Quiz

"These guys are probably the ones with the worst hand writing i have ever seen." Thats how My Team Mate and I were called onto the stage for the El Dorado, Quiz at Ensemble '08 , Conducted by Barry O'Brein. No prizes for guessing, whose writing was it on the paper.

I wish i had written this post some 7-8 years ago. While I watched atleast hundred episodes of BQC and always wished i was there , and watched some hundred other quizzes of different types, i never realised what actually will take me there.

Well, it seems to me now, i finally discovered the key to step into the arena from the audience. One- Persistence, Two-Reading.

Actually speaking, i am not really good at either of these. One thing that is churning its results almost after years after is my ability to sit through all the quizzes even after not getting through preliminary rounds.

Ok, wait, this really seems like an underdog story, i dont really mean it to be so, because i ended anyway 5th out of the 6 teams in the finals. (Excuse the dull tone - its 7 in the morning with no sleep)

Yeah, the second part, i am absolutely bad at reading, the amount of literature i have read is zilch. I have no idea of 99.9999% of the authors that exist on this planet. And my current affairs suck. Thanks to my peer group at XLRI and ofcourse lots of free time in the second year, i have finally started to read the sacred newspaper everyday. I have started to read Economist,TIME, Newsweek(makes one look sophisticated, but indian mags are equally good, Economist scores a bit high though). One of the reasons i never did this earlier is i always used to take the excuse that there is no big deal about it, how does it really help , etc, etc. 

Just from my quizzing experiences over the last 3 months, i kind of have an idea , how it helps.

I traced few of the answers that i knew or got right and how i gotto know them.

1)Identifying Mf.Hussain's Painting : Heard of the controversy around saraswati's painting on anews channel, while surfing channel.

2)Watson's Quote on Sherlock Holmes : Having done merchant of venice in 10th, i had to miss Hound of Bhaskarvilles, only to be bugged by the story in +2 hostel for 2 years, that finally made me read a bit of sherlock holmes.

3)Identifying D.V.Subbarao : Yeah, the gult connection of him following Y.V Reddy, but going through hazaar articles on subprime crisis and its effect on India, you cant help it. This part of reading up on subprime crisis helped me in atleast 5-6 questions.

4)Identifying Movie Alam Ara : Of all the long lectures from my father about being disciplined etc, he also discussed in some rare moments about one of the firsts of Indian Cinema.I should remember it for sure.

5)Identifying You Tube Founders : Setting a quiz in TCS quiz club, i made the same question.

6)Identifying Sound Track of My Best Friends Wedding : It was my direct question in a Movie Quiz which i couldnt answer, so better answer it now.This time , it was a pass question.

7)Identifying Singer of Jab We met Song as Mohit Chauhan: As I Scout for every damn interview of Rahman on the net, he mentioned in one of his interviews that he had been listening to 'Mohit Chauhan's  song over and over. If its rahmans favourite, you shouldnt forget it.

8)Identifying but not recollecting the name: Sulljja Firodia Motwani : Read an inspiring article about 3-4 years back on how a lady turned around an ailing Kinetic Motors. But the name was too long to remember and she was too beautiful to go beyonsd the photo after that.

9)Identifying the couple who won the Raman Magasassay award, but forgetting their names : Reading the middle pages of The Hindu. Just starting, so should make the habit of recollecting names.

Ok, i really feel old, when i see how much time i have wasted without reading up a lot of stuff. I should be happy that i realised later than never. Well the point is, i had no clue that all these things i did, will come to help in this quizzing season.I believe there is more to come like this, if i keep up what i am doing.

The quiz part: We messed up in the buzzer round. It was the first time that i ever sat infront of the buzzer.

Our scoring went something like this:10,10,-5,-5,-5,-5,10,5,10,-5,5,10,5

One good experience : Answering 9/10 in a rapid fire round in a movie quiz , genre being Suspense/Thriller. I missed the name of Psycho :(

Thats it for now :)

Risk, Return and a Little Utility

The title is a hangover of the financial crisis and the numerous articles woven around it in the papers over the last month. Due to un-imaginable reasons i had been regular on papers and magazines , though my itinerary to the library had been messed up in the last week. To add to that , i had been reading editorials in Hindu (OK, i think i should stop blushing) . Yeah, whatever it is, one component that never changes in my daily life is 9 hrs sleep. :)

Now, the exercise of reading papers had been very interesting, one i had an underlying saddistic pleasure to see the markets go down - not because i am anti-capitalist(which i am not) - may be a bit because the arrogance of (a few) I-bankers is reduced to zilch if not humility, and more importantly, it had been an amazing story of postponing the effects of mediocrity under the disguise of sophistication (which is only a worked up form of arrogance). Anyway, my knowledge of the subject is only limited by the spate of opinions in the news papers, so cant really give authentic comments. But the fuzzy calculations of Risk and Return has just undermined the basic thing of the real value anyone gets out of it , which is nothing but the utility (i guess) . Utility till date is one of the most difficult items to quantify and just the point that it is so specific and different for each person in each action makes it an important discussion point for all the economists.

For now, my return(immediate) from reading the papers had been to come 2nd in the DRAC quiz based around the current affairs. It had been ages since i was in that position, thanks to my team mate who has a good run at quizzes. Well, i realised the real value when my team mate waived off a question saying 'I dont know this pa, this is all Fin based question'. Given that premise , i should be equally ignorant about it, however, my knowledge of that specific information left me with a nice feeling that nothing is so incomprehensible. Yeah, it is for sure very embarrassing to know that there was an east asian crisis in the late 90's while all i knew was world cup and my crush in school. But , i kinda realise now its never too late to start reading .(however for people like me, no habit is too steady to call it so, except for sleeping).

Classes had been kind of wierd this term. They atleast are not helping in giving any direction to the Mediocre But Arrogants (except for a few). Why would anyone learn ethics now? My inopportune doubt in class seemed to have irked the prof to earn me a sub-optimal grade(how is that for social experiment in ethics class). 

Scribbled a few lines in some class few days ago :

---------

One more moment of ignorance,

One more moment we delay;

One more moment of inaction,

is the moment of action.

---------

The dance of moonlight

from the nether world

seemed so still in water

until i touched it 

and a shock rippled through

---------

It had been long since i got back to writing these pieces, may be the boring classes will help. The following blog had been a great inspiration though.

http://irrationalrationalities.blogspot.com/2008/09/for-blue.html

P.S: earned myself a small unpaid job :)

Economics and Ethics

The only thing i didnt expect that i would be so interested in B-School is Economics. Now i regret that i might not specialise in it(doesnt make much difference though). Either way, i am still a long way to be a strong numbers guy, looking into projections of economy and interest rates. But what always interested me in economics is the way it accounts for all the interactions of man kind (loaded with their stupid idiosyncrasies) and how they all mess up into theories from an armchair economist. So, i am doing this subject called Strategic Game theory for managers and another one named Strategies of co-operation and one more - Managing Public Private Partnerships this term other than the marketing subjects and the compulsory course on Managerial Ethics(Many say that its an oxymoron).

Just in this context, there is a small anecdote, which i found very interesting , (its boring and predictable , but let me take the name of joker before i start ;) ) .

