1-D-1-OT

The last day of this test match

2010-01-19T10:52:00.000-08:00

Well.. so here I am.. looking at the end of an enjoyable two years (yes 2 - not 1. I didn't miss any opportunity to enjoy my first year)

There are a few in this batch for whom the 2 years at IIMA have led to actually a step down in their career. However, for me, my first experience of staying at in a hostel has changed me a lot.

On the personal front, I've gained a lot.. a hell of a lot. In terms of functional knowledge in various domains - again yes. In a sense, have learnt how to learn new things. Along the way, I've started looking at things differently.. have lost some of my credulousness.

But I think the biggest gain has been a circle of friends on whom I can count on.
Its not without reason that its said that the journey is more important than the destination.

No need to act

2009-10-31T00:57:00.000-07:00

Stereotypes for actors can be good as well as bad- many have used it as the ladder to success, while others have tried to fight it.

After I saw the movie "Wake Up Sid", was wondering whether typecasting has some basis in the actor's persona. This led me to the thought that are there roles for which actors don't need to act; for which their entire life has been "research into the character"/"preparation".

Some examples that came to my mind:

1) Sanjay Dutt as a don

Its almost like, the rest of his life is the real role he's playing. Vaastav looks almost like a documentary more than a film - "Pachaas tola!!", "Trigger dabaneka.. aur khel khallas!!"

The credits should have read: "Sanjay Dutt ............... as himself"

2) Ranbir Kapoor as a spoilt rich kid

The only Ranbir Kapoor movie I've liked is 'Wake up Sid'. Again, most scenes look like "A day in the life of..."

3) Fardeen Khan as the dumb sidekick

After 'No Entry', 'All the best' and all his movies in between, don't think anything more needs to be said.

On the other hand, some goodl movies by otherwise typecast actors:

1) Main, Meri Patni aur Woh - Rajpal Yadav [an exceptional movie, one of my favourites]

2) Jaan-e-mann (yes, the 2006 one)- Akshay Kumar not in a khiladi/priyadarshan-comedy role

An unusable facebook status message

2009-10-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

As facebook status messages go, there's an awesome one from the matrix - where Cypher's talking to Neo and tells him:

"I know what you're thinking... Why o why didn't I take the blue pill"

The blue pill referred to is one of the two pills - red and blue - that Morpheus offers: a choice between reality (how deep the rabbit hole goes) and the illusion that is the matrix.

And of course, if one were to put up "Why o why didn't I take the blue pill" with this in mind, there will always be at least one smartass..

Genkkai

2009-10-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

Genkkai is 'limit' in Japanese.. I guess its better to remember this word in as many languages as possible..

And as every character in an anime realises at some point (esp. in Naruto), I too realised I had reached my limit on Wednesday. Limit in the sense, the amount I can push my body, the amount of sleep deprivation I can handle.

Sunday night - slept 2 hrs. Reason for staying awake: Stopped asking myself these questions in 2nd year.

Monday night - 2.5 hrs. Reason for staying awake: Submission for the next days class was started at 1:30 a.m.

Tuesday night - was looking forward to a good nights sleep, but some 4-5 idiots who wanted to go home for diwali but didn't have the guts to bunk ONE lecture of Ms. Kaul's Consumer Behaviour course, had lectures and hence the presentation preponed (for any non-Indian: [what are the odds?] it means changing the time of an activity before its scheduled slot. Kind of the opposite of post-pone). Hence slept for 2 hrs again.

On wednesday morning, am called on to present in class. Presentation is in my trusty flash drive as usual. Go to the desktop. The projector is on, and I haven't bothered to use an image 'freeze' or anything.

First, the drive doesn't open from the 'what-do-you-want-to-do-with-this-drive' dialog.

Step 1: Begin my search for 'My Computer'. Too dazed. Cant find it.

Ok.

Step 2: Open My Documents (Why?)

Step 3: Go back to desktop.

Searching.

Prompt: Use Windows-E (thank god for engineers)

Step 4: Finally! My computer. Open flashdrive.

Step 5: Everything else is as it should be. Except that my presentation is not there. I didn't copy it.

Step 6: Look like an idiot (Don't need to try too hard for this. It comes naturally)

Step 7: Ask your friend to make his presentation

Step 8: Go back to room and try to sleep, but since you screwed with your sleep cycle, its going to get back at you isn't it

Step 9: Pass out from 5 to 10 p.m.

Repeat.

