Aussies-Deadlines-Ponnappa-ToI. Change.

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. :-)

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

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.

Reliance Fellowship for Stanford MBA | Summer Awesomeness!

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! :-)

Happy to lose to _my_ CBSE topper!

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!!

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

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.

Archive: From the era of the 'Board Exams'

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!

The Perfect Phone Call

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