So, its like this, A well known economics prof from a premier B-School was forced to take up a course on ethics as the institute planned to introduce this course (To claim that they produce Valuable managers with values and blah blah blah) . Now the prof was absolutely not interested as he was strong on the principle that Ethics are more natural than learnt or taught. However the institute persisted. So he took the course the in all its spirit. At the end, he took an exam and he gave half the students a lot more than what they were expecting and the other half of students, extremely low compared to what they were expecting. As one would expect, all the students who scored low rushed to his office asking for explanation, while none from the higher half ever turned up. He documented the same and gave it to the Admin office to prove his point it seems.

Well, i remember one of my prof telling us, if you follow ethics, you will be in Tatanagar railway station. Though too harsh to believe it, i kind of started to believe in it. Sometime in childhood, a neighbour of mine used to practice astrology. he supposedly told my mother that, when i grow old, i will care for nothing but i want  (want = materialistic needs) . I am yet to comply to that, but i see that happening slowly . 

It happened , more than a few times that i expected a help in professional help based on a personal relationship or vice versa, however , it seems all that is just against the rules of the game. I think it also falls in place with the gyan of Shri krishna that when in a war, its a duty to fight anyone. Ok, i think its getting heavy i guess. 

So, as i stick to my timeline of sleeping in the morning and staying awake in the night. There is nothing much happening. Yeah, had been reading some hazaar versions of Sub-prime crisis. And good movie for this week : Nouvo Cinema Paradiso 

Social Experiment

I should admit it , i was being a fool.

Let me explain the game. You need to choose between 1 and 2 , so is the case with 37 people in the room, with whom you don't get to talk with. So if '0' students mark 1 , all the students who marked 2 get 100 each, if 1 student marks 1 then, he gets 5 while all else get 105, so on till 37. By the time you reach  37, if all mark 1, all the students who marked 1 shall get 185.

There are 10 rounds. You are supposed to maximise your payoff. So if everyone thinks the same, , everyone puts 2, you end up with 100 each which is relatively ok but not the best possible, similarly, if all mark 1 , you get 185 each, but if one guy defaults then he would get 280. So there is a high chance to default.

So, lets start, first 3 rounds have no discussion among the group, so everyone is marking randomly, or rather too obviously that wasn't totally rational or irrational. So everyone was marking 2 , some poor souls kept trying marking 1 and getting meager 10s and 20s. They were trying to think ahead or may be just think random.

Now after 3 rounds there was a chance to go and discuss. So i come up with this strategy that , half the group marks 1 and half the group marks 2 and then we keep alternating, so that we average out and decrease the difference among the group. Now there was another proposal that why dont we all keep marking 1s, i felt and said that even one persons default will create chaos in the group (we are saying that 97% perfection is not good). But technically speaking that was the best strategy. The other person who suggested asked for a voting , i think i was too fed up holding and being in elections that i said, we will be together. 

But No - Why?

1)Taking a decision among Peers(of presumably equal intellect) and expecting others to implement it without asking an acknowledgment is one stupid thing to do.

2)My logic itself as i said was a bit flawed. I was working out things in my Utopia rather than in everyone's utopia (which is an oxymoron).

3)People were not looking at the absolute maximum, so they was no incentive for junta to decrease their only advantage in the game, that is relative gain. And so, my scheme had no incentive for any of them, except for a few who were looking for an order.

4)The stupidest thing to do, I told first 2 rows to mark 1 and the next 2 rows to mark 2. I didntr even realise that i was in the second 2 rows that was going to get the maximum payoff in the first round, now i felt that its a rational calculation rather than a conspiracy. I didnt realise that someone in the crowd was smirking within himself and saying "Come on  dude, stop kidding and stop making an ass out of others".

Anyway, we went in, before that, i said that if , there are around 17 people who mark 1s then we are sure that we are together, then we keep alternating. Well i forgot to introduce a character here. My favourite as it will stay on to be forever. I do not know if i should give the credit to John Nash for his game theory or Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson for the creation of this character, or Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and Heath Ledger for giving him a life - Joker. So, you can assume a Joker standing within us and laughing at us every time we had our strategies (This is in no way referring to the prof, though he played the part perfectly well as needed in the game).

So, in the 4th round, there were 11 1s against the expected 18 , which i still believe is a very good number (which would have made Frodo of LOTR happy and confident of some good in the world). Anyway, but it didn't make a lot of them happy. So there on it tumbled, everyone was back to normal. I should admit that there were some good souls who kept to their word irrespective of the deviation and alternated their choices, there were 8 1s in the next round. (I was one of them :P , i have to say this as i was accused of conspiring) . Anyway, the next round was a waste, it had no rationale at all. So we get another break to discuss. As usual, i gave up and stayed silent and people said, we will all go for 2.

I felt this is accepting mediocracy due to lack of co-operation. But i went with the group and we cam with all but a few 2's in the next 2 rounds and the prof started stressing on the point of reaching the maximum obtainable payoffs. 

So, i kinda couldn't stick to the game. So, i said, "See, this isn't about getting marks, this is about proving that you can co-operate. So just do it."  thats never the way to play a game, Anti trust parties would have put me in Jail :D . But by then, people were already on the extremes, they were planning to smoke out the rats out of the hole. They wanted to ask the prof who were the defaulters. The prof gave the choice of penalising the defaulters. (My argument was Utopian or rather Gandhian(though i never liked it), that why are we fighting and giving power to an external person, after all its just a game, play it our way).

Funny that, prof asked for a leader, i wasnt ready to raise my hand because i wasnt with the argument of penalising people. And the Joker went a step ahead and asked , who of dont approve them and their proposals. I woke up late to raise my hand which anyway wouldnt have made a difference. Few rejected their proposals but majority accepted. Anyway, the prof penalised the defaulters by a deduction in the payoff, the results were obvious. 

The narration is open to discussion. But, there was something that kept running through my mind by the end of the game. It was this image of joker talking in "The Dark Knight" saying, "You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just do things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon's got plans. You know, they're schemers. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I'm not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.... It's the schemers that put you where you are. You were a schemer, you had plans, and uh, look where that got you. I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself.... You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all, part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds! ...  I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair. " 

I believe there is a Joker in all of us. 

So much for the gyan. Something atlast finally made me write a good blog. If you didnt understand the game , dont bother, if you want to bother, make a table of the payoffs and work it out.

P.S : Finally some good movies : Welcome to Sajjanpur, Mumbai Meri Jaan, 13 Tzamite, In Bruges. Drona is for the demented :D

Sum of parts

Its not the first time i recollect this discussion with my friend, that can we actually behave the way we want to behave given the so called societal influences. It was very interesting how me and my friend behaved differently at different phases, say college, school, intermediate, work life. Though till 12 th  or even engineering , i was mostly (say 90%) driven by(or controlled and puppeted) by my surroundings, but the % of influence of external factors decreased over time. Everytime I change a place, i started to behave differently. All these , when i look back are different parts (like pieces of a pie chart :P ). 

Well, interesting thing is, i have started to change whenever there is a break also.. so.. itseems, the parts have become as small as a trimester. :) 

RGV is updating his blog like crazy and he is writing some really good stuff about his venture into movies. I guess he has planned to write his auto biography. 

Thats it for now :|

Where was/am I?

