It is as dramatic as the turn of events in the movie. The following picture speaks more than a thousand words. It captures truth with just a slight imperfection. (A 3315 instead of 1100!)

Here are my first thoughts on the iPhone:

It an amazing high to hold such a sleek piece of electronic gadgetry
Best moment: When I could connect to the wi-fi network at home and access gmail on the iPhone.
Accelerometers on the phone rock
Touch -to-click is addictive. Atleast overnight.

Typing text on the phone is pain. Sweet pain initially. Irritating a while later.
Downloading and installing applications on the phone is not easy.
It is a little too sleek :-P
Speaker output is poor - extremely extremely feeble.

Photo courtesy: Normal

PS:

Let the post not give you an impression that I was living below the poverty line all this while. Just that my Sony Ericsson W700i got royally screwed because of my overuse (or recklessness, as per dad) - Charger port not working, keys 2,5,8 not working and mouth piece not working.

So, under such dire circumstances, I reverted to my old Nokia phone. Within two days, its battery died down and all I had was a landline phone because it wont work without AC input. Subsequently, fearing social ostracization, I asked my friends for a spare phone. After employing the tactics of 'saam-daam-dund-bhedh' and 'beg-borrow-steal', finally Uss managed to unearth to his old 1100. Key 7 was not working. There was no battery cover. Atleast, it had enough battery to take me to mess and back! I owe a sincere thanks to my dear buddy!!

In between, Normal took pity on me and lent his swanky Nokia 5310 for a couple of days so that I can text in peace and put my strained relationship(s) back on track ;-) And in his own words 'God is great. Help the needy' ensures that he has a right over my iPhone the next time (and every time) he goes on a date.

The 34-second shocker!

2009-02-24T15:22:00.002+05:30

It is around 2 'o clock in the afternoon. I had to call dad but my phone battery was dead. So, I call him from my friend's phone. Here's the conversation:

Me: Hello Papa
Dad: Ya, who is this?

I am his only son!!

Anyways, just goes to show that people subconsciously decide what to say without actually processing what the person on the other side of the call is saying. Apart, the conversation lasted 34 seconds (which just follows this post.)

IIT BHU... without a typo!

2009-02-23T12:36:00.005+05:30

Just when I thought it can't possibly get worse - with more than half a dozen IITs springing up and the talks about space/faculty crunch - here's what a certain Rahul Gandhi is upto in life:

Rahul Gandhi assures BHU-IT students of early IIT status

What the fuck is wrong with these Gandhi-Nehru nutheads. Jawaharlal, Indira and Sanjay later, we have this thirty-something politician - a wannabe Obama - making random promises.

IT BHU to get IIT status. Good god! Mr. Gandhi, get a life. And here are a few suggestions:

Your alma-mater St. Stephens, Delhi (Oh, I almost forgot you did not finish college there) - give it IIT status.
All the existing IITs, the real ones (B,D,K,Kgp, M) give them Harvard/Stanford/MIT status. Anyfuckingway,evidently you thoroughly impressed by Shakesperian whats-in-a-name.
Faculty.. I am sure you don't bother too much about it. So, get all your party workers to teach at each of the new IITs you are creating out of thin air.
Get Italian nurturing support for IT BHU and name Ms. Sonia Gandhi as it's Director. It sure will be fun to see prof. Ananth trying to explain academics to an Italian library keeper.
And whatever little votes you get by giving IT BHU this status, shove it up your ass. Whatever is left over, retain it for a rainy day.

According to SN Upadhyaya, director, IT-BHU, the institute can match any other IIT institution in the country in terms of infrastructure and academic environment, especially quality of research in engineering.

Oh yes, IITs themselves are struggling to keep up the infrastructure and academic environment. Add excess baggage of people who want to 'tag along'!

IT BHU??!! IIT status.. LOL.

PS: Read this trippy shit about how IIT Bihar (:P) campus has been waterlogged and encroached by policemen. A sample quote:

The registrar of the IIT, Subhash Pandey, was quoted in the Hindustan Times as saying: “our Students’ Activity Centre has been encroached by the cops of the Patliputra police station. They have been staying there since last monsoon.

"Bhaiyya, solve question number 11 a. What should be the magnification?"

2009-02-19T22:31:00.005+05:30

Five reasons why class X students, with brothers who are pusuing engineering, should not have access to too much technology:

Email enables them scan pages and pages of class X question papers and mail them across for instant answers.
Facebook enables them to keep track of status messages - where you are going, what you are doing, who you are going with and so on - and figure out when you lie to them saying you are going for cricket practice.
Google Talk enables them to buzz you online and ask you to solve those irritating optics problems which you try and avoid.
And while you intelligently go invisible on Gtalk, they IM you on Facebook and ask the same optics problems.
And when you blog about your miseries - they instantly get an email in their inbox and soon you are explaining your stance to mom and dad. To make up for it, you promise to buy them the coolest electronic gadget immediately after the exam!

Incidentally, my sister is in class X and she is taking her boards soon - and no, the above is a general observation.. _not_ born out of my experiences.

PS: Incase you need any Maths/Science question papers of class X, do email me and I shall be happy to send you the papers of last 10-15 years and pre-board exam papers of almost all schools in (and around) Bangalore.

PS2: If you are wondering why I am perenially invisble on Gtalk, you now know why.

[@ Akshata, I am just joking honey - you know how much I love those optics problems right]

Following might help your sis (or bro) if she (or her) is in class X:

1: No, my sister's name is not Rajeshwari - And no, I have no clue who Rajeshwari is.

2:That is the solution to some random two-taps-A-and-B-fill-a-container-in-blah-blah- - -how-much-time-will-it-blah-both-together.

3:Huh?! I am sure you all can do that right?

"A Mathematician Plays The Stock Market"

2009-02-14T12:05:00.003+05:30

I've been trying to read this book called "A Mathematician Plays The Stock Market" by John Allen Paulos. It is a book which gives an insight about how the stock market works (or doesn't) with mathematical and counter-intuitive reasoning.

Though I have not read it completely as yet, here's an interesting parable I wish to share:

How to auction a $1 bill for more than it's worth:

This is a story about a professor at Yale. He routinely used to auction $1 bills in his class. But the rules were a little different - while the highest bidder gets the bill, the second highest bidder will also have to pay. The increments are allowed a minimum of 5 cents.

So, the incentive is clear: You can bid sufficiently lower than $1 and still get the bill. Assume the highest bid at some point is 40 cents (A) and the second highest is 35 cents (B). Now, B has an apparent double incentive to bid at 45 cents - he needn't pay the 35 cents and he gets to keep the bill at 45 cents, albeit at a higher price than he earlier intended. Similar reasoning holds true for A. So, both A and B are now 'locked' into the auction - the 'double incentive' pushes the bid higher and higher. When B bids 1 $ and A is at 95 cents, A can bid at 105 cents and make a loss of 5 cents OR lose 95 cents. In this way, the $1 bill can be auctioned at much more than it's worth.

Interestingly, the auction grows from a 'maximise profit' to 'minimise loss' model.

At The Crossroads: India’s Energy Demands

2009-01-28T14:54:00.003+05:30

Following is an article I wrote for the first edition of the Energy Bulletin of IIT Madras.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

At The Crossroads: India’s Energy Demands

India is firmly on the superhighway of accelerated economic growth. Along with China, India will be an important player in determining where the world will be poised a couple decades hence. India’s stance on major contemporary issues of energy security and climate change are especially relevant in view of the depleting natural resources and increasing international attention towards our vehicles of growth.

During 2002-2007, India’s GDP has grown at a rate of over 8 % which has been achieved by an energy growth of less than 4% per annum. Experts refer to this as ‘GDP-Energy Decoupling’ - the independence of economic growth from energy growth. You might be inclined to conclude that our energy mechanisms are becoming more efficient, thereby able to make-do with the below par growth in energy. But such a conclusion will be grossly unfair; a deeper analysis of GDP brings forth our myopia in doing so.

While the Industry sector of India is one of the most energy-intensive sectors accounting for about 35-40 pc of the consumption of electricity in the country, its contribution to India’s GDP, however, is only about 20 percent. On the other hand, India’s growth is mainly fuelled by the knowledge-intensive services sector which accounts for 60 pc of the GDP. While intrinsically the industry sector is energy-intensive, it also suggests that a conscious increase in power input to the sector will accelerate its growth thereby giving the GDP a shot in the arm.

The per capita consumption of power in the country in 2005-06 was about 631 Kilowatt Hours. The government of India envisages increasing it to 1000 units by 2012. A look at the global pattern of power consumption suggests a striking correlation between economic growth and power consumption. USA, the world’s largest economy has a per capita consumption of 13,338 units. Japan and Germany measure at 8076 and 7030 units respectively. Closer home, states like Haryana, Gujarat & Punjab which have high per capita GDP consume more than 1000 units of electricity per capita. Economically background states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and north-eastern states fare poorly on per capita consumption scale with Bihar recording a meager 86 units per capita.

That we cannot call ourselves a world superpower without ensuring inclusive growth places huge expectations from our citizens and responsibilities from our policy makers. Inspite of the economic recession being a dampener, the manufacturing sector is growing faster than ever. India’s residential consumption is growing at 14 pc. Around 1,25,000 villages will have to be electrified to fulfil the vision of providing power for all by 2012. With this background, McKinsey & Co. in a recent report on India’s power sector estimates that India will need an investment of Rs. 24 lakh crores to keep pace with the growth.

India’s installed power capacity should triple in another 10 years time. We are presently at 140 GW. It needs to touch 415-440 GW by 2017. In the last 10 years, our annual addition was 4 GW. What we really need is 20 GW per year from now on. We are clearly at the crossroads.

Are our policy makers up for the challenge?

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Specialization is for insects

2009-01-14T23:32:00.003+05:30

Here's a quote forwarded to me by Uss:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

Specialization is for insects - Indeed! Indeed it is!

