All that is in the news today

On days when there’s zilch to do at office (quite often nowadays and I ponder why), football websites have been a real life saver. But, with the transfer market coming to a sudden stand still and the start of the season still a couple of weeks away, I have been forced to read what Kanimozhi eats for breakfast, then an update at lunch, her conversations with fellow inmates, etc.. Being on the outside, reading this material drives me real crazy; I can’t really blame Kalmadi when he says he’s suffering from Dementia.

Hats off to A.Raja and Karunanidhi. They were on a free fall and suddenly (in the split second that Kanimozhi did nothing of interest for the media) realized, politics is all about pulling people with you in which ever direction you go. PC and PM got pulled in. Bravo. How someone can steal so many thousand crores without anybody knowing can only be explained by dementia.

I have heard (true) Indian cricket fans say “Dravid is not appreciated enough” as much as I have heard people praising Sachin. It is the media which is hung up more the on the “Sachin-is-god” banner. Well, how can you blame them? Sachin and Dhoni sell t-shirts for them, not Dravid. Here’s something for you to ponder: As there is a possibility of Sachin scoring his hundredth hundred in the current series, the revenues through sponsorship (alone) for ESPN-STARSPORTS is to the tune of 180-200 crores. Think of the revenue BCCI would garner? Beware; this is a considerable amount of money. As a nation, we have this newly acquired habit of comparing everything to the so-called money stolen by A. Raja. All said and done, why anybody wants to compare is beyond me. We have one of the best middle orders ever. They do things differently and it works on certain days and on certain days it doesn’t. Get on with your life. We have bigger problems sitting in the couch next to you.

Prior the new Gilchrist, amazing KP, the world’s best bowlers and poor away form of team India. So, naturally, England are the best team in the world. Well, the logic is slightly screwed because none of them take into consideration the away form of England into account. Beating the worst Australian side in a decade at their home with Mitchell Johnson bowling a wide outside legstump line consistently for three days can be called “amazing away form”? I don’t think so. Actually, England calling Australia an away fixture is like India calling Srilanka an away fixture. The conditions are similar, very similar indeed. A proper away fixture for England would be playing in the subcontinent against a top side and winning. Top side would mean a team in form. Not a team which has lost its bearings or finding its way back. And subcontinent doesn’t include Dubai even if it is “home” to Pakistan. But of course, when you can’t do it, you cry foul of the conditions. Of course, Geoffrey Boycott thinks the pitches in India are dead. But, why they never make runs in a dead wicket beats me to be honest. The difference between India and England is the fact that no matter what Team India does, the media here will berate them and expect them to lose the next match and the series while no matter what team England does, the media immediately calls them the next World champions and more. Strauss could be the best ever batsman the world has ever seen, very soon. To move away from the topic: As a relatively new Indian cricket fan, what Strauss and Greame Smith offer to their teams as batsmen, I will never understand. Everytime I have checked their scores, they get out before their partners and they barely look like having a sound technique to look solid through their ultra-short innings. Potential? Class? Technique? Statistically superb?

I read an article about the latest plans the Bangalore municipality has devised to spoil the very reason (cosmopolitan feel) people from all over the country want to live in the city. They want everyone to clear eighth standard Kannada by the next year end as a mandatory requirement to live/work in the city. I, for one, struggled to pass my eight standard Tamil exams a decade back. The very thought of writing an exam in Malayalam makes me go nuts. Now, if both these states followed suit, I would have nowhere to go but become a NRI. Did they really think this through?

Here’s a topic you will find in any random newspaper on any random day. Quota system. For some reason, the creatively challenged politicians of today (across the globe) think of quota as their primary weapon to win vote banks. Damn you fools.  It was this divide and rule system of yesterday that made the society the mess it is today. Don’t make tomorrow worse just because you want to believe you are doing social justice. Quota for women in corporate offices, for students in higher education, for jobs in private sectors, etc.. They do absolutely nothing to solve issues at the primary school level but want an undercooked chicken leg to do a post graduation degree all thanks to a quota. To finish, I want to raise a toast and say “fuck you” to Arjun Singh and the likes.

I am not an expert on any of the topics discussed above but everyone’s entitled to an opinion.