First, the exams are over, but not the term as there are some benefits of procrastination. I have been reading some of my classmates claiming that 4th term has supposedly been the most hard working term for them. That kinda injected a moment of guilt into me. How did i feel the exact opposite, was it because of my Electives - but i chose them because i was interested in them(Leave MACR out of it). Something got into me. Should work it out before it gets worse in the 5th and the 6th terms.

I am back home for 3 long weeks. Good that i registered for the internship, i get to spend some time at hyderabad, but i should have as well planned for some trip along with college junta. Laziness has its side-effects in such activities too. Met all the relatives for the year, yet to meet a few friends. That reminds me of the wedding bells ringing in my class of engineering. Nice to see classmates marrying each other, not something you would expect to happen when you step into JNTU. Someone asked me , when are you getting married, I suddenly frowned at it and then joked 'Dont i look too young for marriage'.

Movies : Well, finally managed to cover more of them. Wall-e, Rock-on, Wednesday, Dark Knight (IMAX) :DD , Ashta-Chamma(Telugu). Regular visits to Mutiplexes let me finish all of it in one week.Dark Knight stays on to be the best, especially in IMAX format, you are left gaping at the screen. And couldnt ask for a betetr seat than the centre seat in the top-most row :P .

The third week of the vacation had been like the last stage of the product life cycle. I had been sleeping inhumanly for 12 hrs a day. Only thing thats interesting but sad is the news. It puts the MBA's on the history map for passing out at one of the worst times. Its ironical and shocking to see your dream company sinking like a Titanic and within minutes , you come to know that its in-existent. The whole equation is going to change for sure. Well, all i could say now is the same as i said above, It is going to be interesting and sad.

U the Marketing People : This was the way, one of my profs used to address us. I have grown obsessive of finding the company behind every brand. The other day i realised that, i was checking the marketer of a floor cleaner brand while i was in the bathroom. Its funny how you try to apply Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning Funda into everything. Movies for example play a lot by this funda. That is one of the reason, Movies like Rock on are such a hit, they are targeted at the superset of population (People who think they are losers in life).

Funny thing was, while i was watching this movie, there was an Ad for R.S.Brothers(Local Saree Showroom), there was no way that the target audience for that showroom would turn up for that movie. But they played 90 second long painful ad. Not that they would have done media planning and STP, but it kinda tells us about the distance between planning and implementation.

So much for now. hope to write longer articles on my assignments before i write the next post.

:) (: :( ): :| |: :O O:

I accidentally happened to use this title as a status message  to inform people about the play we were hosting under the name , Shadows Within. It so turned out that , that Gtalk recognises the first one of the pair as a smiley and turns it to blue color, while the others stayed grey and the title Shadows within came after that. That happened to be one of the most creative works , i claim of. Its funny how things move beyond our observation to colour things. 

Its nice to come across such things once in a while. Its nice to be appreciated for my guesstimates in MR class and frax on some subjects simultaneously. Its nice to sleep 12 hrs a day and still manage to do well in an exam. Its nice to carry a smiling frown or a frowning smile. Its nice to be frank, or rather blatant i should say once in a while like you dont care and also make sure that no one would care about you after that.Its nice to stack up last 2.5 weeks of papers and sleep all over them ,expecting to read them all at once , but still manage to read Brand Equity on Wednesday, Hindu Friday Review on Friday and Hindu Magazine on Sunday. Its nice to appreciate some thing out of sheer interest in it rather than forcefully absorb everything out of insecurity. Its nice to listen to classic telugu songs , though it seems totally out of the place where i am.

So much for the ramblings, just another observation. I was sitting in mess and saw this random bhojpuri song playing on the TV, i could sense the rock bottom quality of the song both interms of music and visuals. I couldn't stop cursing it and instinctively attributing it to the taste of Jharkhand , Bihar and neighbouring states(Well, Jharkhand is where i am now) . So, as i was trying to slip into making more theories about Jharkhand and its population, the next song in the playlist came up. To my surprise, it was a telugu song, from the movie happy, by the name 'Ossa re Ossa Ossa re' , now to start with it doesnt actually mean anything.(I should confess that i have listened to this song at full volume, and for sometime , i actually enjoyed it.) Well but definitely not now, the song seemed like a scream by an actor who resembled a monkey with distorted face, (and god knows why) he was wearing goggles and multi-farious clothes, and his antics would resemble nothing but a donkey's mating call. the whole setup seemed Yuck. I could hear two of my friends talking to each other while they were watching it, 'What the fuck is he trying to do' 'How can someone direct such a sequence?' 'Shouldn't the cameraman be dead by now' 'Who on earth watched these things, what language is this'. I didnt know whether to laugh out loud or keep silence in disagreement. And within a minute, the next song came up, guess what was it, 'Adire' from Rajnikanth's Basha and i could already hear a few laughs around.

Well nothing more to discuss , its just the diversity of India and idiosyncracies of its people who continuously refuse to acknowledge them. Its still a wonder how everyone stays under one name of Indian. Something to be proud of.

Like Didier in Shantaram says "If it had been so many frenchman in one place, they would have killed each other by now and made themselves extinct".

-In the middle of exams, having an easy time.

-At home from 1st to 21st.

-thanks to inflation  , i am taking a train, long journey.

 

Hanged to the Top

'Hail, Hail, Hail '

Echoed the golden waters

dotted with icebergs of stone

shuttling streaks of light

the procession moved up the hill

as men marched in merry

and women sang in praise

He rose with carriage

One on each side, four in all

took him on their shoulders

the bugles were blown

and the drums were sounded

As he raised his hand,

It brought smiles with peace

and all the heads bowed 

and the floated in joy

And then Darkness grew

like a monster under the waters

it crawled like a sand slide

it raced up the hill

Fear followed gloom

and chaos sprouted in the crowd

He stood up and raised his hand

the crowd looked up with hope

Like a cloud of insects

the darkness crawled upto his feet

to everyone's awe

his one half turned to a shadow

He stalled the darkness

as it couldn't take him all

He looked straight into it

holding light in his pupil

'It came for him, but its taking us'

shouted someone from the crowd

Prick came the words, like an icicle

and he blinked

The dark power took over

and razed the golden deserts

to the eye's horizon

It screeched through with a shrill

'Give him away , we shall be saved'

the crowd cried aloud

He raised his hand,

but all in vain

the crowd climbed up the carriage

tied his hands to the back

and someone asked

'what do we do now'

A reply came

'take him to where he was,

that is where he shall be consumed,

so, hang him by the top'

At It Dude

-To the right, no , not that right, oh fuck,no, dont turn like that, 4 o clock, yeah , that one.

--oh,that one? bitch

---

-You know what is a freudian slip?

--Yes, But i don't know exactly.

---

-Every thing, i say, every thing is screwed up at this place.Tell me one thing that is right here, Tell me?

--Yeah, there is one - you- since you find a fault with everything else, the assumption should be that you are perfect.

---

-Reading, Studying, Learning, why does one have to create so many words?

--Good Question!! What do they mean ?

---

-Look Closely, what do you see, in the green lawns encircled with green tops.

--Oh, Shit, i am late for the class, i need to go. By the way, i see a dog shitting in the lawn.

--- 

-How many times will you blink in the next 5 minutes?