Let me see how I fare on the checklist:

Change a diaper - Yet to try, shouldn't be too difficult I reckon. Should try out on my 1-year old cousin soon.

Plan an invasion - Ummm.. I think I should draft a proposal to Mr. Singh.

Butcher a hog - Well, lets skip that one for now - I am a peace-loving human being.

Conn a ship - It will be amazing; but it'll take time before I get to lay my hands on one.

Design a building - This one I have done!

Write a sonnet - This one's difficult; I don't like poetry!

Balance accounts - Aye aye, S grade in the course on accounting. \m/

Build a wall - Sometime soon

Set a bone - I don't know what it means :-|

Comfort the dying - Yes, I have been there

Take orders - Loads of times

Give orders - (Loads of times) X 100

Cooperate - Yes, been there. done that

Act alone - Done

Solve equations - Did that till first year of college

Analyze a new problem - same as above

Pitch manure - Good old childhood days

Program a computer - "Hello World"

Cook a tasty meal - 'Taste' is subjective

Fight efficiently - In my schooldays, Yes. After that, it was mostly on the joystick and subsequently on the comp. Lately, the fight is with my self.

Die gallantly - I am sure I will!

Archive: From the era of the 'Board Exams'

2009-01-03T01:38:00.004+05:30

My sister is class X and she has her first paper of her second pre-board exams tomorrow - Social Studies. She was asking me about my class X marks. I told her I got a (respectable) 86.6 pc.

That reminded me of a very (now) funny event that happened to me. After the results came out, I realised I did fairly well in most subjects - I scored above 90 in all subjects except Social Studies. I got 71 in ess ess tee. Hence, my cumulative percentage plummeted to 86.6. The fact that I got 71 led to an almost unstoppable giggle from my sis!

Those were the days when we had the option of 're-evaluation'. We had to make a DD of Rs. 100 per subject and send it along with a form to CBSE. After discussions with a few students and teachers, I realised it was an effort in vain. Add to that the fact that dad will be poorer by Rs. 100. But the embarassment of having scored in the seventies was too much to take and I backed my instinct and opted for re-evaluation of my Social Science answer-sheet. In the process, I bought some time and arguments to explain why I made a blunder.

Weeks passed by. The issue was forgotten. One day, out of the blue, my school office hands me a letter from CBSE. It was about the re-evaluation. I opened it in anticipation of a regret letter stating that the marks remain the same.

BUT, to my pleasant surprise it read something like "the marks in the following subject(s) have been change: Social Studies" ... and to my utter disbelief it said:

Old marks: 71
New Marks: 70

We regret that there was a mistake, kindly find enclosed a Draft for Rs. 100.. blah blah..

CC to: Principal

Holy cow!! If I was allowed to publicly swear then, I would have. But as luck would have, my school did not follow-up and I still retain the mark-sheet which says 71 in Social Studies! ;)

Apart, I pinged a few friends who were online at that time to check their marks:

Ugri - Ninety-holymother-Five percentage with Math - 99, Sci - 98, Sanskrit - 99, English - 82

I was just thinking, if he had got about 90-95 in English, he would have been on national TV. Tough luck mate. [Ofcourse, what happened later in IIT is more interesting, but I skip that for now :-) ]

Normal - 85 in ICSE. He wants me to believe that in terms of difficulty levels:

State Board < CBSE < ICSE

Normal, ofcourse is known to justify everything in this world. So I need second opinion on that.

Ankita - 90.6!

********

My sis, she claims herself, got 94 pc in 9th standard. Now that sounds a little funny to me coz' she shares the same genes as I do and I could never attach such high percentages to myself. So, assuming it is true, I wish she breaks Ugri's record of 95 and makes it to national television.

There'll be a proud brother applauding her.

Anyone else, who wishes to share their class X marks are more than welcome. I definitely will not be last, Normal's there to cushion me!

Global Cooling, I guess

2009-01-02T03:04:00.003+05:30

This post comes from Bangalore - an unusually cold Bangalore.

I cannot recall Bangalore being so cold in the recent past. Bangaloreans used to take out the woolens at the slightest fall in temperature [even at temperatures of mid-twenties]. After having lived through the chilling winter of Delhi, it was amusing to see people with their monkey-caps and woolen socks in the comfortable Bangalore weather.

All that seems to have changed - Bangalore is now cold and breezy. I have to shuttle between balconies and hide behind pillars to be able talk on the phone without falling prey to the cold.

Recently, I read that the temperature hit 10 degrees in Chennai! People tell me Pune is cold and Delhi is freezing!

Whats happening, what's wrong - what 's up with all the talk about global warming, morons? :-)

Epic Fail

2008-12-04T18:51:00.002+05:30

This website called Failblog - www.failblog.org is highly recommended. Following is an Epic Fail:

Pakistan: A story dying to end

2008-12-01T06:05:00.013+05:30

Post the carnage at Mumbai, global political games have kicked off. While India is constantly and as it seems, convincingly, accusing Pakistan of having played a direct role in the attack, Pakistan is using the good-will of its civilian leadership to act the angel. The US, never a mute spectator, has its own ends to meet through India and Pakistan. The leaders are measuring their words, encapsulating it in diplomacy to avoid a face-off.

A war-like situation is developing. Given the economic situation in Pakistan [their economy was on the verge of collapsing a few fortnights back; received a 'bailout' loan from IMF to the tune of $7 bn. ], it is evident that Pakistan can't afford a war. India, on the other hand, is economically much better off to deal with the inevitable.

Pakistani troops, about 100,00 in number are occupying its western border with Afghan and this is of utmost importance to the US to maintain pressure on Taliban. Fearing an Indian backlash, the Pakistan army has started to 'blackmail' the US maintaining that if India ups the ante along their border, Pakis would have no option but to mobilize their forces towards the east to fend off any Indian insurgency. That would inturn give Bush/Obama sleepless nights as all their progress in Afghan till now will be undone.

Given that international consensus and support is imperative for Pakistan's survival (lets talk about growth later), the civilian government led by Asif Zardari is playing all its diplomatic cards, including appeasing India to minimize the damage. If the civilian government is indeed looking at bettering ties with India, then this incident is a clinching proof to show that the military is the real boss. The international community, including India, fears that should a war break out in the near future, the military in Pakistan would overturn the people's government and we will again have a situation where the jehadi extremists call the shots. Add the nukes, the concoction becomes extremely precarious. Whether they have the pair to engage in nuclear warfare is a question better not posed to the radical extremists.

While India, in all its sanity would wage a 'clean war', the Pakis can resort to anything because the leadership there is based on anti-India ideology, a hatred based one. Infact, the Army Chief of Pakistan is a former ISI chief. This might prevent India from going ahead with a full-fledged war.

A quote from a recent TOI article:

Even in the political sphere, Pakistan's continued existence as a single entity is premised on enmity with India, the glue which keeps the country together. Some Pakistanis have suggested in recent months that take away animosity against India, then Pakistan's founding itself becomes questionable.

International community might vehemently side with India in the coming days but will also be careful enough to craft strategies to ward off war calls. The US has a bunch of problems to heed to - the economic recession and the transition in their own leadership. An Indo-Pak standoff will only add to their woes. US can't sever its links with Pakistan and they can't go back on the newly established love relationship with India. And at a juncture of transition between two leaderships opposite in their beliefs, more external trouble spells more internal indifferences.

Leave out everything, the coming few days will see a lot of international lobbying. Needless to say, a war SHOULD be avoided - but not at the cost of appellation of 'soft state' to India. Its time we show the world who's the boss and if need be, be the means to the end.

The Perfect Phone Call

2008-11-30T01:34:00.003+05:30

Every now and then, I come across newspaper articles which border insanity and at times cross that. A few days back in the TOI, there was an article on what constitutes a perfect phone call. Another reference of the article is here.

The research suggest that an ideal phone call should last 9 minutes and 36 seconds!! It should contain a healthy mix of current affairs, opposite sex, health and such stuff.

Three minutes should be spent catching up with news about family and friends
One minute on personal problems
One minute on work/school
42 seconds on current affairs
24 seconds on the weather
24 seconds on chat about opposite sex
12 seconds, staying quite

Another interesting discovery: One in five people spend the maximum time on the phone talking to their mothers. Even more fantastic is the following:

Only 3 % of people named their father as the person they spent most time on the phone with – because dads hand over the phone to their wives.

My personal probability of mom being at the top of the list, at any point of time depends on the following factors:

Whether love life exists or not? If it does, whether it is on track or not?
Exams going on or not? [If yes, frequency of calls to mom increase!]
Whether my sister is having her exams or not? [Same as above]
Balance in the phone [Lesser the balance, the more missed calls that go home]
Whether dad has asked me to courier the fee receipt or not? [If yes, DON'T call till you have sent it, which usually is not soon]
Bank balance and the slope of decrease of the balance [Higher the gradient, higher is the probability that I bypass dad and call mom directly and use the powers vested in her :-) ]
Frequency of 'achievements' - Perhaps, there is no one who is happier than mom - so makes sense. Marginal benefit fundaes.

With dad it is far far simpler:

Dad has a fixed set of questions :

Wassup?
Do you need money?
Why is your CGPA falling every sem?
Why did you not send the courier yet.. #@$!$!!
Want to talk to mom?

There have been times when I have finished the above conversation with dad in 7 seconds!! But thanks to the research finding, I am not as guilty anymore - I guess its meant to be that way. Let me not challenge nature! ;)

Since we are talking of phone calls, I leave the reader with the following pic of my dear buddy, Ugri, talking to his then would-be girlfriend and now is girlfriend. This is the wing-phone in our wing and the time would be around 1 AM some August night of 2008. What all people do for love! :-P

The IITian! :-)

2008-11-25T23:14:00.004+05:30

For the past three years here at IIT Madras, I have always had a nagging feeling of 'exploiting' the resources of the country. "The government spends a fortune on each IITian", "Brain Drain", "IITs are a social disaster" and the likes...

