ZZZZZZZ

It's been way too long since I've written anything. Maybe my blog feels like an abandoned one, but I hope to back soon .. with many many things to cover:

• Shodh Yatra - One week spent in Mizoram, without much of manmade luxuries to comfort me ... made some great friends, kept some strangers the way they were, introspected some, clicked a lot of photos, did a lot of toiling and finally blew up whole loads of money on plane tickets - Was it all worth it?
• Grudges and keeping them - I've been holding a lot of em lately and don't know how to deal with em ... Somehow I can't seem to keep the friends I make, no matter how well we start off - I need a course on relationship management?
• Umpteen thoughts about an MBA right after grad school and maybe a premature end to my tryst with education - was it really the right way given the blurry road ahead?
• Hypocrisy - is there ever escaping it?
• A saying I saw/heard somewhere - "Keep the things that don't make you happy away!" ... how my efforts to practice this have been going in vain :P

Cheers

234

Is the number of days that have passed ...Condemnations flew, people swore, dear ones cried and the world watched. Today, some memories seem to have forgotten - politics, economics, budgets and the rains seem to have taken top priority. A look at the following videos brought back all the hatred, fear and helplessness.

Do not watch the videos if you are weak at heart (it takes courage to acknowledge the same)

I've been a bad boy

In a completely non-perverse sense .... I might have managed to piss off someone real close to me - thanks to a late night "jump the gun" email, which I've already tried my best to get rectified... Hope things get better soon :|

Writer's block

How ironic is it that in the extremely busy first year I found time to start a blog and keep it reasonably updated... but now, in the second year - when classes begin at 11 am, end at 1 (on some days), the number of blog entries is negligible...

And it's not like I am subjecting my brain to some other extremely strenous activity either :|

So, start tomorrow, I'll try to post snippets from newspapers and my views on them ... hoping to get out of this writer's block :|

For the first time in life...

I am thoroughly enjoying classrooms and the learning experience ... Wish India had more of such educators ...

Tomorrow july begins, and so does a new routine of my life which has good amount of time allocated to health, study, work, liesure and general catching up with friends ... Let's see how long I can keep this up :-)

Parcel needs a scheduler !

Club meetings, group meetings and hang-outs times with PGP-2s is hell !... Classes begin at 8:30 in the morning and run all the way upto 8:30 pm... Grr

Amusing images of India

As extracted from the US department of state's website:

On traffic in India:

On Indian roads, the safest driving policy is to always assume that other drivers will not respond to a traffic situation in the same way you would in the United States. On Indian roads, might makes right, and buses and trucks epitomize this fact. For instance, buses and trucks often run red lights and merge directly into traffic at yield points and traffic circles. Cars, auto-rickshaws, bicycles and pedestrians behave only slightly more cautiously. Frequent use of one's horn or flashing of headlights to announce one's presence is both customary and wise.

On the few divided highways one can expect to meet local transportation traveling in the wrong direction, often without lights. Heavy traffic is the norm and includes (but is not limited to) overloaded trucks and buses, scooters, pedestrians, bullock and camel carts, horse or elephant riders en route to weddings, bicycles, and free-roaming livestock. Traffic in India moves on the left. It is important to be alert while crossing streets and intersections, especially after dark as traffic is coming in the "wrong" direction (i.e., from the left).

If a driver hits a pedestrian or a cow, the vehicle and its occupants are at risk of being attacked by passersby.

Back with a bang

Back to amdavad ... second year has begun and I'm enjoying every bit of it (also getting bored with the free time on a sunday morning)

Here's something I found cool ... and it doesn't seem too far away in the future -

Sunday @ Workplace - DESERTED

Feels good to know that one doesn't need to come to office on sunday ... feels bad to be in this deserted place on a Sunday ... Hisaab fittus (Yeah ... I've been getting back in touch with childhood bombay lingo which was lost so long ago :P)

And hence begins the trend of microblogging @ this blog !