--zero, i am going to sleep.

---

-How dark is the night?

--Close your eyes and see.

Still Rain

1
Still Rain
Sleepy Eyes
Funnels of Light
Stranded Thoughts
Coloured Emotions
Droplets in Vain
Oval Mirrors
Intervals of Darkness
Loose Ends
Puppet Muscles

2
Yes for a No
Cold in veins
Blood Rush
A Truth Unsaid
Lie Uncontested

3
Blush
Grace
Lure
Grin
Cheer
Dazzle

4
Tap on the Ground
Spread Wide
Rise as a feather
And Take off

5
Yet Another Night
I swap with Sun
It gets to Job
I am off the Shift

Ridiculously Wonderful

I wanted to call this post "The Other Dark Knight" and put a photo with myself hanging upside down. Thats what my world looks like these days atleast in terms of time. I am in a fulfilling what my parents always wanted, to be awake by 6 Am. Unfortunately , i go to sleep at 8 or so and wake up at 2 , and there goes the day as i finish my lunch and check my mails and surf through the regular sites. As the day slips into a cozy evening, it feels like i woke up to sleep . And suddenly , like a true nocturne, i rejunevate myself by dinner time and thats when my actual day starts. So given that i am in a B-School, i need to do something , so i do that in this time, its funny how i look through my window at the campus lawn growing out of darkness, when i see students going to class, i pull the curtains, switch of the lights (if any) and push myself under the blanket.Yeah, i know, i attend the classes in day time, but every opportunity to sleep is utilised.

Few proceedings in the last one week,I didnt sleep the saturday night, (because i slept the whole of saturday), I went on this Bike Ride along 25 other friends to a nearby dam. Except that i miss my Pulsar, the trip was awesome , i just want to take a trip to that place all by myself and take time off (which i otherwise keep doing in my room). Best part of the trip i guess was when i got my hands on to a good cam and clicked some really good pictures. Driving in rain was one other experience.

So , as you can expect, i slept off through the day. Similar was the case with Tuesday and Wednesday. Wednesday night being Freshers night, i was there through out the night holding my camera. I sometimes regret me asking my father to buy a Video Camera. I call it a joint idiosyncracy of me and my father that we spend so much on White Goods. He didnt hesitate to buy me a Sony HDD Handycam. Why did i buy it, i thought i will be the next spielberg who used to shoot on 8mm camera that his dad brought him, i didn't realise that one shud be less lazy to become so. So laziness is punished with more useless work. I end up recording every minute of event on campus. I should atleast get to some useful and artistic Photography and Cinematography, otherwise, i will end up covering marriages and thats all i will do.Good part is, after some hours of shooting videos, i am now learning how to focus on objects. Hope the learning curve gets steeper. [More on Juniors Night later].

 So, after the juniors night, thats at 8:30 in the morning, i sleep and wake up at 5:30 in the evening. I had this Marketing Research Proposal to complete [These days, i presume myself to be good at this subject]. But, my brain refuses to start itself, it was still in its sleep hangover, so i sleep from 8-9:30 and finally get serious at the project at 12:30 in the night after a couple of meetings. So i work non-stop till 10 in the morning and submit right in time. I present in 12 Noon Class. Come back and sleep at 3 Pm. For some random reason, i woke up at 6 Pm, which counts to just 3 hrs sleep in the last 21 hrs. I had this exam next day at 8:30 in the morning, i dont start it, instead i screen two foriegn movies for which 10 discerning viewers turn up(I liked it that way actually) and i ended up watching 1.5 movies. By 3 in the night, i am yet to start studying the syllabus, i start and end right before the exam . Go to sleep at 11:30, wake up at 8:30 Pm. Finally i get to my senses by 11 Pm , i have a 3 and half hours meeting from 12 to 3:30. Should have slept off to throw myself out of the cycle. But, i sit to watch a movie from 5-630 and then go to regent for Breakfast, and i am here at 9 30 writing this blog before going to sleep.

Heard this line "Ridiculously Wonderful" from the movie Little Manhattan. It reminded me of these little pleasures we have when we go through some pain, especially when we do it for people we like. The other way of looking at it is my daily life cycle itself. There is nothing so wrong abt the whole thing, its just a little eccentric and it is good in some ways. And the final perspective struck me when i was working on the Juniors Nite, at some point , i messaged someone "There isnt enough Puke in this world, to beat some incidents i was witnessing" , but on the other side, there turns out to be a counterpart from the same set of people that one should appreciate.  After that event , the first thing i did was come back to my room and opened IMDB and read these lines from American Beauty, I had to watch the same on you tube as well. I believe , that is how i am surviving everyday.

Ridiculously Wonderful Lines

"I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's 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 can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life."

Off to sleep.

The Darkest Knight

Batman couldn't be better unless Christopher Nolan surprises himself. Here he is , yet again, with a power packed starcast, who strapped themselves in the back seat wearing the masks that their master provided them with , while he took his audience off to a thrilling ride.

It is difficult to stand out of the typical template of a superhero movie, but not for a Christopher Nolan, not for the one who redefined the rules of screenplay through Memento, challenged the intelligence of audience through Prestige , and turned Batman into what he is. (While i am yet to watch Insomnia, His first venture into film making 'Following' shot on a shoe-string budget on London Streets and at his friend's place is strikingly original for a thriller). One should appreciate the drive of this , who continues to guarantee what true cinema stands for and deserves - Artistic Intelligence.

What is it about Dark Knight?

Christian Bale plays the Caped Crusader, with his love interest being Rachel Dawes played by Maggie Gyllenhaal , a surprise and a wothy new entry , Aaron Eckhart(Remember the witty and canny lobbyist from Thank you for Smoking) plays Gotham's District Attorney Harvey Dent who fights against the mob crimes, Alfred the Butler , played by Michael Caine, Inspector Jim Gordon played by Gary Old man, and Lucious Fox by Morgan Freeman.

Even if i have a mental disorder or a pathetic memory, It is difficult to miss this, Dark Knight is about this one character -

The Joker

One of my friend commented , "A cheap make up and a crazy smear shall be remembered forever"Chris Nolan couldn't have left a better memorial for Heath Ledger.

Joker is Funny, he laughs on the face of every character, he makes a mockery of the shortcomings of human mind, he feeds on the weakness and makes it his strength. He is silly, he is arrogant, he is frightening, he is an idiot, or as he calls himself, he is a freak, he is a dog who chases chases cars but doesnt know what to do with them . He just does things.

He is called a clown, as he puts you to a tragic laugh, his antiques and make-up, a regular slurpy noise he makes, as he swipes his tongue across his cheek, his smirky grin, his voice thats Baritone, Squeaky and husky at the same time, his anecdotes of how he got to his victims,his rationality behind anarchy and philosophy of subconscious fear. In a huge starcast movie, where everyone is sharing a bit of screen space, he is everywhere, he is in the internal conflict of Batman, he is in the weakness of Harvey Dent, he is in the fear of Gotham.

Christopher Nolan needed a master on screen to run the show on his behalf, to move the characters, to make them run and Heath Ledger stood up to the job.

