Random musings

Expense gyan to the director :D

2012-01-14T08:29:00.000+08:00

Yesterday I spent an hour with the director who wanted to know about the way I menage my expenses. A few hours after the session I bumped into herand she told me that she had downloaded the app, done the initial setup andrecorded her first transaction in less than 15 minutes.

It was a satisfying outcome but what bought a smile was thethought that I could go on for an hour and keep a director engaged on somethingthat was essentially a five minute job :D

But apart from that it was a very satisfying discussion for metoo. I guess this for the first I had such a discussion on the topic. And in theprocess of explaining some of the things I ended up articulating the things Idid in a very interesting way. Below is the modified one pager that I had given her.

One pager of my expense setup

Essentially the idea is that I record the transactions assoon as I incur them and using my setup I place these transactions intodifferent buckets. The reporting capability of the app then enables me to doslice dice the data across different timeframes (Entry, Day, Week, Month etc). Thetool thus provides an excellent visibility of my expenses.

Now the way I use it essentially involves:

Monitor and control the routine expenses.
There are some categories where I should be spending more (essentially personal development activities).
As I mentioned in my previous post I got my wifeto use it. This tool shows potential for becoming a tool for aligning ourthoughts on the expense front.

Guess its enough of me & myself and what I did. Lets back to the Directorwho started using the expense app. Now what really amazing is that she didn’t duplicatemy setup. Instead she decided to start small and her setup is perhaps a lot less sophisticated thanmine, but something that is surely going to be more relevant to her life. Her sense of ownershipmade me feel that what she started would be sustained. And that leaves me thatthe thought that a less than perfect system that you understand and feel formay end up giving better results than a perfect system that you don’t understand.

My expense adventures :)

2012-01-03T15:21:00.000+08:00

A few days back a Lady who sits near me was filing her Expense Reports. And that was enough for me to show off my iPhones apps for managing my expenses. The lady liked what I did and she wanted to know more. And before I knew it, I realised that that the lady in question has a Admin assistant. And before I realised it, she asked her admin to fix up an appointment with me on how I use my expense app. And not long after I had an appointment request on my calendar for a 1 hour session on the subject :(( As if taking a 1 hour session on how to use an app wasn’t enough I realised that the lady with the admin assistant is a Director in the company :((

So here I am trying to figure what am I going to tell a Director about managing your expenses? And as a test case I am going to bug you guys before I torture the poor lady ;) The funny part about my experiences with managing my expenses is that I haven’t been all that great with it. In fact when I was in Coke I had foregone a fortune in unclaimed ERs :(( Despite the fact that my income had increased substantially from my pre-MBA days, my bank balance was quite negligible. And the funny thing was that I had no clue where the money was going.

So I created this beautiful excel template to record my expenses. The thought was that if you know what you spend you have a better chance of managing the same. I would use it as planned for a few months and then somehow with the passage of time the number of unrecorded entries would increase. There was a pattern to this behaviour. Usually I would rake up a lot of transactions over a weekend or a holiday and because I was away from my computer I would misplace a few bills or forget to record it. The 80-20 rule worked against me in this case as these weekend expense would be major in nature and they would often get missed out from my expense sheets.

Whenever you grapple with a problem long enough, the solution comes towards you. And in my case it appeared in form of my first Nokia Smartphone. I had gotten an app that could help me record expenses. The most useful aspect was that now you could record the expenses as soon as you incur them. And with time I got reasonably good with it. But as my savings increased I developed this itch to do something with it. And that’s when I started my doomed investments. Because my investments weren’t part of my expense tracking mechanism, it soon became a black hole for all my savings.

And during this period I shifted to an iPhone and the expense apps I tried weren’t a match to what I could do with my Nokia phone. In hindsight, I think I was too comfortable with what I did with my Nokia. And while I looked for replacement capabilities in the iPhone I was a bit resistant to looking for the new things that the iPhone was capable of. After some looking around I settled on an amazing app called CashTrails. This app finally enabled me to port my expense recording setup on to the iPhone. But the other aspects of my financials were still out of bounds from this setup.

And it was during this period that I had an interesting discussion with my Finance Geek friend Paggu Jain. He too does a good job of tracking these details. While I was more into recording the expense transactions, he had a setup for managing his cashflows. As he explained the fundamental concepts behind what he did I realized I can implement the same in my app with a tweaks. And I did it and I had a comprehensive cash flow tracking setup, that could even give me a snapshot of my assets including the cash in my wallet.

The funny thing with doing something good is that each time you solve a problem, ten more crop up. The setup I had created was beautifully simple in its architecture but exceptionally tricky to execute. The accuracy of the whole setup depended on my recording my transactions accurately. And there were a few very interesting challenges:

All transactions had to be recorded and categorized in the correct way. So if paid with cash I need to record it as cash and not under credit card and record transactions like ATM withdrawals which I wouldn’t have done in the previous scheme of things.
Exchange rate issues. If transfer money from one currency to another, there would be transaction fees that would make it different from the Fx rate that the system automatically generates.
If you go out with a group and you paid the bill while your friends paid you their share in cash then recording the transactions in such a way to ensure consistency with your actual credit card dues and the cash in your wallet can become a bit tedious.
Separating your transactions into various buckets like personal & official can get tricky esp when you may have situations where the transactions may overlap e.g. Because of some delays you paid your official credit card from your personal account.

Paggu Jain’s approach to such things is not to sweat on that last detail. Rightly I parked solving these issues for the future, but as I did more of the recordings I realized that there were unexplored capabilities within the app that could solve most of the issues stated above. And best part is that once the thing is setup it doesn’t take all that long. For eg in the month of December (A heavy expense month) I averaged about 4 transactions a day. And recording the transactions take about 15 seconds on an average and that’s a total of a minute a day.

The visibility that has come out of the effort has given me and Anju a very good idea of what we can and can’t afford. I guess some of these things positively enabled us to face some of the challenges we did in the last two years. And a key lesson I learnt from my entrepreneurial friends is that those who manage their cash flows have a much greater chance of success than those who don’t. And in that spirit, a significant achievement of this new year has been to get my wife to use the CashTrails app :D

An interesting talk :)

2011-11-30T09:08:00.001+08:00

In my professional life I had thegreat fortune of hearing stories of some very capable men. In some cases I got tohear those men in person. There is something about these men which enabled themto reach the positions that they eventually did. You can call it their drive orenergy or whatever but it did make them turn adversarial situations into greatopportunities. Such situations may have overwhelmed a normal individual but notthese guys.

Today during my induction I heard the talk of one suchguy, who is a GM in the company. The GM, an Irishman did his MBA from Georgetown way back inthe early 90s. At that time it cost him around $42000, I got this feeling thatit was quite a sum for him but somehow he managed. As a student he stayed inWashington and among his neighbors was Katherine Graham, whose familyowns “The Washington Post”. Imagine spending the formative years of your lifein the company of such characters ;)

This guy started his work in the P&G asan intern where he got to go the Caribbean islands and worked on a deal tosign on an ex-Miss World as a brand ambassador for the company. Suchassignments as intern surely would have been heady and perhaps influenced himto join P&G. The way he explained his first assignment as a brandmanager for a product for urinary tract infection in rural Cincinnati wasinsightful. There was a hint of disappointment but there was also the messagethat he came out well and handled bigger and more exciting things in life.

Amongst his later successes washandling Head & Shoulders. Once upon a time that brand wasn’t allthat big and it wasn’t one of the coveted assignments in the company. He sharedthe fascinating insight of how one individual recognized the potential ofH&S and it was his conviction that made the company put its resourcesbehind the brand and turn it into the world’s largest Shampoo brand.

His address to the newbieslike myself included a fascinating presentation, which had some interesting videos andthe best part was his interpretation of the videos. A brief summary of the things he shared:

1. Passion& Belief

- I missed the exact words of his Susan Boyleinterpretation, but he was trying to emphasize the idea of Passion &Belief. He advised sustaining and deepening these two emotions in spite of yourcareer.

- The other point he made was that life will throw urinary tract products atyou. And somehow you have to figure out what you really like and movetowards it. Matching Passion with you really love will result indisproportionate success.

- He also talked about success & leadershipliterature concepts like “Peak Performance” and quoted works like StrengthFinder, Leadership Engine and so on.

2. Simplicity:

- He quoted the beauty of the Hans Goslingpresentations on world Demographics to suggest that it make sense to keepthings simple. While the intent is admirable I got the feeling that theorganization wasn’t aligned to his thought.

- Steve Jobs famously said that keeping thingssimple takes a lot more work. Take for example the Gosling presentation thatpeople find so attractive. Just imagine for a moment the effort that went intocreating that presentation. First collecting data from all that sovereigncountries in a format that was comparable to each other. And then working onthe analytical capability to simplify everything. In today’s times when theorganizations encourages a scarcity mindset, executing such outputs may bequite challenging.

3. Knowledge:

- He emphasized the importance of knowledge andmastery. Further if you don’t have it then it will eventually show as wasvisible during the Sarah Palin interview :)

As a newbie I came out pretty impressed. Having people tolook up to is such a great thing and in the first month of being in thecompany, this is the second time I bumped into a guy who made me feel “WOW”!!

Yet again an awesome Diwali :)

2011-10-26T23:30:00.000+08:00

I was never a great festivals guy. We did celebrate theX’mas, Diwali & the birthdays, though it was never quite a big deal. I mean Inever quite looked forward to the celebrations that these events entailed.

Somewhere in my life I have started giving more importanceto events and the routines behind them. Now that I think of it I don’t quite remember how this idea gotinto my mind. But surely it got solidified after my marriage. I guess westarted with the small things and they evolved over time.

Diwali has been a big event with us. This is the thirdDiwali of my married life and each one has been a special memory. The first one was when Parag was here inSingapore. The Jains planned a Pooja at their place and we all decided to go traditional for the occasion. For Anjali, that was the first and the last timeshe attempted a Sari in Singapore. After about half an hour of effort,she called for help and promptly I googled up a Youtube video on how to wear asari :D The video wasn’t very useful but we did managed to wrap Anjali into thesix yards after about an hour’s effort :D

The other thing that I remember vividly was the Rangoliwhich over the years has become part of our Diwali rituals :) It so happenedthat we wanted to do something really small and thought that the easiest waywould be to use powdered colour. Little did we realize that the colouredRangoli required a backbreaking squatted effort of a few hours :( But despitethe exhaustion the end result was worth every the effort :)

A Sari clad Anju ji and the first Rangoli of our married life :)

And as we rushed to Parag’s pooja our previous Landlord carriedout a viewing of the place that we lived in. One of those who visited was anIndian family who were moving out to the Ireland. They loved the Rangoli somuch that they bought the house straight away and even paid premium over theexpected valuations to get hold of the house. The new owners completed theformalities and moved on to Ireland and we remained put at the same place.

Given the memories of our first Diwali we wanted to repeatour Rangoli adventures the second time around. My wife felt that making one with flowers would be alot easier. It was indeed a lot easier, but only for her :( One day before theDiwali I travelled half way across Singapore to get fresh flowers. I wanted tomake sure that we don’t fall short so I bought a little (Euphemism) extra ;)The next day I spend about 2 hours plucking the petals. By the time I was done myhouse was full of petals and my thumb nail had lifted off its nail bed :( But soonAnju took over and the result was quite a wow :)

The second rangoli of our married life :)

Given the effort involved in the last two events Anju was awee bit hesitant this time around. And as usual I looked at things differently and wanted do something. So finally after much back & forth she suggested using coloured rice. Given our pastresults this seemed a little underwhelming. I was keen on getting somespectacular results but she was quite mindful of the effort involved. As we explored the options in Little India a week before the Diwali we came across a Stencil mechanism that used coloured rice grains. As we made our plans we got a invite to a Diwali lunch from a Senior at Coke. And for a moment it looked like a case of either lunch or the rangoli :(

A top view of this year's Rangoli :)

A closeup of the rice grains that made up the Rangoli

Now with the lamps at night :)

We somehow decided to give the rangoli a try before we went for the lunch. It seemed like a no win case but somehow after about two hours of effort we had a fabulous Rangoli. And Surprise!! Surprise!! we were ready before time for the lunch. The end result was an awesome day out with great company and an awesome Diwali Rangoli at home :) As I write these final words for this post the Diwali day is almost over, but the feeling is one of a Big High and the excitement of what will happen next year :D

Finally, Got my blood sucked!!

2011-10-25T22:01:00.002+08:00

I used to be quite a regular blood donor back home in Indiaand must have donated at least 10-12 times. After coming to Singapore Itried a few times to donate and each time I couldn’t due to some very minorprocedural issues.

Yesterday I had to go to NUH for a medical appointment andafter that was done I happened to be around the Blood bank. I decided that Ishould resume my donation. But Singapore procedures refused to make things easyfor me :( Apparently I couldn’t donate because I had been to India in May. Thefriendly lady at the reception told me that the current regulations have becomestringent due to cases of bird flu/ Malaria and if you have visited some of thebird flu/ Malaria affected countries in the last six months then you becomeineligible for donation. India was a country on the list and I was rejected for visiting my homeland :(

I was keen on donating, so I persisted and the friendly lady at the reception directed me to Singapore General Hospital. Apparently the facility at SGH had moreadvanced screening capabilities and hence would be in a position to accept mydonation. So off I went to SGH to infectsome Singaporean with my blood. But apparently that Singaporean got luckyas the facility in SGH has a weekly holiday on Monday, ie yesterday :(

Now it was getting a bit irritating that despite such goodintentions I couldn’t execute such a simple deed. So I crossed half of Singapore again today to reach SGH to attempt another shot at getting sucked :(

It wasn't easy, the initial paper work was quite irritating. Some of thequestions were a tad rude and in fact the rules about UK and Europe at first glance didn’tquite seem very logical. However fortunately this time I survived the procedures and finally got my blood sucked for agood cause ;) Though the process occurred only with riders. I was told thatdue to my visit to India my blood will be quarantined and will be used onlyafter a certain period. Whatever inconvenience I may have gone through thething is that if I need any blood transfusion I would feel very safe if itoriginated from Singapore.

Resilience & The Shawshank Redemption

2011-10-24T23:03:00.001+08:00

One of the most beautiful HBR articles I have read is called“How resilience works”. It waswritten by Diane L. Coutu andessentially involves three simple practices to cultivate the habit of Resilience. I quote from the articlealmost verbatim:

FaceDown Reality
Instead of slipping into denial, acceptingreality can help you prepare yourself to act in ways that enable you to endure.
Searchfor Meaning
Instead of viewing yourself as a victim devise constructs about your suffering tocreate meaning for yourself.This meanings will help you visualize a better future and make the present manageable byremoving the sense that it is overwhelming
ContinuallyImprovise.
When disaster hits, be inventive.Make the most of what you have, putting resources to unfamiliar uses andimaging possibilities others don’t see.

In the evening I was watching the movie, “The Shawshank Redemption”. It was as ifthey had implemented the HBR article verbatim. I saw TSR when I was in collegeand I fell in awe of the character of Andy Dufresne.

I remember I was channel surfing andhappened to land on Star Movies at a very interesting juncture of the movie. Thecharacter of Andy seemed suicidal and as I was waiting for him to hang himself Iexperienced a truly amazing cinematic twist. For those who haven’t seen themovie let me not put in any spoilers here.

But the thing is that Andy was an amazing guy, and if therewas in reality a guy like that he sure would have come out of terriblesituation just like Andy did :)

The Miracle of Life

2011-10-23T21:09:00.002+08:00

I happened to see two features on theTelevision today. The first one was the TigerMan. It’s the story of 2 tiger couples mating and the birth of 7 cubs.And as luck would have it, the next program I saw was I didn’t know I was pregnant. And so I ended up with the Tiger & the Human perspective on the miracle of life :)

The thoughts I will try to articulate havebeen in the making for the last couple of years. At my age I have many peerswho are adept at changing nappies, and in some cases handling PTA meetings inaddition to the changing the nappies ;) The excess of free time at mydisposal in the recent past meant that I had the chance to check out some ofthe literature on the subject. The net result is a certain wonder at themiracle of life and a much deeper appreciation for my own parents and whatthey did for me.

Before I add more of my own perspectives,let me recount what I saw on TV today. The program TigerMan was very visual in depicting the birth of the cubs. This was thefirst time the featured Tigress was pregnant and its quite possible that she had no cluewhat was going on. The first few minutes of the cub’s life as documented in theprogram seemed to confirm this view. However within first fifteen minutes of the first cub's birth itwas time for the second cub and this time she was better prepared and by now her motherly instinct had taken roots.

Its still quite premature for me to definewhat that motherly instinct is but I will give it a try after I talk about the next programI watched today. The series Ididn’t know I was pregnant, described the stories of women who didn’tknow that they were pregnant till very late. The tagline for the series: “How can a woman not know she’s pregnant?”, very beautifully captures my first impression about the series ;)

The stories were quite heart wrenching.One of the ladies had lost her Grandmother to cancer and was doing two jobs.She was planning her wedding and was under tremendous stress when she finallydecided to go to the hospital for a checkup. Such stories are apparently notthat uncommon, and in fact one friend told me about tribal women who deliver very late due tolack of support and low education levels. A common thread in all these cases isthe tremendous stress that these women are subjected to. Perhaps these stresses made them less aware of the bodily changes they underwent and perhaps even ignorethe discomfort till it was quite late.

In the series I didn’t know I was pregnantthere are many instances when the women didn’t realize their pregnanciestill the very end. In one of the instances the when the baby was coming out, the nursewasn’t sure whether it was a tumor or a baby. But despite all the troublesthere is invariably a smile when the mothers start talking about their offsprings. Given thechallenges of their own lives displaying such emotions is kinda beautiful.

I talked to a few parents about theirexperiences and I got some interesting answers. I guess its only when you become a parent do you allow someone to be completely dependent on you. Just imagine this, a new born is nothing buta lump of life. In the initial days the baby struggles to do even basic things like breathing oreating. The baby doesn’t have the ability to focus his/her sight, and theunderdeveloped spine means that you have to give that extra support even when youhold him/her. You suddenly realize that its only you who would take care of this lump of life that emerged from you ownbody. That feeling of responsibilityperhaps develops a bond that is deeper than any other human relation.

Saheb, Biwi aur Gangster

2011-10-21T23:28:00.000+08:00

Today I saw the movie “Saheb, Biwi aur Gangster”. Came outimpressed. Very rarely do I get to see such a cerebral handling of a subject. Ifelt that each and every character, however small was well developed and had astrong reason for being in the movie. So go ahead and watch but be warned thatour tastes may not match ;)

Just before the movie, when I went to get the tickets, I saw a bunch of three youngstersinvolved in an animated discussion about phones. The sheer width of facts beingthrown around was impressive, but what caught my attention was the energy inthe group. The guys were like what I may have been decades ago. I guess eventhen I may not have had that kind of energy. But somehow I ended butting intothe discussion and somewhat enjoyed being part of the group :)

In the past few years I have taken small projects for myself and have tried to execute it well. One of the new things that I am trying to do thisquarter was to resume my writing. However what happened was that I was spendingtoo much time talking about things that happened in the distant past andspending far little time talking about the fascinating things that I bump intoeveryday. With this post I am trying to improve the balance :)

The last day of this month I will join a new job and therewill be challenges. One of the things that I will try hard, is keep up some ofthe good things that I have started in the last two years. Let me hope that Iwill be able to do good on that thought :)

A prologue to my camera stories :D

2011-10-08T03:37:00.001+08:00

Some of you unlucky ones may have heard about my camerastories. For the lucky ones who missed them it’s the story that culminated inme purchasing 4 reasonably expensive prosumer (Thankfully not DSLRs ;) cameras of the samebrand and make :(

But as with all my stories I will take some time coming tothe point. And while I eventually come to the point let me take you to the earliestdays of my photography. My father works for the Govt of India and he had aforeign assignment way back in 1984. One of his prized purchases was a Cannonauto-focus camera that survived my family for a little more than 2 decades.

In those days the cameras needed expensive film rolls andfurther expenses in processing the prints. So way back in 1995 it used to costabout Rs 10 per print (Including processing and film charges). The cost was ahuge factor that inhibited my photography. In fact for the first decade of thecamera with us I hardly got any chance to click the button for the reasons ofcost :(

In those days my parents had a rather low opinion of theartistic side of photography. In fact they would force some people into theshots to put some life into what they saw as lifeless postcard photos. And asusual I had an opposite view and wanted the pictures to capture the beauty ofthe place without having to accommodate horizontally gifted creatures likemyself into the frame.

Finally I got my chance and on a family holiday to Kerala wealso visited Kanyakumari. This was sometime in 1994 and among other reasons Iremember it as my first visit to a proper beach in Kovalam. Later we also wentto Kanyakumari we were at a point where we could clearly see the Vivekanandarock. With the sun setting it was an incredible sight and after many familymemories captured I was allowed to take my one postcard shot. The results scarred me to such an extentthat I didn’t attempt another postcard shot till the arrival of the digital age almost a decade later ;)

No one else in my family quite had an interest inphotography and because of that one reason I eventually usurped the familycamera till it was in my bag almost all the time. The limited pocket moneymeant that I had to be really stingy with my clicks. And thanks to the scar ofthe Kanyakumari postcard I developed this habit of fitting in people into mypictures. This and the cost of clicks somehow helped my composition.When I look back at the prints from those days, they were special J

All through this time I stuck on with my film camera. I wasn’timpressed by the digital cameras of those days. I felt that the results werenever close to the clarity I got withthe film prints. But the switch to digital was inevitable and that happenedwhen I went to Bangalore. Our campus was beautiful and I loved the place. Ontop of that some of my dear batch mates bought for themselves huge lumixprosumers (I used Arjun and Gurjar’scamera more than they did themselves ;). At that point of time those werethe largest cameras that I had put my hands on and the 15X zoom was like wow. Thedevice truly opened my eyes to things I never saw before I had those zooms ;)

Unshackled by the restriction of the film roll I startedtaking a lot of pictures. And I guess problem of plenty showed its effect. Myinitial digital pics weren’t as good as my analog ones. Perhaps one explanationwas that the new found digital freedom meant that I no longer put in as mucheffort as I used to in the analogue days. But nevertheless I started enjoyingthe process. There are many on my Facebook timeline who take absolutelyincredible shots. None of my clicks come close the quality of those shots. Butthe one thing that I do very well is to capture the moments of my own life. And the one reason why I did a great job ofcapturing those moments is that I took so many of them ;)

Most of the time I clicked without a purpose. It was one ofthose directionless stuff that you do just because you enjoy it. And it wasthen that I came to Singapore. And the photos became my way of talking toAnjali, who was in India. Whenever something interesting happened I would clickand upload on picasa. The photos made the long distance relationship work. Theygave us so many things to talk about. We used to talk almost on a daily basisand now that I think of it, without those pictures shared on Picasa I don’tknow if we would have enough to talk about :)

And then she came to Singapore and my motivation to uploadpictures went away and my photography again entered a directionless phase. Iused to click and then do nothing about it. And my clicking sorta stagnated.There wasn’t anything amazing about what I did. It was around this time that Ichanced upon StefanoCocco’s pictures. I was impressed by discipline and sheer beauty ofsomething so ordinary as daily life.

I was inspired by his organization and for a long time I sat on the thought of doing something similar. Eventually, one daya friend’s wife Surabhi suggestedthat I put my pics into periodic folders. She felt that it would make theprocess of going through the pictures a lot simpler. I had been thinking aboutStefano’s pics for so long and wanted to do something like that but it was Surabhi’s suggestion that made me startthe Q folders in Facebook.

The first impact was that sharing these pics with the peopleI cared about became a lot simpler. Some of the reactions was quite motivating (Esp Nisha and Aruna's).But what was interesting was the how the user comments added interesting newcontexts to the pictures I had shared. Without some of Shucha, Nisha et al's comments the pictureswouldn’t be half as interesting. And in fact its this context that is the USP ofmy photography. In hindsight it actually helped me update my friends about mywhereabouts and finally when we caught up we had so much more to talk about.

Sharing on Facebook also meant that I got to see the clicksof some phenomenal guys like Nike, Sangeetand a few others who were immensely more talented than I was. Their clicksgave me an idea that beneath my passion for photography lay a very shallow technical understanding of the subject. An immediate consequence was that Istarted exploring my own camera and almost overnight the technical side of mypictures improved. And I had my eyes opened to the things that you could dowith a DSLR.

Beyond the humility of getting to know where you stand I gotan appreciation the things that I did really well. My collection on FB hadbecome reasonably well organized. All the shots in one place and sheer numbersmeant that I started becoming very choosy about the clicks that I retained. And that meant that the discipline of myfilm roll days was back :)

Unfortunately my offline collection was in a mess. And I feltthis huge need to fix that, though the enormity of the effort (I have more than 13000 pics in mycollection) required meant that I never got myself to do anything about it.The thing is that when a need becomes very strong in your mind you eventuallydo find a solution for it. And I found mine when I got my Macbook Pro. The photomanagement capability of this device is way beyond anything I had experiencedon windows. Today I can retrieve almost any pic that I clicked in the last twoyears in almost no time. (No mean taskconsidering that I have uploaded close to 3000 pics on FB alone). One day hopefully I will fix the earlier picsof my collection :)

Finally what I would say is that I am so fortunate to havesomething that I am passionate about. I do know that my current knowledge isdwarfed by the sheer enormity of what I don’t know. But I know that I willlearn and become better at capturing the beautiful moments of my life.