Infact, the best of them all is Prof. MS Ananth's oft-heard comment - "Nehru created the IITs as a step to build the nation, but he did not specify which nation." - with an obvious reference to Obama's country.

Pan-IIT 2008, the global IIT alumni conference that is going to be held in December at IIT Madras has come out with a fascinatng report on the contribution of IITs to India. The numbers and facts that they have managed to put together is amazing, to say the least. Quoting from a couple of news articles, this, here is a summary of their findings:

Over the last 50 years, the IIT alumni have created over 2 crore jobs, which translates to 'Each IITian has created 100 jobs'
One in 10 IIT alumni have started their own companies, with over 40% of them being serial entrepreneurs. Two-thirds of the companies founded are in India. In the last 15-20 years, most of them have preferred to start up in India
Budgetary responsibility of IITians is over Rs 40 lakh crore ($885 bn)
They are associated with incremental economic value creation of Rs 20 lakh crore ($450 bn)
Every Rs 1 invested on an IITian has created an economic impact of Rs 50 at the global level. Of this, India’s share will be Rs 25, says Manu Santhanam.
54 pc of the top-500 Indian companies have atleast one IIT alumnus in their Board of Directors

I am eagerly waiting for the organsition to release the methodology and other findings of the report.

An important factor that should not be undermined is the numbers associated with the IITs. It is the largest organisation in India, by number, to churn out technocrats. Perhaps, no other institution/organisation has such a scale. Hence, these figures should not be taken at face value. That said, for the 3-odd lakhs of engineers that graduate every year, the three thousand of the IITians seem to make a distinct mark.

But, if you are in the limelight - bouquets and brickbats alike follow. I was going throughtthe comments section of one of these articles and here's what I stumbled upon. I would highly recommend you all to read the comments.

One thing is clear from the comments. Although the findings of the report purely talk about only the contribution of IITs and the their alumni and has not criticised any one, a lot of people seem to have been offended and have given baseless reasons to ridicule them. Comments like 'They are patting their own back' 'They should give credit to others' 'You find them selling soaps in FMCG and giving loans in the banking sector'.

(To be completed..)

TANSTAAFL!

2008-11-23T15:49:00.004+05:30

TANSTAAFL is an acronym that stands for There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Wiki entry suggests that it was popularized by science fiction writer Robert Heinlein in his book - The Moon is a Hersh Mistress. But that's not the point here.

In terms of economics, it means nothing comes for free in this world. Everything has a cost attached to it -the opportunity cost of doing it. Essentially, everything and anything that happens to you has an ulterior motive to it - some immediately recognizable, some latent. But that is also not the point of this post.

We (especially Chinmay and I) believe that there is such a thing called a Free Lunch after all. Following is the photographic evidence of a 'Free Lunch' - Normal hogging away to glory without paying for it at the Campus Cafe, one of the summer afternoons in the insti. Well, that was not the first time and a not-so-educated guess is that it'll not be the last time either.

Apart, interestingly, the name of the the eating joint at IIM Ahmedabad is Cafe TANSTAAFL. They serve pretty good food till 4 AM in the night. And to top it all, they deliver it to your rooms - so food is just one phone call away. In that respect, the IIMA cafe clearly scores over the IITM cafe. But yet, food for us (also) is just a phone call away - a call to the poor freshie, who'll go buy food for us, albeit only till 2 PM.

PS: That said, even as I publish this post, I owe Normal 600 bucks. :-(
Damn the economic recession!

Goo-gle

2008-11-22T05:51:00.002+05:30

Dear Larry and Sergey,

Gmail is holy. Please don't defile it with ugly themes. You can screw around as much as you want with Orkut, but DO NOT with Gmail.

Gmail is holy.

Regards

Lypas and autoFiLIP in the news!

2008-11-19T22:04:00.005+05:30

Well.. a moment of reckoning. Lypas and autoFiLIP have managed to make some impact after all. Last week, thanks to Vaishnavi, we were featured on JAM magazine.

And here is another one, in the IT supplement, Ergo, of The Hindu, by Anusha.

I am yet to lay my hands on the JAM article [if anyone has the November issue of JAM and love me, please do hand over the copy] but here is the article on Ergo. The epaper

This one goes out to my MOM! Love you and miss you mama :-)

To Balaji, Hypo, Uss, Sanjay and Hrushya - Cheers, lets kick some more ass. :-P

Update: The JAM mag, e-article snapshot:

What the fuck, Dollar!

2008-11-19T16:28:00.005+05:30

The great US of A and it's recession has definitely impacted India. Since India is a major servicing hub of the world and most of world's business is carried out in the US, the Indian industry has been hit badly.

While everything that is going wrong with the Indian markets can't be attributed to the US, most of it I think can be. Cutting across to the job market, things are gloomy. There is no Lehman to recruit us, Citibank is laying off and home-grown companies are battling for survival themselves. Quoting Chinmay, "I hope next year when we are passing out, the economy gets so bad that we are forced to start our own companies, that way we'll see a turnaround". Well, this recession might be a blessing in disguise for entrepreneurs.

Inspite of the being at the epicentre of the epicentre for all the worldly troubles, the US currency seems to give the Indian rupee a run for its money. The fact that the US economy does not have enough liquidity to pump into the market is giving rise to an illusionary strength to the dollar. The dollar seems to have gained strength in comparison to most other currencies. The Indian rupee was trading at less than 40 about eight months back and look at it now - up almost 25 % to about 50. I checked up Google finance to see the trend and it seems the dollar is 'gaining strength' pretty rapidly. Post September 15 (when Lehman filed for bankruptcy and the global crisis was recognised by the common man on the streets), the growth is unabashed.

It can be explained by the simple concept of Supply and Demand. Since there is a liquidity crunch in the US and the banks and companies alike need a lot of dollars to honour their commitments, they are taking all the dollars from elsewhere in the world. In essence, there is a shortage of supply in the other countries as the companies are selling the native currency in return for dollars.

In India, although we have a liquidity crunch ourselves, in the supply-demand dynamics of the rupee and the dollar, the rupee loses out because the world needs more dollars than rupees. And what with the RBI reducing the CRR (which is the fraction of the cash deposits that the banks have to keep with the RBI), rupee-crunch has been addressed to an extent. So, the dollar strength is not because of the weakness of the rupee or the Indian economy, it is due to the sheer amount of 'recoverable' dollars present in the Indian markets and the evident lack of it in the US markets.

Information Overload

2008-11-16T01:13:00.004+05:30

Uss and I were having one of those brain-shattering weekend-chats where we are madly researching on random topics like energy consultancy to head-hunting to economics to Egon Zehnder to Harvard.

AND this is what he says at one point of time:

"abe, we shall soon turn into each other and won't even know it"

PS: Saturday night at 1.34 AM - I have my toughest end sem coming up on Tuesday; a 100-marks term paper submission on Monday; Four more end-sems lined up and HERE I am.

Freakonomics - Our attempt!

2008-11-13T19:47:00.004+05:30

Freakonomics - Concepts and Application

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: freakonomics economics)

We had to make a presentation in our economics course. The three of us, Varun, Karthik and I chose 'Freakonomics' - till about a day before the presentation we had no clue on what to present. There was no unifying theme, but then that is what Freakonomics was all about. :-)

Finally, it came out well, albeit, with a broad theme of 'What you see is NOT what is inside'

Free Markets: China, India and Globalization 3.0

2008-11-13T18:43:00.002+05:30

Free market is a concept which moots the idea "Business gets done where it gets done the best". It means businesses will always tend to minimise costs and maximise benefits. Profit is the name of the game.

China, the apple of the eye of the developing world and India's great nightmare is able to churn out manufactured products at jaw-dropping costs. and consistently enough now - its been about seven years now since they joined the WTO and opened up their markets in the truest sense of the word. "To get rich is glorious" declared the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping back in 1977, when he put China on the road to capitalism.

China can amass so many low-wage workers to cater to their industrial needs because it has such a voracious appetite for factory equipment and knowledge jobs. This is precisely where the government has to step-in. Create the ecosystem and let the flowers bloom. Because as as long as there are needs and wants, and they will be forever, there will be these industrial flowers eager to bloom. Immediately within a year of joining the WTO China saw a boom in their infrastructure - the government was under pressure from the private companies to provide them the ecosystem for the millions of dollars that they were willing to pool in. Privatization has done China a world of good and i am a little worried that China has found the key to the treasure.

Cutting across to India, the poster boy of our economic reforms and growth - the telecom sector is a shining example what private companies can do with optimum government support. In just one hour, India Inc. sells about 12,000 phones!! It marks a landmark growth-rate of 42 pc in teledensity this year. The government alone could never have done that.

This leads us to a very interesting phenomenon called Globalization 3.0. The term is coined by Thomas Friedman in his book - 'The world is Flat'. Globalisation 3.0 is when you empower an individual with tools to excel - tools like education, electricity, infrastructure, broadband connectivity - tools that'll enable him go into the wild and hunt for himself. You are putting the ball in the court of the individual citizens. You are enabling "Business to get done where it gets done the best".

In the long run, the answer lies in a conscious effort by the government to generate ecosystems, letting private companies model the market, let the market itself decide the course of the development. And as it has shown in the past - be it the the-world's-favorite-son Obama's USA or Japan, they have done it. I am sure we can too.