If i could borrow a blog from RGV's Blog, 'Any story is about Character Conflict' - The Dark Knight is the same, while Joker walks away with the credit of creating a conflict in Batman's character and turning him into The Dark Knight , Christian Bale as Batman walks away as the hero who outgrows the human shortcomings challenged by Joker and becomes the super hero that we would all fall in love with. Don't blink, while you watch the scene when these two meet in the Inspection Cell, you would hardly see a conversation so taut, where eyes shoot at eyes.(The last time i saw such a scene was from Drohi, between Kamal Hassan and Nasser)

Technically, I don't stand to evaluate Nolan(as i couldn't watch it in a theatre, which i surely will). He sticks to his trademark screenplay of continuously tricking the audience, though he saves us from time travel, one still needs to get his brains charged before watching it. The Nolan Brothers succeed to surpass themselves in the artistic quality after Prestige. The dialogues grow out of the best fit between the actors and the roles they donned, be it Michael Caine who says "Endure Master Wayne"  and when he adds his pun saying "Will they take me in for being your accomplice" , while Bale replies "Accomplice? I would say you are the one who planned it all". Aaron Eckhart saying "You either die as a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villian" , "I make my own luck" and of course yet again the Joker - "If you are good at something, never do it for free" and the trademark phrase "Why So Serious?"

Watch it, Watch it ASAP, WATCH IT ONLY IN THEATRES, watch it for the adrenalin rush, watch it for the fear, watch it for the thrill, watch it for the chill down your spine,watch it for the amazing visuals, watch it for the scary sound track while Joker threatens his victims, watch it for the so called Subtle Gadgets and Accessories, ranging from Bat Suit , Bat Pod and the Lamborgini.

Watch it for Cinema at its best.

If you couldnt watch it or didnt watch it, dont worry, 

The Joker will get to you.

Disclaimer : the above piece might be exaggarated due to my extreme respect and admiration towards Christopher Nolan :)

Write or Not Right

My hesitance to express what i think or feel had as usual got me low returns. As i stared at the Industrial Economics Paper for 45 minutes and contemplated on the validity of my answers.In the inability to come to a conclusive decision about the same, I gave half the paper blank. As i sow, so i reap. I score 6/15. I should realize that this score kind of applies to a lot of other aspects of my daily life.

And the other side of it was reading too much before the exam and questioning the preparation during the exam resulted in nothing but a waste of time and effort.

Either way, it seems to be a regular phenomena with me.

The other day, watched the parliamentary proceedings for a while. I couldn't help laughing at it, not for the madness of it, but for my faint acquaintance with such situations. 

Christopher Nolan continues to prove his class.(More on this soon)

Yet another good class of industrial economics.

"With great power comes great responsibility" - It is important to read this line the other way, because, not every one is a spiderman -> Full filling great responsibility gives you great power.

Off to sleep .. zzzzz 

Geetanjali

I do not remember the last time i saw this movie, it is one movie that stands for the simplicity of Cinema. The director was just having fun with the characters while the audience couldn't deny the pleasure. I wonder how cinema had deterioted so much after such classics. It seems as if everyone whose name rolled in the credits earned their place. Everytime a new beat runs behind the screen, you cant help appreciating Illayaraja, P.C.Sriram, Veturi and Maniratnam. The sensuality of such cinema seems to have been buried in a pile of crass.Let me not run down the usual cribbing, i better continue to appreciate the good part of it.

Around 2 days ago,(rather 44 hours ago), I was sitting in this class called Industrial Economics and was having a cliff hanger experience. It was like the prof was telling me to hang on , 'here comes the final step', and when the class was over, i was on the top of the world. It is like a revelation.I went to have breakfast in the mess(one of those rare occasions), and then there was the other side of reason, sharukh khan dancing to 'Kay-Ar-A-Zee-Zee-Y , Krazzy 4'. I came to my room and thought of dropping dead, but quickly read through RGVs Blog. There was an amazing  piece on how he ended up making his Aag. One of the best confessions i have read, it still needs to get a bit close to reality. His sarcastic reactions to questions were fun. I was surprised to the extent that people observed his movies. Another piece on characterising for Satya was awesome.

So, after that i dropped dead, thought of studying for this exam MACR (Ok, behold, this is Mergers Acquistions and Corporate Restructuring). I gave up that my intelligence would not match up to the requirements of the subject, so i planned to bunk the class as well. But i get a message that there are only 3 people in the class, so i rush to the class and then there is this exam. Wow, the paper was one of a kind (let me not talk about it much).

The exam hardly lasted for 10 minutes. I came back to room and got to the blog again , then went to this so-called-SAC photo shoot, and then the consumer behaviour class. 9:00 Pm-Had dinner, came back to my room to read through Knowledge@Wharton. Lazy bugger i was, i put it on audio and slept off till 1:30. Woke up and thought of reading for Product and Brand Management exam(One of my favourite subjects of the term) , but couldn't start till 4 Am(thanks to the slow production process on the Maggi Assembly Line in Night Canteen). So with great determination, i set out to read 16 readings, i manage to complete 8 of them by 8:30 and go to breakfast (XL record, two days in a row breakfast). I sleep at 9Am, Wake up at 12 noon for PBM class. Slept in the lunch break again, attended Social Entrepreneurship class. Did average in PBM exam. I dont know what i did from 5-7:45 Pm (Oh, i downloaded gitanjali). Went to Consumer behaviour class at 7:45 Pm and then dinner outing with friends at 10. Got back to campus at 11. Talked to Sharma after a long time for a long time as usual and then got cynical about B-School.

Then talked to veena and got back to geetanjali.

As the day goes there had been too many Thanks today.

Thats it.

Why did i write all this?

So that i will read it some day and know what i used to do in a B-School.

Reason Vs Excuse

I always believed in this theory of Butterfly Effect, irrespective of classical conditional learning and developing a personality over experience for a long time, there will  be somethings that happen in life that will change things drastically.I should thank my Guide for being the Butterfly Flap.

Few things i learnt :

1)Listen : "We have two ears and one mouth , because , it is nature's way of hinting us that we need to listen twice the time we talk"(Lifted this from 7 Habits). Unfortunately, very few do this. I remember my guide saying to me before my final interview  "Listen to the Question and Mull Over it and Then Answer". After the interview(which i messed up) , I asked for the feedback , he said "You didn't listen to the question, thats it". I thought to myself "Was i Deaf or what?" I think i was, every presentation i see, every class i sit in, there will be atleast one event where the student starts off on a totally different plane when the teacher is teaching something.

2)Every Question doesn't demand an answer or a counter question : I have observed this behaviour every time I do a presentation. This tendency is so evident, the moment someone asks a question, the first thing we do is jump to answer the question. Its like an instinct, there is very little thought process involved. It more often than not goes into a situation of an Ego-Defense, while the purpose of the question was to induce a thought process and clean it.

3)Reason vs Excuse : Finally, this is one of the most important thing I miss. There is difference between a reason and an excuse. When a party is arguing for an issue and the other against, you present arguments on your side first, you don't ask for an excuse from other's argument , you counter it with a Reason. Reason takes its root from strong logic backed up by facts, Excuse backs itself from the lack of concrete reason or data, its basically a personification of either parties' inability to substantiate something. And in any argument, excuse is used by a loser, thats why debaters do research. they don't speak out of their mind or their figments of imagination. 