So now that I have told you a bit about my photography (Indeed!), next time I will share thespecifics about my 4 Sony Prosumer cameras ;)

Audible is designed only for those in the USA

2011-10-05T12:58:00.001+08:00

I havebeen using the Audible appon my phone for about a month. I found the idea of audio-books very appealingand it sort fits very well into my lifestyle. The usage statistics it providesis a great motivating tool. However there are some issuesthat have immensely added to my frustration levels, what adds insult to injuryis the reaction of the customer service. But before I get into that let me talk about the problem:

1. Exceptionally slow downloads when downloading directly from Audible

- The download speeds are incredibly low and often fail. Downloads of similar sizes don't take this long for any other app on my phone and the problem is specific to my Audible. (It took me some effort to convince the tech support that the issue had nothing to do with my network quality).

Audible downloads at a ridiculous 10-40 Kb/ps and suffers from frequent failures

iTunes download occurs at more than 1MB/ps

2.Usage data unavailable with iTunes titles

- So as a work around I started downloading titles from iTunes. But by doing so I don't get access to addedfunctionalities like Chapter info, usage info when listening in the backgroundetc etc.

So after figuring that the issue wasn't at my end I contacted the tech support to find a solution to my download woes. After considerable effort I was finally able to convince them that the problem had nothing to do with my network connection. And this is the final answer I got from them.

Based on your address, I see that you are in Singapore. As you may know there are plenty of factors that would affect the download speed. Factors include speed of the connection, your location versus location of the servers, amount of users using the same connection, the route the connection takes to get from your phone to our servers.

When you download, the route that a connection takes to get from your phone to a particular server will not always be the same for every content provider. The Audible servers are solely based in the US. It's possible that Apple has servers closer to your location resulting in the faster download speed compared to us.

And while on international tech-support call to these guys one of them gave me the above explanation and then said that problem is because "Audible is designed only for those in the USA" (Not the exact word but the intent was the same). The point he made was that the Audible server resided in the US and the distance between the server location and Singapore is the reason for the slow speed and they can't do anything about it.

Now I am not exactly a techie but the explanation seems quite unsatisfactory for the following reasons:

My home network speed is very good and this slow speed is a consistent issue.
The same file downloaded to my computer (Presumably from the same distant server) at a speed that was about a 100 times faster than the mobile app.
Amazon servers present only in the US is not a very sound logic esp since they are going all out to sell AWS in this part of the world so aggressively.

I have had a great experience with the App post the download phase, so I will continue to use it irrespective of whether these guys give me a solution or not. But the moment I have an alternative I see no reason why I shouldn't switch to a service that is also for those lessor mortals outside USA.

How I lost 5 Kgs in a week.

2011-10-03T12:00:00.002+08:00

In the last one month I have had some significant successes in my weight loss efforts. This includes a 5 Kg reduction in a 1 week period. Following my updates on Facebook I had quite a few requests asking for details. And so in response to all that here’s some details that may be of interest to those who are wide like me :(

In one of my previous posts Tond Reduction Contd . . . I had summarized my efforts. The special emphasis on Contd . . . was due the WIP nature of the results I achieved :( So be forewarned that what I am going to write hasn’t quite been entirely effective on myself, but when did that ever stop me from giving gyan :D

Despite the lack of visible results it’s my opinion that it wasn’t due to the lack of effort. In fact in 2010 (Details of what I did) I put in more than 140 hours of Cardio and YTD 2011 I have clocked in more than 110 hours of Cardio. Despite this number (Huge in my opinion) my weight loss wasn’t very significant. I lost about 4 Kg between Jan-Mar 2010 and ever since my weight has been hovering at around 90-93 Kg.

I felt the need to do something after gaining about 17.5 Kgs in the first two years of my stay in Singapore. In addition I had also started experiencing medical problems and had spend in excess of more than S$1000 on medical bills. I used to visit a nice Surdie Doc who after many visits made the point that the problem wasn’t some unknown ailment but essentially a lifestyle issue. In my post Tond Reduction Contd . . . I had spoken about my topline thought process before I initiated these steps. But for those lazy bums like myself who wouldn’t want to read all that lemme repeat:

I didn’t want to give up hogging.
Whatever I did had to be sustainable.
Measurement was key.

Of all the three measurement was the most important one concept. For it was measurement that help me apprise the situation and helped figure why I gained so much weight and once I initiated my routines it helped me with a few course correction steps. In addition I had spoken about my days in the Gurgaon Gym Elemention, when I achieved some very significant results but no weight loss whatsoever. So I wanted some very specific target that I could monitor and use the results for motivation if the other things didn’t happen.

As expected the other things didn’t happen and I used the charts to keep myself motivated. But then the lack of further progress made me realize that something had to change and the first principle to get a relook was the hogging principle :( Its so happened that I met a fitness expert who said that effective weight loss is 70% diet and 30% exercise. Overtime I rephrased this to create my own maxim “To loose weight diet, and exercise to make sure it doesn’t come back :D”

One of the first things that I did in this direction was to learn about the feeling of being bloated. Before I figured that I was like a bottomless garbage bin. I would just gorge on huge quantities of food and it showed :( However mere moderation didn’t quite wonders and I continued to hover around the 90-93 Kg mark. I have been sharing my result with a few well wishers and amongst them is my tormentor-in-chief Paggu Jain :(

He forced me into the so-called GM Diet (Veg Version). I had phenomenal results and at the end of it I had lost 5 Kgs. Inspired by the results Mr Jain forced me into another round where my beloved wife joined me. But unlike my first attempt the results were a bit disappointing: I lost just 1 Kg and Anju experienced instances of Pukiness, Headaches and some dizziness.

The GM Diet link is apparently located on the home page of an IIM Ahmedabad Prof, B. H. Jajoo. This connection had increased the credibility of this program in my eyes to almost blind faith proportions ;) But on doing some googling I found some interesting links:

Now despite the concerns raised in these articles about this being a fad diet I did lose 5 Kgs in a week. That’s more than what I achieved with almost 2 years of exercise. The one good thing that I did was to increase the amount of exercises that I did during the period and ate out to my heart’s content all that was permitted. While I am not sure why I lost so much but exercising hard in a no carbohydrate diet must have helped. And all the water I drank makes me feel that not all the loss wasn't due to water loss alone. So while I do see merit in the point that this GM diet may not be blind faith material. But the results I achieved and the following points will make me go to it for a quick fix weight loss ;)

No restriction on the quantities consumed.
Immediate results and the feeling that my other activities will help me sustain the gains.
The ingredients look pretty safe and even if there are some side effects of consuming a lot of veggies and fruits, I don't think the effects would be long term ;)

Assuming that you like me want a few short cuts to lose those extra kilos then a few points may be worth remembering:

Drink at least 10 glasses of water (I did 14). There are two benefits:
- Some ppl say that the loss occurs due to water loss. Drinking enough should ensure that isn’t the case ;)
- Increased water intake will aid in detoxification ;)
If possible avoid salt. This will reduce water retention in your body and with adequate water intake can improve the detox effect.
The first three days are the toughest when you have cravings, headaches and all those troubles. So keep lots of fruits and veggies within reach and have them as soon as you have those hunger pangs ;) During the days Veggies are allowed you can try carrots for that full feeling ;)
Surviving on Watermelon alone can give some good results on the fruit days.
Do not reduce the quantities consumed. Consume more of what is allowed.
Do some exercises during the period.
Ideally start on a Saturday or a long weekend. Working first three days can be tough as some of friends found to their dismay :(

I will conclude with a word of caution and the LIVESTRONG.com quote “The diet may be effective but is not necessarily advised.” Further diet alone as a tool of weight loss may bad idea. Try moving to a complete and sustainable lifestyle, but then when you hog over a weekend and gain three kilos then it may not be a bad idea to give it a try. (I did that over the last weekend and today is Day-1 GMD round 3).

The Sigrid Grobys talk on Stress Management

2011-09-29T10:33:00.005+08:00

I am going to continue from where I left last time about the talk by Sigrid Grobys on Stress Management techniques. The first thing that caught my attention was her age. She seemed to be in her early twenties. I won’t vouch for the accuracy of my assessment, as I often tend to get the age number wrong ;) But as soon as she started talking I remember feeling a sense of admiration for her diction. I mean not once did I hear a "ah" or any of the fillers that liberally peppers my talks. I really don’t have a word to describe her calm demeanor but there was something interesting. Well enough of her and let me come to the point of her talk ;)

Stress & the Autonomic Nervous System

The first thing she did was to give a physiological definition of stress. She defined it as the body’s response to something that is perceived as demanding. An important component of the body’s response mechanism lies with the so called Autonomic Nervous System or the control system of the body that controls the various visceral functions while remaining below the radar of our individual consciousness. The key point that Sigrid emphasized is the need to balance between the two key response activites of the system: ie Fight or Flight Response (Controlled by Sympathetic Nervous System) Vs Rest and Digest Activities (Controlled by Parasympathetic Nervous System).

Fight or Flight Response Vs Rest and Digest Activites

Without being too technical let me attempt a very brief description. Whenever the body perceives a difficult situation it attempts to activate the Fight or Flight Response through the production of the hormones Adrenaline and Cortisol. They aid in increasing the level of blood sugar, increased Carbohydrate, Fat and Protein Metabolism and increased heart rates. In other words that’s how our body improves our ability to handle a crisis. But if we stay in that mode for too long then there are side effects associated with the negatives of modern living.

So after a long day of work you need rest or in other words stimulate your body’s Rest and Digest Activities. It is in this mode that healing and regeneration occurs. The body further performs activities like digesting, detoxifying, eliminating and building immunity.

Balance and how to actively achieve it

What the body wants is a balance between activity and rest. But given the stressors of our modern lives that’s not quite in our hands and there are so many things that sorta perpetually forces us to remain in the so called Fight or Flight mode. So what Sigrid suggested was three conscious relaxation techniques:

Deep Breathing: The first thing that she did was to make each one of the participants blow up a balloon. The correct way involved expanding your belly when inhaling and contracting it while exhaling to fill up the balloon.

The key idea was that Deep Breathing and adopting of breathing exercises could help reduce the adrenaline and cortisol levels in the body. I am not sure of the scientific basis of this claim but it does seem logical that these breathing exercises increases the oxygen in the blood which in turn will have positive consequences.
Posture: The second point that made an impact was her point about the right posture. Having a straight back increase the quantum of breath intake vs a slouched back. And more breath is good :D
Visualization: Her third point was about meditation. She suggests at least 15 minutes of meditation every day. Keeping your mind free of thoughts is difficult. So she suggests visualizing some very pleasant relaxing situation and keeping that as focal point of thought during the course of the exercise.

The mechanics of meditation and the science behind it is perhaps beyond the scope of this note. But I came out of the talk with the feeling that this is one practice worth pursuing.

Finally she talked about doing some stretch exercises. She explained a few interesting exercises that can be done easily but I didn’t catch the correct technique during the talk. Later I found quite a lot of interesting versions on youtube each with its own names and specifics.

Anyways the important thing is that I found the discussion interesting. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that that I got a theoretical foundation for the whole issue of stress. This foundation led me to google about the topic and I found a lot of other interesting tit bits. By writing this note I want to make sure that I go beyond that and implement some of these interesting ideas J

How I sucked at meditation :'((

2011-09-08T23:54:00.002+08:00

Till recently I was not into meditation. The problem was that I never quite understood what it was all about. The whole idea of doing nothing seemed quite beyond a hyperactive mind’s comprehension.

The first time somebody tried to sell meditation was when I was a lowly undergraduate intern. One of my seniors/colleagues at work had apparently done some meditation and he did a hard sell on me. And he did such a good job that my expectations from the whole became rather mystical :D

The dampener was when we got down to the nitty gritties. The idea of doing nothing was a far cry from the picture that I had in mind. And my first attempt at meditation lasted for perhaps less than a minute. I guess such was my performance that my friend didn’t attempt another sell on me.

Then the next time I encountered the concept in a big way was when I got to know about Jitu. He was my classmate during graduation and we both got placed with the same company. And the last I heard of him he quit his job to join an ashram. And even when he was working he used to conduct program at the company and at his home.

I attended two of his sessions. The first one was at the company and my impression about the whole thing didn’t change at all. And then he invited me to a session at his residence for a group of more serious practitioners. After the session my friend encouraged all of us to speak about the experience. Those present spoke about the spirituality and other such matters and I stood out by my sheer incomprehension of what was going around me. That was the last time Jitu talked meditation to me :D

Then over the last ten odd years a gradual change happened. Perhaps the most important factor was that I was getting exposed to individuals who practiced meditation at one level or the other. And it so happened that I respected most of these guys even without their meditation. Their positive opinion on the subject opened my mind to the possibility that there may be something more interesting and relevant to my life.

I sensed that these individuals tended to more grounded than those who weren’t into such activities. Very specifically these guys didn’t seem to be driven at all and yet they somehow consistently accomplished all that they set out to achieve. And very interestingly all these individuals were exceptional in terms of their understanding of self and how they managed themselves.

I am no closer to deciphering how they do it. But I guess knowledge and skills do play a part in their abilities to manage themselves better. Somehow I am coming to this conclusion that meditation does help them keep their thinking clutter free.

And before I sign off for the day I will share a cool trick that helped me suck a little less in the fine art of meditation. If you focus on your breathing, then it helps prevent your mind from wandering away to other stuff.

And then today I attended a talk by a Sigrid Grobys. There are quite a lot of things that impressed me about her. But most interesting thing was for the first time I got a framework that helped me understand what this whole thing was all about. Perhaps in my next post I will summarize some of the insights and more that I gleaned from people like her. Till then enjoy J

The Art of being Real!!

2011-07-23T04:05:00.007+08:00

My impression of Obama is that he would like to believe that you can sweep the world by the power of ideas . . . So when speaks, he often sounds as if he were in the world of ideas alone. When he acts, he is very conscious of reality.

- Henry Kissinger talking about Obama to Fareed Zakaria
(The quote starts at around 37:00 of the interview)

I was fascinated by the quote and the train of thought that emerged can perhaps be described as a conflict between "The power of ideas" Vs "Getting it done". I mean being called a man of ideas would be a great compliment. However the way Kissinger made the quote, he sorta implied that such a guy is somewhat disconnected with reality. And then he goes to say that Obama is real.

Now I am the kind of guy who usually does get carried away by concepts and ideas. But my discipline to execute wasn't very strong. And then thanks to the good fortune of having meet some amazing individuals I became more sensitive for the need to be real.

Over the years I met many such people and their abilities fascinated me. I wondered how these guys managed to squeeze so much into their schedules and yet be so full of life. One such person is Shilpa Krishnan. I am fascinated by the sheer weight and diversity of her calendar. She is a prolific blogger and what fascinates me is how real her writings are. I am going to quote two particular entries which made an impression upon me.

The first entry is a self appraisal effort . She simply went through her daily blog entries and then identified the things that made her happy:

Food:
Mausams (A movie that she made):
Travels:
Physical Fitness:
People:
Being Good:

I can intellectualize about each of the themes she identified and speak about the deeper meanings. But let me urge you to read the entry for yourself. And what you may find is how very ordinary all her points are. And yet there is pure bliss in the way she talks about her Starbucks Chai Latte. In our daily lives there would numerous such small acts of pleasure and yet how many of us would be able to identify those things like this lady, and then derive such pleasure from doing them.

Then after a few months after having done her Year End Analysis she wrote another piece, perhaps to help me summarize what I talk about today. In this post she attempts to define the purpose of life. And then she identified three different approaches to find that elusive purpose of life.

Having a clear cut long term vision
Having short term high energy challenges but no long term vision
Having a set of principles as the end in itself vs. short/long term goal/vision

In current frame of mind I am perhaps a bit biased towards "Execution" and I have a liking for the second approach. I look at the last twenty years of my life. And if twenty years ago if I had set a long term vision and then spent my life trying to achieve it then I would grossly underachieved. 20 years ago I couldn't have conceptualized some of the thoughts and aspirations that I have today. Then just like what Kissinger suggests, I have the opinion that a staunch allegiance to an ideology can blind you to the truths that may exist in the principles that may be opposed to yours.

In her blog Shilpa states her preference for one of the approaches but then is quite open to the fact that other people may find the other approaches more relevant. I find that to be quite an admirable thought.

To be able to write every day requires quite a lot of intent and solid calendar management capabilities. Just look at the two entries I quoted in here. Part of the appeal was in the fact that it was synthesized from so many other entries. Had she not written those numbers chai experiences of hers, perhaps I wouldn't have found her year end analysis as interesting. The daily writings perhaps gives her the ability to bring into her consciousness things that you and I may have missed altogether.

Tond Reduction Contd . . .

2011-04-01T15:18:00.001+08:00

Despite all my intentions I don’t think I haven’t written as much as I would have loved to. Guess my thoughts don’t flow as freely as they used to. Or perhaps my verbal abilities have overtaken my skills with the keyboard :D

The one thing that I want to sit down and think about is the increasing importance I have been giving to fitness in my life. I have always been a fitness retard. In fact during school days I couldn’t run for more than 100 meters without huffing and puffing. And now that I think of it I was larger than the kids of my age and if anything I felt pride looking at the size of my thunderous thighs ;)

Life was good and easy and then slowly things changed and I widened up L Then one fine day my mother’s love for me made me take notice. Over time I have made a few attempts at tond reduction with varying amounts of success (a euphemism).

Somehow guys in campus developed this craze for running and there was Hutchy who within a very short period started lost a considerable amount of girth. Inspired I joined the gang and within a few months I completed two 10 Km runs. The effort was disjointed and usually followed by gorging in the campus mess. So materially it had little impact on my girth. But the key highlight of that effort was that for the first time in my life I knew that I could do it.

In Coke, I tried to follow up. I had a few great guys to look up to. Wall was a very fit guy and during my internship he made me run a few times and it with him that I took up my first driving lessons ;) Also there was Doodles, who evolved from being the Tun Tun of the batch to being the Telugu superstar that he has now become ;) Overall apart from the intent to look fitter there was nothing much to write about my efforts.

The Reliance Retail period was the time of my greatest success. Its so happened that there were only 30 free company parking lots. If you weren’t amongst lucky few to arrive early you had to shell out 60 bucks and invest in time and effort to find parking alternatives. And fortunately for me there was this Pricey gym in the office complex. I figured that if I went to the gym then that meant assured parking and the savings would more than pay for the gym membership (Very crucial as both these costs were exorbitant for my living standards of those days ;)

The gym was absolutely awesome. Even in Singapore I am yet to come across something that made me feel the way Elemention did. The best part was the machines. You had to log into the machines and they recorded your data for each the activities and awarded you points which could be redeemed. Around 500000 points would have earned you free lifetime membership. I logged in about 15000 points in about 3 months and just looking at the points building up was very motivating. I didn’t lose much weight but physically it showed and when Anju returned from Japan she met up with a fitter and leaner Joey ;) Soon after I laboured through my first half marathon and I thought I could do no wrong.

Despite all the outward progress there were some serious flaws in my achievement. For one fitness hadn’t ingrained itself into my psyche. Gorging continued unabated and I thought that its something that I had to put my mind into and I would get results in no time. After all within 3 months I achieved it in Elemention.

How wrong I was. I was in Singapore, the land of the fitness freaks, with easy access to everything that you need to be fit. And when Anju met me again for her wedding she got a much larger version of me :( I had managed to gain 17 Kgs in two years. And I again took noticed and realised that something wasn’t quite right.

At that point I decided take stock and there were a few major thoughts in my mind:

I wanted to continue hogging.
Whatever I do had to fit into my lifestyle.
Measurement was key. The point thingie in elemention was an awesome motivator. Without that it would have become quite de-motivating as I hadn’t lost much weight. So the idea was that I need a very specific target to keep me focused on the activities and the tond reduction etc would follow.

Paulo Coelho is so very true when he said “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” First Vamsi my ex Boss in a casual conversation mentioned about a pedometer (a step counting device). Apparently a healthy lifestyle is taking at least 10000 steps a day. And to my utter horror I realised that on a weekday I was clocking around 1500 steps a day. The pedometer alarm meant that something had to be done and fast.

So off went the taxi rides to office and started taking the bus. That meant an extra 3000 steps a day. Then I tried having Subway lunches. The place was a bit distant from my office so that meant around 3-9000 steps depending on whether I got the bus to the subway. Eventually I started to prefer missing the bus. And if I missed the Subway or didn’t clock the counts I would just take a walk in the plant to rake up the count. An added advantage was that I saw a lot more than what I would have if I had just sat down in my cabin.

The other good thing was that I got in touch with amazing individuals who have figured the magic art of balancing work and life. There are quite a few in this category and in the course of time I will talk about a few. But today I want to remember Paggu Jain. Had it not been for his subtle hints, not so subtle badgering and downright blackmail I wouldn’t have been writing this post. This bugga on a very busy day wakes up at 5:30 am, goes for a jog and the reaches office by 7-7:30 am and the after a 12 hour workday comes back home to help wifey Gargu Jain cook some good home cooked food J

And as if that wasn’t enough he made me run. In the initial days he used to slow down for me, but it was good fun. Running time was when I would give life ke fundae and he would patiently listen. (For anyone who doesn’t appreciate that needs to sit down with me for a couple of hours ;) We devised a monitoring mechanism and I was to send him daily updates like what you see below L

Summary of Tond Reduction activities in 2010

140+ recorded hours of exercise in 2010 didn’t quite make me lose weight as I expected. And it was quite surprising as I had higher expectations given my 3 month Elemention experience. Had these numbers not been available I would have given up but somehow they helped continue and build up a routine. And the availability of this data led the question as to why I didn’t lose weight. And some googling and a meetings with a few fitness experts led to the following conclusions:

Diet has a greater impact on Body Weight loss than exercise. A fitness expert told me that for weight loss diet alone is twice as effective as exercises. If you want to lose weight you need to control your diet and if you want to sustain it then you need to exercise.
Once the body gets comfortable with an activity the incremental weight loss reduces. The exercise routine has to change to continually put the body under stress.
The exercise regime needs to have a fair mix of cardio and weight training.
Heavy & sustained exercises put some stress on unused muscles. If these areas (Eg Lower Back etc) strengthen enough then you could have sport injuries.
Sleep, Stress and metabolic rates are other factors that affect weight loss.

There were numerous funny incidents that makes my fitness story down right hilarious esp the Cross Trainer and the StanChart Run incidents. I will park those for a later date. But I want to end with a nice discussion I had with Paggu Jain. We were discussing what would happen if you discontinue your exercise regime. Very melodramatically in true Paggu style he retorted, “To all those who say that you will gain more kilos than what you started off with I ask WHY DISCONTINUE??”

Met the March targets :)

2011-04-01T10:16:00.000+08:00

Three Cheers to Anju & Parag. For the first time this year I met my monthly target. I did 12:41:31 hrs of physical activity in March :))

"I value the friend who for me finds time on the calendar. But I cherish the friend who for me does not consult the calendar" - Unknown

2011-03-21T22:40:00.000+08:00

Well it seems that I did ok and my friend will continue talking to me ;)

It so happened that Anju had booked tickets for an AR Rahman show for yesterday evening. And then a close friend’s hubby had his b’day yesterday and we planned a surprise Barbeque party for him. There was another friend who was visiting Singapore and he wanted to meet. And on top of all that Sundays is the day for housework and we usually make it a point to stay indoors on this day.

Keeping all this in mind I planned to meet my friend from India for lunch and then do some stuff around and then take him to the Barbeque party. After making him comfortable the idea was that we would push off to the Rahman show.

But then my friend from India called me the day before yesterday and threw all my planning out of the window. He had purchased USS and various Sentosa tickets and wanted me to come along. The tickets were pretty expensive and they conflicted with my previous plans. This last minute development had me pretty agitated we had a rather heated conversation on the phone.

After I kept the phone I remembered the incident mentioned in the previous entry and I decided that a disruption of the calendar is not a good enough reason to ruin a relationship. Further the calming effect of Anju ensured that I work out a solution that could accommodate everyone.

I was decided to take my friend to USS. He had to cancel the tickets for Anju while she stayed back to complete the housework. After the USS trip Anju joined me to the barbeque party and we proceeded to Rahman show.

To cut a long story short my calendar was able to accommodate last minute changes but I wonder if my lifestyle would permit me to be the friend who would disregard his calender.

“It takes a lot of management of the calendar” – Prof Bower

2011-03-20T02:10:00.000+08:00

I was watching an interview with Prof Joseph L. Bower . He spoke of a few interesting points to help develop your career. However what impressed me the most was his response to the question “How do you maintain a work-life balance??”.

I have struggled managing my time and being organized. Being exposed to individuals who do this well exposed my failings even more. My wife for example has stayed late in the office only 4 times in the last 2 years. And that hasn’t prevented her from get her job done and exceptional appraisals.

Looking back I saw pattern in my disorganization: I tend to misplace stuff, tend to waste too much effort perfecting something that’s not worth the effort, a habit of sometimes taking on more than I can chew and also the occasional failure to say no.

After having identified some of the issues I attempted to get some order into my life and achieved some progress and I want to believe that I am much better off than I was say a few years back. But in process I see a new problem. The problem of handling people who refuse to get tied down in your structure L

Last year I had a particularly sad experience. One of my ex colleagues visited Singapore on an official visit and he asked for something that wasn’t quite my area of expertise. Since he was nice to me and I didn’t want to offend him I googled and provided some basic stuff to get him started. Later due to an avoidable triviality we both got into an uncomfortable situation and that guy hasn’t talked to me ever since.