Last weekend at Internship

And I'm still at work :-( ... Furiously struggling with Powerpoint and Excel ... Let's see how well / badly the final presentation goes...

Cheerios

I've been powerpointing...

And now it's time to make PPTs... Contrary to what I've learnt in Business School (And I even scored an A in that course :P) powerpoint presentations are not memory aids, but stand alone documents which don't contain just bullet points, but fully understandable sentences (read this again and you'll get what I mean) !

So much for an internship being an application of my learnings in PGP-1 :)

So ... Internship ends soon, I've learnt a lot, and more than that learnt how little I know ... Can't wait to chill in the small heaven of a break between the end of internship and start of college ...

Cheerios

Todayz fortune :-)

Today's fortune: Fools and fanatics are always certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts

I've been emailing...

Frantically and somehow the mails have been getting ruder by the day ... Can't wait for the internship to come to a fruitful conclusion :|

Here's an excerpt from one of my recent emails:

So I request you to kindly spare me this unplanned trouble ... I'm sure you will appreciate how important stability is in man's life - it is the very pursuit of stability that has given rise to the institution of marriage on one hand and large civilizations on the other.

Guhahahahaha

Yatra.com - losing my hard earned money :(

Stranded between the past and the present (UK and US) - India has a really screwed up format system... and I had to learn to be extra careful the bitter bitter way

Yatra.com's calendar popup on the site rarely works, and so I have to end up typing in the date everytime I look /book a flight ... This menial task coupled with the dd/mm/yy vs. mm /dd/yy debacle led me to book a ticket for 27 September instead of 27th April and ofcourse the booking details prominently displayed my "booking date" as 27th April since I was trying to get a ticket the very same day. 

Finally after displaying 27/09/09 in all their forms on the website, I received an e-ticket post payment that said 27 - Sep - 09. WOULD ITHAVE KILLED YOU TO USE THIS FORMAT TROUGHOUT ??? And the airline and yatra promptly pocketed 750/- and 150/- each within the next few minutes when I had to cancel and take a 14 hour long train ride to Nagpur :(

Since then, I've borne a grudge against Yatra and Indigo ... grrr

Phew ...

Just had my mid-review today at 7:30 am (yeah, that's what happens when you have multiple people in multiple locations to report to, sigh !) and it went pretty well... I was given some compliments like "good job" and "good fundamental work" ... and this is a bit nerving esp. after I expected to be blasted left, right and center..

The next two weeks are damn crucial... post which I plan to spend a week in Mumbai with comfort and romancing with all that I've so desperately loved mumbai for...

Au revoir...

Time to kill

I'm stranded 200 kms away from the nearest metropolitan in the heart of maharashtra... Waiting for an overnight bus that arrives in an hour... only to kill 12 hours tomorrow and finally fly back home... Whatta life :P

In the steaming orange city...

In Nagpur these days and how I hope I had chosen some other time of the year... The temperature just refuses to go below 47... And most hotel AC rooms are filled to the brim with long waiting lines :(

One respite I have is that am nearing the end of the market visit phase of my project and now's the time to deliver some results and insights...

Cheers...

On the road...

It's been 7 days since I've left Mumbai for field work... and already it feels like it's been ages. With a twist of events, I landed up with a project working on my firm's rural distribution strategy and so I've travelled villages around Maharashtra for quite some time now... here are 5 things I never thought I would do in my life:

1. Ridden 20 kms in an Mumbai size auto rickshaw with 7 other people
2. Rode as a pillion rider on a bike without a helmet for 2 hours in the dark on a highway with no civilization for miles and miles
3. Saw a village "bazaar"
4. Spent time in a place without electricity for almost 10 hours
5. Spent shitloads of money (which should be reimbursed soon :P) on a swanky hotel room, only to realise it would only be used for 8 hours of sleep and a bath later if I'm lucky!!!