The PGDM Hangover

Today’s hangover has correlation with yesterday’s “moment of truth”. Obvious, duh!

We all get to choose between being an optimist and a pessimist. The ones who believe the cup is half full or half empty. On the surface, one of the easiest decisions one has to make. Optimism is good and pessimism is evil. Right?

The problem is, how can one be sure that water is exactly at the half level? Isn’t that where we all exist? We want to believe that the cup is at least half full. If you are bloody damn sure it is, we call ourselves eternal optimists (eternal?) but the moment we doubt that assumption, all hell breaks loose. What I mean by that is, we MBAs/PGDMs frantically start looking for new jobs. This brings me to my conundrum: What do we want to do?

Most of us have no fucking clue what we really want to do which is gibberish for saying we will crib no matter what we do. There are, of course, exceptions. Few don’t crib and a few know they want. These include people who have more pressing issues to be worried about, newly weds with their feet so high up in the sky they do don’t really care about “lesser mortals who run behind materialistic possessions”, the ones who are really satisfied with their life (the type I will never understand and hence I will safely assume don’t exist) and finally the ones who really do know what they want to do. Beware of one other variety. The ones who talk so confidently that you think they really know what they want but at the end of the day if you look back at all their actions, you will realize they are just better equipped to pfaff but really don’t form a part of any of the exceptions stated above.

The word which is is-all-and-end-all for most of us is PEERS. The dictionary definition might be different but the one I believe in: Everyone, we know of, who are doing better than us (Perception decides who’s better. You might be struggling in Antarctica thinking hell is very close but if I feel your life is better, you are in).

All of us live in hope. We all have heard of a friend of a friend of a distant relative who actually has no clue about accounting/sales/marketing/MIS/anything but works in a “dream company” doing what we all want to call “The dream job”. We all really believe that, one day, we will crack that code. The only problem is for most of us, the day never comes. Instead more stories will continue to pour in. And you tell yourself “This is the way the cookie crumbles. You lucky bastards.”.

I couldn’t end this without talking about the most noble of virtues as stated by almost all religions: Forgiveness. We all sit back and complain how this is a lost virtue but I beg to differ. Forgiveness still exists but with one condition: As long as you succeed. Let me give you an example to prove my case/vent my frustration. Being blatantly selfish is something I just couldn’t connect with, with a select few of my “peers”. But then, after two years at a B-school and the year after, I found why people didn’t care. Not only have people forgotten/forgiven what they did in the past but the very few who still remember are confronted with (or a few variations of the same): “Say whatever you want to. You couldn’t achieve what they could. You are plain jealous.” See, you are jealous.

P.S:

1. All the above characteristics have exceptions. If you don’t agree, you are an exception.

2. I do realize that in the end the race is long, people who were ahead have also fallen behind, you are someone else’s “peer”, etc.. But, standing here with a cup of water in my hand and accidently (so I claim) having poured half of it down the drain, I need someone to blame.

Small Town. Big State.

Hi All, I will go through the obvious first. I know there isn’t anyone reading this (and if you stumbled here by mistake, please comment. I really want to know why you reading this). And, ya, I am jobless yet again.

I am currently in a big town (not a small city, Mind you) working for one of the biggest corporate houses of free India. And with about a month and half behind me, I can safely say that the good thing about being an MBA is that you really don’t have a skill set, more importantly people know it as a fact and most importantly they are still ready to pay you. Anyways, there’s this amazing analytical mind that we possess that people want to make use of. Frankly, even I want to make use of this exceptional and I suspect nonexistent talent.

I must admit, it is much more fun than IT ever was. I get to put on my thinking cap a lot more (Commentary on IPL 2) and most importantly I work under a manager who I think is awesome (one thing that I thought was a myth: Good managers). The only sad part is, before I start thinking about stuff, I need to talk to people in the department. After almost two years in the IT, I was of the belief that corporate work culture is cold compared to a more traditional manufacturing setup (Don’t we all live in hope?).