I do rationalize by saying that what he asked for was outside my area of expertise, my help was something that he could have retrieved easily from the net and most importantly when I tried to help he kept on raising issues without listening to my suggestions. Now I have thought about it a few times and the fact is that the outcome saddens me.

I often think if there was something that I could have done to handle things differently. Could I have made my point without offending my friend. And till now I never got a satisfactory answer. The only thing that comes to mind is that perhaps my forced structure on myself contributed. If I was as disorganized as I used to be then perhaps I wouldn’t have taken as much offence.

Well then point of this whole blog is that I faced a similar situation with a friend who closer to me than the previous guy. The situation I got into was messier and in the next blog I will write about whether I was able to extricate myself amicably L

Thanks Aruna

2011-02-12T01:01:00.000+08:00

“It doesn’t matter how slowly you go-so long as you do not stop.”

- Confucius

Today was almost an event less day and somewhere I decided that I need to do something, no matter how small. With that I decided to brush up some of my macro-economic fundas. If not in my actual trading perhaps it would help me with some talking points ;)

I decided on some amount of readup and within a specified amount of time was able to achieve what I had set out to do. Then while wrapping I felt that it would perhaps help my cause if I could get hold of the study guide for the book I was using. I searched in Google for quite a long time and got nowhere.

At that point I messaged Aruna, the only contact I had in my Alma Mater. Later in the day I caught her on chat and within moments she started a search for me. She must have spent in excess of half an hour and got me some very useful presentations. All this despite a pretty hectic schedule of her own. Thanks Aruna, very much appreciate your gesture :)

"ILIAD" ignorance, Trading fundas and Freddy :(

2011-02-11T00:07:00.000+08:00

“If they ever tell my story let them say that I walked with giants. Men rise and fall like the winter wheat, but these names will never die. Let them say I lived in the time of Hector, tamer of horses. Let them say I lived in the time of Achilles.”

- Odysseus

That was the ending quote of the movie “Troy” and I was fascinated in a very funny way. I didn’t find a single moment in the movie that really moved me. Somewhere I have this thought that I missed the point in the story of “Iliad”. Obviously there must have been something in the writings of Homer that touched so many over so many centuries ;) I intend to watch it a few times and hopefully I will see what I missed till now :(

***

Another fascinating snippet that I picked was from a book of selected Lee Kaun Yew interviews. One quote was attributed to Queen Elizabeth’s office which declined the author’s request for a quote as the Queen prefers not to make any public comment about any living person.

***

Then my trading is not quite setting Six Capital on fire. I have made profits everyday but that was more due to my strategy founded on chance. Ideally good trading is all about waiting for the right movements and capturing them. One of the tendencies to avoid is to overtrade and execute orders before you read firm signals. One of the strategies I had envisioned was to limit the number of trades to 15 in a 5 hour trading period. The idea was that I would spend more time identifying better entries and consequently have a better quality of trades.

So I started the trades with all the noble intentions and within a matter of 30 mins I had already executed 10 trades. By the time I hit 14 I spoke aloud that I wont repeat my mistakes and stated my tall claims to Ravi. But before he or me could blink our eyes my trade count was 48 :(

***

Then Freddy Lim is my colleague at work. He is the pillar of our operations. Unfortunately he reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious” in a not so charming way.

Freddy has a few routines to follow and I have been tasked to make some process improvements. Unfortunately for me Freddy feels that my intervention is going to increase work for him and despite my repeated assertions to the contrary I found it a bit tedious to make the point across. Thankfully I have persisted and I am pushing pretty hard. But what’s more gladdening is that I have been doing so in a way that’s constructive and not disrespectful of Freddy :)

The Blogger Shilpa who inspired me :)

2010-12-07T21:38:00.000+08:00

I met Shilpa a few months ago during the shoot of her movie "Mausams". And I clicked a few pictures and posted it on FB and soon I started following her on the social network. The lady updates her blog on a daily basis and today was the summary of the last one year of her writing efforts.

http://1000beautifuldays.blogspot.com/2010/12/day-383-year-end-analysis.html

I am reminded of my diary days. I tore off the first few pages that I wrote cos I thought it was so lame ;) and then told myself that I will only write about things that truly wow me. And over a period of time I started liking the whole thing and it was I was talking to this really wonderful person who was patiently listening to me, while being critical in assessing what I said/wrote. The sad part is that over time I wrote less and gradually started forgetting all the very wonderful things that happened around me :(

Hopefully thanks to Shilpa I too will resume my talks with myself :D

Back to Dilwaalon ki Dilli

2010-10-11T20:57:00.000+08:00

Its been about 36 hours since I landed in Delhi. I have slept twice and yet it feels as if I have been in here for ages. And its been an eventful time I had. Am ready to go jogging for the second time since I arrived, spent time with Shuch, Amma and Achin, Went to the fist market and took a snap of a Giant fish, had a memorable taxi ride in a rickety old ambassador taxi with a tiny little cricket for company. Saw the Kutub metro station, and finally for the first time in my life went for a live hockey match and saw the Australian, Pakistan and of course Indians rain goals. Used the auto rickshaw twice and not once was I overcharged.

AmEx da Great

2006-03-21T03:55:00.000+08:00

One of the biggest problems when you start working is that your expenses go up and you have no clue where all the money is going away. You have a thousand things to take care of including the pending bills, the loan repayment, telephone bills, investments if financial year is coming to a close and so on and so forth.

One thing i can say with reasonable amount of confidence is that i am perhaps one of the worst tax planners that you would find in the country. When i joined the company i did not declare any of my investments and as a results the TDS for me was one of the highest in the batch and consequently the take home was the lowest in the MT batch. To top all that i suddenly realised that I went on a spree of saving company money at my own expense. So today the company owes me close to 50 grands of money.

On top of all that I had a credit card bill of close to 32 grands (All official expenses for those of you who think I have left my miserly way of life). And on top of that i had to pay close to 11 grands on account of my educational loan repayment. I had kept it pending for quite a long time and so i decided to do something about it. However all my good intentions nothing came out of it and consequently it was the last date for the payment of my bills. That date fortunately or unfortunately happened to the day before the colourful festival of holi.

So I decided I should take my cheque book along so that on my way back from gurgaon i could stop by around Saket and drop my cheque. And while on my way back the weather took a turn for the worse and before I realised it was raining cats and dogs. And while i was heading towards saket i suddenly realised that i did not know the location of the drop box where i was supposed to drop my cheques. And when i located the AmEx telephone numbers i suddenly had the "LOW BATTERY" messages flashed across my cellphone screen. The last stick on the charge indicator was on and by the looks of it, it wasnt going to last long.

So i did the next best thing and got the cell of the guy next to me and called up the AmEx guys again and got the nearest location in Saket. Then i sentified my co-passengers to stop by near the drop box so that i could go ahead and drop the cheque. They relented and we headed to the location and my offical cab waited while my friendly colleagues waited fuming inside ;) It was raining bad and the roads were overflowing and there were vehicles all around. The net result was that the pedestrians had no where to walk and if they did manage to move the vehicles and the rains gods ensured that no part of you remained untouched by water.

Despite all that I went on and with great difficultly I reached the place where I was supposed to drop my cheque and found it closed. Me foolishly thought that saket is a big place and there would be more places around where I could drop my cheque. So I got back to my cab and got my laptop and asked the guys to leave. And by that time my cell was completely discharged and poor me had to call up the AmEx guys through a PCO. I must say from very many past experiences that they take a lot less time that most of the Bank Call centers. However still that took me about 5 minutes to get all the details. And when I got the address of the next place to drop my cheque I realized that too was closed :( So I got all the drop box addresses in the five km radius and headed towards Savitri which happens to be a bit far away and in a direction quite opposite of where I stay. But before I left another piece of information that I extracted from the call center agent was that there existed an AmEx drop box right next to my office. But now that I was all wet and being the last date to submit without a fine I decided that I had to go for it & submit it. So I called for a few autos and I saw a practical implementation of something called differential pricing. The buggers had the balls to ask for 80 bucks for a less than five km ride. I said balls and got a hitch to the same place. Aha I said at least something is going my way.
Finally reached the place which was at least a km away from where it was supposed to be. But despite all that I reached and dropped the box and got an auto back home. While on the way was my PSU bank which had started this new feature where in you could drop your cheque into their drop box. I was so tired that I actually slept off on my way back ;) and narrowly missed my bank where I was to deposit my loan repayment dues. When I realized the thing I had the auto guy drive back and when I reached the bank I suddenly realized that I have the cheque but no pen. And to top it there was not a single soul around that place as the bank was situated right in the middle of Central Govt Offices where people are so very conscious of their work life balance. Fortunately my auto driver was literate and he had a pen to spare for me and I had the cheque deposited and happily headed back home. Next day I checked my ATM and it was lower by about the amount that I was to pay on account of my loan repayments.

All there was in my account was close to the amount that was required to pay for my credit card bills. But I just had to survive till the next pay cheque and nothing else. Wow man. Broke after a degree from IIMB. To top it off I had to make an investment of 13 grands to save tax and pay my telephone bills. Had two of my office buddies lend me the money for the investments and had Anjali pay the telephone bills and at last moment took 2 k loan from her ;)

I thought at least I had all my bills paid ;) And then came the funny part. The AmEx cheque came back cos I did not mention the date on it and the SBI returned all the money that had been debited from my account due to reasons I am yet to figure out. Call that luck man.

Mr Wu & my Salsa Woes

2006-03-20T03:52:00.000+08:00

Dear All,
March 19,

When there is long period of inactivity on the mail front i get a few mails once in a while asking me to write again. And then i get up and resolve to do something about it. And then one fine day like today you get to read all that you are reading right now. Usually a mail like this starts on a rather apologetic note on how sorry I am and so on and so forth.

Guess lemme do something different. Rather let me talk about Mr Wu. Or lemme take a while before i bring up the topic. Lemme first talk about what i am doing and then I will move on to the more juicier things in life ;)

For all those who are ignorant about my present whereabouts the news is that I am still with coke and presently in the Bottling Corporate Office. My current designation is Assistant Manager Special Projects. My role is something called market execution and essentially it involves activities focused on our customers ie the Retailers. To draw an anology Lays Racks are always placed outside the outlet and the packs are kept in the racks in a particular order. Such a small step at the outlet level can have a huge impact on the sales of an impulse category like Coke.

However ensuring that the racks are set right in over a million outlets in which the company has little control over is a huge organizational effort. And my role is directed at creating systems and processes that would enable anyone at the corporate to get an outlet level snapshot as to what is happening on the ground. We have taken some small baby steps and as of now I have rolled out a project that captured data about around 21000 outlets in the month of Feb. The idea is to extend to all the high volume outlets of the country and then further extend the system to other outlets.

The idea of outlet level data can have huge implications. For one it would mean that experts sitting at the corporate could design a strategy based on high quality data and direct the field to implement it on the ground. After rollout the experts could then go ahead and monitor the progress of the rollout. All this again have implications but I guess its enough gyan for all you guys for a single day ;)

In the process of ensuring that I did all this I had been doing some extremely clerical and frustrating activities. And it was one such day that I was sitting in front on my comp cleaning rows of junk excel data. And needless to say I was agitated and had sort of become numb to whatever was happening around me. I mean at that moment I hardly knew the names of the people sitting around me. All that mattered was there was work to be done and I needed to complete it asap.

And it was then that this avuncular gentleman came over to my desk and with an reassuring smile and said, “Hi I am Kochin Wu”. At that moment all his attention was directed at saying those nice words of greetings to me. And to be honest I was stumped. It was as if the gurl of your fantasies had just proposed to you and you were standing there completely speechless trying to figure out what was going on and forcing some words to come out of your mouth seemed like the most difficult things in life.

All he said were some very mundane things but with those inane things he had just touched me in ways no body had done before. Koch as we love to call Mr Wu is of Chinese descent and during the war of 62 had to bear the brunt of fellow Indians bullying him. Right now he is rather gifted in horizontal terms but in the sixties when he was just a tiny kid. And to help him out his grandpa gave him some martial arts fundas. And ever since no one dared to bully him ;)

Before coke he worked with Pepsi and had done some great work for them in the deep UP. Some our of present MBA friends dread the idea of spending time in areas that Koch had lorded over. I am told that his joining Coke from Pepsi had made headlines during those days. He was at that time one of the highest paid professionals in the country.

And in the days that followed I am told that he could not recreate his magic in coke. I don’t know the specifics but I guess its was partly because of his habit of calling a spade a spade. People would say that such a man is difficult to work with. However in my limited experience of having interacted with him I have seen people stand by him and admiring him. That sorta admiration is something that I would die for any day :)

Well its enough serious stuff for a day and let me talk about the funnier things in life. And what could be funnier than me telling you that I have joined up Salsa classes. Its funny and it would be funnier when I tell you that I had made a similar futile attempt to learn music. That was years ago and I spent three months to learn Sa Re Ga. And sometimes I feel that my then music teacher remarked about my limited success out of sheer pity for me.

These are not things that I had forgotten when I made the decision to join up for Salsa. Franking it was on top of my mind when the topic of Salsa was bought up. In fact I just remember that in the past only the music teacher, her son, her servant and her pet dog had the misfortune of experiencing the sheer depth of my musical talents. And now there would be others to witness my special gift for salsa. And to make matters worse my partner is a trained Bharatnatyam dancer :( I even had nightmares of she dumping me for better male dancers in the group :(
Anjali had described to me her enthu for Salsa and other such things. And to make things really difficult for me she one fine day out of the blue informed me about a certain salsa training classes being conducted near her place. I was in a strange dilemma. I very well knew my capabilities and on the other hand there was that stupid pride of mine which prodded me to say yes. And believe me I was like cursing myself for having gotten myself into such a soup. But then things do happen unplanned and I had resigned myself to my fate and the sure ignominy that was to follow. But the pride inside me kept me from displaying any signs of that to the outside world.

And just to be polite I did enquire about it a few times. And my god she was all enthu about it :( But then out of the blue I saw a glimmer of hope when she told me that her traditional malayali parents (Read father) did not approve of a dance form like salsa. In fact her father went on to suggest that instead of salsa she should continue with her Bhartnatyam and he would get the Bhartnatyam instructor home.

Such unexpected things could give you quite a lot of relief and same was the case with me. Happy i was, but i felt that expressing my relief would be a rude thing to do. And so I expressed my indignation at being denied the opportunity to learn a few salsa steps. But then some guys are born unlucky and I would make all of them feel inferior. Anjali could not bear to see me denied the opportunity to salsa with her. She decided to do something about it and to press her point with her parents and went on a hunger strike :( And to make matters worse for me she got unexpected solid support from her mother. And before I knew it her father too couldn’t say no to the pleadings of such a nice daughter.

I had already resigned to my fate and against all my wishes started attending the classes. And the instructors started with some very basic steps and in less than five minutes into my first class he couldn’t resist remarking about the faults in my steps. And with great difficulty I thought I was catching up and getting some of the steps right. And dashing any such thoughts was his next remark that guys like me were just copying steps and not dancing. He went on to stress the fact that we need to feel the music if we were to get the Salsa right. And I was like, “HOW THE HELL TO YOU FEEL THE MUSIC?”

My ordeals with Salsa continue and whats funny is when Anjali expressed her side of the story. Today she remarked that the only reason for her to join the Salsa classes was the sheer enthu that I had shown ;) She went on to rub more salt when she remarked that she had just mentioned the salsa classes off handedly and would never signed up had I not been so enthusiastic about it :(

Nightout in Mumbai Central

2005-05-17T02:31:00.002+08:00

Hi Guys,
May 14,

The best part of my MBA was perhaps the convocation. Compared to my previous academic engagements this was a very elaborate affair. Apart from wearing the graduation robe and getting the degrees the experience was memorable for the speech given by Anand Mahindra. But before that we actually spent the whole of the morning rehearsing for the event. And the staff members of the IIMs definitely deserve kudos for the way the entire thing was conducted.

Then to add icing to the cake was having Mr. Anand Mahindra as our chief guest. Normally when you have a good speaker you admire him and say wow. But at the end of the speech you usually wont be able to speak for more than a minute about what the person actually said. Its on this count that mahindra scored over all the others speakers I have heard in my life. His speech was rich in content his delivery was perfect. But more than it was as if he was speaking to a plan. It seemed liked a story with a start, a middle and an end. And at the end of it I actually ended up speaking for about 10-15 minutes about what he did say.

I wont bore you with the details but he had numerous anecdotes from his personal life and he articulated his vision for a future for india. The core idea was to have confidence in our abilities to create a future for the country where there would be space for the poorest of the poor. At the end of the speech I felt that it would be a great experience to actually work under someone like him. And I understood the reason for the dynamism the Mahindras have shown in recent times. Its no surprise to hear about the various Mahindra initiatives like bikes, scorpio and the bank and in future only greater things are in store for this company. And I also decided that as soon as I have some money I will start investing in this company :-)

Then my parents were in Bangalore we did some travelling and I also fulfilled my mother's childhood wish of going to the Vrindavan gardens in mysore. It was a opportunity for me to bond with my parents though I did face a few instances where I concluded that parents have an inherent ability the bug the hell out of you :-(

At the end of it all I wanted to do some travelling and catch with some old friends. I had mentioned my plans to my parents but at the very last moment my mother gave some royal sentis about how she wanted me to be with them on the journey back to delhi. I retorted with sentis of my own to wriggle out of the situation. Soon after that I packed my stuff and loaded it on to the train and so that they could chaperone it back to delhi ;-)

The experiences that followed in the next few days was insightful for many reasons. For one I think I started appreciating the differences in the way me and my parents would perform some task. I mean my first stop was Nashik and two hours before the journey I had no clue about how I am going to travel. My father would have planned the entire thing to its last detail and perhaps would have been the first person to get the tickets to that place. In hindsight he would have had a smoother ride but I guess I had much more fun than he ever would :-)

Getting a ticket on some of the trains in india is difficult. In fact some trains like Karnataka express actually have their tickets sold out at least a month in advance. And getting sleeper tickets is actually quite an adventure. But there are loopholes and there are people out there to make the best out this opportunity. Its so happens that there are cancellations at the last moment and who gets that berth is a function of who approaches the TC first. So as soon as I got to the ticket counter I encountered guys who told me that they could help me get confirmed ticket. They got me an unreserved ticket and we talked to the TC who did the needful to get me what i needed. He gave me the necessary papers and also charged money for his services. Over and above that I also had to pay for the tout.

But the most interesting thing is when the guy came to collect the money from me. He actually spent about fifteen minutes with me and proclaimed that honesty is a virtue and how those touts are out there to cheat innocent travelers like myself. And then he gleefully took his commission and justified it by giving me some weird reason. It was an example of how dishonesty has been ingrained in the system wherein its no longer bad. Bribes are part of life and that's the way it is. But despite that the guy was honest in some strange ways and some of the things that he told me actually ensured that I was better equipped to handle the rail troubles that I would encounter in future :-)

Neways, I was happy that I got my ticket and I was on my way to manmad which was nother half hour away from Nasik. I reached Nasik after a journey of about 24 hours and met up with my friend Nitin. He is with Reliance infocomm and it was nice catching up with him. Later I met one of his distributors and its was great to chat up with them all. The guy is called Ravi and actually there was something really nice about him. I mean still cant quite articulate what I actually liked in him but I did and if I am to believe hunches then I guess I would love to actually work with someone like him.

Then Nitin is I guess a very special guy. He prepared for cat with me and did his MBA frm SCMHRD. The first time I met him I guess I felt tht he was a prick but from those days he is one of the few I have cared to keep in touch with. The reason I like him is perhaps because he is very dependable. He was always a fighter quite unlike me and some of the things he did during out cat preparations used to give me creeps. Since the last one year he has been managing sales in Nasik and a normal guy would have cribbed but this guy has did a decent job and his voice conveyed a certain amount of calm and confidence that perhaps reflects the satisfaction from the job :-)

We did go to a few places while in Nasik and the thing that stuck me most were the names. I mean the guys in Nasik sure have some sense of humor. I saw boards proclaiming details about taklu jewellers and kela & kela associates. But the cake was a men's apparel store that had a board which proudly proclaimed "Sorry Madam" :-)

After that it was bombay where I met Rahul the man behind the now famous machhar theory. From there we went to pune to meet a classmate from graduation days who is no longer single. The couple is quite interesting cos the guy is relatively quite and his better half ensures that silence is absent in their homes. But what was more interesting was the observation of how a successful relationship can give you a certain amount of stability and confidence.

Then it was back to bombay with Rahul where he is staying at a place called Pali Hill. The place is interesting cause if you look out of his windows you would stare directly into the residence of Maushmi Chatterjee. Not far from his place is the residence of the Kapoor family of Kareena Kapoor fame ;-) There are so many other celebreties in the vicinity but whats more interesting are the neighbours inside their apartment. The humans in the place are out of bounds in one of the rooms. The place is exclusively reserved for the wildlife in the area that includes pigeons, their shit and a lot of other things ;-)

One day before my birthday I went to a place where I had a great time last year. My summers at Patni was one hell of a great time I had and one of the reasons I went to bombay was to go back and meet them all. Some of great guys at the marketing department are no longer there. Others like Jai and Nandini are still there. Every one seemed to be busy and yet Jai actually walked out of a meeting for me. And there were others like Rochelle with their small talk touched a chord. I had an appointment with one of my seniors at JP morgan but I stayed on cause it was great getting back to these guys.

Then the thing that was really funny was my meeting with my mentor Ashutosh Apte. In one of my previous mails i had described my first meeting with him. I showed him the excerpts from those writings and he was graceful as ever and I actually started admiring him more than ever before. He had played a role in me getting the PPO from patni and had been very supportive during my stay at patni.

Later I met the big guys in the department. I was just a trainee and it was a nice feeling being able to just walk into their rooms. And the icing on the cake was when the mkting head actually offered me a job anytime I wanted it. But despite all that I left the office on a rather sad note. Jai and Nandini who were closest to me seemed rather low and I couldn't even spend proper time with them. Anyways I guess I do intend to make up with you two as soon as I get the chance :-)

Then I met up with Modi who was my senior at bangalore. We had a rather longish chat where I bugged with some details about kerala and the Mahindra talk and he told me about his girl friend and relationships. He also had some interesting thoughts on topic. He said that love marriages are based on a foundation of faith, while understanding forms the base of arranged marriages. He went on to explain, that when you marry someone you love, you expect the other person to understand you. On the other hand when you go in for an arranged setup you actually make space for the person coming into your life. Its an interesting analogy and that's the most important thing that stayed with me form the conversation that I had with him over a month ago.

After parting ways I met with Rahul and few of his batchmates from MDI. First we went go carting and from my performances I must say that I should learn driving pretty fast ;-) Then the buggers had a coke and cake surprise for me right at midnight. My favorite blue and white shirt looked brown after the molestation :-( Guess thats how they wished me Happy Birthday and Coca Cola Enjoi.

Next day after Rahul was back from office we went to one of his friends place where the bachelors from different b-schools actually prepared their own food and had it too ;-) Soon after we were back at Pali hills where I wasn't feeling one bit sleepy. So I decided to take a midnight walk and in the process experienced some of the shadier sides of the night life in bombay. Young girls hardly fifteen packed like sardines in a omni ready for sale. Then enuchs dressed in really expensive and hep cloths in autos parked in a way that aroused suspicion. Anyways the walk up Taj lands end was interesting and so was the jog back home ;-)

Then it was time to get back and I had wait list tickets for my journey back home. I had planned to reach the station a few hours in advance and get hold of the TC and get the tickets confirmed. My train was at 9:30, Rahul was to get the ticket from a travel agent who had booked it a few days back. He was to leave for Sholapur on an official tour so the plan was that he would leave office early and reach home by 6 and then we pack and leave for the station. At 8 he called me and told me that he was gonna be late and urged me to pack his bag and come to the station which was ten minutes away. I did everything in haste and I got the ticket from him and I was on my way to Mumbai central to catch my train. I reached Central with just one hour for the train to leave. I checked out with the TC for the train, but since I was already pretty late confirmation of the tickets seemed difficult.

So when I was approached by another tout I readily agreed provided he provide me with the proof of confirmation before I leave. The guy made first told me that confirmation was possible only for AC three tier and so demanded more than a thousand bucks for getting sleeper wait list confirmed for the AC coach. He asked for the money in three tranches and the way he behaved was pretty suspicious. He used to take the money and disappear with some excuse about what he had to do. He also made some excuse about why he didn't want me to accompany him.

He played so many games that I decided that if something goes wrong then I am going to royally screw him up. And that's exactly what happened. The guy came back some five minutes before the train was to leave and he gave some bull about what to do to get the tickets confirmed. I checked with the TC and he told me that the info I was given was wrong. I got out of the train he gave me some more advice about how I must have talked to the wrong guy and I should have talked to some particular guy who would help me get the tickets. So he once again got me into the running train.

But unfortunately I had got into the general compartment and there was no way I could get into the AC compartment till the train stopped. So I just waited for the next halt which was borivilli, which is actually quite a distance away. And before getting into the train I had a word with a Policeman called Mr Arya who hinted at the widespread malpractices happening inside the station. He also suggested that I should file an FIR in case something goes wrong. He also hinted at the collusion that exists between the police and the touts. And how an official FIR could do a lot good even if the guy responsible is not arrested. His behaviour was professional and was quite helpful.