Three key phrases:

Business gets done where it gets done the best
Government should create ecosystems
Globalization 3.0

PS: The above is a modified reader-friendly version of my entry in the IITM's inter-hostel debate.
PS 2: The skeleton of the discussion is based on 'The World is Flat' by Thomas Friedman

Chemplast Memoirs - I

2008-11-02T23:25:00.006+05:30

There is this bright sunny day when you go out to bat when the team needs more than fifty runs in less than five overs. Then somehow riding on your luck and the good wishes of fellow team members, you win the match for your team with five balls to spare. You come back to the pavilion, welcomed with cheers and figure out that you scored a first-time-in-life 32 off 15 balls. You go back to your room pumped up and wanting to better your performance the next day. You go to your gtalk and change your status message to "One over mid-wicket for a four" - a comforting reminder to yourself (and to the gtalk-world) of the best shot you played in the match. You go to sleep and then when you lay on the bed, you feel the strain in every square inch of your body. Then you think to yourself "Aah, is this the sweet pain of success? "

The very next day - equally bright and sunny, if not more, you go out to bat - no pressure, no targets to chase. You are riding on the confidence of the last knock. You think to yourself "This is the day!" You tap your first ball to mid-wicket for a dot ball. Next ball, you time it to perfection only to realise that you are caught at mid-wicket. Out for a Duck. Gtalk status message changes to "Quack Quack" and the body pain intensifies. Only this time, you don't like it one bit.

Such is life. 32 off 15 one day and a ZERO off 2 the very next. Such is life.

Don't you marry your secretary!!

2008-10-29T23:54:00.003+05:30

"If you marry your secretary, the GDP of India will fall "

- Eco Prof. in class today.

The iPhone Jazz

2008-10-20T15:49:00.005+05:30

iPhone Blah, iPhone Bluuh, iPhone Aah, iPhone Uuh.

Ever since His Technology-Holiness Shri Shri Shri Stevendra Jobs launched the iPhone, its been a rage. More people have liked it than hated it. Most people have revered it, a few others have raped it, and no words minced.

For starters, I love the iPhone. Not as much for the phone itself (coz' I don't own one!) but for the unimaginable hype it created. Apple has a rich tradition of releasing products which sweep the market and give the competitors sleepless years. Starting with the Mac, it went on to the pod and now the phone. iPhone has started a whole new industry of software programmers who make money by designing games and applications for the iPhone. And they tell me, it is a very booming industry. In India, it is trying to dent the share of Nokia - iPhone is trying to create a wave. They have tied up with Airtel and Vodafone to bring it to the market (@ 31k, a lot of middle-fingers have greeted them though).

The 'early-adopters' or the people who are compulsive users of any new technology are a bunch of biased, judgemental, highly opinionated and vociferous people. The term early-adopters is a term coined by Geoffrey Moore in his book on marketing for the entrepreneurs ''Crossing the chasm"

So, if they love your product, they will love it more than their wives [and not to sound sexist myself, their husbands aslo] and make sure that their uncle, aunty, neighbour, cousin and even their milkman knows about it. On the other hand, if they don't like your product, they will tell the same people and many many more. [My Marketing Prof. tells me that it is scientifically proven that if a person is happy with a product/service, he tells FOUR people but if he is not happy, he tells ELEVEN people. So bad spreads faster than good]

With the iPhone, I came across an interesting mail sent by Chinmay and then a page by Varun.

iPhone v/s the 40000 BC phone:

And then the 'The Best page in the Universe' article

A Computer Scientist's view of The Wall

2008-10-18T13:21:00.004+05:30

Rahul Dravid, the Wall

The following algorithm has been devised by Mr. Anurag Verma. He is a '07 batch alumnus of IIT Madras pursuing his Ph.D in Operations Research at Texas A & M University, USA. He was a student of Computer Science with a keen interest in OR. An avid cricket-lover, he also captained the IIT Madras cricket team to win Gold in the Guwahati Inter-IIT in 2006.

Ok. Enough. Laddoo is basically a cricket fanatic. He was my captain in the above-said year and a very very good friend. He is the muggu cricketer type and boasted of a nine-point-infinity CG. Cricket is his religion. Left-arm-fast ..Sorry, Left-arm Opening bowler and Left-handed batsman, he was Shtudd! Rahul and Sachin are his idols. We all love Laddoo.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Following are snippets of the chat I had with him:

achcha, i loved the dravid algo - i thought i'll reproduce it on my blog with your permission

Laddoo: zaroor... but BNU license agreement ko follow karna padega

*GNU

me: woh kya hota hai

i will credit you and put your orkut/facebook link

Laddoo: pata nahi.. bas naam pata hai

me: oh peace...

Laddoo: kar le... koi tension nahi

me: cool..

Laddoo: me also will get publicity

---------------------------------------------------------------------

So here is my part of the duty:

[ I tried linking the Orkut and Facebook profiles but the Google server says this :(

ERROR

URL contains illegal characters

]

Laddoo on Orkut: Anurag Verma

Disclaimer: I am following the GNU license agreement. :P

Realisation: Finally!

2008-10-18T04:51:00.002+05:30

A moment of reckoning: Ugri and I have realised and confessed that if either one of us was a girl, we would have been madly in love with each other and would have definitely gotten married and had kids and a wonderful life together.

Sigh. Too bad we are not.

(This post comes in the backdrop of lightning and heavy thunder!) I think it takes tough times in life to realise profound thoughts. :P

A Dream Parking Lot

2008-10-17T05:16:00.004+05:30

The course 'Basic Principles of Economics' that I am studying this semester has been an eye-opener for more reasons than one. It comes at a very apt time when the whole of the finance sector is doomed and the principles that I am taught in the class make a little more sense now. Secondly, it is a course that has changed the way I look at society/money/trade etc - giving me a more mature insight into market behaviour.

But that is not the point here. In one of the classes, I remember the Prof. sharing an interesting story. He was talking about an University abroad (not too sure if it was Univ of Chicago or California), where they had huge car-parking space for the faculty and a separated, bigger parking lot for the students of the institute.

Here comes the biggie; he went on to say that there is a parking provision for about 7-8 other cars that is reserved. And it reads 'Reserved for Nobel Laureates'. I was amazed at the whole idea - an institute that could boast of patronage from so many Nobel laureates that they have a special parking lot for them!! Woah!

[I googled for it but could not find much info - just got the above pic from Picasa]

I wonder when can an institute in India do something of that sort?

I quote Wiki:

Eight Indian citizens or people of Indian origin have been honoured to date, but legally only 2 of Indian citizenship, and only three of Indian origin. (C.V. Raman - Nobel Prize; Amartya Sen - Nobel Memorial Prize)

Given such a dismal performance over the past 107 years that the concept of Nobel prizes have existed, India needs to buck-up and invest a mammoth amount in R&D. When will the IITs, IIScs, IIMs have such a parking lot?

When will IIT Madras have such a parking lot?

PS: USA has more than 300 Nobel's till date.

Update: Apologies for a bad blog post. There are factual inconsistencies in my post. Here is the update - The story was apparently shared by our Marketing Prof. and not the Economics Prof. (so tells my wingmate Pondy). Secondly, he also apparently said it was Stan (as suggested by Sayan in his comment) and not Chicago or California.

Thirdly, thanks to Caesar's comment - I relearnt basic English grammar. The correct usage is 'a University' and not 'an University' as I initially wrote.

Manager banne chalein, IIT se

2008-10-17T01:14:00.008+05:30

Of the many things that set the (old) IITs apart from the other engineering colleges (and the new IITs), one is the concept of a 'Minor' degree. It goes like this:

On paper, you can choose from a range of minor courses ranging from Physics to Management to Ocean Engineering to Industrial Engineering. This is ofcourse in addition to the Major degree that you get. In practice though, you can only let your luck do the selection for you. They have a system to 'minimize maximum regret'

Nonetheless, of the 500-odd students of my batch, my guess is about 300 (including me) applied for the 180 'seats' in Management stream. A little help from the almighty and a lot more from my department ensured I got the stream I wanted. So over the past one-and-a-half-year, I did course in

Principles of Management (HR-centric)
Accounting for Managerial Control (Finance, for you)

The course I am doing this sem is some-fancy-name which stands for Marketing. And yes, the course has not disappointed. Some salient features:

Attendance at the beginning of the class - 60-odd students. The Prof. reads out the names of each of the students. No attendance for coming late.
5 marks for attendance. You get Zero if you have more than 5 bunks. I had 11 on the last count.
35 marks for a project. Our project was on 'Marketing Strategies in the mobile services sector' - perhaps the best part of the course.
Every now and then, a research scholar would take a class. (Sigh)
Prof. doesn't bother if you sleep in the class - It is difficult to stay awake at 1 PM on a Monday afternoon after an invariable late-nighter on Sunday.

5th October

2008-10-06T19:32:00.001+05:30

Closing Ceremony of Shaastra 2008. And more.

49

Badge of C(R)oreness

2008-10-05T00:37:00.007+05:30

It has been about a year and a half of hard work.

It took me places. Finally, I have this badge around my neck. Every single moment is worth its weight in gold.

Hats off to life!

Credits: Aniket Anand

A Bog Conversation

2008-10-04T12:56:00.003+05:30

The following conversation happened when I was trying to convince a dear friend to DO SOMETHING to get his love life started.

Setting: Bathrooms, B3 wing, Alak.
Time: 12.30 in the noon

Me: Dude, kuch kar yaar. Mard ban.

Him: Kyun?

Group Dances

2008-09-27T16:18:00.002+05:30

I happened to watch a Freshi Nite Choreo sequence just now. On the huge SAC stage, there were a lot of freshie guys and freshie girls dancing to some nice hindi party numbers.

I watched the 3-odd minute video a couple of times. I have the following opinion: In your troupe, you should NOT have a dancer who is disproportionately hot as compared to the rest of your group. What happens then is that the other guys on the stage definitely become inconsequential and the other girls are also easy to ignore.

After watching it a few more times, I realised I would have enjoyed the video as much if not more if the guys were kicked out and the other girls were also .. well.. kicked-out. All I remember is the one girl grooving to the music :D

On the other hand, if that disproportionately hot dancer is a great dancer, the chances of your team winning multiply since the others are anyway not being watched so closely! This is probably analogous to the fact that if two naked women rob a bank, they will never get caught since no one would actually remember how their faces look.