Oh boy, I couldn’t be more wrong. They have simple way of functioning here. Consider you work in a manufacturing plant for some odd reason and you want some work done from a guy, say Mr. X. Mr. X will look at where exactly you fit into the hierarchy. If you are above him, you might (watch the word, never will I make the mistake of saying WILL) get the work done then and there. If you are equal to him, he’s gonna give you a nice sweet lecture on how he’s busy and how he will surely get back in a day or two (trust me, your next two days will be wasted trying to get the work done). And if you fall in the third and the obvious category and assume you ask him “Can you help me here, I think I am about to die”, Mr. X will look up and down like you come from another planet and then say “Sorry”. Dead or about to die are the same here. Neither can help him today.

Courtesy and simple common sense isn’t really a must in this place. Let me validate my statement through a seriously true incident. The plant that I work for/in has an ongoing feud between the management and the union. Employees (like us) who are not worthy enough to be on either party have a serious safety issue. So, there’s this extensive planning going on about who will go in whose car as walking or going on a bike is a big risk. And of course as you should have guessed, I wasn’t in their plans at all (although I was sitting right in front of most of them). Anyways, one of these girls who I work with suddenly looks at me and goes:

Miss X: You also have to go home right (BIG Finding. Wish I could come up with such findings for my own project). How do you come usually?

Moi: Walking.

Miss X: That is highly unsafe right (Another good finding)

Moi: I guess.

Miss X (to Mr. X): Don’t you think it is unsafe for him to walk.

Mr. X: Who is he? (I was sitting 2 cubicles away from him for one month now)

Miss X: Trainee

Mr. X: Its safe enough.

Miss X: Ok

He doesn’t seem to know me but he was damn sure I would be safe. Maybe he’s watched a south Indian movie and assumed all people from south are used to fighting more than ten people at a time. Lot more stories in the pipeline. Next post maybe.

Is it just me or does the IPL trophy really look sad? I had never really got the fashion sense that most people seem (at least they themselves believe) to possess. Why do people call it good design just because there’s zillions worth of ruby and diamond stuck on it? As far as my fashion impaired mind goes, the only person who should be saying “What a real beauty!” is the guy who’s planning to steal it. An ugly looking thing which costs a lot and is light compared to anything else you can get at that price. So, basically, my point is, it is so light that you can transport it easily, so ugly that you would readily part with it and so costly that you make a fortune for parting with it. I am a big supporter of Chennai Super Kings and I sometimes think CSK wantedly lost the final because Dhoni really didn’t like the idea of, as commentators put it, “get his hands on the trophy”. If they manage to get to the final again and lose, I might have struck on something valid. I always feel like posting when I am damn frustrated and I recently went through this amazing blog. Guess who? Lets just say that Appam has risen in popularity for all the wrong reasons.

Devil’s Workshop

People say Monday mornings suck. I have close to a month’s experience in unpaid unemployment and I can tell you it just ain’t monday mornings that suck. Every afternoon that I wake up to sucks. It always begins with me asking myself the all important and possibly day altering question: “What should I do today?” This question is always followed by the realization that it has been a month since I did something ( Don’t start with “Its been 2 years since you did something”. At least, I got up early and traveled 40 odd kms. That is enough work for a day).  The tea arrives with a reminder: “Enough. Switch that thing off. Go back to the IT company if you want AC through the day.” If only somebody respected what we do. Hmmm. 

Time for me to go through the various options available. A lot of DVDs at home but then my CD/DVD drive doesn’t work. Try playing it on TV using the player? A complicated menu pops up on TV and no matter what I do with the remote, the cursor doesn’t move an inch. “An insult to the IT professional ” I tell myself. After around 30 minutes of meddling around, I understand that the remote doesn’t have batteries. I finally get this thing working. “Chotaa bachhaas” I tell myself, sit back, and finally the movie begins. Few minutes later, I realize that the video and the sound doesn’t synch. Well, a for-the-degree-certificate engineer can’t do much about it. What else? I feel like reading a book but don’t have one(except Statistics for management by lewin & rubin. No, Thank you.). Computer games? My computer doesn’t have the minimum requirements. At this point in time two weeks back, I came up with something: Watching random videos on youtube. Anything I could find. Even that came to an end when the phone bill reached home. 

I start getting restless. Commentary inside my head: “The World is moving fast, people are dying faster, why am I sitting so damn jobless under the hot sun? (Assume the roof on top and the house on top of that doesn’t exist ). I shouldn’t be thinking. I should be doing something. Panic isn’t the need of the hour. I must stay calm.”  Seconds turned into minutes. Before minutes turned into hours, my cell beeps. A friend of mine; the paid unemployed youth (PUY). I call back.