So finally i reached Borivilli and got off the general compartment. I went to the TC who again told me that there wasnt anyone by the name given by the tout. I got out of the train and informed my parents and Rahul about my intentions to stay back. My father suggested that i should have continued my journey cause I had a wait list ticket and the TC couldnt have thrown me out of the train. But somehow i decided to stay back and bought the tickets to Mumbai central.

As luck would have it i took the slow train instead of the fast and on my way back i had total strangers who went out of the way to help me out. One was a Tamilian who stayed in mumbai since the last 17 years and now had earned enough to be able to move back to his home town. Even after he left he actually kept calling me just to check if i needed any help. And whats more admiring is the fact that the guy actually stays in Dharavi, a slum cluster.

The first thing i did after reaching Central was cancel my wait list ticket and get the money refund. Then i went to the police station to file a complaint. The time was 12 in the night and the intention was just to file a complaint and i least expected the guy to be caught. But the police in our country works in strange ways and even they can perform wonders.

I told them that the guy was in his early twenties and he had medium height wore a yellow shirts, light trousers and had curly hair. That's all i told the police about the guy. So after that i went back to the platform and also talked to a couple of railway officials who promised to get me a ticket to delhi for the next day. So the idea was that i join the illustrious gang of guys who had spend a night on the platform. Then get the tickets for the earliest train possible and leave off for delhi after filing the FIR.

On the platform giving me company were hundreds of others and "Angels & Demons" the book Dan Brown wrote before he became famous with "the Da Vinci Code". While I was reading the book I felt that people were looking at me. Initially I felt that it was perhaps a figment of my imagination but then soon I found some really interesting twist to the story. A really scared guy in yellow shirt came to me for confirmation that he wasn't the guy who had duped me. Sort of shocked I agreed and told the police that this wasn't the guy. The time was around ten minutes to two and the police told me that there were two other suspects. Within ten more minutes my guy was caught and he was behind bars and soon I had my money returned to me.

Within two hours with vaguest of clues the police had actually caught the guy. It was an admirable act had it not been for the things that followed. Now that the guy was arrested I suggested that an FIR should be lodged. The officer in charge evaded response and he asked for my father's name and permanent address. The mere process of writing the address on a piece of paper was intimidating. To add to that he kept on suggesting that the entire fault was mine since I should have gone to the official counter. I had the urge to tell him that had I got tickets in the normal fashion I would have never gone to the tout in the first place. But I kept quite. Guess I had chickened out.

As soon as I got out of the police station I was surrounded by the other thugs and those who had helped me arrest the guy. They urged that I should press charges against their fellow thug. It was interesting, cos all those who seemed to want to help me seem to suggest that I should go and file a complaint. And that included the thugs, policemen like Mr Arya and the railway employees.

Then I went back to my reading place and I resumed my reading and now the people who were staring at me seemed more important and occasionally they had the police with them. And at around five I got 2nd AC tickets to delhi. Even now I had to pay a small bribe but what was most interesting was that I got the tickets for the training leaving at around 7.

And now every half hour a guy used to come over ostensibly to inquire about my well being. I feel the purpose was more to ensure that I didn't file an FIR. They kept on telling me things including how inconvenient it would be to file and FIR and how I would have to come over again and again. I called up my father and told him that the guy was caught. I didn't tell the other details and he was insistent on me coming back.

I did come back. And the first feeling was that of having chickened out. Rajan the Tamilian gave another call just to chk if everything had gone well. I felt good and headed back to delhi. But I also felt bad that I didn't quite do what I had set out for. I mean I could very well have continued in the previous day's train on my waiting ticket and yet I came just to file an FIR. But that's exactly what I didn't do.

I guess a long time has passed since that night that I spend on the platforms of mumbai central. Guess the guilt about how I ran off has also come down. I take comfort from that the fact that I saw things that you normally don't. And more importantly if faced with a similar situation in future perhaps I would be more assertive and perhaps results would be much more proactive. So on that note I end this piece. In my next edition I would be writing about my trip to lahore and the twenty five odd bees that bit me ;)

Till then take care and njoi.
Shijo

Little Ali wins the Race

2005-05-16T02:29:00.000+08:00

After that the trip had its usual share of fun. We went to quite many locations. We even had a paddle boat race which i lost to tiny tots Little Ali and Lanky Aman :( I would love to believe that the boat that we had was defective but whatever the matter of the fact is that we lost :-(
Then it was back to bangalore and before i left i bought a bottle of coke each for my cousins and you should have had a look at my Aunt's expressions. She was as if how dare you give my kids that bottle of pesticides :-)

In fact its pretty hilarious the way my family has reacted to my joining coke. Actually the first reaction was from my father who seemed utterly confused by my decision to sell coloured water. My cousin's first reaction was: Oh now you gonna sell pesticides :-))

Then the way back to bangalore was painful to say the least. I was sitting right in the front and to add to my woes the guys were playing an extremely painful B grade malayam movie. And the movie was running at full blast. So neither could i sleep nor look away. To add to the excitment my brother who was sitting jus next to me commented that the movie was actually one of the worst he had seen in his entire life :( So after enduring the movie i was back in bangalore where my parents joined me for my convocation, details about which i will mention in my next mail. Also i will describe the adventures of spending a night out in mumbai central :D

take care
Shijo

My Father Da Great

2005-04-12T02:27:00.000+08:00

I have done some good travelling over the last few days. Soon after the placements i packed my bags and off i went to kerala. Kerala is where all my relatives are and being the fraud mallu i am i dont know half of them. So whnever you go to kerala you invariably have cribs about not having seen them all. So this time with the intention of having some private time i went there unannounced. The best part of an unannounced visit is tht its ends up being a small adventure. After 95 this is the second time that I am going to kerala and so my knowledge of kerala and the things there would make any fraud mallu proud :)) Then there is also the problem of the absolute lack of directions and bus boards that I can read :))

When it comes to travel my father is pretty meticulous. He would plan up everything in advance and invariably book the train tickets and take care of all the small things that you would never think of. But a guy who makes his plans at the last minute a bus is a much more suitable means of travel. And bus to kerala from Bangalore are there far too many.

The Volvos and the private buses network that exists in the south and mumbai region is something thts pretty different from what happens in delhi. In fact some of these buses can help you reach your destination quicker than a train and additionally you have the luxury of last minute booking and much more flexibility.

Whenever I go to a place I am not very familiar with, I usually make it a point to find someone who does. The advantage of doing that is that you can then enjoy your travel and all worries of getting to your destination automatically rests on that poor soul :)) And in the event you get hold of someone interesting then you also get some company to kill time :))

That day I felt that I was doubly lucky for I found this law grad who seemed interesting and he was to go to the same location as I was heading to. The friendly guy assumed full responsibility for me and it looked like a hassle free journey ahead. So we stood chatting and waiting for the bus to come. In the mean time a bus to kerala came and stopped right in front of us and we continued our chat for my friendly guy assured me that our bus was yet to come. Jus before that bus was about to leave I realized that our buses were different and I managed to get into the right one just in the nick of time. Suddenly I realized the wisdom of my father’s preference for trains. When you are on the right platform you have little risk of having different trains with the same name going to the same location and leaving at the same time :))

As if that was not enough I was further subjected to a three hour long Malayalam movie. There was a time when I felt that mallu movies were far better when it comes to plot and substance but this one with its twists and turns could beat any b grade bollywood fare hands down. Neways I reached the nearest town to my destination around 5:30 and I suddenly realized the number of kids who are related to me is quite large and with kids a relative coming after a long time is like a santa with a pack of goodies. So at 6 in the morning I went around the place looking for something for the kids. It took me a hour walk before I could actually find a shop with some chocolates. So with about 40 chocolates in the bag I spent another half hour to get back to the main bus stand.

Finally when I got into my bus I thought about the fact that no one in kerala knew about my impending visit. Was kinda expecting my uncles and aunts to blast me off for coming like this unannounced. So I started thinking of saving myself from the impending encounter with the elders in the family. Its then that I realized that my attempt to get hold of the chocolate was an unintended master stroke. For one it ensured that my relatives wouldn’t have to be woken up from their beds and then with the chocolates I was sure of having the support of the kids :D
So I entered my house with apprehensions but what followed was one of the biggest anti climaxes of my life. My aunt opened the door and her first expression converted into hindi was, “Tu phir aa gaya” :))

The next few days was a whirlwind tour of the kerala. I met as many relatives as humanly possible and by the time I left the place I had quite many of them pissed up with me for not having met them or for not spending enough time with them.

Almost all of them wanted to get me married off. Some like an Aunt of mine had some really insightful things for me on the same subject. Then being with the tiny tots and all those people was a special experience for someone like me whos spent most of life away from them.

Finally I was supposed to wind up and meet up with my brother in Munnar. Some of my friends from Bangalore were to join me there. Fortunately or unfortunately most of the places in kerala including munnar is out of coverage for most of the major telecom networks. So the plan was to have my brother as a conduit and call him up to update our status.

So on the designated day I called my brother to find out that he had his sports day that day and so wouldn’t be available till evening. Half concerned that my friends would be looking for me I took a fast bus to munnar and after traveling for almost three hours I reached munnar at around 11:30 only to find that there was no clue of those guys. I waited for another couple of hours and then gave up waiting. So went to this dhaba like structure and had some meal. It was tastiest meal I have had in a long time perhaps because of the experience I had earlier in the day.

After that I decided to do some stuff on my own. And I found out that there was this place called devikulum that was about 8 km from the place I was. The walk to that place was the walk of my life. I mean its hard to describe the sight from that walk. The road that I took was right in the middle of a hill. Above and below the road were unending tea gardens with rows of eucalyptus trees. These trees supposedly helps maintain the right amount of humidity for the tea plantation and their presence makes the whole place look heavenly. Adding to the beauty was a thin veil of mist and workers who were plucking the leaves.

I then took a walk inside one of the gardens and the experience was awesome. Then when I was back on the main road I heard something like a stream. But vegetation was so thick that I could hardly see a thing. So with a spirit of adventure I decided to go down and explore. I saw the stream and by the time I was back I had a cut on my body :))

It was then when I reached a cluster of shops and it was close to 4 almost six hours since I had entered munnar. I finally gave a call to my brother who informed the arrival of my friends ;) So from there I took a lift from a truck and within another half hour I was back in munnar town and met my brother. He took me to where my friends were staying and it so happened that my friends were in munnar since around 8 in the morning. And soon after reaching the place they happily dozed off without informing my brother :(

The rest of the day just went by. I spend a few hours jus walking with my brother. Among other things there was a rickety hanging bridge. We had some gud fun on that and while we were having our food my bro suggested of this place where we could do some trekking early next morning. The idea was tht my bro and me were to pick up the other five at around 6. But by the time we reached the guesthouse the only guy awake was little Ali.

Ali used to stay right next to my room and operations is his are of interest. He has internalized so much of operations that he had planned the entire holiday to the last minute. The perfection of his plans was equaled only by the reluctance of the others to stick to it.

The other guys in the group jus simply refused to wake up at six in the morning. So finally we had to leave all but ali behind and off we went for our tiny little walk. I had no clue about where we were heading, all my brother told me was that there would be some water so better be prepared. So in my infinite wisdom I took a rubber slipper from a friend of my bro.

And very soon we got started on what was to be a walk up a stream. The place was wet and thanks to the moss on the stones some of the parts was extremely slippery. My rexona hawai chappal made the task of walking quite an adventure ;) And soon enough I had a royal fall right in the middle of the stream. The entire thing was made more hilarious cos I had landed right on my butt and little ali made the profound observation that all this was due to my wearing the slippers. He went on to add that slippers were called hence cos they slip :D

The trip become even more interesting after that. The boulders became larger and path looked even more menacing. We reached a cave like structure from where the stream was passing. Finally we had to give up the walk cos the trail was becoming slightly difficult and without proper gear progress was dangerous.

The Coke Side of Life

2005-03-20T03:21:00.000+08:00

Phew tht was long back and now everything about IIM is near its end. The only thing left is the convocation when i will get my degree :))

The most interesting thing that has happened in the days that passed by is that i have got a job and my boss would be mightly upset if you guys drink pepsi :)) For the first nine months i would be on a training stint involving a comprehensive bharat darshan program. I would spend some time selling the crates and finally after the training period is over i would be give an Area Sales Mgr responsibility. Its going to be very different from the things that i have done till now but i guess its going to be good fun :))

Then have been seeing a lot of movies. The first movie is called Page 3. Very well made stuff. The story is perhaps an exaggeration of what happens in reality but still very much worth a see. Some quotes for you guys

QUOTE

sach se bhagna aasan hota hai magar uska saamna karna mushkil hota hai
Sacchai ko batana zaroori hai lekin woh kis tarah se batai jaye yeh samajna usse bhi zyada zaroori hai. Imaandaari ke saath samajdari ka hona bhi zaroori hai
we have to be in the system to change the system

UNQUOTE

Then had read a book called the monk who sold his Ferrari. The guy who wrote it must be an MBA cos the book is essentially a cut paste effort. The end result is a sambhar curry of inspirational quotes. So if you wanna read please don’t tell me later that I didn’t warn you :) In any case some interesting quotes from the book

QUOTE

Stop judging events as either postive of negative. Rather, simply experience them, celebrate them and learn from them. Every event offers you lessons. these little lessons fuel your inner and outer growth. Without them, you would be stuck on a plateau. . . . . . . . Stop being a prisoner of the past and become the architect of your future.
Begin to live out of the glory of your imagination not your memory.
With one eye fixed on the destination, there is only one left to guide you along the journey.
everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality.
There is noting noble about being superior to some other person. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self. purpose of life is a life of purpose.
time slips through our hands like grains of sand, never to return.

UNQUOTE

Apart from reading and movies I have continued to keep up with my running. I can manage a few kilometers and one fine day I heard of a 10 km run being organized near our campus. There was a participation fee so I said I should chk out inside the campus before I go for the real thing and guess what I actually completed the trial run. So with great confidence I went ahead for the real thing and actually completed it :)

Sleepless in Bannerghatta

2005-01-11T03:00:00.000+08:00

Since my last mail i have gained another couple of inches sideways and a few kilos at all the wrong places. With such an amazing performance i tend to think tht the time I spent with my good old bed was better. At least you didnt gain so much so fast :(

A couple of nice things happening out here, will take it one at a time. First this is the chillest term at IIM B. Actually i have no work to do and for sometime it started to bite. I took to my usual vocation of sleeping but again that didnt take me too far. In fact the other day i actually got up at around 3 and suddenly decided that i dont feel like sleeping any more. So got out of the room and suddenly realised that I wasn’t the only one faced with the problem.

I have a talent of sniffing out food from the most amazing of places. And I am most effective during my now infamous nocturnal visits around some of the neighbouring rooms. But that day my talents failed me. My neighbour Gauravjeet aka lolo didn’t have a shred of anything edible in his room. My disappointment was somewhat comforted by the fact that I wasn’t alone in feeling so insomniac. Such instances in campus at not very uncommon. The usual thing that follows is a few movie downloads and till at least late early morning.

I never kinda had a liking for those hefty bullets bikes. I always thought that those were rather downmarket products. And I used to think hard as to why people actually found those things interesting. Then some time a few years back I had one of my classmates spend a fortune for one of those bikes and I was like how can someone be so idiotic.

My preference for things sleeker like the pulsar would have remained that way had it not been for the unexpected developments in my immediate neighbourhood. Our dear old lolo singh bought a thunderbird for himself. The second hand machine actually cost him a small fortune. Neways this huge giant of bike has somehow helped change some of the biases about large Bullet like bikes.

So as I was telling you it was early in the morning when the sunrise was a few hours away and here I was with lolo agreeing on the fact that we were sleepless in IIMB. So we decided to do something about it and what we did was take a trip to Bannerghatta National Park. The road to that place is bad is an understatement. We had cars moving at around 10km on an empty road cause any faster than that would have definitely caused some harm to the car.

I always felt that speed is not something that I am particularly afraid of. But after that morning ride on bannerghatta road I stood corrected. Lolo jeet singh was riding pretty fast and I still consider it to be a miracle that the speedometer never crossed the hundred km mark. At least five times during the trip j lo asked if we had crossed the 100 mark and I had to disappoint him by stating that it had jus crossed the 95 mark.

Riding at that speed on a good road I am sure would be a challenge but on those roads its nothing but an experience of a lifetime. At those speeds a normal bike would have been flying a few meters above ground level but the thunderbird was firmly grounded. The only thing not in its place was my jacket that was fluttering all over the place. As if that was not enough my cellphone which was firmly tucked inside a pocket decided to take a jump out of the moving bike. As if this was not enough my wallet decided to do an encore jus to remind us tht we are being too fast ;)

Entry into a national park at around 5 is not tht difficult a task. We took the bike into the place where none were allowed and we planned to sit there and wait for the sunrise. In the pitch darkness when all tht was visible were the stars and a few bulbs far far away. The immediate surroundings was pitch dark and without the headlights absolutely nothing was visible.

Its was just then that a couple shooting stars whizzed past us. Jus as I was thinking wht to wish we heard noises. The immediate response was J Lo back on the bike ready to buzz off. I tried to reason with him and tell him that the sunrise was indeed a great scene. But then I realised tht he was not in a state of mind for rational reasoning and so we headed home through the potholes of bannerghatta road.

I was pretty disappointed for not being able to see the sunrise but what was more disappointing was that in our haste to leave the place we didn’t even properly determine what the source of the noise. We did discuss the matter later and our guess is tht it nothing but a harmless hippo or at the most an elephant. And I guess its best not to talk about the state of mind of that nice little animal.

Sangee and Shrut

2004-12-22T20:41:00.000+08:00

Dec 22,

This mail would have reached you guys a bit earlier tht the date whn it will eventually reach you. But its me who's in charge and i find new ways of procrastinating :))

On Dec 10 or sometime close to tht i had written something and the floppy tht recorded it all got corrupted. And here i am writting tht all over again. Amongst the many things tht i wrote included a section on some of the nicest friends i have.

The first one's Shruti and she's actuary and during diwali she had nothing good to do. So she decided tht she’ll come to Bangalore and meet up with all her Bangalore based friends, to be more precise three of them including myself. She was supposed to stay at her cousin’s place and meet up with a common friend who’s doing nothing at a pharma company.

But then uncertainty is a part of our modern lives and it was no different for our small reunion. Her cousin suddenly had to go delhi, the other lazy bugger buzzed off to Kolkotta and I had to start work on a submission that I had not started work on. So the poor girl was left all alone at her cousin’s place. Under normal circumstances she would have blasted us out of our roofs but this time she jus didn’t say anything. Shrut jus want to tell you that I am really sorry for the messup and I will make up for it one day :)

The other person is Sangeeta and she was with me in HCL. This is someone who is a big time chatterbox and can irritate the hell out of you. In hindsight she can also bring life into whatever she does and that’s what made her so lovable. Now she is abroad and the last time I talked to her she wasn’t quite her old self. I don’t know wht responsible for this change but one thing I know for sure is that I prefer the previous version of our good old Sangee.

Ending the mail hoping tht she does get back to her old irritating self
:) Take careShijo

My father's mallu wish

2004-12-17T20:34:00.000+08:00

Dec 17,
My father had some interesting things to speak about mallu gurls. He started off by saying that marriage needs more than the efforts of two individuals and a mallu gurl would somehow help rebuild my ties with kerala. How much of all this is applicable to me is quite debatable but sure all this did take some of my thinking time.

Mass reduction at its worst (Contd...)

2004-12-08T20:33:00.000+08:00

Dec 8,

My mass reduction initiative is in full swing. As a result of all that exercises i have gained a few kilos and a couple of inches sideways. It so happened that while back in bangalore i worked hard with my cycle. But then after each round of exercises i couldnt resist the call of my mess. To make matters worse i invariably end up taking some rest which usually extends up to a few days.

Anyways i have told myself in very clear terms that enough is enough and i better get back in shape. So as soon as i reach back bangalore i would be getting back to my exercising ways. Will keep you guys updated about any progress i make :)

For all those who dont know by now i have landed up a job with my summer company. For the next few years i would definitely have to work in the corporate sector and repay my loan and all. But i am seriously asking myself whether continuing in the typical corp job would be the right thing to do.

While dabbling with things here and there and after meeting a few guys i suddenly have felt this urge to do something really different. I want to do some photography and perhaps get into documentary film making. Will keep you guys updated if something really turns up.

I wrote the last few para a few hours ago. And now its the early hours of the day. Jus some time ago i went in for a post mid nite jog with an intention that i have already described :)) Hope to keep up with the good work :)

Last term i had taken up a subject called Political Economy. The guy who took up the course was called Rajeev Gowda. You may hear more about him in the papers as this guy actually is a potential congress candidate from the South Bangalore Lok Sabha seat. However thats not why i am writing about him. Despite the promise and the high expectations i had from the subject it was a big bore. All i did in his class was snore like a pig. Though there were some interesting incidents (in fact one). Once he invited a young MLA to the class who spent 45 minutes to say that he is not responsible for what happens in the system. He spent some time to describe the fact that he is an amazing thing and in fact came pretty close to being God's gift to Indian Politics. As a parting comment he said that if things are to change then the all the people apart from himself have to do something.

Unfortunately for the young MLA the other invitee to that class of Rajeev Gowda was Trilo. Soon after the MLA's exit from the stage he said, "If you cant do anything then what are you doing in here as an MLA. You should go home and sit there". Then he continued with a tirade against the politicians.

His performance could have put our angry young man Mr Bacchan to shame. In half an hour he used passion, facts and opinions to bring life to an otherwise boring Gowda session. He had some interesting anecdotes and spared none and those who faced his wrath included our nice sardarji PM. Btw Trilo is another professor at the institution. He more of a social activist than a professor and in case any one of you have any politician as a friend then ask him to please avoid this gentleman :))

My take home from that lecture is quite interesting. I don't consider Mr Gowda or the MLA or our PM as bad individuals. Its just that a politician tries to please everyone. In the process he ends up making so many compromises that he loses his credibility.

Coming back to Mr Gowda I think his was the preferred class for anyone who lacked some sleep. Now I don't mean to say that our Gowda is bore. In fact he is quite an interesting guy. He was a prof at some Ivy league college. And he won or was the runner up at BBC mastermind competition. But the fact is that during the class he was just plain boring and there was no coherence to his discussions.

And all I did for the entire term was absolutely nothing. But the wily politician had his own way of getting back at poor me. He has given us a take home end term. And I guess I have read more for this take home assignment cum end term than I ever did during the entire course. So all those who are in delhi now know why I havnt been able to meet you all ;)

Then the next funny thing concerns my dear old parents. Some two years back my mother had come to me with a marriage proposal :)) and my reply made her avoid the topic for almost two years. A couple of months ago she went to kerala and with my aunt's help she again bought up the topic. But so learned am I in the tricks of her trade that she actually gave up in her attempts to get me married :))

I had considered the matter closed but unfortunately for poor me my father got this brilliant idea of getting me married. So a couple of days back he came to me and said. Son I have something to tell you. I wont force anything on you but there is something I want to tell you. You are free to marry anyone but YOU SHOULD ONLY MARRY A MALAYALI GIRL. :)) I have done a royal act of ignoring the topic and I guess he wont raise the issue again. But in process he had me thinking.

Mass reduction at its worst (Contd...)

2004-10-06T04:10:00.000+08:00

Oct 5,

That was a long time ago when I wrote all those things. The situation has changed little and the term regular still needs to used with great discretion. But jus for the sake of completion lemme do the honours and tell you abt wht happened on that fateful day in July.

It so happened tht this METRO store is in the outskirts of the town. We took an auto and reached the place and as intended bought a cycle. But what was unintended was the fact that the cycle refused to get inside the auto. So poor me was left with no option but to cycle all the way back.

But then when something goes wrong the hindi saying, “Jab deta hai to chappad phad ke deta hai” becomes so true. So as if cycling all the way to the campus was not enough I ended up with a flat tire even before I started the journey. And to add to it I happened to be in a city that sleeps early. So all the guys running a cycle repair shop on way just about closed their shops before I could avail of their services. Poor me so had to walk the cycle back to the campus. A few additional hilarious things happened but I don’t think you would need any additional proof of my ability to get into all possible interesting situations :)) Another reason why I wouldn’t want to talk about those great things is because I would want you to run your imagination wild and I am sure with some persistence you could come close to imagining wht I went through tht day.

Mass reduction at its worst

2004-07-04T04:08:00.000+08:00

July 3,

I always knew that i was a bit gifted in mass terms. But the enormity stuck me when i went to delhi. My mother looked at me and said you have gained a lot of weight. This comment came from a person who usually used to insist that "Beta tume kuch kha nahi rahe ho". She told me this when i met her in the first week of apr. Had things been normal i would have forgotten everything about it and resumed on my mass enhancing activities. But then my mother intervened again and she sent me a very sweet letter. She said, "Son you should consider going to the gym".

Guess i took the comment a bit to my heart and i started a regime of regular exercises. Now some of you may raise some doubts about the term "Regular". If you have any such doubts then i insist on using my discretion on the semantics and the use of the term. Since most of you wont be interested in the mundane technical details i would go ahead and describe how the matter of downsizing is given every bit of importance it deserves.
So with all seriousness i decided to take the matter beyond the gym and decided that i should get hold of a cycle. Now we as an institution have some relations with METRO (a cash and carry discount store), and poor me decided to leverage some benefits out of the same.

Competition

2004-06-21T04:07:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,
June 20,

We have a message board and in the jokes sections we had an interesting post by a mallu who happens to be a fellow IIMian based in Ahemedabad. Some back one of his posts called the "The Travails of Single South Indian men of conservative upbringing" or "Why we don't get any..."