(inspired from my signature in my dbab id: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1015)

Faccha Summers

2009-10-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

Faccha summers should take place in a little over a month. Surprisingly, one faccha asked me how I went about preparing for summers, since we had somewhat similar profiles - this after all the mistakes I've made after coming here (or was it because of that? didn't ask..)

Anyways, placements at any B-school are hectic to say the least. Going through the placement process at an IIM can be an ordeal, especially if you aren't going to be making the IIT-IIM combo, or don't have a truckload of academic achievements and extra-currics. If someday, I come back as a recruiter, and am sitting on the other side of the table, I'd cut the interviewee some slack - especially if its the fourth day of placements or later - cause I know that the last 4 days would have been some of the most trying days of his life.

All the time in the world

2009-09-02T11:40:00.000-07:00

Was heading out from Ahmedabad a week ago.. the time was 19:37, and the train was scheduled to depart at 19:45..

A little over a year ago, I would have been scrambling to get to my seat; but after 1 year of sending assignments due at midnight at 23:57, WAC runs and what not... 8 minutes seems like an eternity

What a match!

2009-04-23T12:26:00.000-07:00

KKR makes 15 in the super over, which I thought effectively sealed the deal.

But Yusuf Pathan.. WOW! 6264, under such pressure. Respect.

And cant wait to hear what will fakeiplplayer have to say about this.. hope the blog doesn't die.

The IPL erupts

2009-04-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

I write this as the match between KKR and RR has resulted in a tie, and hence a 'super over'.

Finally.

A close match.

And, the whole KKR blog thing makes a KKR match even more interesting. I don't care if the blog is real or fake. Its just amazingly entertaining. I keep thinking what will be fakeiplplayer's reaction to this, his thoughts on that.. and, boy-o-boy do I await the next post!

Withdrawal Symptoms

2009-04-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

It has been two weeks now, since my internship at PUMA in Bangalore has begun, and one thing I felt, even in the first week, was a 'vacant-ness' if I could call it that. I don't mean to say that the induction and project aren't interesting; it's just that I've gotten so used to having a day that is full - either due to a project or some submission (in the last slot) or just browsing whats available on the LAN- that having ANY completely free time, without any idea of how to fill it, feels weird..

my internship isn't in an i-bank or consult, so people come to and leave office at normal hours. So what do you do after that - when there is no LAN from which to download movies or the latest episodes of sitcoms, and when you aren't staying at home.

I tried going to Garuda mall last sunday. Its nice, but couldn't really see how people could spend more than a couple of hours there. Finally settled for the Crossword that is on the way from Central to Brigade Road. Spent two and a half hours there browsing through books I had no intention of buying.

This saturday slept late and watched some IPL.. didn't find the same feel as last year - is it the absence of novelty in it, the shift to south africa, or the lack of big hitting, due to a somewhat bowler friendly track? My plans for tomorrow: learning Access, preparing for my first monday update to my guide and some more IPL..

No longer a PGP1

2009-04-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

2nd April marked the end of my first year at IIMA, but I haven't experienced the feelings of liberation that inspired many to spam on DBab: "end of facchadom.. tuchhadom here we come" etc.

This led to some thinking (yeah.. I do that occasionally) on why this was the case. When we had entered, we were often told "just wait till 2nd year... then its a party", so why am I not experiencing the same sense of relief that many others are?

I could come up with the following:

1) The workload has decreased:
On the whole, I believe that this batch has had an easier first year- the scope of many subjects and the number of lectures has decreased.
However, we have had more courses and credits in the first year, so shouldn't it be even worse?

2) I don't have that light a 2nd year ahead:
By not taking 'fraud' courses where the workload is low, or taking courses to have an easier timetable combined with my choice of subjects - my 2nd year timetable is the almost the same as my 1st year timetable. I have all my classes, except SRM (Strategic Retail Management) in the morning.

3) I didnt study as much as is expected of a faccha, hence there was no burden that was released
Yeah.. I think this is the reason. I mean, in my first year, I have lived the engineering-hostel-undergraduate life that I missed: watched movies, TV series and even got started on Japanese anime..

So how does that make me feel? Spending 5.5 Lakhs doing this?
Guilty at times, not so at others - when the "theek hai" defense mechanism kicks in.

Taking a survey

2009-03-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

Have your ever been approached by somebody in a mall doing some survey, or asking you to fill out some lucky draw coupon? And how did you react?