I sincerely apologize to all the people I haven't been able to be in touch with ... my dear old reliance phone is outta battery, cos I was stupid enough to not carry a charger along anticipating a short trip :P ... So mail me your phone nos. if u wanna know more about my adventures - another wonder of modern technology, anywhere I go - there's some telephone network coverage ... which brings along email, google maps and all my work along :|

Here are some pics from my "adventures":

In the mumbai ;)

Back home ... it's hot, humid, crowded but it's still my first love :)

Past few days have been bad ... Ahmedabad > Delhi > Gurgaon> Delhi > Ahmedabad > Mumbai > Navi Mumbai > ??? ... After a major reshuffling of my original project, I am still pretty unsure about what lies ahead. But I ain't complaining ...thanks to some good perks :

1. An awesome extended week at home which I spent up sleeping and eating (cos my mom insists I've grown thinner :P )
2. A chance to attend my Junior's Valfi at IIT Bombay (priceless)
3. Playing on my brand new Nokia E63 :)

Cheers all around ...

Youtube again :)

Here's a sweet short (not really that short) video about smiling. Coincidentally, I've been in a perky mood ever since exams ended. And I've decided to go with the short span of happiness I have instead of worrying about the happy moments being lost to some impending doom; and I'd recommend you do the same ...

The end of an eventful year at Wimwi

Learnt a lot... forgot most of it ... hated the pressure... loved the experience ... lived a life !

Time to let down my hair (figuratively ... otherwise, its always down :D) and PARTYYY ...

Edit: Going by the general trend amongst my batchmates, I feel compelled to proclaim:

"I have survived"

Swati Bhargava weds Mr. Patel

And they both live happily ever after in the magical land of Karnavati, where they rule all troubled Wimwians as Swatiben and Patel bhai...

Disclaimer: You won't get this unless you've studied Operations management at IIM-A. And if u have and still don't get what this is about... God bless you!

Wake up time...

Precisely why youtube should be completely banned from educational campuses during exams. Lot of wasted time led to this one ....

A short break from Wimwi ...

Has been long due... After a gruel ling marathon of exams ... 7 subjects in ~4days, i'll be able to heave a sigh ... will it be relief or a ponderous future? time only will tell... for now I bid adieu to the tucchas, who've been a source of amazing inspiration at times and that of sheer hatred (for their vella lifestyle) at times...

And now I'm finally set to mug one last time before heading back home for some much needed recharging :)

Adios

Live post for earth hour

And my lights are switched off for the next one hour.. and so is the laptop and the fan ... :)

Vote Earth

THIS SATURDAY 28 MARCH AT 8.30PM (LOCAL TIME YOUR COUNTRY) YOU CAN VOTE EARTH BY SWITCHING OFF YOUR LIGHTS FOR ONE HOUR - EARTH HOUR.

I've decided to take this up. If you want to know how you can show that you care, do any of the following:

Take a photo on the night, upload it to flickr and add it to Earth Hour's flickr group and tag it with your city and country.

Make a video of your event, upload it to YouTube and add it to our YouTube group.

Write a live blog post during the event and tag it with earthhour or voteearth, and your location.

Update your Twitter on the night and write #earthhour or #voteearth and your #location in your update to tag it.

Visit this website for details.

Peace

Back to square one

Life has again taken up a new veil of uncertainty... Waiting and watching :)

RIP the irony of an elite institute

"Third year Electrical Engineering student, Rohit Kumar was declared brought dead at the Midnapore hospital this afternoon as he was being shifted from BC Roy Technology Hospital to Kolkata. Rohit succumbed to a head injury after he fell off a rickshaw on campus. As is well known in Kgp, Sunday being the “off” day for BC Roy Hospital and the fact that BCR is severely short of facilities to deal with injuries such as these, BCR authorities (or lack of them) refered Rohit to a hospital in Kolkata. As Rohit was being shifted to Kolkata in an ambulance, he passed away and was declared brought dead at nearby Mindapore hospital." says the story at this link.