Moi: Hi da.

PUY: Where are you?

Moi: Home and you?

PUY: Almost home. Come to the usual place in 15 min.

Moi: Sure.

I drag myself out in the hot sun to the not so nearby teashop and order garam. For those who don’t know what it is, it is just another way to say “Hot Tea”. And for those who know “Shut Up”. After about a brief discussion on how the PUY’s day at office went ( tea, coffee, cafeteria, dorm and the likes ) I head back home. After some time I decide its been a real long time since I visited Adayar, the beach,Thiruvanmiyur,etc. So, I quickly head in that direction. Spend two or maybe three hours roaming aimlessy and then return back home.

Dinner’s on the table. It remains on the table for an hour. Random search on Orkut looking at what people who I kinda knew in school/college are upto. The same feeling comes back “I should be doing something.” Go through my video collection on computer before I hit the sack. Tommorow is almost the same except of course the remote has batteries in them.

Reserved: Not for the Backward but for the Rich.

If you are thinking: “Here comes another post on Reservations”, not quite. I will keep that for later. This is something that struck me while I was watching an advertisement on television. I personally feel that ads are a great way to portray one’s creativity. As with most ads, even the one I was watching had something new to offer. If you actually concentrate and focus on the top right corner, there’s a cricket match on display. What a bonus. An Ad with a game.

Hasn’t the world come full circle. Once upon a time, there used to be cricket matches. Then came television to help cricket reach millions. Then came advertising to help raise revenue to cover cricket more extensively. Here comes the latest: Cricket matches to boost advertising. Yep, Today’s topic of discussion is of course The I.P.L. The IPL, as any cricket fan north of Antarctica knows by now, is the Indian Premier League. It is actually a brilliant concept where anything (absolutely anything) can be marketed, sold, bought, fought, etc as long as some cricket happens (preferably on the side of the screen).

Couple of things went wrong and this great parent killing child was born. Firstly, the concept of 20-20 was introduced and secondly India won the 20-20 World Cup. If these two hadn’t happened, the BCCI would have continued by organizing two or (if need be) three Indo-Pak tours a year to achieve their financial targets. Instead, the IPL was born. At this point, I felt this could lead to something really exciting. Then came the sponsors. They bought the various franchises, bid for players and in the process compiled their squads for the “karma yudh”. Then came the cheerleaders and I was telling myself “Now we are talking”. The team compositions came through and most teams except Bangalore RC (Wasim Jaffer???? who you kidding.) and Rajastan Royals looked competitive.

The D Day came. The first match started with SRK in the middle of the screen. It has been 40 odd matches since and I badly want to know: why the f*** is SRK still in the middle of the screen? I understand he’s bought that team and I also understand that he’s about to lose a lot of money in the process, what I don’t understand is why is the camera still pointing at him? A part of the screen is dedicated to him for showing his emotions/ugly face (depending in how much of a fan you are). As he says in most of his interviews, the press should let him be. Leave him alone for god sakes.

For the initial few matches, cricket took up the rest of the screen. Then came the latest in the world of advertising: Shrinking the screen to fit in ads (with sound) during the match. I understand that money is the most important thing here but then it shouldn’t be so blatantly obvious. Having said all this, the cricket has been AMAZING. One would be more appreciative If only he/she could: 1. Take their eyes off the bright sponsor logos on the side of the screen demanding one’s attention 2. Hear the commentary on top of the sounds that accompany the ad and 3. SRK/ pretty zinta ( commentators changed her name recently) get off screen more often. In this world of ‘Customer Satisfaction above all else’, it is such an irony that one needs to be content watching cricket on the side of the screen with a lot of unwanted faces/ads on a paid private channel. Well, things need to change and quick.

I rest my case assuming that as it is just the beginning, these things will be set right in the coming years. Hopefully. To conclude, I hope against hope that either SRK gets bored of it and moves on or I get bored of it and move on.