Now, it was my turn to be on the other side of the survey... and to be honest, for an introvert like me, it was quite difficult to approach somebody and ask him (or her.. as I'll elaborate) to fill out a survey.

But it can be funny to watch at times as well.. a friend of mine, nissim was about to approach a girl, walking with her mother (or so it seemed :) )..

nissim: excuse me..ca
girl (cutting in): NO!
me: (silent laughter)

later, I told him, it was probably the worst combination of people to approach.. the girl would probably want to show her mother that she doesn't talk to random guys in a mall.. at which point another friend chipped in with:
"nissim, you should have approached the mother instead, and told her: 'ma'am, i'm a student at iim and i need to conduct this survey...' and she would probably have got her daughter to fill it.."

this reminded me of a discussion with daddu.. and a sample of his words of wisdom: "IIM ke naam se ladki nahi pat-ti yaar.. par ladki ki maa zaroor pat jati hai.."

Selling Sugar Water

2009-02-09T13:16:00.000-08:00

Mr. Venkatesh Kini, VP Marketing for Coca Cola India came to campus today for a guest lecture. He is an alum of 1989, considered by many to be one of IIMA's best batches which has produced a number of highly successful entrepreneurs and professionals.

Must say, was an excellent presentation on the process and method of marketing, something which many consider faff/gas. If I were to name one thing that will stay with me, it would be the analysis of Akshay 'Action' Kumar's parkour Thums-up (my fav cola brand) ad.

You might have noticed that initially when an ad is first shown on television, they show a full length version, and then later, some parts are edited out. In fact, the orignal ad shot is even longer than the first 'release' of the ad. What is interesting is the way they decide which parts to edit out: participants are shown the ad, and are given a mouse, which they move up/down to indicate their interest level in the ad. This is continuosly tracked as the ad is shown, and a graph is plotted. He showed us the ad, with the graph of the interest level in the background... which was fun.

He ended the presentation by showing us ads that Coca Cola India that will be shown this summer. When he distributed rating sheets for the ads, people were like "free ka market research kar raha hai"... but he clarified that rating the ads were just for tp, and that he wouldn't be able to use any of the data, since we weren't a "representative sample"...

My take on the ads:
Coca Cola - arbit
Fanta - 2 ads, fanta apple and fanta - Genelia was there, which to me was the only plus :)
Sprite - 3 awesome ads...
Maaza - again, tp.. an 'aam' funda :)
Limca - continuation of the current ad, so since sushma reddy was there, good :)

(ps: The title isn't to put down the job of marketing colas etc... just that it is supposed to be what Steve Jobs said to John Sculley to get him to move to Apple from Pepsi).. so there you go, some gyaan as well..

Quiz Attack

2009-01-28T04:40:00.000-08:00

Boy, did we piss off the professors or what... a quiz on every working day, 4 days in a row...

A real surprise quiz in Eco - which did not have a quiz component to begin with - that too on a saturday, which has never happened till now. And that's not the end of it - Sangharsh, the IIMA-IIMB-IIML sports meet was also on at the time.

Tuesday: Decision Making quiz, which I think should have instead been called a quiz on advanced probability.... followed by a whirlwind CorpFin quiz today.

It reminds me of the final scene in 'Jaane Bhi do Yaaron':

Students as Dhritarashtra: "maine kaha yeh kya ho raha hai?".... "this is too much... yeh eco kaha se aa tapka?"

and the profs as Taneja: "Nalayak, adharmi, durachari, bhrashtachari...(slap)... bol sorry!"

Placements 2009

2009-01-22T01:37:00.000-08:00

Laterals for the senior batch have started, with quite a few companies trickling in. Fin may be down, but there seem to be enough firms from other domains to fill the gap. The thing is, most people (myself included) come to IIMA with dreams of getting jobs in some of the big name international banks. An overwhelming number are focused on a career in finance, often with little more to justify the choice than compensation and precedence - a senior from my college had gone to so and so and its a good option.

Now, some argue that this situation - the downturn etc - will translate into greater job diversity, which would help in strengthening the alumni network, and make it more broad based. They feel that students are taking a look at what they want to do, rather than jumping at the first i-bank offer that comes their way. However, I feel that the entire 'students will now go where they want to rather than being driven solely by compensation' thing is slightly flawed, as many may be forced to accept an offer they would not have otherwise taken, for the simple reason that there may not another offer coming their way. Add to this the pressure and stress of placement week, and it doesn't look like many students will really be able to exercise a greater amount of choice.