That said, tonight is the inter-hostel Choreo Nite, so let me test if this theory I have come up with is true or not. [God, I wish Sharav has a hot girl... No, the hot girl in their team]

GREAT LEADERS ARE BORN AND MADE

2008-09-21T19:42:00.002+05:30

"They possess the core virtues within them and then they invent their skills. A leader needs vision and passion, high level of integrity; must possess the ability to inspire and innovate, courage and the will to take risks. A great leader allows others to assume leadership when the situation calls for the same and inevitably have the holistic picture in mind. Great leaders work for the common good, work with their team as a team member carrying people along and always focus on overcoming problems. One of the main characteristics that defines a great leader is the ability to stand by values and never compromise on them."

Sucheth Rao, CEO, Neuland Laboratories Ltd.
The Economic Times Chennai, 16 September.

Pursuit of Happyness

2008-09-20T02:51:00.003+05:30

The definition of happiness is skewed. There definitely is not an universal definition.

No matter how much you want the people around you to be happy, it ultimately never happens. And there never is equity. It is a cruel world and you are expected to deliver every time, every single time. Failure to do so is unpardonable.

End of the day, it is every man for himself - You are on your own: You want to be happy, you better find your own ways.

And ya, happiness doesn't come cheap. It is freaking expensive. But you are expected to provide it cheap, damn cheap. Failure to do so will result in chaos. And who wants a chaotic life.

Those 10 laws of Economics, by a gentleman named Mankiw won't apply to life. Nope. They won't, inspite of his proclamation that it is equally applicable for an individual, society, state and a country.

PS: The above is not universally true; it is .. whatever, fuck it.

Why

2008-09-20T02:48:00.002+05:30

Why the fuck?

It is not worth the effort.

Blink and it's over

2008-08-16T03:02:00.002+05:30

True, I have not been online lately. Nor have I really devoted time for myself. What's keeping me away from my first love, the internet? Let me see...

Golden Jubilee Shaastra 2008! - Yeah, it is kickass fun.
Mobile Phone ;) and Advertising agencies
A defunct LAN port in my new room. :-(
The latest talk in the campus: LAN cut from midnight to 2 PM, that is 14 hours woah! :'-(

Whats an ideal day like:

Class(es)
Proxies (perhaps follows from above)
Meetings - infinite
Phone calls
Phone call
CCD Meetings
CCD Meeting
Reading-up!

All that said, Shaastra 2008 is on track. It deserves a separate post!

The sweet and sour relationship

2008-08-01T11:52:00.003+05:30

There are those tough times in one's life when the computer does not obey your command and instead prefers to put a blank face and be indifferent to your feelings! :-)

Using a Dell laptop for the past two years, it has been a rather faithful relationship; as with most love relationships, there have been times when she has been distraught with the way I treat her and occasionally made her displeasure evident. At Ahmedabad, I had a tough time putting up with my sweetheart, she would just NOT listen to me. I tried everything - from getting expert advices to buying her expensive gifts to giving her some time with herself. Nothing seemed to work.

But as they say, you have to be considerate and patient in a relationship. You should change with time and accommodate for her space and time. I slowly but surely figured out what the problem was. And I fixed it -My Firefox 2 was taking an insanely high amount of RAM because of a malicious script, so I switched over to Firefox 3 . We are a happy couple now, with everything perfect between us [but for the LAN port not working in my room and hence having to use Ugri's sweetheart to post].

On a parallel note, here is something made me write this post:

--Gtalk--

Me (to Ayush): Wassup?

------

I get a message on my phone from Ayush and here is the conversation on SMS

Ayush: Haan bol mera lappy hang ho gaya :(
Me: Ha ha ha. Loser. Kuch nahi, gen buzz kiya.
Ayush: Yaar mera lappy har 5 min mein hang ho jata hai.. useless piece of crap.

I guess every relationship has to go through this. With time, this too shall pass :-)

July 26, 2008

2008-07-27T22:30:00.001+05:30

Room.
Tarams.
Room.
Ascendas.
Tapti.
CCD.
GC bus stop.
Satyam Cinema.
Insti Lake.
Insti Stadium.
SAC road.
Sharav.
CCD.
Delhi Avenue.
GC.
ED DCF.
MSB 357.
CRC.
MSB.
CLT.
Outside OAT.
SAC.
Insti Stadium.
Hostel.
Ascendas.
Room.
Room!

New-age Bengaluru

2008-07-24T15:44:00.003+05:30

A glimpse at how 10th standard students study for their exams in our own Silicon City. Load-shedding has reached a peak in Bangalore with most places in the city plunged into darkness for almost 6-8 hours per day.

According to a news report, the demand for diesel has increased by 40 pc owing to the increased use of generators in Bangalore. Previously, the daily requirement of Diesel in Bangalore was 1800 kilolitres.

Weird USB Drive

2008-07-16T05:12:00.002+05:30

Came across a cool gadget online. They call it the Sawed-off USB Flash Drive. It was featured on Gizmodo yesterday. It is actually a USB Flash drive capable of storing 2 GB data. It is time we rephrase the age-old phrase to "Don't judge an USB drive by it's looks." :D

Cool thing!

Amd I quote a comment from one of the websites "This looks like it is aching to be thrown away by mistake. "

Which one?

2008-07-14T09:45:00.003+05:30

Tripp!

The following was scribbled during one of the lectures at CIIE. Snapshot of the notebook (read from bottom upwards, two lines):

It was an innocent comment followed by an honest reply. :D

The three most...

2008-07-13T04:03:00.002+05:30

The three most talked-about contemporary products/gadgets in the tech bloggers' spheres:

Apple iPhone
Twitter
Facebook

Three most talked about phrases:

Social Networking
iPhone Applications
Start-ups

Three most talked about 'promising' domains in India:

Online Advertising and e-commerce
Mobile Phone applications and m-commerce
Social Networking

IIT + IIM = ?

2008-07-10T06:57:00.002+05:30

[Pardon the barrage of IIT-centric posts; with time, this too shall pass :-) ]

If IIT Gandhinagar takes off in a big way and in about 8-10 years manages to have the reputation of the present IITs, the fact that an IIM and an IIT are within a distance of 30 kms of each other might result in an unprecedented synergy.

In an ideal scenario, the best technologists of the country will be ably supported by the best managers in the county and vice versa. Imagine the situation where a path-breaking innovation at IIT Gandhinagar is nurtured by IIM Ahmedabad and taken to the market. OR a healthy interaction between them resulting in fostering ideas and aiding and accelerating innovation and invention.

Man, I can't wait to see that day become a reality!

PS: I fundamentally believe that we need managers to only 'manage' as such the world can survive without managers but might not survive without engineers/technologists. :-)

I Love You!

2008-07-09T04:08:00.004+05:30

Tripp!!

Picture courtesy: Chinmay

----Gtalk Chat----

Chinmay:
you should put this on your blog

Vikas:
ha ha..
where did u get this?
Chinmay:
Gen

Will the new IITs do an IIMA?

2008-07-07T22:09:00.006+05:30

Further to the diverse comments on the last post about the new IITs, here is a small follow-up.

I was roaming around the IIM Ahmedabad campus this afternoon with a friend of mine and we were discussing the architecture of the place - wonderfully thought-out and carefully crafted buildings which lend the institute its whole 'culture'. I was told by him that they roped in the world-famous architect Louis Kahn, who was a Prof. of architecture in UPenn (in the late 50s) to design the buildings along with NID, Ahmedabad.

The institute was a brain-child of some of the most respected brains of India, including Vikram Sarabhai - the man who spearheaded India's space missions, among many other things. Infact, the IIMA library is named after him.

I was browsing through the gallery to find out interesting tit-bits about the institute and I came across a very fascinating fact. Here I share it:
"The picture above is of 'Retreat', Vikram Sarabhai's residence in Shahibaug, which would house a fledging institution's office for more than a year beginning in June, 1961, until a proper campus for IIMA took shape. "The institute started functioning... under the auspices of a registered society and the general direction of a Board of Governors. It then had no buildings, no furniture, and only a skeletal staff and faculty. The vision of its early leaders was perhaps the only sustaining factor." (IIM Ahmedabad, The first Decade, 1973)"

It is just so fascinating! It just reminded me of the situation now, with respect to the new IITs and the comments from Jimmy on that. So! So! So!

Are these IITs going to recreate what IIMA did?
Are these IITs a brainchild of the best brains in the country?
Is the vision of the early leaders of the institutes enough to sustain them?

I leave it for the reader to answer.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PS: I was browsing the website of Indian School of Business, Hyderabad - another premium B-school in India. I quote "The foundation stone was laid in 1999 and the Post Graduate Programme was launched in 2001".

PS2: I am not sure if the title of the post is grammatically correct, but seems to convey the point.

un-IIT: Of real and virtual IITs

2008-07-05T04:07:00.007+05:30

I was going through my mail-blog-wiki-news routine when I stumbled upon a link that had an old interview of Prof. MS Ananth, Director of IIT Madras . Fascinated by what he had to say on issues like setting up of new IITs, reservation for students, reservation for faculty, JEE etc, I thought I'll catch up on the latest buzz around IITs - the new IITs!!

I happened to visit the JEE website, which provides all the details regarding the admission. I also downloaded the counselling brochure which is an information guide for the prospective students. What I read was horrifying - a nightmare to say the least.

Here's a part of the brochure:

"IIT Hyderabad is one of the three new IITs proposed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. The academic session in IIT Hyderabad will commence from August 2008. IIT Madras has been identified as the mentor institution for IIT Hyderabad. To start with, B.Tech program in three branches will be offered, namely, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering with 40 students in each branch. During the first year of the program, classes will be conducted in a suitable campus located in the city of Hyderabad. Students will be provided with hostel and dining facilities within the campus. The curriculum, course structure and syllabus for various courses will be the same as in IIT Madras. The fee structure will also be the same as that of IIT Madras."