It has been such a great experience through the summer, that i am reliving it everyday and laugh at myself when i come across the stupidest mistakes, when i see my friends. That how we get back to the learning process.

One of the good quotes i read : 

"Tradition, long conditioned thinking, can bring about a fixation, a concept that one readily accepts, perhaps not with a great deal of thought."- Jiddu Krishnamurthy.

Now i wish i studied Sociology.

Movies that wish to see :

Grahanam : Watched Twice already, doesn't matter to watch again.

Good Night and Good Luck 

Short Snaps

Landed on campus on 16th June.
Room No 213, The Saint Thomas Mens Residence.The Room with the view.
The day I landed in Calcutta , I didnt sleep, one can guess that i did it for no reason.
Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na and Aamir Songs on continuous play.
Watched Lions For Lambs - Awesome movie. Favourite Quote :
Prof :"Professors are not teachers , they are salesmen. "
Student: "what do they sell then?"
Prof: "You to You."

Mahatma Gandhi: "It has always been a mystery to me how men feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow men"

AGD stands for Attention Grabbing Disorder. [The Phrase is Trademarked]

An year Ago, My OB Prof wrote in Big Letters on board , not actually big, They were Huge Letters, and he wrote "PERCEPTION IS REALITY". Today, i feel, he should have increased the font size.

I am surprising myself everyday by the amount of notes i am taking. Funny that a single summers experience can change you so much.

I guess i am getting good at negotiating.

Is Ego a Driver or a Barrier? (I know the question isnt complete).

Few things i dread for now : Power, Politics, whats the other one, i forgot.

Zyada Maanga hain Kahan , Sarhaddein na hon jahaan , Duniya Mile Humko.

Thats it !!

To Teach

Teaching is not as easy as it seems. It is not so simple as well. I remember gifting a diary to one of my lecturers in 12th class. He refused to take it saying " I do not Qualify as a Good Teacher, I still feel that pinch when a student gives a better answer than me ". To confess such a thing would be impossible for a lot of us. He deserved more than the diary, may be he deserved the right of rejection. Thats all we could give him.

There are some simple parameters that i look at in a teacher. Infact , cant figure out more than one for now. When someone is teaching, He/She takes you through a journey of reason, He works on your mind like someone who holds a kids hand and make him connect the dots. Slowly , showing way, one after the other, as the picture keeps materialising, you will be in that mystery zone thinking "Something is happening, where are we going?".

And you finish it, and a Big Picture is presented in front of you, the Teacher gives you a smile. The Smile which stands for the pristine joy of discovering the far end of reason and more importantly, acknowledging that you have reached the destination that you have reached a several times, but you have new companions with you. You would see the best smile from the teacher who enjoys this feeling the most. Thats the only thing that can keep a teacher keep teaching the same thing Section after Section, Year after Year. The best of the teachers I have met, invariably carried this expression with them. They enjoyed rediscovering the same thing with a new student.

I wish to be one someday.

Other Updates:
-Back to College.
-Back to Old Odd Sleep Timings.
-Back to Cancellation and Rescheduling.
-Back to Chilling.

Quote From Shantaram "A secret is not a secret , unless keeping it hurts".
Gtalk Status Message: "Ha,Ha" = Laugh,Mock,Smirk,Despair.
Anonymous: " Show me a writer who doesn't have a good vocabulary,i will prove that he/she is not a good writer"

Me

Me, Beofre i wrote anything else, let me write this, I have been to Leopolds, the place from Shantaram. :D

Ok, now about me, i dont know where to start , but i somehow felt that i should write about myself, another consequence of Shantaram. One of the reasons that i almost closed down my blog was , i was almost writing such kinda things, But i think the its more of a matter of courage to write about yourself, atleast at times when you cannot be yourself.
The only reason i picked up Shantaram was this line on the first page, "The most important thing in this world is Freedom, Freedom to hate" Nothing with relation to this post.

Me and the Manager.

This is how i can put it, i used to sit on these Exams, one of the Hundreds i wrote in my life till now. I used to break my knuckles for the first hour, yawn at the paper, flip through the paper and see that i know the 5/8 questions and finally, i would have finished 15% of the paper in 50% of the time. And then there is Midterm revision and i get all hurried and i start writing nad thats when the real me comes out, there is so much content but no time, and thats when i invented a language that no spieces could understand. I used to literally make scratches on my answer sheet. I remember that i used draw circuit diagrams, while i am running to submit the paper, you get it right, i used to draw with paper in the air, the diagram seemed nothing like a diagram. The Best part i should say, with the worst ever possible handwriting that human kind could have ever seen and the handwriting that would have made doctors proud, i managed to do well in my academics. Surprisingly. I still do in a way.I always said this to myself when i could see people drwing margins with coloured pens all over the paper and writing as if they printed, "I have content, and i need to write it, not present it"
My parents held their breath while i survived being the topper(Ok!! 2nd ranker, or the silver medal that was never there :P) . they were surprised that i finally manged to be at the top. They thought thats it, now my kid will go on to be the best because , all he has to do from now is to type in a sophisticated but easy to use software called Word and easily present ion Powerpoint.

Like they say in strategy, you always need to get the problem right. My parents didnt do that. Problem wasnt in the Hand writing, it was with me, i have too many thoughts in my mind that i keep them away or keep them locked for some time and then let them out in a flurry, and thats when it all gets scrambled. This mixed with intelligence and arrogance is Me. Thats the manager i could be by presenting thoughts in non-linear manner , but speak out at length in discussions when you want gyan, i would never say, lets look at a structure here, i would start off saying, "you know what,these could be various ways how things could be done". Anyway, thats Me as a manager , Guy who is too lazy, arrogant and (assumed to be) smart. I think the wake up call was, when i was told to stop my presentation in between and redo it in a structured manner. Thats how people change i guess.

Ok, so, if i cannot present , what else can i do. I am sure of one thing, anywhere i work, i will bet on this, i will make 10 others around me happy and motivated to work. More about that later, but otherwise i think i should write more rather than present. Anyway, i will stop it here, hopefully, there will be more versions to this in a structure manner. If possible i will upload a PPT. :P

Coming Soon (Mostly) : Me and the Cool Guy
Me and The Man
Me and Just Me

To Write

"Did you ever get high on something other than a drink?" asked Krishna. I wasnt very sure when i was answering that. I said " I get high when i watch a very good scene or read a great line or most of all write a great line and feel that pride of being the author or rather a creator of something original, running through my nervous system".

The very first lines that i wrote on this blog was that i am one of the laziest creatures on earth, i dont stand to argue with that. Once in a while somethings take me to a parellel world. Its like that thing i learnt in science, if you are thrown away from earth a velocity greater than a specific amount, you get out into the space. Thats what happens when one gets a high.

I should totally dedicate this post to Shantaram . I bothered to grab it while i am travelling , i had still been lazy enough to keep away my arousal that i experienced after reading the first page. I should thank Ramki for pushing me onto this book. Well, i will come to the point. I think , i got goose bumps a hundred times already within just 140 pages of what i have read. Some important things to really take a note of.