Now i have full faith on the power of the internet for i have been forwarded the mail by no less than three non IIM guys and then this mail found its way to our message board. I wont go to anymore details but just want to say that i have some guy to look upon for inspiration. Anyone of who aspires for some inspiration can have a look at the following site:
http://sidin.blogspot.com/

Me in Mumbai

2004-06-15T04:03:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,
June 14,

Long time no see. Thts been the case with me and you all (More correctly with most of you guys)

A couple of days back a friend of mine, send me a mail and I replied. My reply was such that he remarked that i have changed. After thinking for sometime i replied that i have indeed. Lots of things of that would make me someone very different from the guy you all know. But deep within i guess i have become more of what i always was. Defining what that is would be quite a task and perhaps I wouldnt even be able to express to anyone what i am feeling with myself. But as another friend said perhaps somewhere i am becoming more comfortable with myself.

The last one year has been pretty inactive. Or if I was to use the correct words lemme say that its not been as good as i would have wished. And the last two months with the summerz in bombay was gud. The best part was perhaps the fact that I met some amazing individuals. Some of these guys in some ways have impacted me. Perhaps they have changed me in ways they don’t know themselves. Will talk about these great guys sometime soon.

The company I worked in was located in Andheri and i stayed in thane. A normal local/bus ride would have definitely taken a couple of hours. But fortunately we were provided transport and the one hour bus ride through the expressway was a time for sweet dreams :)) I was supposed to do a project on Web Marketing. As soon as I entered the marketing department the second in command gave a very interesting definition of my scope of activities. He gave me a lot of fundas about what I had to do, a term he used quite liberally was ROI and he also wanted me to look into the new initiatives that Patni could look into :))

The fun actually began once I got out his room. He had given me two names and the first person I talked gave a clearer definition of what I was supposed to do. He asked me to study the Company website (which was already optimized ) as part of the WEB MARKETING PLAN. The experience that takes the cherry was my meeting with my actual project mentor. With great pride he told me that it was he who had defined the project for the summer interns. And with even greater pride he stated that my project was a fraud and he had no clue as to what I was supposed to do and I could go ahead and define my own scope (Euphemism for do what you want :))

But despite all that I would term the last two months to be a great experience. I was mostly involved in the day-to-day operational aspects. My project report was something that I actually weaved out of the so many tiny winy little things that I did out there. But the most important thing was that after a very long time I actually had a nice time. The guyz at patni and the trainees at Thane actually helped have a nice time. As the cliché goes I also made some friends for life.

Most of the guys who did their summerz at Bombay now know a lot about the chowpatties and the churchgates and what not. Sadly for me I jus know a few places other than the ones I jus mentioned. But now I do know something about the area around Baga beach in goa, Matheran, daman and shirdi. :))

We went to these places during the weekend break and Goa was the best. We did everything that could be done in that short period. For the first time I actually went deep into the waves and despite my worst fears I did not drown. (Though I did manage something quite close). Did paragliding and took photos from the top. Hired a bike and a kinectic and went around the place. I also rode the kini and needless to say I bashed it. Being the easter weekend we had some nice crowd. The place around the Baga beach has some great restaurants with some not so great prices. There was this place with some huge lobsters. Looked very appetising so went in with the intention of finishing it off but then the price tag of 600 bucks made me think otherwise. Despite all this we did have some great seafood. Sharks and some interesting continental fare, guess for the first I actually liked cream with seafood. It was also during this trip that I actually exited from the teetotaler stage of my life. They are so many other things that we did and some time soon when I get the photographs scanned I will send you guyz the link.

Somewhere in the middle of may I was getting a bit bugged up. For one my project was getting nowhere and there were a couple of things that were in my mind. All in all the last to last statement was a bit of an understatement of how shitty I was feeling. And then all of a sudden some of my friends made a plan to go to Daman. The plan was ready and I was the last to know. Somehow that made me feel even more pathetic. Under normal circumstances I would withdrawn but luckily for me I went along with them and had a ball of a time.
We hired a taxi for a couple of days and on the way to daman we went to a veg restaurant. But being hungry we jus ordered something. The palak curry and the dal was perhaps one of the best I have ever had. We continued on the drive to daman and the road is one of the best you would ever see anywhere in the country both in term of the quality and the view.

Daman per se was a bit of a disappointment. The sea water is pretty dirty and coming back from goa it proved to be a let down. Despite all that there were some nice things. There is the large and the smaller versions of daman and quite appropriately its called Nanhi and Moti daman :) Then we went to Moti Daman. Went for a small ferry ride from the Nahi to the Moti and finally we spent a few hours in the sea simply enjoying waves. The water was actually muddy and the shore was black. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have ventured near the place but somehow I jus let go and had one of the best times in my life.

Dead tired we got into the cab and started our journey back to the city. Deprived of sleep everyone including me had jus one thing in mind: Sleep. On any other day with that state of mind I would have easily slept like a log for hours together. But then you don’t always get what you wish for. The one person responsible for my subsequent sleep deprivation was Shruti. The other guys in the cab were fast asleep and so she happily turned her attention to me :( For the next couple of hours she went on to put all 24 hours new channels to shame. Initially I listened to her live commentary for the sake of being polite. I felt that it would be too rude to say that I am sleepy but then she went on with such gusto that I was left with no option but to force my eyes open and nod in once in a while. In the process of keeping my eyes open I actually started enjoying her commentary. Not that I listened to what she actually said. Its jus that she was so energetic that it was hard not to see her enthusiasm. The way she laughed, her smart ones and of course her stamina was actually inspiring.

Shruti works in a call center in mumbai. From my own experience I know that its far from easy. Apart from her regular work she has enrolled for a correspondence course in management. From what I hear she like most of us has a set of problems. But that doesn’t stop her from having a nice time and enjoying herself. And doing so she managed to bring a smile on a hard core bore like me :))

Inspired by guyz like her I decided that I want to change my life and loosen up. And as they say if you want something badly the whole world conspires to make it possible for you. In the last two months I have had the chance to be close to some very positive individuals in my life. Chief among them were Ravi, Jai and Nandini from Patni.

Ravi in some ways like me is one who is under performing. He’s been in patni for the last two years and feels that he is not getting as much as he should. However under normal circumstances you will never get to see this side of him. He is always cheerful and cracking smart ones. Part of the reason why I got a PPI from patni is Ravi himself. So many times when I was low his mere presence used to pep me up. I am only certain that Ravi will continue to make a positive impression with whomever he will come in touch with.

Another interesting person was Jai. This guy from IIT mumbai actually knows the entire railway time table by heart. As if this was not enough he is a part time psephologist who got it all wrong in the jus concluded Star New exit polls :) and additionally he handles the pre sales function at Patni. Once I was damn sleepy in the office and he happened to pass by. He said that he understood my state for in the not so distant past he too found himself in similar situations. But now he is full of energy as he has a good night’s sleep which became possible because he is content with the days work he puts in.

Another very nice person at Patni was Nandini. One of the remarks she made was that you need to focus on who is important and who is not. Doing that actually solves many of your problems. If I use some of the marketing gyan with Nandini’s comments I think I segmented people into important and not so important ones. I have always treated guyz equally. And the few exceptions like HCL when I was able to figure out who were important to me I was happy.

The last few months have had some great experiences and if I had nothing to do I guess I would have jus gone on and on. But from today my classes begin and I am yet to sleep. So its time for sign off.
Take care
Shijo

Anthills of Bangalore

2003-07-22T04:02:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,
July 21,

Its been sometime since i got rid of all excuses for not writing. But then there was the typical me holding me back.

To start off the best thing about bangalore is its weather. Its simply so different from the places that i have been to. I am told that the IIMB campus is amongst the very few campuses that don’t boast of air-conditioned facilities. And let me add that the guys out here have good reasons not to do so.

The campus is rather compact much smaller than say IITD but much larger than any of the delhi b-schools. There is still a lot of construction going on and the place has very thick green cover. Even the unplastered walls have thick creepers growing on them. In one sentence is the campus is simple and yet magnificent.

If you go into the woods you would find a few creatures here and there. In fact I once found a tiny snake. Then you would some giant anthills. If you come to the campus you would just find it difficult to miss them. The bangalore rains have smoothened the rough edges so the ant hills that you see here are rather different from the ones you see anywhere else.

Then another thing that caught my attention is the water tank. It has two levels and the upper level where the water is stored is out of bounds for most. Someone I know in this group told me some nice things and ever since I have been trying to get to the top level. The administration has not actually been helpful but will let you guys know when I reach the top.

The mess is an interesting place. In the morning just before the class there is always the rush. You can see many including yours truly stuffing things into their mouths. The most interesting thing about the place is the steel utensils. Kinda reminds of home. The food is decent but often you have to eat things that is absolutely bland. Some of the dishes esp the non veg is an insult to the south Indian taste buds.

Things are quite efficient. In fact you would see the same guys working whether its 7 in the morning or 2 in the night. Always ready with something or the other. Its simply amazing to see people working like that and yet if you don’t look carefully then chances are that you may miss them.

Then the profs out here are a big disappointment. Its my opinion that at any point of time if I suffer from any insomnia that I just have to attend a few of our stats classes. The guy whom we so fondly call Mr Trilo is so damn effective that it wont take more than five minutes for the effects to show up. Then there is Mr Rambo. The seniors had scared the shit out of most of us about him. Had given some scary sleepless nights to the poor souls. In fact they still tremble at the very mention of his name. I share somewhat similar sentiments about the character.
Then some of the guys out here are simply great. A few of them I knew from delhi itself. As some would remember there is mr Aalap Sharma who is actually in contention for the aditya birla scholarship. In fact some of my closest friends our here are contenders for that scholarship. Then there is Mr Aliasghar Bawa, Sumit, Gaurav and a few seniors like Das, mohley, Maroo and KK. Wont bore you with the details but somewhere down the lane I will speak more about these characters for I so very sure that these guys will come up with some thing worth mentioning.

Then there has been some problem with my yahoo messenger. I have not been logged on but some how it shows me online. So some of you who faced an unresponsive me can blame it on the network :)

Then coming to messenger I had been chatting with our dear old anit and we made every attempt to outflirt each other. While doing so there was this interesting thread of thoughts that came up in my mind. Its that I have changed so much in the last couple of years. Would be difficult to define it but in a nutshell I guess I have started to value relations more than ever before. Perhaps there are two people who are worth some mention: Kshitija and Shilpi. These two have changed me in ways that even they are not aware of.

Then part of the reason that I write this mail is because of those things that came up in my mind. Just wanted to tell you all that you are important and I value you all. And I find time to write you at 11 in the night when tomorrow I have an extremely important quiz and a marketing project that needs to be submitted.
So guys I apologize for not being punctual. Will make amends and let me say that I wont mind a few apologies from your side:)
Take care,
Shijo

Gyan session inspired by midnight wanderings

2003-06-19T04:59:00.000+08:00

June 18,

Some of you may be aware of my midnight wanderings. A few minutes back i was back from one such adventure. To spice up things let me tell you that the time is around three early morning.
My mother last evening told me that she wanted me to go to the batra hospital and since it was around 6:30 she wanted me to accompany her. Sensing nothing fishy in it i said ok and headed towards batra hospital in a rickety auto-rickshaw with my dear old mother.

She got of a few meters after the bus stop and instead of getting into the hospital she went into the orthodox chruch situated right next to the hospital. Some of you guys would say big deal! And actually it is because after 1996 i have been to the chruch only about a couple of times.

The church that we go to has a tuesday evening mass and it usually last till around after eight in the night. But even god was aware of my habits and he had the mass wrapped up within five minutes of my entering the church. Thus failed another of my mother's attempts to make a believer out of me.

A victory like this needs to be celebrated. So i saw my mother home and headed to PVR saket with nothing specific in mind. The time was around 7:40. Despite a weekday most of the shows were house full and I was left with no option but "bhoot" at around 11:15 in the night. So waited for more than three hours to see a movie. Kinda reminded me of the old days trying to get hold of a front stall ticket.

After the movie on my way back home and i heard people shout. Since it was kinda loud i thought that some kinda fight might have broken out. I went near and found about twenty people replacing the electric cables in the locality. Their war cries would have been louder that made by the Senegal after it defeated France.
As the cables inched ahead the guys got more fervent and the excitement was kinda infectious. I don't think I have seen happier men than those twenty odd. Later I got a few snaps and talked to some of the guys.
Most are farmers from Rajasthan. They've been bought by contractors to delhi and work on a daily wages basis. The contractors get the work from distcom and the telecom companies like BSES, tata indicom and such. Most get more money than what a DVB employee used to get and the productivity of these guys is much more.
I am also aware of a small group of workers settled near bhatti mines. Unlike the farmers from rajasthan that group actually worked in the stone quarries around delhi. Just a few kilometers from the chattarpur mandir these guys stay in the mud houses surrounded by abandoned stone quarries. Some of the things are rather primitive by delhi standards. Food is cooked using the firewood obtained from the nearby sanctuary. Since cutting wood is prohibited most of the women folks and the kids have to walk for hours together to collect the required amount of firewood.

I have not found any information about the santuary in question. But it extends from beyond tughlakabad and if you keep walking then you would eventually reach bhatti mines. The place has an extensive metal boundary netting. Further a lot of work has been done to provide the green cover that is present. The few groups of women told me that not long ago the entire place was a wasteland. Even here most of the inhabitants are from rajasthan. Despite living in mud houses the locality has access to electricity and most houses have tvs and fridges along with cow dung cakes plastered on the walls. They prefer the mud houses because it's inexpensive and rather cool compared to the concrete versions.

I was told that these guys are relatively well off. The settlement has got some kind of a legal validity. Most have ration cards, there is a govt health center nearby. Unlike this group the other one live in the temporary slums near batra hospital.

The most interesting interpretation of what I saw is that some kind of trickle down effect that is taking place. This effect is kinda unseen by most of us but its real. So your usage of some of the relatively high end services is actually creating opportunities for these people.

And the potential for such employment is huge. Say for example the power situation in delhi. As of today delhi gets far more power than it requires and yet we face power cuts. The reason is the sorry state of affairs of the delhi distribution network. According to a recent press report it would take at least three years to overhaul the system. And three years of employment for the farmers of rajasthan. And imagine if we work upon the distribution network for our entire country then the economy would save billions and employment would be generated for people at the grass root. And for people like us it would mean uninterrupted cheap power. For the MNCs and IT companies it would mean that they can do away with the investment on generators and UPS.
Just like power there are innumerable projects that have the potential to change the landscape of the lowest strata of the economy. The fly overs, the metro the golden quadrilateral are just a few examples.
Now if you look for the reasons behind this transformation then the obvious answer seems to be the private initiative. I agree but I feel that there is more to it.

If any one remembers travelling in a private blue line bus he would agree that private initiative in itself is not the solution. What needs to be done is to define clearly measurable goals for the private sector and then have proper regulators to ensure that these guys go about doing their job. Equally important is to ensure that these private operators make money. If they don't then the result will be similar to what we saw in the orissa power reforms and our good old delhi bluelines.

Now coming back to the power situation in delhi, things have improved because of the vision shown by some of the bureaucrats and the govt. These guys were able to formulate a policy that addressed the issue that I raised in the previous para.

I can kinda sense the growing yawns of those who have been able to reach this far. So let me wind up for the day and share a nice piece of new with you guys. At bangalore I wont have access to my own personal computer. So it may take some time before you all get a group one again. But in case I get any mails I will reply.
Take care,
Shijo

Me at it again

2003-06-13T04:56:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,
June 12,

Last sunday i went to chattarpur mandir. It is indeed a huge structure and rather different from your usual temples. One of my office colleagues Sangeeta is a regular at the temple so me and three others decided to join sangeeta at the temple before I leave delhi.

After the visit Sangeeta want to purchase a few things for her brothers. First she bought a shirt and took my suggestion for the shirt. After choosing the shirt I kinda pitied the guy who was going to wear a shirt chosen by yours truly. Anyway the gift was wrapped up and we had our lunch and you know what I again did not pay a single penny.

Then we went to the green park market and got a watch for Sangeeta's other brother. And as we were parting all the guys surrounded me and handed the shirt to me as a parting gift. It was quite a touching gesture and I will remember it for a long time to come.

Later in the day I went to the NSD with Shilpi the museologist to see a play titled "Janeeman". It was the first time I saw a play at the NSD. It was about a group of eunuchs, the power structures within the group. The dogma that the group represented. The new blood who come to become the part of the dogma and how they end up opposing it. The resulting anarchy and the hope for something better.

The best part of the play was that quite an amount of research went into the production but yet the narrative was gripping. And you could draw an interpretation that was perhaps more universal than a group of eunuchs it represented.

Then on Tuesday I was invited to a farewell party in IP extn. In the process of going to the place I reaffirmed the fact I have an amazing knack of complicating the simplest of things. Before leaving for the place I hurriedly tore of the paper containing the contact telephone number and called up the person. I jotted down the address in my memory as 61, Abhiman appts. I reached the bus stop and there was not a sign of the bus that I had to take.
I waited and waited and soon twenty minutes passed by like the water running down the leaking Jal Board pipes. And just as I was losing my patience I had 4 different buses of the same route. Then after more than an hour journey through some of the most interesting traffic jams I reached IP extension and it was then that the fun began. The people there told me that there was no Abhiman appts in IP extension and I seemed to have lost the telephone number. Since I remembered the 61 number I went around the place looking for all the appts that had its name starting with an 'A'. Within sometime I had checked out all the ah sounding appts in the vicinity. Some of these societies had no '61' number or it was occupied by someone not known by me.

Then I gave a call to my place hope against hope that I had got a call from them. As usual luck didn't favour me. So finally I got into a cyber café and got in touch with people in noida and mangalore to get hold of the telephone number. Finally got it and called up the place to realise that the place I had to visit was called Kailash appts.
My kerala visit has been cancelled and so I am stuck in delhi for a few more days. In these few days I will go around finalising my loan which has met a few more roadblocks. And in the time that is left will try completing some of the books that I planned to read months ago.

Then I must say that you should not judge a book by its cover or its author. I regret spending 200 bucks for NDTV Vikram Chandra's "Srinagar conspiracy".

Then I also happened to read Fountainhead. Some of the ideas are interesting. But somehow I felt that the book was too opinionated for my liking. Anyway check out the following excerpts which I found to be rather interesting.
***
"It's said that the worst thing one can do to a man is to kill his self-respect. But that's not true. Self-respect is something that cant't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it."
***
"I like to see a man standing at the foot of a skyscraper," he said. "It makes him no bigger than an ant - isn't that the correct bromide for the occasion? The God-damn fools! It's man who made it - the whole incredible mass of stone and steel. It doesn't dwarf him, it makes him greater than the structure. It reveals his true dimensions to the world. What we love about these buildings, Dominique, is the creative faculty, the heroic in man."
***
"The worst thing about dishonest people is what they think of as honesty," he said. "I know a woman who's never held to one conviction for three days running, but when I told her she had no integrity, she got very tight-lipped and said her idea of integrity wasn't mine; it seems she'd never stolen any money."
***
"It takes two to make a very great career: the man who is great, and the man - almost rarer - who is great enough to see greatness and say so."
***
"I am Gail Wynand, the man who has committed every crime except the foremost one: that of ascribing futility to the wonderful fact of existence and seeking justification beyond myself."
***
"The basic trouble with the modern world," said Ellsworth Toohey, "is the intellectual fallacy that freedom and compulsion are opposites. To solve the gigantic problems crushing the world today, we must clarify our mental confusion. We must acquire a philosophical perspective. In essence, freedom and compulsion are one. Let me give you a simple illustration. Traffic lights restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish. But this restraint gives you the freedom from being run over by a truck. If you were assigned to a job and prohibited from leaving it, it would restrain the freedom of your career. But it would give you freedom from the fear of unemployment. Whenever a new compulsion is imposed upon us, we automatically gain a new freedom. The two are inseparable. Only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total freedom.
***
( The entire book of the fountainhead is saying something contrary to what is expressed in the previous paragraph. Toohey is the anti hero who glorifies all forms of collectivism because he knows that only under such forms will he, as the best representative of the mass, attain prominence and distinction, impossible to him on his own merits which do not exist. The idol-crusher par excellence Toohey is an organic enemy of all things heroic)
***

Goodbye delhi

2003-06-04T04:54:00.000+08:00

June 3,

On 30th I had resigned from my company. In some ways it was unsettling. Here I was getting comfortable with the setup. And now I am getting into something about which I have little idea.

I know I would miss the whole gang. Jus hope that I get a group in bangalore that is as good as it was in noida.

Then its actually adieu from me for sometime. It will be sometime before I write again. I go to kerala on the 12th and from there its hi bangalore. During this one month period I probably wont have access to a computer. But I promise to update you all as soon as possible about the spicy curries and the tea gardens I visit in kerala.

Take care,
Shijo

Shoili Aunty's marriage

2003-06-03T04:53:00.000+08:00

June 2,

Then its not Sudi alone who is doing something really out of the way. Some who comes quite close is Shilpi. She intends to do a PG program in Museuology. It took me some time to get the spellings and the pronunciation right.
She's already done a couple of PGs and intends to add a few more to her resume. Apart degree collection she proof-reads huge manuscripts and kinda manages a publishing house. After doing all that she goes on and does some broadcasting work with AIR and she is part of a few theater groups.

There are other things that she does but the reason for her inclusion today is that she is a big prankster. Something like the devil behind the face of a saint. Among her recent pranks was getting Shoili married without the bride getting to know about it. There was another character who completes the conspiracy. And that's Rahul. This fellow is a natural entomologist who like shilpi collects degrees as a hobby. For starters he did his pg in management and then soon after enrolled for two more pg courses. Along with all that he sells cars. And when he gets time he tries to make a fool of everyone around.

Now that I know this chap for almost six years I started feeling that he was couldn't play a trick on me. And that's exactly when he proved me wrong. Realising that we had kinda smartened up to his pranks he used the services of Shipi aunty and got shoili married.

Probably some of you would say that I am getting rather personal in a mail that shouldn't have anything personal in it. Well the justification of the two conspirators is that we are rather getting too serious with our jobs and once in a while we should make fools of the people around.

Well that's what we did on the 28th of last month. Late in the evening many of my college mates met up and the conspiracy was unearthed. Further we got nostalgic about old times and had a nice time. Five in the group will or have already left delhi and the others are busy building their careers. Perhaps it will be sometime before we meet up again like this.

But we were not worried that we were moving off but happy that we met again. We were happy to know that there are people who care about us and who would be there when we need them.

Benoy and Sudi

2003-05-27T04:51:00.000+08:00

May 26,

On saturday night we went to the Bangalore Alumni meet. There were some well known guys out there including Pepsi's Rajiv Bakshi. But the guy who caught my attention was Benoy, an IIT/IIM guy who was once my classmate. He's done rather well for himself. He's got one of the best jobs on offer. But the reason i mention him is because at a point of time I kinda disliked him. Its not that he did anything wrong or said anything wrong. Its just that somewhere we didn't get along quite well.

Over the years we hardly met but i thought of him often. Partly because he was doing rather very well and partly because i never disliked anyone so much and all that without a reason. Often you meet people and you say that this guy is not quite likable. But after a few meetings you suddenly realise that he was perhaps quite a decent chap. With Benoy it took me quite some time to come to that conclusion.

I dont know if he remembers my name but at party he spent some good time talking to me. After he left some of his batchmates told me some very flattering things about him. Not about the things he has done but the kind of person he's become. Jus hope someday people think about me in the same way.

Then at an IIM meet you would normally expect super duper guys with lots of airs about themselves. But the reality is quite so different. The two years has had an impact on most of them. As someone said it was like a rude awakening to reality. A reality that is so very different from what we would normally associate with such an environment. But the end result is that they are proud of the experience and most would agree that it had forced them to redefine their value systems and in the process have become better human beings.

I guess you all have had enough of IIMs from me so let digress to talk about the more mundane things in life. Sudipto is one of the interesting chaps in this list. Not many of you would know him but Anit does ;) Actually after her now famous mail sudipto made it a point to make a personal reply to her. The consequence was rather hilarious and this time the message was so clear that we didn't need a punjabi interpreter. Well coming to back to sudipto he's has perhaps the most unusual resume in this list. He is an engineer who sells shrimps, prawns and lobsters and along with it does insurance policies. ;) Now this fellow is a huge hairy monster who's quite gentle with the people around him. But once in a while when he throws his threatening glances around and you are left with no option but to obey.

I write about him because when I was without job I didn't have the courage to do what he does today. For an engineer to do what he is doing today is perhaps a big let down for some. But for me its like creating opportunities where none existed. I admire him for what he is doing now. Sudi is perhaps taking a big risk in the conventional sense. But who knows what this could lead to.

IIM C

2003-05-12T04:45:00.001+08:00

Hi Guys,
May 11,
A few days back i called the place of one of my friends Shoili. A male voice that sounded like her brother answered that she wasnt home. Since I felt I knew the chap i simply asked him "aur bhai kya haal hai?". Somehow he seemed to be shocked to be questioned liked that. Perhaps he didnt recall me so I offered more and told him that i was Shoili's friend. At that he seemed to recognise me and remarked that i must be from IIMC. Kinda happy that he knew my getting into the IIMs I went on to correct him that I was joining "IIM bangalore". The full significance of the statement hit me only a few moments later when in response to my constants blabber about myself he remarked, "You must be wanting to talk to my daughter".