If you thought that was unimaginable, wait till you see this:

"IIT Patna is one of the new IITs proposed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India. Its location and academic calendar will be known in due course of time. To start with, 4-year B.Tech. programme will be offered in three branches, viz., Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering with 40 students in each branch. The curriculum, course structure and syllabus for the first year courses and the fee structure will be broadly same as in the mentor IIT. The first year classes may also be held at the mentor IIT campus after which they will be relocated to the place where the new IIT will be established and the students taking admission in the new IIT will be required to give an undertaking to this effect."

It is the same case with IIT Rajasthan.

As with most nightmares, this one too doesn't seem to end. Extremely unfortunate, but here is more. Further to the drama of overnight 'establishment' of more IITs, a circular was released which can be accessed here:

"The Government of India has announced setting up of 8 more new IITs in the 11th plan. Admissions in the following six new IITs, subjected to the approval@ of the competent authority of the Govt. of India, is likely to take place during the counselling session of JEE 2008."

@ If for any unforeseen reason the start of any new IIT is delayed, admission to that IIT will not be taken up during counseling session of JEE 2008.

To aid in my memorizing the names of the new IITs and for my future reference, here I list them:

IIT Gandhinagar
IIT Punjab
IIT Patna
IIT Hyderabad
IIT Bhuvaneshwar
IIT Rajasthan

Each with an intake of 120 each, i.e 120*6 = 720 additional seats for the geniuses in the parliament to barter for votes. Did I mention that exactly 49.5 percent of them would be the flagbearers of the nation who would be out there on the premise of 'Equal Opportunity'.

Interesting and extremely amusing points to note from each of them: (By now, the whole experience was turning to be funny)

IIT Rajasthan

The location of the new IIT in Rajasthan will be announced by the Government of India. In the meantime, IIT Kanpur would be acting as the mentor institute of IIT Rajasthan.. Till the required infrastructure comes up, the classes will be held at the IIT Kanpur campus, after which the students will be relocated to the place in Rajasthan where the new IIT gets established. The students taking admission to the new IIT Rajasthan, along with their parents, will be required to give an undertaking to this effect.

IIT Gandhinagar

...Till the campus of the new IIT in Gujarat gets established, the classes will be held within the premises of Vishwakarma Government Engineering College, Chandkheda, which is within the municipal limits of Gandhinagar. Students will be provided with residential and other facilities at a temporary location. The curriculum will be similar to that of IIT Bombay with some differences until the time the academic bodies of the new IIT is in place. Fee structure will be same as that of the mentoring Institute...

IIT Bhuvaneswar
...The location will be intimated in due course and the academic programme will start from 24 July 2008 in the IIT Kharagpur campus. After completion of first year in IIT Kharagpur, the students will be shifted to new location where IIT Bhuvaneswar will be established. The first year fee structure will be same as that of IIT Kharagpur.

Don't be mistaken, we are still talking about the famous Indian Institutes of Technology, which have made a mark for themselves all over the world as the strongest Indian brand. Fortune 500s, the Navratnas, the PSUs, the Scientists - you name it, they are there. And the government believes it can recreate the brand overnight, even without a single brick being laid? Without any external support? WITHOUT FACULTY? For the records, the Engineering Design department building at IIT Madras, only a building, was supposed to be completed by Dec 2005 and it is May of 2008 now - it is still only a civil-engineer's sight-visit place. Also, IIT Madras faces a acute shortage of faculty. [When IIT Madras was founded way back in 1958, it had funding from the GoI and support from the German Govt. and there was no dearth of quality faculty. More importantly, they were founded to build the country; unlike now, to win elections.]

Here's my take on the whole issue:

Having spent three years being part of the IIT system, I can safely say that the system teaches you much more outside the classroom than inside. So, all those dumbfucks in Delhi need to realise that just announcing the formation of IITs within their ignorant midst does not make the IITs, it merely creates another college. IITs are not colleges, they are IITs. For all that the IITian is valued, it is not his technical know-how, not his competency in academics; it is his sheer intelligence and analytical skills (which I am assuming the JEE still upholds).

But where I see the new IITs just being another college with bright kids is the fact that they'll miss out on the system; Being in the pioneer batch of a new department in an established IIT itself was tough enough for me, I can't shudder to think the plight of the students in departments of non-existent IITs.

Here's another perspective. Of the real IITs (the established seven), B-D-K-Kgp-M are doing very well according to the Indian standards (mind you, according to world standards, we are still lag grossly behind), while R and G are still second-rung IITs. Their placements are not as good, infrastructure not as good, faculty shortage blah blah and a thousand other blahs. Now with the virtual IITs also in the fray, it is but natural that these IITs will be third-rung. Perhaps, my prediction is they will be worse than even the NITs and quite a few private Engg. colleges in the country. Brand-IIT will cease to exist; individual brands will evolve - IIT Madras for example will be a much more formidable brand than IIT itself.

If you are a non-IITian who painstakingly read this long post, here's an insider's info: The placements in the real IITs itself is not the best and we ourselves are grappling with the poor response from the industry. The 1-crore job you read about in your favourite newspaper is a myth - no such thing exists. Think of the virtual IITs now!

Final comment: If I were to advice my sister on joining IITs now, I would definitely ensure she does not take up the farce new IITs - those which exist only in Arjun Singh's letterhead. She would be much better off in an NIT or a good-enough private engineering college in Bangalore. Infact, I think I would encourage her to start-up after 12th! :-P But, thankfully there is a good three year period before I need to think about it.

I pity those 720 non-fellow IITians.

Roller Coaster May-June!

2008-07-03T09:26:00.008+05:30

The last two months have been exhilarating. What with a roller coaster time I had.

Became best friends with a Prof.
Made a design prototype of a page-turner along with a friend of mine, Balu.

The prototype being engineered at CAD lab

Applied for a provisional patent for the same
Got my passport finally
Visited UK for a product design show

At the Coffee House, Brunel Univ

Met a good friend at UK
Bridged old broken relationships.. err friendships

Most good friends ventured into the industry for the very first time for their internships - Ugri, Shammo, Shatto, Ayush, Karthik, Aniket etc
A few others went abroad for their interns - Shruti, Varun etc
Seniors, who were the bestest of friends got placed at reputed companies - Caesar, CB, Cycle, Ankita, BC, Gigs, Anand etc
A fair few of them made it to the IIMs - Naresh, Pico, Deepu etc
Some of them are off to the US for higher studies - Dharik (Purdue)...

Finally ventured into entrepreneurship - got my hands deep and dirty
Started-up on a venture called Lypas along with best buddies Chinmay, Aniket, Sanjay and Hrishikesh

Lypus team at work at CIIE. Sanjay and Aniket are online!

Read-up a lot of tech-blogs to get a hang of the internet and the mobile domain, falling in love with Google Reader all over again
Launched the website for the company www.lypas.com, co-designed the website with Chinmay and co-authored the content with Aniket
Came to IIM Ahmedabad for iAccelerator, a dream that materialised a tad too early, all because of a freak co-incidence and 'being at the right place at the right time with the right people around'CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad

Got to interact with a lot of brilliant people - entrepreneurs and industrialist
Being mentored by two awesome individuals - Freeman Murray, a man worth $110 Mn, who founded and sold two software companies and the man behind the '8080' port that we use.
Tarun Dua, who is in his own words is a 'Linux Enthusiast' and a brilliant tech-blogger, who understands the internet domain very well.
Aditi, our one-woman force for iA here at CIIE has been the "Conti-woman "arranging for mentorship sessions by who's-who of India.
Got to know the secrets behind companies like naukri.com, makemytrip.com, mouthshut.com, zoho.com and many many more from the horse's mouth
Visited Delhi on my first 'business trip'With Aniket; Metro in Delhi. After our first 'Business Trip',

we spent the night sleeping at the airport

Planned the largest student initiative in the country, the technical festival of IIT Madras - Shaastra 2008
Lead a bunch of enthusiastic individuals as part of the sponsorship and the PR team along with Aniket and Hemanth
As a team, contacted more than 400 leading companies in India. A truly remarkable feat
Dreamt big golden dreams
Roped in corporate biggies for a never-before sponsorship amount
Understood the nuances of leading a team and 'HR Management' hands-on

Personally, been very stable for the better part of the last two months apart from the occasional bout of 'lows'
Been talking about and planning the future course of life of a dear friend - marriage and relationship
Scary enough, been talking to another friend about the concept of marriage and relationship quite often
A very dear friend and a idol-of-sorts is actually getting married this July 12th at Delhi. Here's wishing him a very happy married life! And ya, he is off to Lancaster Univ for an MBA after his marriage. Cheers bro!

Three of the most talked about technology companies

2008-06-30T05:20:00.002+05:30

Google - For the immense brand-value that they've generated and the way they are taking over almost every aspect our life. Google is also respected for the way they do business and their don't-be-evil philosophy.
Apple - Steve Jobs, regarded as the best speaker of Corporate America. His amazing presentation skills coupled with the great products that Apple makes. i.
Microsoft - For being the satan in this good world. The amount of (bad) publicity Microsoft gets at any tech-forum owing to their so-called 'crappy' and 'expensive' products is simply unbelievable.

More updates on this soon!

Success - Achieving/Deserving

2008-06-25T05:24:00.002+05:30

Heard a speaker at a presentation a couple of days back. He started the presentation with a rather unusual title 'How to deserve success'. Later, he justified the usage of the word 'deserve' as opposed to the more common usage of 'achieve'.

Achieving success depends on a variety of factors, some of which are not under one's control. There can always be external factors which may not let one achieve success. Some would prefer to call it luck. On the other hand, the elements which enables one to deserve success are completely under his/her control. So, no external factor can prevent you from deserving success.

In essence, a person can achieve success only if he deserves it; he may not always achieve it even though he deserves it.

Bottomline: One can only work towards deserving success, never towards achieving it. Matches tune with the famous Mahabharata shloka: Karmane vaadikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana?

Golden

2008-06-03T22:54:00.001+05:30

Ever overheard a deafening silence?

I did. Today.

Why count?

2008-05-31T20:27:00.004+05:30

I have never been able to figure out why people count the cash dispensed by the ATM.