1) Shantaram mentions that writing had been his saviour in the most difficult of the times. He used to carry pices of paper and write prose and poetry wherever he wanted to. And if he hadnt done that he claims he would have gone mad. From my experience i would say that its so true. I remember writing on a tissue paper in a restaurant one day. Writing is the best vent for man's thoughts that couldnt be absorbed by any other man. Writing is fluent as the fluid that curls around from the pen and takes its shape into such effective words weaved together that when you look back at it , you will realise that with all the threads of our thoughts , we had actually woven an art piece. And believe me, writing gives anyone a high, you should see me as i scurry my fingers now on my laptop with battery meter ticking off and my mind racing against it with thousand thoughts.

2) I always used to write about my dream girl in one form or the other. I should not actually be calling her the dream girl, but its more the girl that i wanted to write, like an artiste wanted to draw an imaginary figure. Whenever i tried to write some part of it, i had a feeling that i am going over board, and i am doing some thing that doesnt look very - whats the word - practical (not the right word). But shantaram's description of Karla kind of reassured me that it takes a lot of art and skill to write about what you admire and desire and looking at what you created or put into words will give you a lot of pleasure. This is so because writing such things is always an attempt to create a replica of your best admirations, and you look for that quality and finesse in what you write , because this is not a plain dream,this is where you assume the powers to bring something from dream to reality , and that i believe is (if he exists ) is second to God's Job.

3)Thought is the frailest thing that man would ever experience, it would be fluttering like a dragon fly's wing in your mind and it would be there, it would be here, and it would be gone, but when it runs through your fingers in a well constructed sentence, it is the deepest thing and the strongest thing. I think Shantaram taught me that once again that all the philosophies that we, or I blabber off given the slightest of the opportunity would appeal more when written down. I was amazed by the skill with which Shantaram wrote about what seemed to be the simplest of the realisations that we go through everyday but never actually stand to acknowledge and appreciate . We have a long life of short moments that more or less define what we are, but when we feel very empty once in a while, thats when we grope for those moments when we were transformed and re-defined to new life, when we took a new step from surviving to living, All such things will come to life when we write.

I think i will close the post there atleast to win against the electronic machine.
But will soon elaborate in some form of the other,
hopefully i will be less of a sloth and more of a writer .

Silence and Sound

Before i write anything about the title, let me first convey my sincere gratitude to my Professor who taught me Business Research Methods.

Ok, now over to the actual post.

Silence : I was just watching the movie Nishabd, what an artpiece it is. I know that not many would stand to appreciate it, one of the reason being, its made over a taboo and another reason might be , thats made by a guy who went nuts after making some of the most amazing movies that Indian Cinema had ever seen. , Ok, i would atleast say that they were best of those that i have ever seen. RGV would always be one of my favorite directors, even if he had murdered Shiva by remaking it as Shiva 2006 (Sounds like my e-mail id : Kartheek17). What was he thinking when he made that movie with that guy from James, I mean, Shiva was a rage among students at that time, people practiced pulling out chains from their cycles. I am sure it would have made gangsters out of a few students of those times, especially in Vijayawada. Ratri , before it was remade respectfully in Hindi, used to scare the shit out of many while they just watched it on TV. He had a knack of talking to people through silence, through terse dialogues,through Heroes who stared into your eyes for so long that you would sometimes lower your eye lids with fear, and ofcourse the heroines whom i believe were given the most respect in his movies. Never mind what others say, be it Revati, Amala, Sridevi, Urmila and few others.(ok, lets put nisha kothari as an exception).

Some people say that he made some of the shittiest movies people have ever seen, well, i dont want to answer that now because that will take a long time if i list down what i call shitty movies. Somehow, it just struck me hard to see the amazing skill with which he handled a movie like Nishabd, I just want to be on his sets and see what he tells to the actors, something like, what would he have told to Nagarjuna in Shiva, or Sridevi in Kshana Kshanam or Saurabh Shukla or Manoj Bajpai in Satya or Amitabh in Nishabdh and Sarkar.

And when he Produced movies, he gave some of the best directors to the industry whom the Big production houses like Yash Raj are exploiting now. God, Shimit Amin couldnt get better than Ab Tak Chappan. The good thing was, (I dont really know, but this is what i believe) , he made movies which he felt good about, he put his money on it, and he did it, he didnt care what happened after that, and he risked his money , ofcourse he learnt a bit of business later, but not like Yash Raj, who make small films because they get you the highest ROI and then put your money on movies which would even not be screened at Film Festival in Timbaktu but you can screen it for one week in all theatres over the world and get your money back before the audience realise they were cheated( God, a Kid wouldnt write a story like that of Tashan in his childhood, one should be an idiot to produce it). I believe RGV doesnt do that, even if the whole world says the movie is bad, he would say, i like it, thats why i made it, he wouldnt say, i know its bad, but i also know that i would get my money.

Ok, so much about Silence.

Sound : Sound here basically means noise or other random things.

- Some thing wrong happened in Surat sometime, i didnt visit many cities in india, but till now, what ever highways or roads i have seen, Surat has the widest roads out of no reason. I know it has all the textile market, but what the hell are they doing with 10 lane road, i am not joikng, i will bet on this, 5 lanes on each side. Today, i was catching an Auto standing, right in the middle of the road.
-Girls in Surat look good. Let me put it better, Girls in Surat also look good. No, not the exact one, Girls every where but down south look good. Whats the problem!! Did Aryans forget something while they travelled south and I wonder what did the dravidians do. This might seem a bit awkward , but this seems to be the first topic of any school/college (Guys)re-union in a Metro(Oops, Chennai is an exception) or in a city Up-North . One of us would go saying " Ooooh!!, why werent they in our school". Like one of my friends used to say "I will take my kids to some Northern Metro where girls and guys can hold hands peacefully (Ok, 10 years later , if i read this, i mite be reading it as a 'Hypocrite')
-I want to be a teacher some day. Dont know how good would I be, but i will make sure that my students will have a great learning.
-Watched Goodfellas for the second time, Joe Pesci is God. No wonder , people copy that movie.
- Grades are coming out one after the other, funny that my learning curve is going down (wait a minute, did i attribute learning to grades !!?? Shit!!)
-Oh yeah, i deleted F.R.I.E.N.D.S from my lappy so that i can go on with my internship, and so , i am blogging now :|
-I still write in NotePad, i dont feel like using MS Office.
-Ok, thats it, i cant get more random than this.
--End of Post--

Mumbai and Neverland

Ok, Mumbai is not Neverland.

Mumbai is this awesome place, its like the place for everyone and a perfect place for guy like me to loearn some things. I am spending a fortune at this place, i cant figure out exactly on what i am spending it. But sometimes, there is a nice little sense of earning something, not actually earning , but virtually earning.
For example, the other day i took a Taxi from Chembur to Byculla, So as i was happily reading Brand Reporter in the back seat like a Brand Manager (Wannabe) , the mechanics worked on to move the taxi, so the system also had a sister concern called meter that moves along with it and it turned over to cost me 125 Rs. So, the next day i get to do the same thing, but i thought its time to move my butt a little more. So i catch a bus to the nearby railway station, that costed me 4 Rs and as i buy the ticket to Byculla, there is an announcement for the fast local. I run over the over bridge and just then the train stops and i thought i cant get this because , you cant actually catch a running train in Mumbai with "Used to catch Running Bus during college at Hyderabad" on your Resume. But, Hey wait up,the over bridge has a slide down instead of steps, so i run down and just as the train starts to move, i get in. And as i listen to a 4 min song from Godavari, I am there at Byculla. Now that train ticket costed me 5 Rs. With new found enthusiasm after saving 116 Rs, i thought i will walk to my place, which is kinda 1 Km away.