Despite the huge backlog of assignments, presentations and reports, I take my time to write this cos this news has somehow affected me deeply. Over the 5 year period away from home now, I have seen first hand how these "premier" institutes of the nation have failed to live up to the expectations of young minds. Be it the gross shortage of quality faculty, the stupid bureaucracy of the power and commission hungry administration or the vote-bank-reservation politics; all are equal contributors to the pathos of society. Is it fair then to point fingers at those who seek greener pastures abroad? At places where hardwork and competence is valued and merit prevails?

I'm a geek

Call me a geek, but it's these kind of things that really turn me on ;) ... couldn't stop banging my desk (thanks to IIM-A parliament style classrooms) all the while I was watching this video ... Also, feels kinda proud to see a fellow Indian do such great things :-)



PS: Am and always will be a fan of TED talks ...

Goosebumps

Watch this ad ...

A favor from all Amdavadis

If you stay in Ahmedabad or visit here often, please do me a favour and fill up this survey ... my entire life depends on getting enough people to genuinely fill this up (using the butterfly effect principle ofcourse)

Arigatou, Danke, Merci, Dhanyavaad and thanks in advance :)

http://www.esurveyspro.com/Survey.aspx?id=54d56393-847e-4d3e-ad1e-019f8d9a5b3f

Regards,
Rahul

Return to my first love...

I'll be spending most of my summer at Mumbai :) ... Nothing makes me happier... except maybe a PPO and a shiny new monster from Nokia :)

An hour ago I was thinking : With the kind of work I do these days - "Ho jayega" has turned from two plain words to a way of life ... more on this some other fine day... Now's the time to think about Mumbai :)

I wonder...

A student asks a teacher, "What is love?"The teacher said, "in order to answer your question, go to the wheat field and choose the biggest wheat and come back.

But the rule is: you can go through them only once and cannot turn back to pick."

The student went to the field, go thru first row, he saw one big wheat, but he wonders..may be there is a bigger one later.

Then he saw another bigger one.. but may be there is an even bigger one waiting for him.

Later, when he finished more than half of the wheat field, he start to realize that the wheat is not as big as the previous one he saw, he know he has missed the biggest one, and he regretted.

So, he ended up went back to the teacher with empty hand.

The teacher told him, "..this is love.. you keep looking for a better one, but when later you realize, you have already miss the person.."

*"What is marriage then?" the student asked.

The teacher said, "in order to answer your question, go to the corn field and choose the biggest corn and come back. But the rule is: you can go through them only once and cannot turn back to pick."

The student went to the corn field, this time he is careful not to repeat the previous mistake, when he reach the middle of the field, he has picked one medium corn that he feel satisfy, and come back to the teacher.

The teacher told him, "this time you bring back a corn.. you look for one that is just nice, and you have faith and believe this is the best one you get.. this is marriage."

Back to 614...

After a gap of 10 days, I'm back in my dusty brick walled dorm room. 10 intense days which saw me skipping and racing through classes, answering and ignoring umpteen rings on the phone, getting applauded and humiliated and in the end exhausted, confused and missing it all...

My room has cobwebs hanging from the weirdest corners, the casemats and books still smell afresh, there have been things I am unaware of - assignments (thanks G3 for bearing this freerider's load!), dorm-affairs, happenings outside campus and inside the lives of some of my closest friends and foes. The new year resolutions are almost down the drain now, and so deep down that fishing them out seems too mammoth a task to accomplish. And despite a lazed off weekend there is still an army of backlogs to haunt my sleep tonight. Should I even care?

It's time to follow some much dispensed advice - If you care, you just get disappointed all the time. If you don't care nothing matters so you are never upset ! ... Cos advice, like youth, is wasted on the young ... and I'm still young !

Signing off, b back soon

Scared ...