There is no point. Absolutely no point.

Case Study

2008-05-31T03:23:00.007+05:30

It is 29th May, 2008. 7.15 AM.

Two persons A and B decide to meet in Delhi. A flew to Delhi from Chennai and reached Delhi at 2330 on 28th May. He stayed at Surajmal Vihar overnight.

B takes a train from Nagpur and has reached Delhi at 0700 hours on 29th May. He is at Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station.

Both A and B have to meet a company representative at 10 AM at Okhla. But they need to meet atleast an hour in advance to make a presentation.
The company has booked a guest house for A and B at Faridabad.
B has to freshen up, have a bath before the meeting. He has to go to the Guest House.
A can't leave Surajmal Vihar before 8 AM.

Surajmal Vihar to Nizamuddin takes 30 minutes. Nizamuddin to Okhla takes 45 minutes. Surajmal Vihar to Okhla is 1 hour. Surajmal Vihar to Faridabad is 1.5 hours. Okhla to Faridabad is 45 minutes. Nizamuddin to Faridabad is 60 minutes.
B has no idea of the Delhi geography, so he'd ideally like to meet A to avoid moving around in Delhi alone.
A is carrying a laptop.
The mode of travel in all cases will be Autorickshaw.
B has only 10 Rupees balance on the phone and he can't recharge his phone. Mobile phone is the only mode of communication between A and B.

What Should A and B do, given the above constraints?

PS: Now that you've read it; this is exactly the situation I found myself on 29th May at 7.15 AM. A would be me and B would be Uss. :-)

Power talk - I and the realisation

2008-05-22T20:47:00.004+05:30

Finally caught up with a very dear friend and guide after a long time. Both of us were madly busy in our respective work. He is a passing-out senior, so he had all the final year woes. Somehow, missed having those little 'power talks' with him for the past three months.

He mentioned something interesting today" If you are in a serious relationship or love someone very badly, you need to have bad fights, very bad fights. That is when you see the worst side of each other. There cannot be anything worse than that."

For a compatible couple or even friends, it is of prime importance to be able to accept the person the way he/she is. If you don't love a person the way he/she is, you can never possibly love him/her . Reminds me of a little fight I had with a friend just a while back and I quote "If you can't accept me the way I am, that is your problem, not mine". Very obvious yes, somehow made so much more sense when expressed in words.

Something similar but not same: Ego should NEVER be a point of contention between two people who care for each other. Ego taking a backseat once in while to accommodate for the other is not a big deal. But ya, the other person should be careful enough not to take you for granted. A fine line - but that is the fun.

Pecha Kucha

2008-05-22T09:05:00.004+05:30

Pecha Kucha (pronounced peh-chak-cha) is a wonderful patented method of presentation that I came across a couple of days back.

The presenter is allowed 20 slides for 20 seconds each. That is a total of 6 minute 40 seconds per speaker. It is a methodology that is fast gaining ground in the creative and design industry. This way of presentation helps the presenter be focused on only the relevant content in a presentation and also keeps the audience hooked. Most Pecha Kucha events have about 10 speakers, that is about an hour of presentation - which is ideal to keep the audience interested. And as one of my friends commented "T20 everywhere."

It is yet to catch up in India, but there have been a couple of events in Bangalore and Delhi. It would be such a refreshing change to see the concept being introduced in IIT Madras, may be Shaastra or Saarang or even our department presentations.

May be our Professors can use it to sustain the levels of interest of the students during a class. Oh wait! 50 * 60/20 = 150 slides per class. Now that is scary.

Arrogance!

2008-05-21T18:38:00.005+05:30

Been thinking about the word 'Arrogance' for the past few days. It is a word I keep rather close to my heart. More so, a characteristic I have successfully embedded into my system after years of hard work.

The thought was provoked by one of my dear friends, who quoted something to the extent of "Don't be as arrogant, you are not so famous yet". And then I started thinking. It is a fact that I like to believe that I am arrogant, true-or-not helps keep mom happy; she has started to believe that I atleast know of my fallacies. Plus, you have a nice 'honest' answer to keep interviewers happy when posed with the rather boring 'What are your weaknesses'. As much as I believe it, I can't SAY that I am perfect. (Yes, that bordered on arrogance!)

Dictionary.com describes the word as "offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride." Interesting I'd say. Arrogance is a result of a very strong self-belief and self-confidence. At times, over-strong. Then there'd be those wanna-be philosophers who would say it is a result of a very weak self-belief, hence the excessive need to show supremacy to hide your apparent weakness.

But some prerequisites for arrogance:

Unflinching belief that you are the best that ever graced the planet, rather the universe.
Ability to come up 501 reasons why the whole world is dumb.
Belief in the concept of 'lesser mortals' and a thorough understanding.
Innate repulsion to advices and a craving for an opportunity to preach.
Open unapologetic proclamation of what you don't understand being wrong.
Ability to be able to claim that the only good to ever happen from the Big Bang was YOU.
Constant thinking about the concept of arrogance and an untiring effort in upholding and publicising the same.

For once, may the almighty bless all the lesser mortals as well! I think they too, though with fewer reasons, deserve to live.

Also, think about this: Can an arrogant person destroy a person with low self-esteem by his sheer presence?

Forty-Two thousand!

2008-05-20T20:39:00.002+05:30

Here's a promise to myself, to my joblessness and to the writer in me. Not to mention the eccentricities and the activities of a rather restless mind.

I shall post a new blog everyday. Day after day. Till 6th June.

A blog a day keeps your worries at bay.

Chocolate - Food for thought(s)

2008-02-15T09:33:00.003+05:30

Chocolate is considered to be an aphrodisiac - it is a substance that enhances or intensifies your sexual desire. I knew this fact since class IX and somehow it has stuck with me ever since. While I did figure it out practically that it is indeed true on a case-by-case basis, I came across this article today.

The article tries to explore in a very unsatisfactory way the relationship between chocolate consumption and frequency of sex. Whether there exists a correlation has been a subject of many a scientific studies and apparently nothing concrete has been established. What is true is the fact that chocolate is a mood lifter which gives a sense of happiness and well-being. Eating chocolate also induces a sense of being in love - a general happy feeling bordering on euphoria. Chocolate also provides a lot of energy to the body. So the fact that it induces a feeling of being in love coupled with a supply of energy probably gives rise its reputation of being an aphrodisiac.

The post comes a day too late what with the V-Day being yesterday. That said, a box of chocolates would have been an ideal gift.

Anyways, Sex or No-Sex, I have decided to be happy - Eating chocolates seems to be the best approximation right now! :-)

The BIG BLING theory

2008-01-30T21:39:00.001+05:30

This theory states how to make loads of bling bling in bang bang time.

The associated rhyme is 'Blinga Blinga roses'

The theory has not been made yet but yes, it has been put into practice. There are three co-authors of this theory who have contributed to the non-existence of such a theory. The sole aim of this theory is to help it's co-authors become infinitely rich, famous and powerful. The theory, when made, would outline how to erect, buy and sell companies, How to buy-off people who become a pain in the ass, How to talk about something that does not exist but exists only in its non-existence. Such non-existence of that something helps the authors to dream unlimited about the possibilities of such a theory, if made.

So! There is no theory, it does not exist. But the authors exist and they have learnt (almost) to put the theory in practice. There seem to be endless opportunities once the theory is formulated but the whole essence of the theory is lost if it is made. Hence the theory exists only in theory and is being practiced. Such practice of the theory gives the authors a great chance to Bang their way to the Bling Bling.

PERIOD.

Pic courtesy: Vatsa, www.vatsap.com

On the Super Highway of life!!

2008-01-30T13:48:00.001+05:30

It has been on e hell of a time since I have posted. And there could not have been a better time to blog than this.

Life has been really exciting over the past few days. This semester has been impossibly brilliant till now (touch wood!!) The high of working for Saarang initially cracking all the deals and interacting with Marketing heads and 25-year old Directors of companies was something!!

Then came the TIE entrepreneurship conference and boy-o-boy, how much I thank my stars for having gone there. Then came Saarang; this Saarang has been undoubtedly the best Saarang I have lived. There is a special feeling when all your hardwork manifests into something as great as the show we managed to pull off. That we did it against odds makes it all the more special. Saarang for me is more than a cultural fest, it is one opportunity to interact with diverse people, to lead a team, to work for a team, to be a figurehead, to be a coordinator, to be a representative, to prove my worth to myself.

What Shaastra taught me, Saarang has just topped it.

That apart, a few interesting instances have happened, a few interesting people met. Networking has helped big time. And together with a couple friends, I am embarking on an exciting journey, one that resulted due to sheer coincidence and enthusiasm and the desire to achieve, the desire to excel.

Me and my eccentricities for sure!!!

2007-12-04T14:58:00.001+05:30

The gentleman that I wish to be, I take another step towards being that.

The previous post was deleted on popular ~~request~~ demand.

Mailer D(a)emon

2007-11-28T22:12:00.002+05:30

This is a 'Gyaan' post. Close on the heels of the last post in which I mentioned how my writing skills have been finetuned, this post is about writing good mails - readable and enjoyable. It is not about your grasp over writing that I try to improve here (I so definitely can't do that), but some basic mailing manners that will go a long way.

[I write this because I am pissed off at the way people send mails, so damn painful to read and understand]

1. Subject:

The bloody subject line is to give a jist of what can be expected in the mail body. It is essentially to get the reader into the proper frame of mind before getting him to read the actual mail. Use the little available space very wisely else the mail might not even be read.

- Subjects like "Hi" and " :-)" are acceptable (if at all) only in an informal mail.
- Subjects like "Regarding the sports budget" is for crazy nuts. You write " Sports Budget information required" instead.