Another trend is the increase in people OOPSing (Opting out of Placement System) out, and starting their own ventures. One senior from my dorm has chosen to go this way, with a couple of other batchmates with www.2home.in - a site for placing orders for home delivery online. Here's wishing them all the success they desire, and then some more.

Back to the campus

2009-01-10T17:04:00.000-08:00

Back from home, after 6 days which flew by at warp speed. Met up with a lot of friends, since it was a good convergence of holidays for all of us.

Senior batch's 'Senti NB' on dbab* is now up, and in about a month and a half, another batch will pass out. No matter how much you bitch about the place and the 'system', these are the last years of student life (unless you do a phd) and you will miss them. Which is the reason I am very keen to go on exchange - want to visit Europe as a student.. take my time and visit places, not just do a 'country count' tour.

* dbab is an instant messenger software which has electronic noticeboards (NB) - idea being, if you subscribe to a NB, messages posted to that NB will appear in your inbox

Ghajini

2008-12-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

Scene on screen: Aamir, suffering from short term memory loss, looks totally lost on screen - like main kaun hu... main kaha hu?

AM: "yaar ye to mere saath har OM paper mein hota hai"

CCCF: OM is operations management, one of the best courses at iima - best in the sense that i probably learnt the most in this course, from the great Saral-da.

CCCF(CCCF): CCCF = conceptual clarity and contextual focus

Happy new year!

Back..

2008-12-04T11:21:00.000-08:00

Back... with a determination not to let this blog be added to the looong list of things i started in josh.. but stopped later..

whew.. lot to write about... many things have happened since the last post. sleeping in class is more the norm rather than the exception now, for one. will post more often now, although not on what has happened in bombay - have consciously kept away from all news coverage on it.

Sleep and the movie gods

2008-07-29T01:32:00.000-07:00

Sleeping in class, I was.

Probability and Statistics lecture on 25th july- 2nd lecture of the day. Quiz expected. Had slept early (0030) and got up at 0400 to study.

Was awake throughout most of the lecture.. then the prof dims the lights, and starts a presentation on normal distribution - what it is, normalising etc. Sleep could not be put off anymore. Got caught, but luckily, prof took it easy.

Now, coming to the movie gods.
Since I have come here, on an average, I have seen a movie a day (especially during the weekend, when the deficit of the week is covered)
Now, so far, things were going good.. quiz performances satisfactory, other things ok.. and then, skip movies on monday and tuesday (21st,22nd) - and the rot begins.
Bad luck in every bloody thing - from quizzes to food (stomach upset) to the sleeping episode above.

Saw Andaz Apna Apna, Jaane bhi do Yaaron back2back - 2 timeless classics - things seem to be getting better.

Telemarketers

2008-07-17T02:31:00.000-07:00

You may have heard many prank calls, and of course, the Seinfeld episode where he goes something like (paraphrasing here)-

To telemarketer: "I'm a bit busy now.. can you give me your home number?... Oh so you dont like people calling you at home about this.. Well.. now you know how i feel" - bang.

But, this one, as Barney would say, is 'legendary'..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un_PjRXV5l8

found : jokes nb, iima

PHD comics

2008-07-16T01:31:00.000-07:00

Incredibly funny - if you are a grad student.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive_list.php

Link courtesy Ms. PG

Organizational Behaviour

2008-07-15T01:48:00.000-07:00

Organizational Behaviour - or OB as it is abbreviated as, is one of the lighter subjects in the first term.

I mean, you don't have to prepare much before class (if anything at all), and its mostly common sense, or something so vague and technical (cognitive learning, negative reinforcement v/s punishment), that you really can't really relate to the stuff anyway.

And its during these classes that I am thankful for my work ex - even though its only 10 months, I don't think I would have been able to relate to many things discussed in class, if i were here, fresh out of college a year ago.

Nice article

2008-07-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

lets start off with an absolutely awesome article:

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.html

found: general nb, iima - July 11, 2008

Intro

2008-07-14T07:38:00.000-07:00

Well.. here goes my first experience at blogging.

About me:
Well, I'm a regular, lazy boy (yes, i haven't grown up yet), foodie, movie buff (not the artsy kind but I enjoy 'popular' movies).

Paraphrasing Mr. V: "He was born in bombay and spent the first 17 years of his academic education in that great ruined metropolis."

This blog will more or less be a collection of ramblings, rants and random stuff (whoa! never seen this before!), all with a generous dose of sarcasm.