So is this like the Master Card Ad. Not exactly, the story is not over yet. As i walk down, i find this Pizza Place called Mama Mia and i walk into it, to celebrate my earning. After that blame it on the Great Indian Economy and the Consumer Confidence , i ate a Pizza worth 100 Rs with a cool drink worth 15 Rs. So thats it. I earned a Rupee.

Ok, even otherwise, Mumbai is an awesome place, might be too early for me to judge, but , as long as i can have 6 panipuri for 6 Rs on roadside, I love it.

Now to Neverland. Before i write this, if one is fired for bloggong about his job, this phenomena is called getting 'dooced' , i came to know this in just another quiz prelims which i didnt get thru.

I have been taking survey on 8-12 year kids on what they do and their daily activities. It has been awesome talking to them. There was this word about kids that my friend used , 'Unassuming' . i think thats it, thats one of the most beautiful attribute that humans are born with and only tend to lose it over time. There is this question that i ask "Do you worry about what your friends think about you? " . And i so loved it when they say a strong 'NO'. Seeing from where i come from - The B School and where i would go from there - I would call the kids world - Neverland.

Some really funny stats about Neverland, not actually stats as i didnt tabulate everything , actually nothing so far. God, so much work to do.

Ok, if anyone from Media Agencies are readingv this, if any of you want to put an ad for kids product, put it on this program called "Shing Chang" (i dont know if i am spelling it right, because with all curiosity, i could find out that he wears Red shorts and Yellow shirt, god i actually asked a kid if he can draw him). Kids love this program , they watch it what so ever.

They love those ads which i thought to be the stupidest Ads. There is nothing more than that i could reveal for now.

Ok, there is one final reference to Neverland i want to make. Not actually a Neverland. Anyway, let me explain.

Today kind of rounds off as a day where all of my good friends who wanted to be in a B-School, finally get to be in a B-school. Looking back, it was kinda stupid journey that we started , let me count , 1,2,3,4 years ago and got obsessed with . So, all said and done, we all looked at it as a Neverland which we wished to reach soime day. Oh, Oh!! that reminds me of something else thats common to us, as someone said, we are all this bunch of self-pitying, nostalgic graduates from JNTU Hyderabad.

And guess what, everyone is going to an IIM as just I go to XLRI. He he , howz that for differentiation. :P . Ok, very bad joke. Signing it off, just like some post long ago that i wrote, this day seems to be one more of those few days of absolute happiness.

So, if my humour seemed unoriginal, wannabe witty or plain simple bad, blame it on my obsession to watch 4 episodes of FRIENDS everyday.

As i signed off, i will have to leave a finishing joke.

P.S : I land in Mumbai Railway station from Hyderabad with all my luggage . Being an Engineer, i couldnt be smart enough than buying a Map of Mumbai in the railway station. Thinking back, i dont know what i was trying to do, what, buy a compass also and reach the place i wanted to. Anyway, so, i open this big map in the railway station and starting searching for the place i wanted to go. So, from another angle, i would be looking like holding a board saying " Come on you Taxi Guys , I am New to Mumbai and I am absolutely clueless and dumb, come take me for a ride". So one guy finally takes the offer and says, hey its just near by , and it costs just 150 bucks. So i think to myself " Oh!! ya, i have read about that in the papers, its called inflation, prices have have gone up." So i sit in the Taxi, and whoosh you are there in 5 mins. So, i get down , with gaping mouth and say "Come on, this is too much". That guy says "Buzz off, you weigh too much
- with your luggage " :D . It costs 30 bucks on Taxi from that place.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

This is no centi post!!

Ok, i know i woke up way too late. I just got addicted to sitcoms now. Hopefully not more to coime, but for now, i am watching too much of Friends. My laptop battery allows me 4 episodes at a time and i take all of it. I should say, i am enjoying it, Chandler remains my favourite for his one liners, while Ross would get the special jury award for being the All time good guy.Thats as much on friends.

Other than that, my summer internship seems no hot thing to talk about for now, except that i feel deprived of chocolates all of a sudden.

Thats it for now

The Other side of the consumer

You walk into a shop, look at few items and pick up one and walk towards the counter. Freeze!!!

This is the moment, the moment that huge corporates work day and night for, the moment for which all research agencies drill your mind with hundreds of questionnaires, the moment for which sales man drag their feet to every shop in every nook and corner of the city, the moment for which merchandisers fight for display space in the shop.

My first glimpses into the other side of consumer. Will try to write more later.

I am alive and so is my blog

Before i doze off, before i delete this post also rejecting it on the basis of low quality, i will write something and post it.
I and my Blog are alive. Just that i had been as lazy to write as a person in coma.
Was going thru a fellow interns blog , i could just feel the kind of feeling that one has after writing something.
So , where was I, what was i doing. Term 3 at XL had real been XL size, i didnt expect it to be so, i didnt expect me to be so. Not on basis of education , but on the basis of life style atleast, i am learning few ways to be a manager. Some hazaar events and hazaar conflicts to handle. Some real good tests for my communication and composure. For once , i could suddenly sit up in sleep and think to myself "this place means something to me". Its funny that i didnt sleep before 5 am for 2 weeks straight. And if best things happened so far in XL for me, it happened in Term 3, if shit happened , it happened in term 3.

Anyway, it was fun being the old man . Hope there is no more necessity for that role.

Had been to hyd twice during the term, two very short and quick trips. Sometimes, u will realise how much you can do in a day.

I had been in hyd for 8-9 days after term 3. Biking seemed scary for a while. But i still enjoy it. And somewhere for the first time, or rather not for the first time, but it was just that my thought it was very dominant that "My priorities were getting scrambled".

Fundae : Jugash and me used to have this discussion on how to live and behave as one wishes. I was struggling to behave as i want. For some people the above statement might seem funny because one is supposed to live how one wants. But its not so easy when it comes to execution. I think XL gave me that chance to live all by myself and still be good and answerable to myself. It was really interesting to see the coin flipping the other way. This was like a paradigm shift for me.But its good. If i had to take in terms of market share and percentages, i used to listen and rule myself by 15-20% an year or two ago. Now its as much as 65-70%. I think thats phenomenal.

So much for now.
P.S : Coming soon, Chorlie at the Chocolate factory.

Restart

It seems that i cannot stay away from writing. It seems to be my best way to refresh besides roaming with a camera(though i am too lazy to do that as well)

Updates:
-Unlike the first term ,I had to slog a bit during the exams, though the results seem to be coming out bad.
-2 weeks of vacation added more to my sleep.
-Some sleepy idiot mistook one sandal of mine as his and left one sandal of his.
-Hyderabad is the only place where i can survive by overtaking from left side.
-Managed to reach XL safely breaking the record of adventurous journeys.
-One more term to go to graduate as seniors :)
- I shall mark January 7th as a great day , this is the day Room no 301, TFEMR looked spic and span. This might well be the only day
-Taare Zameen Par :)))))