2. Formatting:

This goes all the way down to the basics. For all you people who have cleared class 10 and class 12 English, here is a list that you NEED to keep in mind:

- A noun begins with a CAPITAL letter.
- There is always a 'space' after a full-stop and a comma.This is not acceptable, this is.
- When you refer to yourself, I is I and not i.
- Although no one stops you from using '...' all over the place, DO NOT do that. A full-stop and a comma can almost always rescue the situation.
- Use of block letters (caps) should be avoided unless of course, unavoidable. It is considered rude to use block letters. Use it a tool to aid the mail and not rape the mail.

[Bonus Suggestion: Refrain from using SMS language - u, k, 5n, sed etc in a mail. SMS is a short message, a mail is not always. So too much of it in a mail screws it bigtime ]

3. Deleting previous conversations before replying to a mail

This has been pissing me off lately. People just do not understand. Sample this: You reply to a thread in five lines but your whole mail takes up 150 lines and this is when it becomes really painful.

Mind you, I had to zoom out infinitely to accommodate the mail in one page before I could use the Print Screen functionality for the above pic.

When you reply to a mail, the text automatically appears as it is intended to be a reference to 'reply' to. When you are done replying, you delete the god damn thing.

Sometimes, you do keep the text intact and not delete it. ONLY SOMETIMES.
- When you have replied to mail after a considerable amount of time, you'd want the reader to know the context in which the mail is replied.
- You have to send the text as a reference for some third person and you want him to understand the scenario of the mail.

So, the next time you reply to a mail, please keep this in mind - If nothing else, you may free some bandwidth!

Body:

The first line in a mail is very important - it will set the tone for the rest of the mail. So spend some time on it, ponder. Think about the reader before you type the bloody thing.

Use the available space in the mail body. USE. Do not try to cram everything into one line or a paragraph as if it is a black-hole. Use multiple paragraphs is need be.

End the mail in a polite way. Use PS if need be to reiterate a point made in the mail or remind the reader of something. All is well that ends well.

Additional Fundaes:

Use italics, bold, font size effectively - not many people do that - Infact, very few people might know that such a thing exists in Gmail/Yahoo. It can really help drive home the point and catch the reader's attention. Usage of colour is also a factor, but it is not recommended to generate a rainbow in a mail.

Phew! I hope this post does good to the world. And spares all the fellow mail-readers the pain I have endured.

Take a bow!

2007-11-24T16:42:00.000+05:30

I just had one of the most beneficial chats on Gtalk I've ever had. Two people - My best buddies, that apart - with immense capabilities and exceptional vision.

It so bloody rubs off on you when you are in the midst of people who dream big and have the fire to conquer the world. While I am really happy for the both of them, it just adds infinite fuel to my own desires too. While one of them was charting a plan to 'decouple your income from your profession' which essentially means that you work for fun and it has got nothing to do with the bread and butter for your family. So your family and friends will be happy and content immaterial of your professional inclinations. That is you don't have to take up a certain profession even though you don't like it but just because it pays you enough to keep your peers happy.

Now, that is what I call sheer brilliance of thought. You have one such chat and you are grounded with thoughts.

Second, one of the most wonderful level-headed human beings I've come across in my life. I lately realise he has been a guiding force for me, unknowingly I've tried to emulate him. He has a vision and a clear path defined. I can't share that here although I so wish I could. But, he is among the best that set foot here.

( The two of them are actually a shade of Richard Branson, the chief of Virgin group. Do read this book called SCREW IT, LET'S DO IT by him - Strongly recommended. Thanks to Shruti for lending me the book to read)

These two apart, there is a certain other budding entrepreneur, another of those whom I am in awe of. I am sure it takes balls to defy the world and do something that is off-the-normal. He does that. And he plans to do it bigger and better than before. Hats off!! Also, one other person I truly respect unconditionally has played a major role in modelling my thoughts and has finetuned my writing abilities among other things. His penchant for perfection has so definitely showed me the way forward.

As an aside, I had a little talk with Dharik when I wanted to know how to go about answering 'Tell us something about yourself' in any interview. I remember him telling me that he modelled himself on certain people he looked upto.

Now, after having felt it first hand, I realise what he meant. I am surely modelling myself after certain people whom I look upto, picking the best qualities from them and trying to reach there myself. I guess that is human nature, atleast my nature for sure. Being in IIT Madras has been a blessing, I could not have asked for more in life. To be among such truly exceptional people drives you, fuels your life. Life is not worth it if there is no inspiration.

Well, I have purposely not named any of the people in this post to spare them the embarrassment. But I am sure, the message is loud and clear: Get inspired quick, time is running out. And for all those in IIT, trust me this is THE time. Such a high concentration of brilliant, talented and exceptional people needs to be exploited.

Knock! Knock!

2007-11-23T15:11:00.000+05:30

Some people are born losers, others acquire the necessary skill sets in the course of their life time. They say opportunity does not knock twice on the door.

MY Business Card :-)

2007-11-16T22:44:00.000+05:30

This is great!

I always wanted to have a business card. And I have one now. And I am lovin' it.

With the IIT Madras logo on the top left, it is just awesome. I will cherish this for life. :-)

Sleep Management

2007-10-24T11:04:00.000+05:30

3.45 AM: Leadership Theories, Motivation theories, McGregor, McClelland, Herzberg, Maslow. Good. Great Going.

But will I be able to remember all this stuff. (From past experience, the answer was NO). I shall get up at 6.45 tomorrow morning and revise the stuff once and then I should be able to crack it. I'll set the Alarm clock at 6.45 AM.

3.50 AM: Lights switched off. Laptop is kept ON so that I can save a couple of minutes when I would have to boot it.

3.55 AM: Leadership theories, Motivation theories, Staffing, McGregor, McClelland... Fuck.. Staffing?? Holy cow, Staffing?? Damn.

Never mind, will get up at 6 and do it. Shit man.

4.00 AM: I Set the alarm clock at 6 and switch off the lights.

Between 4 and 6: Although I am sleeping, my brain is full of management jargons. I could feel the McGregors and the Maslows roaming around in the moribund lanes of my virtual world. I also remember saying to myslef "Cha! what pain, I should not put a night out for such fart courses". And god only knows when it was 6.

6 AM: My Nokia cell phone goes beep -beep. beep -beep.

As is the usual practice, I press the button on the top right corner which says "snooze". Or so I thought. My snooze time is 4 minutes.. I had calculated in the meanwhile that if I snooze four times and get up on the fifth beep.. it'll be 6.16 AM and I shall have a good one hour to mug.

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-
-

I wake up with a start. I frantically search for my cellphone. It reads 08:03. What the heck.. something is wrong. I figure out in the next two minutes that I had an exam at 8 and I am in my room at 8:05. Fuck. Is this real?

It was.

I grab a trouser and a Tee, change into them and get out of the room. Get hold of a cycle and cycle like mad. Thoughts crossing my mind:

- One of my good friends had slept through the first quiz and I am about to join his league
- The only course where I expected an S and I screwed it.
- Will the Prof. allow me to sit for the quiz?

By now I am almost at the exam hall. Hurriedly I enter the room and the Prof. greets me with me with a " Why are you late?". I probably did not bother to answer. I Grab the answer sheet and find a seat besides one of my other good friends. He seems not to be perturbed by my presence.

It is 08:12.

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-
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Principles of Management. Time: 50 Minutes. Total 25 Marks. 5 X 5.

Answer any Five of the following:

Q1. Selection methods - What the heck is this!! Oh! Staffing.. Shit Shit Shit. Never Mind. Move on.

Q2. Aptitude, Attitude, Achievement - Staffing Shag again. God!! That is 10 gone.

Q3. Projective Tests - What the fuck is happening to me! Now where in the slides was this even talked about. That is 15 gone.

Q4. Theories of Motivation - Phew! 5 marks finally.

Q5. Communication - NOOOOOOO!!!! But let me not lose heart, Communication I can write something of my own, I should manage atleast two marks.

Q6. Managerial Grid - Peace - 5 more marks in the kitty... err.. maybe four. That makes it around 10 for the whole quiz. It is atleast better than not writing the quiz in the first place.

8.55: I manage to fill all the pages of the answer sheet and attempt five questions as per the Prof's wish.

Fuck. What an experience. I think I should blog about this.

It is at that very instant that I realised that I had pressed the "stop" button instead of the "snooze". He he he. I smile to myself.

That was a one-off experience for me and I thought I shall blog about it.

Will update the post as and when I get the answer sheets back. :-)

Saarang 2008

2007-10-11T18:38:00.000+05:30

The preparations have officially begun. The respective teams have started slogging it out.

Saarang 2008 is cooking and it promises to be more delicious than ever before.

For now, check out the Saarang Blog: http://blog.saarang.org

Pursuit of Happyness

2007-09-07T00:12:00.000+05:30

I am not good at this shit. The whole idea of talking about life and happiness gives me goosebumps. But this is one post I want to write now.

Happiness. It is a state of mind in which you find the world a good enough place to live in.

Over the past many days, I have been doing good work, great work. I have been good but have not been happy. I have always believed happiness comes from within and not from the external system. A thousand praises from others will amount to nothing but a little feeling from within makes you HAPPY.

I was discussing this with one of my good friends and she happened to remind me of my own words " Happiness is a personal choice. YOU can choose to be happy or sad only and the extent of happiness will be decided by the external elements, but whether you are happy or not is totally decided by one's self" I was kinda taken aback. It is pretty true I realised. But I still can't reason as to how I could come up with such a profound statement, that too long back.

That apart, I realised that people talk the right things but it is actually difficult to implement it all and walk along. At times, you know everthing that needs to be done, but seldom do that. Practicing what you preach. :-|

It makes me sad that I could actually think logically and figure out what happiness is and from it stems but am actually not able to implement in my own goofed-up life. At times I feel I can write a book on how to be happy and live a wonderful life. But inspite of all of that, I am personally not being able to be happy. Is this only a state of mind or just an exaggeration of the circumstances. Whatever it is, it is kinda prolonging too much... affecting various/all spheres of my life. I wish I could swear LOOOUUUDDDLLLLLYYYY!!!! I did.

I am being good but not happy. I wish to be happy; soon, very soon.