It's 11:30 pm and I'm yet to start an entire subject, finishing the one at hand seems like a mammoth task altogether. Reminds me of many days gone by :) ... How trivial would these fears seem to others with much more to worry about. I reflect back on near death experiences and a life spent avoiding embarrassment and humiliation and every single time the fear at hand seemed to be worst in the world :) ... Transitioning from a cribster to a compulsive worrier? Newayz, here's a good video someone sent me. Youtube is such an awesome way to kill time !

Back after a long long time

It's been 10 days since I've posted. A lot has changed in these 10 days - an entire year at IIM A has now taken up a new task, all those speculations about foreign exchange or contesting for elections have now been replaced by a larger cause - alas, I can't write about it here due to some policy issues :P

Since exams approach, my blogging frequency is bound to rise... so to put a start to it I read a rather disturbing yet empirically true statement:

"Expecting life to treat you well because you are a good person is like expecting an angry bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian"

Pondering ... thinking ... reflecting...

Have feet - will dance

I finally did it ... a performance in LKP in front of a huge audience... almost flawlessly - almost :P, cos to my pleasant surprise I could hear shouts of "Parcel", "Parcel" being thrown from the audience (love u guys for tht !!!), which distracted me for a moment causing me to lose a step somewhere ... but apart from that I enjoyed every single bit of whatever limelight I could get :)

Tomorrow I start being a media coordinator at chaos (Deja Vu). Part of the role led to opening up this new blog for chaos. And if time permits read up on some WAC and OM.

Cheerios and be back with the dance vid if it turns up soon :)

Paanch

Yup .. day 5 turned up with a surprise in-class quiz.... Thankfully no guest lectures to follow ... but that doesn't mean any Siesta time for me :( ... Gotta buy stuff, dance some and go move around some media ppl... Nothing deep i'm thinking at the moment... just a random crib

The Chaos before CHAOS ....

IIM-A is getting ready for Chaos, and the last week has been chaotic - quite literally . Imagine this schedule

Day 1 - A 500 word report outlining the systems in a local mid/large size company
Followed by a surprise quiz

Day 2 - A 500 word report based on loads of research on a topic chosen by the facult
Followed by a surprise quiz - from a subject which there was no mention of any quizzes happening altogether <>

Day 3 - A 1 page submission on observations from a 20 min discussion to be arranged by every student between 2 people on a debatable topic- every section would need about 80 different topics and discussions.
Followed by a surprise quiz (Are you getting the hang of this?)
Followed by a 2 hour long guest lecture

Day 4 - A 1500 word report on the sales and distribution strategy of a company with a presentation in class
Followed by a surprise quiz !!!
Followed by another 2 hour long guest lecture

Day 5 - Coming tomorrow.. And I dread what it's gonna bring. Coincidentally Chaos starts tomorrow and we have 2 other submissions rite after Chaos - yipeee ~~~~

Club this with hours of dance practice, chaos work and club interactions and you get a very very tired parcel !

Bwah

Republic day is back again ;)

Just back after some exhausting dance practice, and finally now I think I'm getting the hang of how to dance. I pity the girls in the group who have to wake up in the morning, get all fresh, wear loads of makeup, and dance well on stage at 9 am in freezing weather - maybe I'll wake up and head there to cheer them up after all :)

So, in 22 years of my life I am bound to have celebrated atleast 18 "Republic Day" anniversaries - 26th Jan - the day when India became a Republic - a day when India adopted its constitution - the fallout of the event is still unclear to even a self-proclaimed patriot like me. So here I turn to Wikipedia for the "accepted" public version.

On the republic day, India hosts a head of state from some other nation - a symbol of how much the other country matters in India's foreign policy. This year it's going to be the president of Kazakhstan... How long has ONGC had its eyes on those oil fields for? ... It's not like inviting a president to your country is just like asking out someone for a movie now, or is it?

The initial thought to write this post stemmed from my anger over a constitution that is vague about a lot of things, absurd about some and simply powerless about the others... but all this knowledge search seems to have grilled down the tempo - I've felt this for long, it's time to stop being a manager and start being a leader, or atleast try to start being one... in whatever small way is possible

Cheerios
Jai Hind !!!