And the daughter Shoili had done her PG from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication.

Euphoria before the IIMs

2003-04-28T04:43:00.000+08:00

Apr 27,

Yesterday I attended a party organized by the IIM guys and they went on about the fun it is to be on campus. You have parties at least twice a month and between the parties you slog. The work load they say is much less out in bangalore so at most you have to spend about 50 hrs without sleep. Somehow i felt cheered when they poured gyan on me that this was at least 30 percent less than what they do at the other IIMs.

Before the party it was egroups. We were added to the group and within a span of a few days my mailbox was full. I mean i got roughly four hundred mails in a span of about seven days. Reading the mails was enough to give creeps to the lesser mortals like me. The discussions ranged from Ayn Ryan, Deepak Chopra to computers and loans. There is also one chap who makes documentaries as a hobby.

When you read such things you sometimes have this feeling about how you will perform against these Goliaths. For sometime I guess I was rather conscious about these things. But I guess I am over it now and feeling rather upbeat about the whole thing.

I am going to miss a few things about HCL. There are hundreds of not so nice things about the company. But my experience with the company has been rather positive. There have been moments when there was some element of tension. But there were also moments when I was felt happy, much better than i ever was.

Had some very nice and friendly guys around me. Just hope that bangalore treats me the same way.

Shaadi Season

2003-04-23T04:41:00.000+08:00

Apr 22,

The last few weeks had been tied up with tying up the loans and taking care of other such formalities. I was in for quite a shock when I realised that many of the banks actually did not have any educational loan facility. At least the guys at ICICI and HDFC banks dont know the existence of such a scheme even if it does exist. The experience at the PS banks was a bit different. They were not as friendly as the private banks but I guess were far more professional. As of today I guess I will be taking a loan from PNB and will most probably carry an interest rate that will be a notch lower than the official interest rates.

I am 24 yrs + and so are most of my friends. What it means is that most of you will be losing your single status soon. Last thursday I saw my dear friend Rahul losing his Bachelors. So i guess in the coming days my mails will have a new reader. The names Kusha and I must say Rahul is quite a lucky bum.

The good friday day was quite an amazing day. Got a surprise treat from my colleagues and a bunch of flowers from two good looking females. You guys should have been there. Moving around with the red roses and the good looking females was . . . I guess I will leave the rest to your imagination.

Then coming back to the question of marriage another one in the groups getting knocked off the eligible list. Shoili of all characters is getting hold of a bakra and I feel like sob sob (pun intended).

Gladiator and Nitin

2003-03-06T05:29:00.000+08:00

I have been seeing a lot of movies. The following is an interesting excerpt from the gladiator. Its the scene just before the old king is killed by his son.

QUOTE
"you wrote to me once listing the four chief virtues: wisdom, justice, fortitude and temperance. As i read the list i knew i had none of them but i have other virutes, father.
Ambition that can be a virtue when it drives us to excel.
Resourcefulness, courage perhaps not on the battlefield, but there are many forms of courage.
Devotion to my family to you but none of my virtues were on your list. Even then it was as if you didnt want me for your son
I searched the faces of the god for ways to please you to make you proud. One kind word one full hug while you breat me to your chest and held me tight would have like the sun on my heart for a thousand years. What is this in me that you hate so much? all i ever wanted was to live up to you father!"
UNQUOTE

Quite revealing indeed. Before i tell you more about the context of these thoughts let me tell you about two different discussions that i had in the past. The first one involved the one of my friend's sister. She said that things like faith, values and such have their foundation laid by sources outside your own self. Much later one of my co-worker in the company expressed the opinion that ultimately what counts is your own self.

Both the arguments have their own merits but at the stage I am at present the former has played a more important than the latter. Like most of you in the list the last few years have been rather turbulent. Many ups and downs and situations where I was literally on the edge.

The edge meant that things happened to you rather than you making them happen. In retrospect i feel that things that happened were more good than bad. And there are many in this mailing list who were responsible for those nice things happening in my life. I won't bore you with the details but I would like to thank you all for all the nice things that you have done for me.

The reason for this great show of gratitude is that the IIM results are out and I've got final acceptance letters and will finally go to bangalore. And I guess I got into bangalore also because I was more fortunate than the Son who killed the king. I was and am surrounded by people who perhaps unwittingly said a lot of nice things about me. I guess that I have made enough use of heavy sentimental stuff. So it time to tell you about the lighter moments of life. I always felt that people never took seriously enough. Quite true many of you would say but then every rule have their exceptions. It so happens that I have a few good friends in pune. A few days back I was chatting with one of them and as usual I made a few comments. Needless to say the remarks made were untrue. But then my dear friend Nitin was away from me for a long time and he failed to see through them and so shocked was he that BSNL earned some money for their long distance network.

Without going into the details let me say that this was not exactly an exception. A few days later I made three outstation girls see a movie at around 10 in the night. The best part was that the guy who initiated the plan (ie me) was not there to watch the movie.

Movie and lots of them

2003-02-03T05:10:00.000+08:00

Feb 2,

I have seeing a lot of movies of late. I know that some of you are real busy. But then being a bit sadistic once a while is quite a pleasure.

I have seen three bond movies since my eulogy of Mr Bond. I saw Golden eye, Moonraker and "The spy who loved me". The last two were very big disappointments and my passion for the bond movies have come down by a few notches. Before these ones I had only seen the Brosnan starrers and read the Ian fleming books. The movies don't capture the essence of the character as I see it.

Then I saw "Philadelphia". The most amazing part of the movie is the cross examination of tom hanks where he expresses his passion for law. I quote from his dialogues

"every now and again not often but occasionally you get to be a part of justice being done that really is quite a thrill when that happens."

Then I saw another movie which fell from the high pedestal I had placed it on. Quoting something interesting from the movie whose name cannot be described.

"pyaar jaan chuki hoon, is liye dariya ki tarah bahti jati hoon. hawa ki tarah chanchal, aur jo bhi meri rah mein aaye use maan se apnati chalu, jaise rasa kahti, "jo bhi ho, zindagi kabhi galat nahi hoti". mera man khule aakash se bhi vishal hai".

The next quotes are from "American Beauty". It's a touching story of a forty something adman Lester Burnham. He is hated by his wife and his daughter regards him with contempt. It's a story of how he tries to breaks free and his attempts to let his identity blossom. Two quotes that capture of import of the movie

"I have lost something i am not exactly sure what it is but i know i didnt alwyas feel this sedated. But you know what its never too late to get it back."

"Its a great thing when you realise that you have still have the ability to surprise yourself. Makes you wonder what else you could do that you forgoten about."

There are other characters each representing some emotion at its extreme. An interesting character is Burnham's daughters boyfriend. This chap is druggie with a flair for capturing life on video. The following is a description of a video which has a poly pack circling in a swirl of wind.

"its one of those days when its a minute away from snowing. when there was this electricity in the air you could almost hear. right!

"This bag was just dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to to play with it. for fifteen minutes . thats the day i realised that there is this entire life behind things and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know that there is no reason to be afraid ever. yeh it was a poor excuse i know but it helps me remember. i need to remember. Sometimes there is so much beauty in the world. if i can take it in my heart its just gonna cave in."

The last scene is perhaps the most dramatic of them all. This is when Burnham dies.

"remember those posters which say that today is the first day of the rest of your life. Well thats true of all days except one. the day when you die."

"i had always heard that your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second you die. First of all that one second isnt a second at all. it stretches on for ever like an ocean of time. for me it was lying on my back watching falling stars and yellow leaves from maple trees that lined our street or my grandmother hands and the way her skin seemed like paper and the first time i say my cousin tony's brand new firebird. and jeane and carolyn"

"i guessed i could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me but its hard to stay mad when there is so much beauty in the world.. Sometime i feel like i am seeing it all at once and its too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that is about to burst and then i remember to relax and stop trying to hold on to it and then it flows through me like rain and i cant feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea of what i am talking about i am sure but dont worry you will some day."

The next and the last movie to be covered today is "My Greek Fat Wedding". We saw it today. The we were my colleagues from HCL. I know these guys since the last four months and ever since I joined the BEA weblogic project I have been meeting them about once or twice every month. Yet there is this camaraderie. I feel cared and pleasantly refreshed after spending time with them. It was the same feeling that I got when I was in "time". The movie also talks about connections. It's a sweet little tale of second generation greeko-american female "Tula" who's not pretty proud of her greek connections. Its about how she dislikes everything greek and how she falls for "Ian", a non greek. And then in process of marrying Ian, she understands the value of an embarrassingly huge family who will stand by her in her hour of need.

I always prided myself as one whose mail size could not be matched. Today i stand corrected. First i got a 17k mail from Shipi which was more double the size of this currant one. As if that was not enough my ego took a further beating from Rahul who send me a mega mail with 8553 words. That roughly six times the size of this current mail. I read that all a few times and let me say that i now fully empathise with whoever has reached this far:)

Before I end I have a great news to share with all you guys. I have got an interview call from IIM Bangalore. I got the call letter on saturday. My interview is on the 29th of march and I have to fill up the forms and send it to bangalore by the 28th of this month. I have filled up my essays. But before I send it I need some help from all you guys. I need a mail from you all telling me about what you think of me. You could send me my strengths and weakness as you perceive it. Further if you could mention specific instances I would be even more pleased. And you could add in a few bad things :)

Take care
Shijo

Nat Geo Special

2003-02-01T05:08:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,
Jan 31,

If you fall on the ground and soil yourself what will you do? Chances are that you will look for water. Now imagine surrounded by water all around and you get dirty.

Some deep sea creature do something really interesting in such cases. In fact the green turtles use the rocks on the sea bed to take a bath and remove the dirt and barnacles from their shell. And some like the Peacock flounders take a dip in the sea bed sand. Ergots and the buffalos are the not the only ones to have a symbiotic clean up relationship. Under sea there guys like the Hump heads and the Cleaner Ras taking the famous ergot buffalo role.

So many times have i heard of the story of the small fishes coming together to take on the larger ones. Actually its all based on facts. You have certain characters which in groups can be a danger even to the big ones like the shark. Some like the barracudas move in groups of thousands and hunt.

There are other interesting characters like the sweet lips and the crocodile fish. Further you have the sea urchins and the cushion stars And of the course the tentacled octupus. The character, like the chameleon shrinks and expands the elastic pigments on its skin to change colours. The camouflage helps it to trap the unfortunate ones for lunch.

You have the pipe fishes which look like the hydroids. And the sea grass that looks like fishes. To take matters further you have fishes that look like dry leaves.

But the most interesting character was the green turtles. The females copulate just once in about three years. But the action on the d-day kind of makes up for the gap. The ratio is skewed heavily against the males and the poor chap who turns lucky is so badly assaulted by his peers that he is rendered useless for a long time. Talk of competition in the humans.

The females after the act lay hundreds of eggs often from different sources. The nesting is done on some islands. If the nest is warm then you have a huge number of females off springs and a colder nest favours the males. May i say its a case of hot chicks and cool dudes. After the hatching the baby turtles have to head all the way back to the sea. Some dont and are breakfast for the Monitor lizards and the sea birds. The monitor lizards are the closest relatives of dinosaurs present today. They often reach the size of a couple of meters.

Non-veg tea

2003-01-21T05:07:00.000+08:00

Jan 20,

Most of the HCL office are pretty spic and span. But the eserve building is an exception. There are so many tales to tell but what takes the cake is what happened to me when i went for a cup of tea. In my cup of hot water i found a leg piece. An intern with us had a look at it and said that it looked like mosquito. Not long after she stood corrected when i pointed that it once belonged to a cockroach.

The icing on the cake soon followed. Soon after we identification process we saw a man spraying baygon on the vending machine. So if anyone of you has weight problem like me then all you have to do is spend some time in the HCL eserve building.

This is the twentieth day of the year and I have already been to the cinema hall twice. Yesterday we saw tuxedo at priya. The circumstances under which we saw the movie reaffirms my faith in myself.

The day before yesterday my friend tapan made a plan to see a movie. Some of the fellas wanted to go to PVR. So tapan da (a one time HOD of computer science department in the hindustan college at agra) called me up.

He wanted to see Mr & Mrs Iyer which I had already seen so I suggested Tuxedo the new jackie chan movie in town. He was hesitant. On some prodding he indignantly pointed out that it was rated "A". So the movie was decided and it was also decided that Tapan da would be seated right in the middle of two beauties Sangeeta (the big mouth or Sanki) and Tejaswini (Teja).

The show was to start at one in the afternoon. There was to be a cricket session in the morning and since these guys had no idea where Priya was I volunteered to pick them up at around 11:30 after my cricket session.

As luck would have it the Sunday morning was cold and I woke up late. So as a change of plan I called up those guys. MTNL and the Private operators had chosen the right time for the interconnectivity row. And all cell phones were out of bounds from the landlines and there was no way I could get in touch with Tapan da and gang. So I skip my breakfast and I leave my place at 10 on a cold foggy Sunday morning to NOIDA. I wait for half an hour before I get hold of a blue line which crawled to get to the next stop.

Thanks to all these factors I was late. I reached the place at 11 : 35 to find the guys waking up and having their breakfast. After going through all this I was told that the movie plan had not moved ahead.

So yo me kicked the asses got all of them ready and rushed to Priya. On the way I called all the guys I could using Tapanda's cell. You should have seen his face when I made those calls as if I was calling a toll free number.

Due to the short notice we had some interesting incidents. For one Sankee ji came directly from her relatives place and she had with her a huge bag of her personal belongings and lots of abuses for us. The movie was fun and after that we called up guys who joined with us but left for infy in mysore.

After all fun it was time to return home. But I decided that it was not enough. So off I went to the dear park through the rose gardens. It was getting dark but I did manage to see the deers and the rabbits. The only regret is that we missed the ducks.

I wanted a look into the fort but it was closed. So ended up spending some time in an art gallery with the guy explaining the paintings in detail. After that it was back to Gshire got some work done and I was back home.

Before I end this edition let me tell about the other guy who wanted his name in my mail. This $%*@ happens to be my brother.

The first reply that i got was

"WHY DO U HAVE A WRONG IMPESSION THAT I'M GOING TO READ THIS"

He continued in his attempts to boost my morale

"I THINK YOU HAVE GOT MY NAME IN THE WRONG LIST"

and then finally i got a mail from him saying

"KUTTE KAMINE

IF YOU WANT MY RESPONSE. INCLUDE MY NAME IN THE MAIL"

Reading the last mail gave me a lot of satisfaction. And in return i am heading to his request of including his name in the mail.

Then I think I have replied to most of you guys apart from anit. I have been try to jot down something. But somehow I am getting a writers block specifically targeting anit. I do intend to keep up my promise but before I do that a very happy b'day to you.

So anyone interested in getting a treat on Saturday can get in touch with the well paid market researcher.

Take care,
Shijo

Oracle installation wisdom

2003-01-19T05:04:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,
Jan 18,

I have been having a very busy time. I left for office yesterday at around 9 in the night and today i returned at one in the afternoon. Before you get ideas let me tell you a bit about my so very hectic schedule. I wanted to do some work regarding BLOBs and CMP beans. There are few complexities involved but I will spare you the details

The interesting part of the work was neither the CMPs or the Blobbys but the effort i put into the preparation of the ground for the real work. To do the work i intended to do you need a database. And normally such things are taken for granted. You have it in almost all the machines. But as luck would have it I had messed up mine thanks to no mean efforts to my mentor. I guess i messed up my registries so badly that my original oracle cds refused to install properly.

So yo I went to work and I must have changed, modified or deleted at least 250 registry entries. To make matters interesting i had applications running on my machine that depended on some oracle entries. So I had to be careful not to mess up with them or I would have more trouble. So painstakingly i continued with the process and after a few hours i realised that there were some entries that refused to budge. No matter what i did they just could not be deleted.

The number of times i restarted my machine must have reached the double digit figures. Despite all this my persistant double clicks on the oracle setup produced nothing but an hour glass which lasted for not more than a few seconds. Tried i looked to google for help. And even that tested my patience. I must have gone through at least 60 pages concerning Oracle iniatialisation errors. Finally i came to newgroup pages that exactly described my condition. Unfortunately thats all those newgroups mentioned: ie my problem.

So after going through all those pages containing P4 patches to god knows what else i came across a work around at around 5 in the morning. It involved copying the contents of the first cd to the hard disk and then making some changes in certain files.

Sensing victory i took what i believed to be a well deserved break. Fate probably did not like my doing so and the real saga began. After about half hour of installation work when i was to put in the second cd the installer again played truant. It refused to accept the second cd. I repeat the whole thing i dont know how many times. Guys started going home and slowly the office became almost empty. There was another guy who was ill and he stayed back just because of me. And I continued with my work. And it did not work.

Finally my friend (another Rahul) took pity and sat with me. We got such a good pratice of the oracle installation that i can now take classes for it. After a few hours of effort he made a startling observation. On the basis of his observation Rahul taught me an important lesson. "Never ever try an oracle installation with the wrong cds". A big part of fourteen hours for such a priceless piece of information.

HR guys and honest promises don't go hand in hand. I can prove it but wont take the risk of doing so due to reasons which are not so obvious.

Then one of the recipients of this mail has got a call from XL. He is confident of getting into better places and so am I. He once surreptitiously asked if I could include his name in my mails. So Aalap here I grant your wish. :) There is another one who wanted me to do something similar but more of him later.

Great new beggining to a new year

2003-01-02T05:02:00.000+08:00

Jan 1, 2003

When I was a student I used to make a mistake in the month of jan. On the top of the work assignment sheets where I marked the date i used to get the year wrong. Even after graduating to the electronic format I still made the same mistake.

So before anything else a very happy new year to all you guys.

I spent the first few moments of the new year in a very unique way. I was in office. Almost all the guys were off to their hometown or had taken leave. But poor me with my boss and three others were still in office the early hours of Jan 1 year 2003.

We are a group of 29 guys and right now we operate from the HCL eserve premises. So our parent company took pity on us and send us a mega cake weighing 3 kilos for 5 guys. Under normal circumstances that would have been okay but sadly i was on a diet. Despite that we 5 ended up gobling half of the whole thing, credit mostly due to you know who.

Then with almost half of that remaining I had a flash of an idea. Inspired by me we had a holi party with chocolate and vanilla cream. I am sure we dont need cold cream for another week. To add to it we also had coke to add to the holi spirit.

With faces completely brown and white we went to the bathroom but the temperature of the water forced us to have some extra fun. So we went on a display of our creamy faces to the rest of eserve.

Someone told me that if you do something today you end up doing a lot of that for the rest of the year. Now if that is true then I am going to do a lot of work and have a lot of fun and you guys are going to get a lot of mails :)
Take care and have a wonderful new year,
Shijo

Empathy

2002-12-29T05:01:00.000+08:00

Dec 28,

Jus read the lines that i jotted down last night and i now realise what you guys go through when you get my mails.

Saathiya

2002-12-28T03:56:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,
27 Dec,

The response to my last mail was pretty cool. After a very long time my inbox was full and there was no forwards:-)

The last some time has been pretty lifeless but the x'mas season got better of me and I made up for the dry period. First my brother was here in delhi for a break and for first time in my life I spent money on my family. I bought a cotton sari for my mother, a shirt for my father and a walkman for junior.

Let me say that those who suggest that there is happiness in giving are at times not very far from truth. A few days from now probably all the gifts will be forgotten. But for me it was memorable as that was the day when I hugged my parents for the first time in my life.

Then I saw two movie that I liked. On the X'mas day I saw Saathiya with 9 other guys from office and the next day saw the bond movie with my brother and two other friends. Both the instances i felt like being in the minority. For i was amongst the few who really liked them both.

Saathiya is an interesting tale that spans a single day with a lot of reflections peppered in. The central theme is the love hate relationship of the lead characters. The language of the movie is different from the usual bollywood stuff. The songs are nice and the background is real. It talks of love and goes beyond its usual connotations. It talks about the frustration of the characters without the use of melodrama. And there is wit and humor that comes out of incidents that are so mundane.

The discord between the characters is not based on some huge difference of opinion or ego. The root is the small incidents that you forget after it happens. You don't fight but there is an unease based on things not rational. Fundamentally there is nothing wrong in the relation yet nothing is right. The characters care for each other and yet they are not comfortable in each other's company. All in all an interesting movie which should not be seen in large groups.

Then the bond was the way I like it. I am a die-hard fan of the Ian Fleming creation. The special effects and fight sequences are good. The others with me felt that it was a bit too incredible to be true. But then I am a believer when it comes spies and adventure.

There are the girls and the action sequences but what appeals me the most is his character. He "never say die" spirit makes him move on despite being betrayed and put in the enemy prison for fourteen months. After being freed he is disowned by his own kind and branded useless. He stands for his men with all he can and his loyalty is not loud.

Bond for me is a super normal man, in other words he is very different from you and me. He is so incredible that you don't for a moment feel that he is possible. An exaggeration that is the result of someone's creative imaginations. My feelings are quite contrary to such a line of thought. In fact I feel that if such a man existed he would be capable of all that is attributed to him and much more.

Some of people involved in the creation of the character are as incredible as the creation itself. Ian Fleming worked for the British secret service and was actually involved in the kidnap and arrest of the second most powerful individual in the german army during the peak of the world war. The character who is rumored to be the inspiration for the bond character actually planned to topple the communist Soviets single handed. It's a different matter that he failed but what is interesting is that there were and perhaps there are individuals who can think and do things that is far beyond what is impossible for most of us.

I read somewhere that some of the gadgets with the bond are the result of the imagination of scientists from some of the best organizations around the world. In fact I read some where that the soviets in their heydays actually had a division that replicated things mentioned in the bond movies.

As a rule most of things that a part of the bond movies are possible. Take for instance the bond car which can become invisible. There were reports that the US navy was able to make the people invisible as early as 1944. Even the logic of an invisible car as explained in the movie seems plausible.

Then another interesting thing is that Mr bond goes to Cuba and pretends to be an ornithologist. And the real Mr Bond was an ornithologist based in Cuba. In fact I believe that the book in Mr Brosnan's hand was actually authored by Mr James Bond, the real life ornithologist based in Cuba.

Having written all this let me also say that my tastes are a bit eclectic so see these movie at your own risk.

Friends with rich tastes

2002-12-15T03:54:00.000+08:00

Dec 14,

That was a senti plea requesting you all to pleeeeeeeeeeeease fill up my inbox.

Having made the point loud and clear lets move ahead and concentrate on the other things in life. The last one month has been hectic. We had a lot of work to do but more than that there was a lot of confusion. As soon as you enter a place you feel that this is the toughest job in the world and things become more interesting if you have a completely undefined work process and comprehensive self study trainings.

The worst part of the last one month was the confusion and fear of not doing well. Add to it the feeling that perhaps support is not the best thing to do.

Anyway things have stabilised quite a lot in the last one week. Firstly it now seems possible. In support if you want to do a good job you need to be smart and know a lot of things. And the weblogic is something whose documentation spans over 5000 pages and J2EE specs involves a similar amount of data. So reading all this is just the first step, as the guys who come to you have already done so. Often the prob involves things that you hear for the first time and often you have to replicate the prob at your place.

Well well enough of work. Let me tell you about something that happened one day when I went to the reception. Even before I entered the foyer I heard a loud female voice. Lots of ahs uhs and so on. How do I describe it. Let me say that the person seemed to be exerting a lot of pressure. As soon as i reached the reception I felt as if a storm passed by me. Then I caught the glimpse of a huge fatso. The lady in question was running around the place and kind of woofing. I actually felt that she was running after me and this made me run for my life. And i did do that without an idea of what was happening. The experience actually shook me and I took some time to recover. So I will let you have some time to let the whole thing sink in.

So let me take a break and tell you about some interesting characters staying over at my place. These fellas have some very rich tastes. They just like to hog and hog and hog. Sometimes even I feel slighted in front of their appetite. But a few days back they crossed all limits. Their dinner cost me two grands. They wanted more and actually went ahead to have things worth another grand but thankfully I intervened at the nick of time to restrict my losses. The chaps did not want things that cost anything less than a 500. Even the hundreds did not match up to their sophisticated taste buds.

Right in front of the RBI building there is a statue of Kuber and Laxmi. I saw it thanks to the efforts of my dear friends. Had to go there to replace the remains of my dear 500 notes. Somehow I felt that there was something missing so spend forty more bucks and bought some desserts for these guys. Kept the bait all around the place. The guys really enjoyed it. There was foul odor around my place to prove my point.

Oh the fatso who was running around the place. This person actually happens to be the receptionist who is very conscious of her figure. And so has decided to exercise right out there right before the HCL T reception.
And then yours truly has graduated to a higher level. He has started sucking blooding at a much wider scale. All India Radio guys had me speak for ten minutes. Though I spoke about economic issues believe me I was no less irritating.

Then HCL obliged by my presence has decided to give me a raise. They have given me a raise of close of close to five grands. But obviously that's too less for the services I render. So I refused to take it. So guys there Trade Unionism cooking up at HCL technologies and I am a part of it. Will keep you updated with the latest.
Take care
Shijo

Senti side of me

2002-12-02T03:53:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,

In the last few months I had a chat with some of you guys. And all of a sudden I realised that I dont have anything to talk about. Rahul and Shilpi called up most in this period and often I just did not know what to say and the forced conversation lasted for not more than a few minutes.