Moving on…

Change is tough but makes a person tougher in the process, they say. But for people(like me) working in IT companies who think they are stuck and have nothing at all to contribute or learn from, change comes as a HUGE RELIEF (Believe me). And I, finally, will complete my journey through this very dark tunnel in June (touch wood). Would the next step be any better? I don’t know but one thing I know for sure is I am not going to make any progress as an IT professional. If somebody could measure self confidence and represent the data as a graph, mine would be a constantly decreasing one which has already reached DANGER levels.

Is IT so bad? Of course it isn’t. Make no assumptions here. There is a small but a significant number of people who make it big in this million dollar/employee industry. But the problem for most is the million employees; who are equal or better than you. For all the noise people make about students not being properly trained to be able to be employed in an IT industry, it is funny to know that most of the people I know were trained in some technology and are working in a completely different technology. Well, I shall stop here; I can make up a million more excuses why IT didn’t work for me but the hard reality is that I didn’t work for it too. I have never put in 100% effort into anything remotely work in these two years and the only excuse I can come up with is my dream of (too passionate a word? Ok replace it with ‘interest in’) doing an MBA.

Why does an MBA interest me so much? The best two reasons I thought of: Peer Pressure and Lack of interest in the present job. I felt that by doing an MBA the bare minimum I will successfully do is to shorten the competition from millions to thousands. I also feel that an MBA would provide me with interesting job profiles which I get to pick from (And not the companies doing it as a random process). They say everything comes to an end. Well, I am happy this not-so-short stint at IT comes to an end. Now begins my next test; Trying to be a manager. Hope this works out better.

How to : Reclaim my Life????

Hello people (Guess, the few people who used to check this link have now stopped). I am back to probably the only thing I can truly call MINE, my B.L.O.G. If you are looking for something worthwhile to read or feel good about, this isn’t the right post. Maybe few of my older posts might help.  This is about me wanting to write about the day, which I guess, is one of the worst days in my life, to date (Murphy’s Law taught me not to assume:) ) . The irony is that my last post reads ‘Reclaim my life’.

This, as any other day, was somebody’s good day, somebody’s bad day and just another day for the rest. For me though, it was the day I awoke to the reality: Life is indeed a tough thing to get through. This day 8-01-08, the world literally did come tumbling down for me . Didn’t realize it is a palindrome until this very minute: 80108. Maybe palindromes are unlucky for me.

It was the day when my CAT result came. Even a drunkard reading this (Don’t ask me why would he read this) must have understood that my character had been killed in this particular script. My first post on this blog almost two years back was about how I messed up IIT JEE. You can call this as a sequel to it. Never felt this bad about any result ever in my life. (Oh boy, I have written many)

I really thought I could bell/bang/whatever the CAT. But the biggest problem in CAT is you are dependent on other’s performance and on top of it one day’s mess takes a year to clear (clear, let me change it to ‘get another chance’). And for the third year running I felt next year is when I clear up the mess. It never happened and now I understand why they call it the elusive IIM call. At this moment, I understand the plight of the Indian Cricket team. Really, there’s a lot in common. They go to Australia and they get kicked by the Australians not because they played bad but because the opposition played even better. And they are left with the feeling: we did better than last time and still lost. It is the feeling that you are very close to the catch that makes you try again. I am in very similar waters. People talk about going in to the exam hall confidently, do the necessary preparation, sleep well, eat well before the exam, blah, blah, blah. I have tried all that and more. Sometimes pure will isn’t enough.

Few things I learnt on the way, shall note it down for future reference.

1. Never assume that some things come naturally. No, it doesn’t unless it involves drooling over a girl.(for guys of course). You need to work on it.

2. It isn’t right to ask somebody his/her CAT percentile when they don’t come and tell you. If he/she has done well, the/she will tell you and if he/she hasn’t, why you beating up a beaten bag by asking that question?

3. Golden Rule: If it happens once, it will not happen again. But then if it happens twice, it will surely happen thrice. So true in my case.

4. Never let go of your job for CAT preparations. Oh boy, I would have been in trouble and if there’s anybody who is thinking on those lines, do it only if you have 99s CONSISTENTLY in your mocks.

p.s: I am B*A*C*K

Reclaim your Life

Been such a long time since I posted, it feels like I am a stranger to this. An empty mind is a devil’s workshop, they say. After about 8 months of absolutely nothing to do, my mind too has started spinning up stuff I don’t think a sane person would wanna listen to. And probably thats the exact reason why I felt my blog would be the perfect avenue for me to test it on harmless souls.