PS: Too much blogging these days, need to spend lesser time here ;) mental note made

A different perspective

I wake up at 5 in the morning - there's no alarm clock to do it, but i must wake up early if I wish to live. Go out and do the morning chores before the sunlight arrives - because i stay in the desert and there is no place other than the bushes to give me and my wife some privacy in some of life's most mundane tasks. Then she walks 5 kms to the place where the water tanker unloads. In the meanwhile, I start the pump with much efforts and diesel costlier than my blood starts pumping water onto my field some time later...

I walk all day on the salty land, amidst salty water, barefooted - because the rubber boots my wife made out of some tires could not give me the strength I needed to do my job. I work all morning- while my younger kids wake up and wait for the school to start. They stare intently in one direction - at a hut 6 kms away, covered with some plastic and tin shelters. A small flicker of mirrors by the teachers tells them its time to come to school now - and they joyously signal back with our broken mirror. They hop to school along the desert mud, joyously because the school has some toys, some friends and food to eat. My older kids work with me in the water now. We work till the sun above our heads starts to burn the scalp and the skin, I get out of the water only to see my leg shrinking further. My joints ache when I sit down for a meal, but I put on a brave smile - they say there will be some students from some well known management college in Ahmedabad here to study us today ... Maybe they can do something to explain why my life is so...

Remembering Techfest

I was once a part of the Techfest team at IIT Bombay. That was probably the best group of people that I had a chance to work with. And I see that my successors are trying their best to keep up the name we have striven to create. Looking at the video below makes me nostalgic and want to go back and be there once more; maybe I will, given the extended weekend that IIM strived hard to deny us...;)

The guilt of being privileged

Even an eternal cribster like me feels too privileged to crib today. Just got back from a 12-hour long trip to the Little Rann of Kutch from near Ahmedabad. The life of the salt pan workers there screams of exploitation every second of every day... The next post I write would be from one of their perspectives, rite now I post here a video (not embeddable surprisingly) which got my mind still anticipating what I would witness before embarking on this trip, and as gruesome as it may seem, everything from this video is true. I thank my luck (or God, since I haven't really been able to convert to an atheist completely) for the life I have and hope to make a difference in some of theirs someday.

:|

And then they came for me ...

Read this article which mentioned the German theologian, Martin Niem"ller. In his youth he was an anti-Semite and an admirer of Hitler. As Nazism took hold in Germany, however, he saw Nazism for what it was: it was not just the Jews Hitler sought to extirpate, it was just about anyone with an alternate point of view. Niem"ller spoke out, and for his trouble was incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945, and very nearly executed. While incarcerated, Niem"ller wrote a poem that, from the first time I read it in my teenage years, stuck hauntingly in my mind:


First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Scary ...

Nortel files for bankruptcy protection...

And the recession has spread to the tech world too? Maybe this was an isolated effect ... afterall, some of Nortel's biggest clients used their VPN services extensively. I for one found it to be quite satisfactory during my internship with P&G ages ago; but then, I had nothing to compare this with !

I'll be waiting and watching to see if this is just the beginning - pray that it isn't ! With placements starting for my dear Tuccha batch, more bankruptcies could only make things worse...

Wondering how the London Olympics in 2012 will cope with one of their key sponsors filing for bankruptcy protection ...

:|

Satyam Shivam Ramalingam

Interesting strings of Satyam mocks running the rounds of emails these past few days:

Raju Raju sat on the wall
Raju Raju had a great fall
Balance sheet died
Shareholders cried
Raju Raju made a fraud

Raju Raju
Yes baba
Cheating us?
No baba
Telling Lies?
No baba
Open the balance sheet
HA HA HA

And this very apt graphical illustration ...