Then the mails from regulars like Rahul(Both), Anit and Rohit have actually dried up. It used to be such a pleasure getting a mail from these guys. But somehow today all I see in my inbox is a few fwds and mailers which I very happily block. Now let me admit that Bhanu, Anit and Shuchi have been nice enough to send some thought provoking fwds. But I would be more pleased to get hold of a mail addressed to me.

So i thought of asking some of you about how it felt getting my mails. The first reaction was of course that it is painfully long and boring. The second category of people actually said that they did not mind getting these boring strings of ascii characters. I also got some interesting replies as to why some of you dont reply.

The first group said that the mails were not addressed to them. The second category said that they wanted to write but some how felt that there was nothing to write about. The third category said that they actually had so much to say but did do so for the fear of sounding silly.

Now in response to these feelings which may or may not have come up in your minds I have a few things to say. First and most importantly my mails are addressed to each one of you. As I mentioned in a previous mail you all have affected me in some ways. You got this mail because you all have a special place in my life. Its not that I send the mails to each and every person I know.

I have had some pretty tough times in life. And all along i came through because of the people who stood by me. After graduation when everything seemed lost the guys at TIME told that there was hope left. The way Nitin, Lathika and Shruti looked at me gave me the faith to move ahead. Manish and Vipin inspired me.
At spectramind the meetings with Anand, Sumit and Nitu were great. They made me feel that the some things i did were not wrong. During my lows people esp Nitu stood by me and told me that I could still make a difference.

Then there is Vinu. He can talk non stop about sci fi stuff and computers. Half the time I am at loss to understand him yet his enthusiasm is infectious.

I had such great guys all my life but some how I have had the talent of losing them. One of the biggest examples is Rahul. He was my classmate till class ten. During my plus two days I used to write letters to him and it felt so nice getting replies from him. Then all of a sudden he came back to delhi and we drifted apart. I know that he cares for me yet I dont know what happens in his life. If he calls me I am sure going to find it difficult to carry the conversation too far ahead. I dont know what is happening in his life. I dont anything about him. Part of the reason is myself. I still see him the way he was in his plus two days and since then he has changed so much. A change that I percive so much but yet dont understand. I always felt that I was an idiot and actually was scared of looking like an idiot in front of him. This extra cautious approach resulted in a big gap between us.
Something similar is happening today. We are all changing and I know so little about the changes that happen in your life. I am getting so disconnected from you all. I dont want to repeat the mistakes I did.
I do sincerely hope that this answers Anit and Rahul(C)'s complaint that I am not being very personal.
Then a reply to some of you guys who fear sounding foolish. Can you sound more foolish than me? No matter what you tell me I would like to believe that this is one thing that i am absolutely unbeatable.

Weblogic et al

2002-11-14T03:51:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,
Nov 13,

I have some mixed news to tell you. lets start off on a positive note. So guys let me tell you that I wont be doing any coding for at the next one year. Free unlimited edible food and snacks

And the bad new is that I am back to a call center. Back to shifts, loss of sleep and home drops and pickups that take longer than a DTC bus ride. I will also have 24 hr internet access with machines that have no floppy drives.
Organizational grapevine is a great thing and somehow we got the hint even before the news was made official. So my group headed to the HR dept to protest. I was a silent spectator as the events unfolded.

The HR lady did a good job of trying to convince non believers that we were getting heaven. No one was convinced and one of the chaps(It was not me) jumped the gun and actually said that he did not want to go to the said project. The HR very politely reminded us that beggers are not choosers. The details are funny but I wont go further for obvious reasons.

Now three guys out six assigned to the MECA(Mobile and e-comm) group were to go to the said project. We were to have a meeting with the PM who would have been the final authority. We decided to bring out the worst in each of us. The first guy Suresh an MTech from ISI calcutta did a fantastic job at that. In response to the question, "what is unique about you?" the chap thought for two minutes and said nothing.

Then it was me. I tried to look awful but then you know how attractive I am. The magnetism of my previous experience worked and i was an automatic choice. Then there was Chandan Chatterjee another BIS guy from DU. In response to the uniqueness questions he said that I am always happy and never crib. The PM just stared at him and responded, "let us see".

So with a heavy heart we said good bye to the old friends and the good time we had building our TT DOT NET skills. I jus could not stop thinking about the days when we did nothing. The good old days when . . .

It was so painful but then we decided to move ahead. Headed to the new eServe building. And the first look was enough. From the state of the art sec 24 building we had reached a call center. Then what followed was more shocking.

We met everyone and the seniors told us about the job. We were to provided support to the BEA customers using Weblogic as an application server. For all those computer not savvys I will do a bit of explaining. All the websites are hosted on a webserver. Commercial sites like hotmail or a shopping site needs to be running 24 by 7, 365 days without break. Even small glitches could be catastrophic. So apart from being extremely stable the sites needs to take care of complex issues like security and load balancing which can be crucial esp when millions of users across the whole world access your system. This part of the story is usually handled by webservers which is more commonly known as Application servers. Most of these servers are mission critical and expert techies man them at all point of time.

Now these experts being humans are far from perfect. These guys like you and me often make mistakes. And I will provide support to such @#%& who wont do their job well enough. Now the webservers is a very very wide topic and mastering it requires a lot of time. But then mastering the ins and outs of Weblogic servers is not good enough for my job. You need to know more. Weblogic is Java technology specific and often the errors and bugs lie in the source code itself so in such cases you need to know a list of other things. The list is pretty long but you can start off by knowing a few things like JSP, servlets, RMI, Networking and EJBs.

If that was not enough more was to follow. The guy who will be our mentor gave us all this information and then he said that we get a three week training before we go on to the sever admin stuff. As if all this was not enough he went for the final assault. With perfect timing he said that he will be in-charge of the three week self-study training program. (his exact words)

We met more guys. One just gave us a list of mistakes he made. The list of his advice was long. Seeing all the concern that was being poured on us was moving. In the midst of all this I met one bright face. It was none other than our good old Nitin's pune wali Pooja. Her enthusiasm was infectious but somehow I was not infected, perhaps because Pooja is leaving in two days.

Right now I am having day shifts. So I have to leave about 6 in the morning. I don't want to give you sleepless nights so I wont' give the details of when I return home.

The next few days are going to be pretty interesting and I will keep you updated. But then there is a problem. I just realised the feelings of a thirsty man stranded in the sea. I have 24 hrs internet access. Can even download music but somehow my machines don't have a floppy drive. So if you think that I suck blood by my mails then think of what you have been spared and say "THANK GOD".

Take care,
Shijo

2002-10-24T02:49:00.000+08:00

Oct 23,

You learn from mistakes but what if the person concerned is me and if the mistakes have a tendency of being so damned unique then what do you do?.

I have already mentioned the details of the previous three cricket practice sessions. I went for the fourth time and the my magnetism worked again.

I had another practice session today. So I went to bed after typing all those things I woke up early today, I mean really early. And then I went all the way to the stadium and this time had a very incident free practice session. We had a catching practice session and guess what an important member of the team commented that my reflexes were very good. Though its another matter that the ball had a tendency of passing me each time I tried to get hold of it. So after the whole thing was over I went to a friends place and had a wash up. And as the clocked ticked 9 I rushed out as the office was a good 15 minutes away. After moving some distance I realised that I had forgotten my wallet out at the friends place. So dutifully I went back and got it and headed back. Again after covering a good distance the fellow with me pointed out that I was looking a bit different. Soon he realised that the strap around my neck certifying my being a HCL employee was missing. So we went all the way back and did not find the thing. So we did the next best thing. Headed to the stadium and had a good look around. Failed and defeated we headed back to the office.

Now replacing the ID card and the access cards to three different building will cost quite a sum. I am hoping against hope that I do get the stuff and not lose any money.

Well then we had some training session. And suddenly I fell asleep. All of a sudden I woke due to some sudden activity in the class. The guys were having a heated discussion and suddenly there was doubt in my mind. So I spoke up my doubt with a hidden agenda of telling my trainers that I was listening. The entire class shut up at my question. The fellow looked straight into my eyes and very pitifully gave me the explanation. And then he offered all of us a break.

Very happy and a bit confused I looked around at the faces which were screaming with laughter. Then someone explained that my question was the center of the discussion since the last half an hour and had already been discussed thoroughly.

So I sign off for the day with a lost id card and a lot of sleep time to be covered.
take careShijo

2002-10-23T02:46:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys, Oct 22,

We are having a hell of time. Reach office at around 8:50 in the morning and in the last four working days I have left the office premises at around 9 in the night. Even today the story was repeated and i reached home at around 10:30 in the night and now here I am drafting the ramayana.

The point is that I really am ashamed of myself. All my life I have been preaching the value of finishing your work within the office hours. And I have failed miserably to do so. As a consolation I want to ensure that I don't miss out on these mails.

Then our in the first friendly against HCL Infosystem we won. One of the reasons for the success is the absence of yours truly but then an important role was played by Chandan Chatterjee. The chap bowled two overs and got 2 wickets at a cost of 14 runs. Infosys managed to get around 159 in 25 overs. And one of the reasons for that was our own friend chandan managing to drop two catches. Yet it was a great performance and our group of 27 felt that something should be done to commemorate the great event. So guys we decided to go in for a party fully sponsored by our dear cricketer friend. Now the party was simpler said than organized. The 27 guys in question are spread over 3 different buildings across noida. And communicating with all the guys is a logistic nightmare. yet we did it and then finally managed to get all the guys at one place.

We then decided to go to sec 18 and have lunch. The poor chap actually agreed to shell out the whole sum. But then getting out a consensus is a big thing and in the process of doing so we lost precious time. We then decided to waste no further time and someone decided to go and get something for everyone. THAT SOMEONE HAPPENED TO BE ME. Can you imagine me being made incharge of something to do with food. ha ha I just cant stop laughing.

So we went to sec 18 and since were not to worry about the cost we went to Domino's and bought pizza's for all the chaps. HCL has possibly not seen such a large order of pizzas. Now despite the various discounts offered we managed to run a bill of a few thousand rupees. And I was getting it to the office. By the way I have increased my weight by 10 kilos in the last one month. The score has actually touched 82. By joe I am sooooooo proud of the fact.

Ya so as I was telling you our senior managers got to know that there are these bunch of guys who like good food and a lot of noise. This time they did not try to silence anyone. Finally what followed was simply great. It so happened that Mr Chandan did not have to shell out a single penny. It was a treat for him on behalf of the entire group. And it was further decided that the whole thing would be a monthly event with a budget of around 5000 bucks. Like it? I have already started salivating for i am sure to be one of the biggest beneficiaries and you all know why? he he he he.

So now gotta sleep for tomorrow is the d-day and we have to submit a project which we have been working on since the last few days. will update you all as and when something interesting happens.

2002-10-20T02:43:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,
Oct 19,

I have spend more than a month in my present company and I am enjoying every moment of it. The most eventful chapter of my stay is my attempts to swing the cricket bat. I went for another session last thursday. Since it was a working day I was to reach the place at about 6:30 in the morning. And this time I did not take a bus. Instead i got a lift direct to noida. Sitting in pilot seat of a truck on an empty road is sure a great experience. The most memorable thing was the truck getting into a pothole and me almost hitting the roof.

After reaching the stadium we did some practice and for a change i did connect a couple of times. The best part was someone commenting on my footwork (I would really like to believe that there was no sarcasm intended). But then good things don't last and my magnetism worked again. The bowler's whose ego I hurt by connecting the ball had himself avenged. He threw a beauty which completly missed the bat and landed straight on my foot. So ungentlemanly tactics to get rid of a master blaster. I have a crape bandage on the foot and effectively out of practice sessions for another week but after that I will surely return with more details of my magnetism at work.
Then the group we have out here is pretty active. You hardly feel that you are working in an organization. When the entire team is in the canteen or the cafeteria invariably you have someone like the VP or the COO coming down to remind us that we have our college days behind us. Noble intentions but my feel is that these guys are going to have a hard time making us behave.

We have a yahoo group. Each one contributes. And mind you there have been very little forwards. There were some interesting events like birthday bashes and some wacky polls. There was a Chatter box poll with a certain individual(not me) winning hands down. In the Mr Smarty poll I am a close second( No kidding I really got votes besided my own). All in all we are a motley crowd of individuals from different parts of the country. I will give you the details as time goes on.

Then this time the size of the to list is quite small compared to previous instances. The reason is that I feel that each one of you would be interested in these small tit bits. I have a very hectic schedule and so do most of you. I see these mails as a means to keep in touch and to connect to all of you who have made an impact on my life. I dont want to grow old and senile like the bosses around me. I still feel that my best is yet to come and the college days and the past is nothing in comparison. And you all will be a part of the wonderful days to come. I feel strongly about it but would feel better if these efforts are reciprocated.
take care
Shijo

2002-10-14T02:39:00.000+08:00

Oct 13,

The date in the last entry should tell you how punctual I am. In fact during my plus two days when I did have access to the computer I used the plain vanilla pen and paper and often i wrote letters that I did not post. Well thats a different story altogether and some day i will go into those details.

But first of all let me update you guys with some details. First of all for the uninitiated there wont be anymore broken cd roms. I left the spectramind job on the 31st of july and then for about a month and a half I took counseling sessions for guys preparing for cat. It was sure an experience sitting front of guys like you and me and listening to all their tales and miseries. Then on the 16th of September I finally joined HCL T. But what was more interesting was the fact that I joined their cricket team.

The cricket team inclusion reinforces my belief and I am extremely talented and there is some kind of magnetism in me that makes me do great things. The cricket team in HCL usually practice in some sports facility in an around noida.

I feel that a chewing gum is about to be stretched so pls take care.

So as I said the practice go on and the head of the team has this talent of being extremely inaccessible. More over he finalizes the timing of the practice sessions just one day in advance and invariably after I leave the office. So I got used to the experience of getting mails informing of sessions that was history.

So I told myself that this has to change. All charged up I took the initiative and decided that I will go to the session on Saturday come what may. So last to last Saturday morning at around 5:30 I got up from bed (Unbelievable nahi??), dressed up and took a blue line to noida. Being a weekend the driver made sure that he waits at each stop. And at one stop I felt that he was waiting for his girlfriend who was yet to wake up.
So finally after about 90 mins I reached the noida stadium. And I found lots of teams practicing. I saw the Birlasoft team, the Icos team, the sahara team and many others. But somehow I jus did not see the HCL team. So I look around under each and every nook and corner without success. Finally I gave up and returned home only to find that the guys were practicing in another facility not far away.

Well I reasoned that it was my mistake and it jus a freak case. The next time I got all the location info right and I was confident that I would not get into such a situation again. But then as they say History repeats itself. So the following Saturday I got up early in the morning and this time thank god I got a DTC bus. The driver drove as if there was no tomorrow. I got down at a stop that was jus around 500 meters from the place where I was to go. Now 500 meters doesn't seem much but for me it was a completely different story.

I somehow feel some very big yawns and irritated faces swearing onto the screen. So without getting into the details let me tell you that covering a distance of 500 meters took me about 75 mins and 60 bucks.

LIKE IT??

So man I finally reached the stadium and the practice session was almost over. The guys took pity on me and asked me to put on the pads and play a few overs. I played two overs in all. The bowlers were extremely patient. The guys tried real hard. There some lollies and sitters but somehow each time the ball went past. As the event was turning out to be a complete disaster the bowler said that something needs to be done for the poor guy. So he gave me a lolly pop of a ball and I salvaged some pride by making contact with the ball.

Then before I wind up let me take the opportunity of getting a bit sentimental. I have not been writing to you guys but I have everyone in mind. So please take some time off and have a hearty laugh at my expense and then when you find time jot down a few lines. Even abuses are welcome.

Take care,
Shijo

2002-05-27T02:33:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,
May 26,

I am back to my old bloodsucking ways. Got some interesting experiences to tell you but before that got to admit a mistake. Of late I had become a bit grumpy and forgot to enjoy a joke. When such feelings persists for more durations than is warranted you do stupid things. The last mail that you guys got from me is one good example. I made a mistake and I apologise to each one of you. Now that I am back to my bloodsucking ways let me consider the matter closed.

One good after effect of boring mail that I sent is that more followed. That was indeed a good job by all you guys. Keep it up and if you dont mind then I propose the establishment of a egroup like structure. I thought of many names. Kundifans is a great name. If the non CVS guys find it a bit esoteric then they are not at fault. I would not be able to go into the etymology of the word since its a matter of great blah blah . . .

Anyway with full regards to the transparancy principle i invite more suggestion from the motley crowd of anemics(Isn't this good). If anyone of you can think of something better and non-controversial then nothing better.
Then have been having an very interesting mix of time. First of all let me tell you with pride that I have done something amazing. I broke a computer over phone. Like it??

It so happens that dell has some amazing machine. It requires regular calls to the tech support and then the components are removable. I mean you can just remove the cd drive, floppy drives, rams and harddisks out of the laptops and then keep it in a safe place. So there was this poor fellow whose time was up and had to call up the tech support. His stars were worse than usual so he landed up in my hands. He felt noises coming out of the machine. And the idiot felt that I could fix it up. And fix the noise I did.

So with all honest intentions I began the process of troubleshooting. Following the principle of noise troubleshooting i had him remove all the removable components. Then I came to cdrom. I clearly told him what to do. But the idiot won't understand. So followed our efforts to get the cdrom out of the $3000 machine.

Me: you see the latch under the drive
He: Ya
Me: press it
He: Ya
Me: Done
He: Ya
Me: Now pull the drive out.
He: Ya
Me: Done?
He: Na
Me: why?
He: Its difficult.
Me: Common dont be afraid. Its kids stuff.
He: Ya??
Me: Yes indeed.
He: Ok if you insist.
Me: Ya man jus go ahead.
He: I am pulling it out
Me: great
He: I am pulling it harder
Me: Great work man
He: Oh! are you sure it is childs play
Me: Yup man Jus go ahead. You can do it
.He: NOW I get it out.
Me: Great.
BOOOOOOOOOM
Me: what was that.
He: The CD Rom
Me: what happened to the CD Rom
He: Its in my hands
Me: wow that looks great.
He: but the CD Rom doesn't.

At that instance the einstein in me flashed and I looked at the system pictures. Then I realised that the life is never certain. Even your removable drives can turn out to be fixed optical drives embedded into the system.

2002-04-08T02:32:00.000+08:00

April 7,

After that kick i had two more experiences. First on the 22nd I had to go to the IMI campus for the calcutta interview. The most interesting feature of the interview was me myself. I bumped into something or someone at least 6 six times inside the interview room. Then the fellows told me that they required the pay slips. So back I went to my office and got the stuff for them. The interview was the most amazing thing. They asked me questions and I was at my silent best. They felt that all that was not enough so they decided on some icing on the cake and started of with a maths question. Now I had given them many I don't knows so I decided to do something different. I sat there silent doing nothing. Once in a while I gave some murmurs as if I was in some deep thought about the problem. Finally the guys got so pissed up that they showed me the door.

Then the last interview was at the MDI campus. I must say that it was the most disappointing one of my life. I was to report at 12.30 and the whole process was over at around 4. But what stood out was the fellow who took my interview. He actually took a nap while my interview was going on. Then these guys asked you to prepare a short note after the gd was over. And I as usual was not able to complete the whole stuff.

Finally I got my second result. I am not destined to be a junior of Rahul. The c and l results are expected any time now and I have given up on that. The worst part is that you really feel that the interviews and the gds were excellent and then the results come out to give you a royal shock.

Well things have been interesting even otherwise I have been having some very tight schedules. We are supposed to have scheduled time of about 8 and a half hours. But we spend at least 9 + hrs in the office. And we are also entitled to home drops and that means that you are the last to be dropped off. So a it takes me at least 1 hr to reach home from office which in the normal course should not take more than 10 mins. Apart from that if you are lucky then there will be some one who would get late due to some reason or the other. So the point is that you often end up spending about 12-13 hours in the office.

And apart from that you are supposed to handle a minimum number of calls per day. Unfortunately for me I never ever end up handling that many no. of calls so I end up coming an extra day.
So that's how I am doing these days. There will be lots of you who would be pissed up with me for not being in touch. For all such guys I have only one answer. I will try to make amends. Till such a time come pls make up with my mails.

Take care,
Shijo

2002-03-20T03:31:00.000+08:00

March 19,

I had my SP Jain interviews on the 16th. I was to reach the Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan at 11.30. So in order to reach early i left my place at around 10. At around 10.40 when i was about 20 minutes away from the interview center I jus felt like having a look at my call letter. The contents of letter really make me feel like . . . (I was to report at 10.30).
Now I don't even have to try to do such things. It just happens. But fortunately not all guys are punctual like the IIMs so when i reached the place a few minutes after 11 I realised that rahul and his ideas are not irrelevant despite some exceptions.

Now SP Jain is different is quite an understatement. The level of student involvement is simply great. Students are take care of everything from the registration to the final interviews.

We had a presentation and at no point did these guys say that there are the best and such. The honesty was refreshing and very evident. In the interviews I did not see a single fresher or a female. Oh I am sorry there was one.

We had a group interview and a gd session. It was a six member group and the panel had five guys. Two profs, two students and a alumni. This was the prelims and then there was to be a test and a couple of rounds of interviews after that.

My gd topic was "MBA is losing its relevance". In my group I felt that there was only one person who spoke sense and you know you it was. So after the group gd interview session some guys were to be short listed. So we six guys sat waiting for the whole thing to come out.

Very soon our results were out and it was informed that four out of six guys were to go for the next rounds. The names were read out. After the third name it was the fourth and it wasn't mine.

In the recent past I did not have an experience even close to that. For a moment I just did not believe it. Then I did the obvious and went to the panel for a feedback. But sadly history did not repeat itself. But the way these guys explained their position made me feel that they were justified. It was very different from what I felt after last year's FMS fiasco.

The told me that I was articulate but they were not happy with my people skills. In other words I was arrogant. I was convinced and so poor me walked out with another kick on my ass. Like it??

2002-03-14T03:27:00.000+08:00

March 13,

Having a friend like rahul does help esp when it comes to taking a lift. But then like coin he too has an other side and I bore the brunt of it the day before yesterday.

After spending almost 5 years with him you become a true indian. You start believing in the concept of the IST ie the Indian Standard Time. So when I reached the IIC at 11.33 (my report time was 11.30), I felt that I was dot on time, but not before long I realized the folly of my assumptions.

There was another chap who reached one minute before me and he was asked to return home. When I heard of it I had all the butterflies that you can think of. But then the other side of the coin tossed up and I went and had a word with the guys around. They relented and asked me to come at 3 in the afternoon but the other guys who reached one minute earlier than me was told to report the next day.

So I had lots and lots of time and the guys in the three O Clock batch turned out to be very unlike me. They were at the venue at around 2. So I took the opportunity of psyching all the guys present out there. And believe me it felt great to do that to the IITD and DCE guys. In fact the most interesting exp was with a fellow who was working with Hughes. And then I kept my promise with the lodhi gardens but the whole thing did not go as well I would have liked it to.

The gd interview went of well. The gd topic was "Will liberalization lead to slavery". There were seven guys in the group. For the first seven minutes of the gd yours truly was silent. And then I spoke for two minutes and I was heard. My interview happened about 3 hrs after the gd and the first question that was asked was in relation to a comment that I made during my gd. Then the fellows went through each one of my certificates and looked at all my marksheets and grilled me on it. Then asked me about my religious beliefs, my self, the pashupati temple in kathmandu and the just concluded strike in kerala. They also asked me about ayodhya and all the things that you can fit into a half hour slot.

So after that I went to office had one of the worse days till date. I attended about 17 calls and each one was worse off than the previous. One fellow just put the phone down when he realized that I was an Indian. There were other horror stories but I won't bore you with the details.

2002-03-12T03:23:00.000+08:00

March 11,

Its almost 2.30 in the morning and I am jumpy. I lost count of the number of times i have moved about my room doing nothing. I took up a couple of magazines only to put it down in a couple of minutes. Looking at any of my course book does not help either.

Now what do i do to feel better. let me share a gem of a suggestion given to me. I have my interviews at the India International Center. So one smartass suggested that I go to lodhi gardens and stare and laugh at the early birds out there. Isn't that a great way to get rid of your stress.

To be honest I just have no idea what I am going to do tomorrow. I have not touched any of my course books and papers are a thing of the past. To make things worse I have been getting some very negative comments for my gdpi. The first gd had the invigilator tell me that i was too apologetic and in the very next one I was told that I was too obstinate. So guys what to believe and what not??

Writing to you guys has definitely done some good to me I jus hope that it stays that way till the whole damn thing is over. I will write to you about the details as soon as the whole things is over.

2002-02-18T03:22:00.000+08:00

Hi guys, 17 Feb,

It’s about 2 in the afternoon and I just had a reasonably heavy lunch from the canteen. By the way I at my office doing nothing.

I had been surfing from about 10 in the morning. The whole experience has been quite dampening. I had been going through a couple of IQ sites and the scores have been quite different from what I thought would be a reasonable measure of my intelligence.

Well as I am typing this whole sequences boring bytes I am seeing something Xtremely touching. A TSA who's one batch junior to me is guiding his family around the office. He has a whole bunch of relatives who seem awed by the surroundings.

This whole thing set me thinking. I intend to go ahead despite the bad breath that comes out due to your yawns. I worked in three different companies and got a job in another and not once did I even think of taking my family members to some place. Now looking back I feel that people get what they deserve.

Another interesting site that I went to was the coolavenues.com. Its possibly amongst the best I have seen in my life. I read a few mails on ISB. A mail supposedly from a chap from ISB was simply great. I mean the size. It was something that would fetch the title of a reasonably well written mail esp in terms of size. The issue of ISB definitely generates some very heated passion and it was there to see. If possible do check it out.