Last Sunday, I was watching the French Grand prix at my place. The race, it goes without saying, was BORING. The usual story. The teams are so unevenly balanced that the fate of the driver has nothing to do with how good he is with the wheel. (Not taking any credit away from the eventual winner here) Its become so predictable that if you know which tyre manufacturer has the advantage on a particular track, you can easily say who’s gonna win: Schumacher or Alonso? Well, you might ask, aren’t there 22 drivers competing for the top place. The rest, as they say, are in the “also ran” category. If you know a tiny little bit more about the sport, you would ask what about Schumi’s and Alonso’s team mates. Don’t they also have a good chance? Technically,yes. But then, one of them sucks real bad while the other has signed the contract saying “Under no circumstances in the race will I be ahead of my team mate.”

Ok, will cut the crap and continue with what I wanna tell you. While I was watching the race, one of the commercials caught my eye (so you can understand how interesting the race really was). Most of you would have seen this several number of times. Its about this SUV and the basic line reads “Reclaim my life”. It shows a couple of unshaven guys (L.O.S.E.R.S.) who stand depressed and say things like “I always wanted to quit on Monday morning”. The way they say it makes me feel they are not actors. Their faces look too sad to be faking it.

Anyways the point is, aren’t too many of us taking the same path that those characters in the commercials would have taken to reach that point of “I always wanted to quit on Monday morning”??? We (certainly me) don’t seem to live in the present. It is either the past or the future depending on the age of the person. We keep peeling off, layer by layer, an onion in a wild hunt to find something. We call it, “Our goal in life” or differently put “The very purpose of existence”. In the end, all thats left behind is a lot of wasted tears (Damn you onions).To me, all this “purpose of life” stuff is pure crap. You got a life, so shut up and go about living it to the max. You f**k around searching for “the ultimate goal”, all you will end up doing is increasing the World population and in the end asking yourself the question “Haven’t I screwed it all up?” You may never know that in itself might be your Ultimate Goal.

p.s:

* I know it is cliché and I do know its something I should be talking about at the age of 60, probably, but don’t blame me I warned you in advance.

* Zizou, you rock.Literally.

The City’s all empty.

A lot has changed in the past one month including the frequency of my posts. But it has got nothing to do with disinterest but just that my computer got all screwed up (as usual, many might say). A couple of years back, my computer got into trouble because of a small glitch. The engineer in me wanted to correct the problem all by myself. And the rest as they say is history.

The World Cup is moving into its final stages. No upsets at all this year. That’s quite astonishing. All in all, one of the best World cups to date. Initially it was Argentina setting the pace, now slowly, Brazil are back to where they belong, the top. The team I support is playing horribly, to say the least. The first thing England need is a change in attitude. With the team they have, why they are so negative is something I can’t understand. Its quite amazing they are still in the tournament with the form they have showed till now. Hoping things change and soon.

It had been a long time since we guys had gone out somewhere and that very thought led us on a trip to Ooty covering Coimbatore, Topslip, Black Thinder, Monkey falls, etc on the way. Shouldn’t even be typing this but “was awesome fun”. The best part for me is the long trek (14 odd Kilometers) we did in search of wild animals at top slip. We ended up in a completely secluded waterfall, in the middle of the jungle. Amidst all this, came our final semester results, which we all cleared thankfully. That’s the final nail in the coffin. I am out of the place I hated for four years.

Infosys sent out its first list of students whose training began on June 26^th and as it turned out, most of Chennai got called. The Shatabdi Express on the 25^th of June was filled with people aged 21 and all of them had just one destination to reach, Mysore. And what a sight it was. A lot of confusion, people fighting over luggage space, moms crying and to add to all this, the platform on which the train actually stood had just a board “2A” and the platform was no where in sight. It took me 15 minutes just to find the platform. It was real tough saying goodbye to all the guys who had kept my life ticking since school. So many happy faces, didn’t wanna be a mismatch, so left the place 3 or 4 minutes before the train actually left and went straight to the beach. Whatever happens happens for the good, I keep telling myself.

The Hard Reality.

Borrowed the graph from sagaro… 

Oh, so true……