What all these fail to depict is the trauma that so many people must be going through because of the entire incident : a) the 53000 odd employees b)Multitudes of shareholders c)The Shivalingam family ... Family, they say is the most innocent yet most severely punished. And although you might be educated and mature enough not to translate the wrong-doings of someone to his near and dear ones; somewhere at the back of the mind, there is always a suspicion and immediate loss of trust for everyone associated to the miscreant ... Afterall, blood is thicker than water !

One of the faculty members very aptly put forward the point in a course on ethics - No Name, No Fame ... probably the reason why sanyaasis let go of their names before their journey in the search of Moksha. The discussion stemmed from debates over the book Yuganta by Irawati Karwe - quite a good read for someone who likes to find rationality in religion.

Ciao

Tidbit about dreaded GD-PI preparation

Recollecting a few of the queries I struggled with last year after the unexpected IIM calls; I thought it would be a good idea to put them down here for some friends and acquaintances -

GDs: The best practice for a GD would be to join a coaching institute, merely for the reason that you would get to "discuss" with a wide variety of specimen. There are typically 3 roles you can play in a GD- 1) Aggressive 2) Passive and 3) Moderator. As I've been told and have seen from my results umpteen times, it's not about the quantity but the quality of things you say. Choose to observe the people in your group, I found the following tactics useful:

a) Catch the troughs: Many people usually tend to finish off their sentences in decreasing amplitude. This can be an ideal time for you to pick up with a loud start and make your point - but do this only if you have a point related to what was last said, or else it would just be a rude interruption.

b) Avoid the 'buts': 'But' and 'And'  are considered by some evaluators as very weak words screaming underconfidence. Use of words such as 'nevertheless' and 'whereas' add a bit more veriety and strength to your vocabulary - Try it !

c) Take notes: I was asked to summarize the discussion in one of the GDs, you never know when you might be asked to do the same.

Btw, Ahmedabad didn't have a GD as an evaluation method last year - a sane choice I completely agree with... (That's another sick aspect of GDs - shouting out agreements and disagreements just to let the evaluator how you sound like !)

PI (Personal Interview):  Just remember to be completely honest. The person interviewing you has probably been selected well enough to be 10 times smarter than you at things you claim to be smart at...

Brush up on:

1) Your bachelors' / masters' courses : Every single course on your marksheet should have added some value to your learning, remember a few salient aspects of these courses. Also, be through with core topics related to your field of interest. I was asked questions like Lenz's law- things I had learnt in the 12th Grade...

2) Your extracurriculars: If you have put it down on your form, be ready to speak about it at length and speak passionately (as if that can be faked !)

3) Current Affairs: Wide-wide topics... know that one needs to be thorough with the happenings right from 1 year before the date of the interview.

4) Some basic history / geography : I was asked to name 5 rivers running through my homestate in the IIM-B interview - give it your best shot if you can't get 5 ofcourse, but please avoid guessing and running the Ganges through Maharashtra !

5) Loads of economics: SLR, CRR, Interest rates, foreign exchange rates, Stock markets - all the variables that affect the business world - afterall, you have to show them how interested you are in the business world !

6) About your past jobs : Although I didn't have this feather in my cap, I've heard that they can get quite detailed about the kind of work you did, the organizational culture and many other debates - Reading random blogs all day at work doesn't count !!!

Best wishes

Rahul

New year huh ?

It's a new year, one which was brought in with huge bashes and booms throughout the world... But what does a new year bring in apart from the usual starting confusions of writing (or typing or saying or miming...) 2009 instead of 2008 in the box asking for today's date on forms?

On that note, what makes a birthday all that special? It's nothing but a reason to celebrate, and a reason to judge how much someone cares for you looking at the timing & intensity of the wishes? If nothing else, I hope that someday I'll be able to overcome all these petty customs and rise above ;).. till then, need to get the gifts flowing :).

Like another friend, Sid from my class, maybe I oughta try a maun vrat too ...

Ciao,
Rahul aka Parcel