The few days have been pretty frustrating for me. For a while I thought that I was being singled out for all the bad calls possible. In fact I got three calls on the same XP issue spent at least two hours each and each time had the cust hang up in disgust. Even now I don't have the solution to the prob.

Then in another instance I got a very creepy call. After spending about an hour during which I made him boot to various creepy modes and removed his mouse drivers. Then I had to make him do all the work with just the keyboard. And some of work included fiddling with the registry that is complex in the best of times. I fixed up the prob despite all that but as I hung up I forgot to get him out of the diagnostic modes. The fellow will now give a call back and I end up with a 0 FTR for all the efforts.

Now despite my feeling bad I must admit that the Americans are perhaps the most polite people in the world. Had I been taking the calls for the Indian customers then I would have left the job long back but these guys just go on with you even when it becomes very obvious that you are making a mistake.

2002-02-12T03:20:00.000+08:00

Feb 11,

So guys since last Tuesday i have been taking calls and each one has an interesting story behind it. I talked to an Indian malayali software engineer working with SAP, a Russian and a whole lot of other interesting characters. Right now in the 450-minute call time for a day we are supposed to average about 15 calls but till date my highest has been 13. On an average a call lasts for about half an hour and once it took me a cool two and a half hour.

Some of the guys are real comp illiterates. But one thing thats great about these guys is that they are amazingly patient. At times when we make mistakes some of the guys even go on to the extent of reassuring us. Every now and then we end up with some very hilarious. I'll share some of them with you guys.

Once a very irate customer called up and told the tech on phone that she wants to talk to his supervisor. The poor fellow calmed her down and listened to problem on hand. The lady in question had received a message on the screen asking her to "Press any key to continue". And she was angry because she did not find an "Any" key on her keyboard.

We guys are rated on various parameters. One of them is called the FTR or the First Time Resolution. This measures how successful you have been in solving the cust's problem. According to the rules if the cust calls back for the same issue within 2 days of the call the techie gets a 0 FTR for the call in question.

So the guys try to see to it that the custs don't call back in the next two days. Once it so happened that a techie messed up the system while troubleshooting. To save his ass he came up with an ingenious solution. He told the cust that the comp had a virus and it will take two days to cure and in the two days anyone touching the comp will get infected. So pls wait for two days and then call back.

Even I faced a very interesting case. The fellow was a Russian who did not know English and to my unfamiliarity with Russian added to the problem. He had some problem with the video card and I wanted to run some dos based diagnostics. I forgot the name of the file so I asked him to use the DIR command. The fellow after following my instructions told me that he got a message which said "Bad command or file". By chance I asked what did he type in. He replied BIR. I tried to correct him and told him that it "D as in Delta" IR. He replied B for Belta, now what is Belta. Finally I gave up and asked him to send us an email.

There are hundreds of similar instances and I will tell about them next time we meet.

2002-02-06T03:18:00.000+08:00

Feb 5,

Guys just tell me how would you feel when you know that someone around you has a soft feeling for you. Just think about it a bit and I'll come back to you.

Then let me apologize for spreading canards about Rahul. The thick-skinned dog still burps and doesn't give a damn about who's around.

Then IIFT and IIMB results are out and let me tell you that your great friend is amongst the majority who have been left out. Then other results will be out this week and will let you know of what happens.

My job is going out pretty good. Last couple of weeks have been pretty bad. But then such feelings don't last long and that's exactly what has happened to me. First of all there is this chap called raman in our office who wanted to meet me. This chap sits in a big room which has a board outside which reads ceo. Like it?
Then I will be taking calls from Tuesday and have been budding and irritating others. Some of the calls have been interesting and believe me just three months back I wouldn't have considered working in a place that required me to work in such a place that required me to handle such calls.

Aha so I asked you about a scenario when someone you know has a soft corner for you. You all must have come across a couple of such instances and a smile or a blush would have been your typical first response. But guys that was not how I reacted. I want you to decipher the things that went on in my mind. So get those gray cells ticking before I spell out the beans.

A couple of days back I changed my office assistant to a dog called Rocky. He's just the kind of person I was looking for. He'll give you those blank stares and for most of the time will do nothing but zzzzzzzzzzz. Check it out and I am sure you will like it. For the computer not so savvies amongst you just right click on your existing assistant and choose assistant. And you can choose anyone from the default clippit to the cat link or the genius.
Ok I agree that I have stretched the gum a bit more than necessary. So Guys I asked you how did I feel when someone around me developed a soft corner for me. The answer is something that I won't let out but to help you in your search I'll pose another question. What happens if the person in question is of the same gender as yourself.

2002-02-01T03:15:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys, Jan 31,

I know that all you busy bodies have very little time to sit down and jot down a few lines but its real heights when you guys tell me that you didn't have time to read the stuff I sent you.

2002-01-24T03:14:00.000+08:00

Jan 23,

So guys still thanks for showing enough patience to reach this far. So I told you of my burst of dedication and some of you must have thought that here is this chap bragging about a god damned call center job. Now if that's how you feel then let me tell you that I take great pleasure in taking the thing a bit further. This whole thing has been much more complex than I ever imagined. To elaborate further dell ships about 40000 units a day and each one of these is customized according to the specific needs of the customer. So you can just imagine the possible system permutations and combinations. And further Dell provides very little on site support. All problems from complex issues to simple ones are handled over the phone.

To give you a further idea about the complexity of the job let me speak about modems. Dell currently ships 70 different types of modems and each manufacturer has his own special features and system specific diagnostic tools. And now a customer can come with a problem with any one of these. And you've got to troubleshoot. To add to your woes you have a foreign accent problem wherein you can't understand what those guys speak and they don't understand what you speak. To bring further tears there are some extremely intelligent customers.

To quote one example guys in the shop got this call from a lady who got a system message "Press any key to continue". She called up to complain that there wasn't an "any" key in her keyboard.

Then there are often cases when we have 60 yr old grandmas calling up with a problem that requires you to open up the box. Now I am sacred when I have to do something with the motherboard. And here I am supposed to tell guys who are complete novices to open up their systems inside out.

And the passing criterion is not easy. To give you an example in our batch only two guys have passed the assessments. One is guy with a five-year experience in hardware installations and the other chap is yours truly . . .

Then to make me feel better there are some really interesting guys. I met a couple of BIT guys whose dates like mine have been postponed. Then there are other really interesting guys. There is madhumita who had done her PG in French from JNU. We have a fair bit of engineers. In fact here again I am surrounded with rahuls. One is in my class and has done his BE from pune univ. The fellow once got stuck in Singapore with no money or visa with him. He was there for about 10 days and how he survived is another interesting tale that will make whatever I have written till now look like an answer to a 2 mark question.

The other fellow is my instructor and guys let me tell you with pride that I have done it yet again. I have done to him what I am so good at. But to be honest I guess this one was the most difficult one to handle but then I am so good that nothing ever seems impossible.

So I guess it's enough for the day and I will let you know about my latest adventures as and when it happens.

take care
Shijo

2002-01-21T03:11:00.000+08:00

20 Jan,

In the last mail I talked about the heights of something now i will carry the heights series a bit forward. We guys out here have a five-day week and have the weekdays off. But I felt that that is a bit unfair to the company so I come in yesterday (i.e. a Saturday) quite early in the day (by my standards) and now it is around 5'O clock Sunday morning. My pending work ensures that I will be in the office premises for at least around noon today. So guys that is what I call the height of you know what.

Then let me tell you the story of a very intelligent guy who once psyched me out. This smart ass had got a GRE score of around 2350 and had been placed with Infy and I had the misfortune of hearing about his achievements straight from the horse's mouth. And now this chap will join Spectramind as one of my juniors. Like it?

I am doing something very interesting. If successful I will be the proud owner of a Hero Honda Passion and will also ending up taking less loan for my PG. Now I am dying to puke out the whole details but I guess you all will have to wait till the whole thing gets done.

I won't bug you guys with any further management details I've got enough responses that makes your feelings about the issue very clear.

Now I was getting bugged up sitting at one place for so long so I decided to move my ass and have a walk. Part of the reason why I took a walk was because I had a hearty dinner. I guess it was my personal best when it comes to the quantity consumed. I am sure you would have disowned me at the cafeteria had you guys been there.

Any way as I told I went for a walk and believe it was a walk for it last for about three quarters of an hour. During the course of my midnight adventure rahul's brethrens accosted me. First they barked but when they realized that I was the great ex-burper's friend they gave me a friendly wag of tail. The next surprise was finding a motor-boat in the middle of the industrial estate. There are other interesting things but then you know I am a very kind hearted person who doesn't wish to cause any annoyance to his friends.

Then as you must have guessed I had been going through a very hectic schedule. I had my fms and iift on the 13th and they went off pretty decently. It so happened that my iift center was in vasant vihar and fms in the north campus and between the two tests I just had a two-hour gap. Now in the middle of the test I suddenly realized that I had to go to the campus and I had no conveyance so in my characteristic style I got up and very politely screamed whether someone could give a lift till the north campus. I got some expected frowns and such but fortunately and unexpectedly one fellow from DCE agreed to make the mistake of giving me a lift. And so thanks to him and also to myself I reached my center well before time.

The iift thing was actually a joke. The paper had no seal and the guys started the paper as soon as they got their hands on it. I looked at them and said that I shouldn't stoop so low. So there I sat for a couple of minutes and then when nothing happened I asked the invigilator when to start. I got a very forthright reply "Any time". So poor me started with the paper and realized that, that was just the beginning. Every ten minutes the lady felt the need to enlighten us all. First she told us to fill us our names in the answer sheet. Then she told us that in question no. so and so the attempt should be read as attempted. She persisted with a few more gems like these. Anyway despite their best attempts I ended up finishing the paper decently. I attempted about every 6 out of 7 questions and came out bloating. Soon my dce friend bought me down to earth by telling me that there was no negative marking and so he attempted all the questions and left none.

I have met some very interesting people out here. But the person on top of this list is a person called Laxmi. She has an uncanny resemblance to Arundati Roy. She's just the person whom you wouldn't expect in a call center. An extremely well read person who would make you feel that khalil Gibran is your next-door neighbour. Jus kidding. Apart from dancing, singing, painting she can also do all the things that you can think of. In fact she even goes to the extent of designing her own clothes. Apart from that she's a Java Certified Professional (not that she needs any certification). But the thing that's amazing about her is her dedication. Spending about 16 hrs in office and that too for a call center job is an example of that. Inspired by her I decided to catch up on my pending work and stuck back at office. So thanks to my latest burst of dedication you can always rely on me if you have any cd-rom or XP related problems.

The Indu's Corporation

2002-01-13T03:10:00.000+08:00

Jan 12,

Right now I am having a training session with a Mr. Mukesh Khetrapal. Just think about a fairer and taller Amrish Puri with a very smooth and shinning skull. I can see beads of sweat on the top of his head. Being a trainer he definitely is going to save a lot of money for the companies that hire him. For one he doesn't require a mike and he is definitely going to save a lot of coffee for the company. By the way the guys have gone out for a coffee break. As I told you he is still going to save a lot of coffee for the company because it is impossible to sleep with the sound that he makes.

This fellow has been the senior VP with shaw wallace. that is the second most important person after manu chabbaria. This fellow now has turned into a entrepreneur and now heads a training outfit called the INDUS corporation. He is also associated with TiE(The Indus Entrepreneurs). Now knowing what the indus valley is I asked what seemed to be an obvious question "Sir why did you name your corporation The Indus Corporation?". He told me something so unexpected that I want to share it with you. The company was called differently when he started the whole thing. It so happens that his wife is called Indu so he called his company "The Indu's Corporation".

Then he just showed some us figures which had many figures hidden in it. He then spoke about perceptions and I guess the things he said was interesting. He went on with many other exercises with some very interesting insights.

First he played a game of pictionary and then we had chinese whispers and thats it till now.
So that's it from me for the day. For tommorow is a hectic day for me. got 2 papers and the centers are situated in far off places.

Some guys learn from their mistakes and I almost did not for again I had almost copied the whole thing on paper to repeat the process of heights all over again. But thankfully for me the guys doing their training out here are smart enough. Public email sites are blocked accessible from our intranet. but the smart asses have found out proxies to bypass the server settings so i avoided the trouble of copying and sent the mail to myself

Mosquito Burps

2002-01-07T03:07:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys, Jan 6,

The breaking news of the moment is that Rahul will NEVER EVER burp again in public. I can't give you the details because of some promises made. But nothing stops you from going ahead and digging out the details. To help you in your task you can always get the help of our dear old talli.

Then I have a referral program in my company that gives out monetary benefits. So if there is someone who has a basic idea of the comp fundas and can speak in angrezi then I can get him a job that will pay around 8 grands. The job will involve troubleshooting comp problems over the phone.

So lets come to the interesting things in life. The most interesting thing that comes to mind right now is that XAT has been postponed. The whole process makes me feel that the guys at DU are great professionals. The exam which was to be held on 6th of jan and many guys got there admit cards on the fifth. Doesn't it remind you of our good old sem exams.

2002-01-03T03:05:00.000+08:00

Jan 2,

I am going through a training session on cultural gap between India and the Americans. Our trainer is a surd called amerjeet. Cool guy.

Right now he just told us how ganeshji inspired him. He says that Ganesh ji has a big head, long nose and a small nose. His interpretation of these features is interesting. I won't go into the details or Rahul ka chus jayega.

He has been talking about flying kisses and such.

Right now we are having a break and let me tell you what happened yesterday. There is a batch mate called Shivani. We were supposed to do an extempore. And this girl started off by saying that she was 33 years of age and how a few months ago she was diagnosed for a terminal condition. Then she went on with a detailed description that had the entire class in tears. Now after the whole speech she went on and took her seat. And for this act of her I suggest that her name be forwarded for the Oscars.

Okay the break is over and the fellow is back. The fellow likes to stand and talk because it makes him feel tall. Sadistic pleasure out of looking down at people, Right?

Henry Ford once said. "you can choose any car provided it is black". Now the session gone further and is talking about customer satisfaction, service, understanding and such.

Another snippet about the SABENA airlines: According to this gentleman the name stands for "Such A Bad Experience Never Again".

Now let me tell you the height of velapanthi. I had typed in this whole thing during class. Then I realised that my floppy had been corrupted so hell broke and I did everything possible and yet did not get hold of a floppy. So what do I do? I go and copy the whole thing on a piece of paper and then here I am at home typing the whole damn thing again.

Take care
Shijo

2001-12-30T03:02:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys, Dec 29,

First of all a very happy new year. I'll try my best to see to it that this mail reaches you before the end of this year but then you know how punctual I am.

I have already relayed it to everyone but in case if there is someone who is not aware then let me tell you that I have joined up spectramind. My training has begun in full swing. In the last three days itself I guess i have learned a lot. In fact the last three days has helped me move a couple of steps up from my semi literate status in computer applications. You won't believe me when I say that. But to further corroborate my stand let me just tell you that I don't know how to chat on the net. When I say that I mean that I don't know how to download the messenger softwares. And add to that I am at sea when it comes to the net lingo. I get the creeps when people talk about terms like asap, a/s/l. ( I hope I written the things right).

With the spectramind experience i intend to change things the way they are. Hopefully it turns out to be the way i want it to be. The guys out here are pretty friendly. And the atmosphere is pretty good. This time no matter what happens I am not going mess up things. Let all nature and fate conspire and here I stand to conquer the world. The last sentence takes the title of the most melodramatic thought that has been jotted down by me.

By the way a very interesting incident happened today. While we were in the office a rumor cropped up that war has been declared and all commercial vehicles on road are been confiscated to be sent to the border. Many other things were in the air like a nuclear explosion in Kashmir and god knows what else. We were delayed for an hour or so and then sent home piece by piece. Some guys as of now are still stuck up at office and its almost 3 in the morning. Like it?

Then i guess i am getting better at sucking and lowering the hemoglobin count i.e. I back to my good old sucking best. If anyone of you doubt my claims then just visit my office and you will see that my standards have actually gone up by a few notches. I have done quite many things but nothing earth shattering so I won't let you into the details. I guess I am waiting for the right moment before I strike and show my true colours. Whenever that particular incident happens then you know it from the horses mouth itself.

But there is a very big if to the above condition i.e. I should get some kind of replies from you guys. Of course there are some very good ones fellows amongst you. Top on that list is anit and shudeep but all the others need to buck up otherwise god help when I meet you next.

So that's it from me for the day

Spectramind

2001-12-25T02:54:00.000+08:00

Hi guys, Dec 24,

Many of you have given me interesting responses to my joining a call center. I just feel that beggars can't be choosers and I just have no other option. Anyway the purpose of this mail is to tell you about spectramind. The info that I am giving you is based on whatever I read from the magazines and what I came to know about the company in the last three days. Most of the info is accurate and can be quoted anywhere without a problem. Just ensure that no one knows that I am the source.

So let me start with the spicy details. Actually the story of this company is closely related to the IT enabled revolution in India. It all began in 1989. Raman Roy the present CEO of the company, a ca was working with AmEx. The then president of AmEx came to India on a routine tour. After his stay in India he decided to set back office operations in India. And so was born the first serious call center or as euphemistically called the business process outsourcing center in India. Before the only similar kind if work that was done out of India was some ticketing work at British Airways.

Late in around 1995 GE hired Raman out of the company to set up their facility in India. His brief was to replicate the AmEx success at GE. And within a couple of years the facilities at gurgaon and hyderabad were employing more than 12000 persons. According to the various reports that I went through it was way ahead of the expectations of the GE top Management.

Seeing the success of these companies many entrepreneurs set of shop to do something similar. The problem with GE and AmEx facilities was that they were captive facilities. And the others simply did not know anything about management. So you had a lot of guys breaking up specially this year. Anyway around 97-98 VCs including HDFC and Chrysalis capital persuaded Raman to set out on his own.

So with an Initial seed capital of around Rs 65 crore Spectramind was set up nearly 20 months ago. The company was a 100% EOU and most importantly a non-captive facility. It is registered in Bermuda for taxation reasons. The EOU status also provides it with some benefits from the Indian govt. Spectramind set up its first facility in Okhla. The facility was set up around 13 months ago. This last piece of information is not something that I am sure of. During this period the company has grown at an amazing rate. Right now the company has around 1500 employees on its rolls. Recently about a month back they have got a second round of VC funding. This time it was wipro and the investment is $10 million. Spec is setting up a new facility in mumbai and the work on the third will start will start soon. Unlike most of the other non-captive players these guys have clients. Big shots form Dell, AOL, and guys like franklin mint and DFS are clients and more will join up soon. And guys like Deepak Parekh are on the board of the company. I wish to speculate that soon we will have a wipro guy on the board. It could be Vivek paul or even azim premji. By the way premji has been to the spectramind complex and it is Wipro's biggest investment till date.

So if you thought that call center is all about servicing calls then think again. The BPO services can be grouped into 5 different categories. 1. Data conversion example medical transcription.2. Rule set processingHR and accounting works3. Decision making/ problem solving4. Direct customer interface.5. Expert Knowledge services
The last one is real fundo stuff. One of the project being handled in this category is a Human genome project. The guys employed are all PHDs and the like.

The company right now has a turnover of around $21 million cool for a company which is yet to see its second B'Day. It plans to increase the turnover to around $121 million by 05. By then it hopes to have around 6000 guys on its rolls. Now this whole thing is not fiction. According to Mckinsey &Co. the total cost of BPO as it is being carried out in the world will be around $532 Billion by 2008. If this whole thing is brought to countries like India then the whole thing will cost just $141 billion. So it's a huge opportunity similar to the manufacturing sourcing the Asia pacific in the 70s and 80s. And India is expected to take a huge pie due to the oft repeated advantages. So we can see a China like thing in the next decade or so.

The employment generating capacity of this business is immense. In fact in the US there are around 7 million agents in about 70000 call centers that is currently showing an annual growth rate of around 20%.
Now let me bring you back to the company. It is a leader when you take the non-captive entities. Already the systems out here are said to be better that of GE which is the overall leader in the country. Amongst the pluses of the company the thing that stands out it's the top quality management. Apart from Raman who is often referred to as the father of the IT enabled revolution in India you have 9 others in the top management who have made their mark in the industry.

A brief Intro of the Veeps would be interesting.
Padmini Mishra is the VP training. She just stands out of the crowd. As I saw the others I felt that the whole crowd stands out. Anyway she's not even a graduate and was with tatas for about 17 years. When she left she was the VP training out there. Then she joined up GE as VP training.

Then you have Mr Varadarajan. He is the VP HR. His introduction is something that I will remember for a long time to come. He entered the room with a bag full of chocolate and introduced himself by saying that he was from an INSTITUTE CALLED THE xlri. After his pg he worked in an organization CALLED THE tatas. Then the consultancy bug got him and he joined up a place CALLED kpmg. Then he went on with the process and named a couple of more organizations like pwc, amex and so on. It seems that the fellow changed jobs like one changes undies.

Sunil Rawal the VP quality is a man with unlimited enthusiasm. He is from IIM A and has the experience of working with firms like telco, Kawasaki and so on. He takes great pride in describing his personal encounter with JRD and the ceo of Kawasaki whose name I don't recall.

Nilanjana Paul VP-relationships has been with NIIT and has a rich experience in IT marketing. Upendra Sing VP operations is someone whose organization skills is simply awesome. The quality of his presentation in terms of flow was simply awesome. Raj Dutta is the CFO. The fellow is an ex-HCL and was once rounded up by the ED for some minor problem. He has some strong views on the license raj and finally sunil gujral is the VP tech. A hard core techie is all I can say about him.

These are the guys say that they have some organizational values in spectramind. I have heard of such crap all over the place but after my experience with some great looking companies I had become a skeptic. But this company has me back as a believer. Whether it was Birlasoft or HCL info or IIS. I saw that very few employees actually knew the names of the CEOs. HCL tech was an exception but that was more because of the nadar name than anything else.

Anyway out here things are different. Every one from the gate keeper to some one who is someone knows who raman is and the respect for the fellow is something that has to be seen to be believed.

Then on the tech front the place is great. The whole place is wired up with cat 6 cabling. They have tie up with CISCO, Compaq, dell, etc. The security features are simply amazing. A hardware-based CISCO firewall provides almost wire speed. Then you have a "checkpoint" software base wall on top of the hardware firewall. All the memory is RAID5. Araya of lucent is the one for many of the voice systems. Then you have firms like NICE from Israel providing some incredible system features.

They have systems ready for processes like live help and screen help. In the former you have on line help being provided for things related to e-commerce. So if you may be doing some e-shopping and all of a sudden you are stuck. You ask for help and some fellow contacts you immediately through a series of options like email, chat and even telephone.

Then in certain processes you record all the screens. So in case of a failure you can pinpoint the exact source of the error. The back up policy is huge. The kind of memory requirements is just mind-boggling. Then there is a process team, akin to a consultancy firm that is responsible for devising the processes for the various clients.

So that's a brief of the company called spectramind. I intend to make a synopsis or a report for the unlikely event of my getting a call from some place. So if you have some suggestions or have some questions then pls ask.
And most importantly merry X'mas to all you guys.
love
Shijo

CAT gyan

2001-12-13T17:00:00.000+08:00

Hi Guys,

Let me start with the cat. Again it was a three section paper and with just 150 questions in all. The various institutions say that with a score of around 70 you can expect IIM calls. Now I have attempted around 100. But . . . In the english section I misread a whole section and got 5 wrong straightaway and the passages stank. They were long, sick and had very few questions each. I felt that DI was good but as soon as I came out Rahul pointed out a few mistakes of mine. Then my attempts in the quant section was okay but the accuracy is not something that I am very happy with.

So that was how cat was. To be honest I do have a good chance but then when I hear about the mistakes I made I feel creepy. Now I have FMS and IIFT left which will be held somewhere next month. Then I have got a job. Many of you guys had warned me against doing something before cat so I waited and as soon as cat was over I went ahead. So that was the reason for the delay in mailing a reply.

So as I was telling you I have joined up Spectramind. I have joined up for a process that involves technical support. I guess that the client that I will be working for will be Dell computers. We have names for each process and the fellows working in my process are called the TITANS. I will start with them from the 19th and for a month we will be given training that involves some technical and speech. These guys have some very interesting HR policies. There salary structure is something that forces you to stick around. Some of you MBAs should visit the place as it has some very interesting things especially the Max health center that is dedicated to the needs of the spectramind employees. Then much of the non essential things are outsourced. They have a dedicated VSNL gateway installed in the premises. And of the stakeholders include wipro, chrysalis capital and some other big shots. Anyway it's a very interesting case study. Rahul and Kshitija if you want to do some private project on HR challenges then this could be a nice place.

The environment is pretty cool and I will be having a couple of BITians who had been placed with HCL. The interview was pretty cool and when I faced the guys I felt so confident as I have never been in recent times but that's a very different story.

And now let me get a bit personal. I am pretty disappointed with the rahuls and pooja but full marks to anit and shudeep for being such regulars. And i don't want to say anything about jo and everyone knows why. Then I keep meeting Vishal. Nitin and priyank are back in town. Priyank left for moradabad and intends to leave for pune on the 22nd. Nitin will be here till the x'mas day. So I guess that covers all the common info. I will follow it by personal mails to all you guys.

Best of luck to all of you for your exams. I keep on mailing and please oblige.
LoveShijo