Yahoo !!

Feeling a lot lighter after the 7th semester exams are dealt with. Also, not to forget the mighty CAT, and the stupid IIFT exams. I'm primarily calling IIFT stupid not just because I couldn't do well in it, but the exam was inherently very stupid. Right from the invigilator to the question paper, nothing was proper. The exam was a nightmare.. 150 questions in 120 minutes and that too the level wasn't so low. Anyways, what is gone, is gone. Luckily, CAT went well and expecting a few calls from the big ones. But the next big news is that I'm leaving with my friends to a Sikkim trip for about a week. Hope to have some great time over there. It was fun planning the whole thing, right from the itinerary to the budget, to noting down locations of ATMs and hotels that fit our budget. The tentative itinerary is as given below..

Day 1 - 27/11 - Reach Gangtok by noon. Find out details about changu lake,pelling,lachung(yumthang/zero point),darjeeling trips. Local Sightseeing (Rumtek Monastery,etc.)
Day 2 - 28/11 - Start for Changu lake early morning, Nathula Pass.Return to Gangtok.
Day 3 - 29/11 - Yumthang and zero point. Stay at Lachung/GTK.
Day 4 - 30/11 - Start early morning for Gangtok/Pelling. Lunch at Gangtok and leave for Pelling by 1.30 pm. Stay at Pelling.
Day 5 - 01/12 - See Pelling by noon and leave for Darjeeling. Reach by evening. (or) Start for Darjeeling early morning. Reach by 10-11 am, local sightseeing,nightstay.
Day 6 - 02/12 - See Tiger Hills,early morning. Local sightseeing till time permits. Reach NJP by evening by toy train(0915 hrs) or bus/taxi. Train at 1925 hrs for Howrah.
Day 7 - 03/12 - Reach Howrah at 0510 hrs. Train from howrah 0735 hrs.

Will get back soon.. Goodbye till then..

Proud to be part of the Tata Group

I don’t have to mention the sequence or details of the events that led to the great disaster of Singur. What actually deserves mention and laudatory applause are the ethics, values and principles that make Mr.J.R.D.Tata the gentleman he is. Poor Mamata Bannerjee, little did she know that her move to stand by the farmers in protest against one of the prolific industrialists of the country, who was trying to bring the poster child of Indian innovation in frugal manufacturing and numerous other opportunities to the state of West Bengal, would ultimately not result in any significant enhancement in her vote bank. The Nano, which drew the attention of the world towards India, is now resulting in bent eyebrows about the friction industry faces with vote bank politics in this part of the world. Some western newspaper had a report whose title read “Tata Nano falls in Indian ditch”. The Singur imbroglio will not only scare away huge potential investments in the state of Bengal, but could also force a rethink about foreign investors planning to invest in India’s booming economy. The comments it has drawn from Indian industry stalwarts clearly speak for themselves. Sunil Mittal made it clear enough when he said “If the house of Tatas can face such serious problems, then it is definitely a sorry state of affairs”. Infosys and many other conglomerates have stated that they are closely watching the Singur episode and would take cues from it about their future intent of investing in the state and even their current investments. A Trinamool Congress henchman close to Mamata said on condition of anonymity that Mamata Bannerjee might have to face the stigma of driving off investments from Bengal for a long time.


But Mamata Bannerjee is not new in the game of politics. Her stature might not have grown at the pace with witch UP CM Mayawati’s has, but it is still worth taking note of. She’s always found the protest route the best thing to do. Right from the time she forayed into politics, she was vociferous and also got literally, I mean physically charged at by CPI henchmen, the police and also probably the RAF. But this has never deterred her to keep away from the political bigwigs. She’s slowly and steadily earned a noteworthy status in the Red/Left dominated politics of the state. By now, she’s experienced enough to know opportunity from disaster. Then, where did she go wrong in case of Singur? Simple. She couldn’t comprehend Mr.Tata. In fact, many of us might have done the same mistake if we were at her position. The prospect of relocating the Nano factory would mean incurring a loss of about Rs.500 crore, which is a huge sum by any standards to forgo. Therefore, she thought if she could force/choke the govt. or the Tatas to return the disputed 400 acres of land, she could score a noticeable political victory and significantly increase the size of her vote bank by tilting the farmers in her favor. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn the way she expected them too and she has nothing to do now.


The whole episode brings to the fore the reason why the Tata group is not only a national brand of repute, but internationally acclaimed for its core values and business ethics. This makes me proud as a future member of this group, whose leader is a man who doesn’t believe in compromising his values for anything.

Positive Signs ..

There's this nice feeling when you realize that you can actually do what you think would require a lot of effort and would still not be possible to achieve! Hard work,persistence and perseverance cannot be substituted, but often people tend to ignore or sideline certain other factors which play a part in achieving one's objectives. One of them being the strong, unflinching belief that it can be done and the right frame of mind at the all-important moment. The strong and unconditional belief that I referred to needs to be elucidated further as it simply doesn't mean the burning desire to achieve something, but a comprehensive knowledge of one's strengths, weaknesses and intended course of action-which should be an outcome of thorough research of the situation & the possible strategies, taking into account not only their effectiveness, but also feasibility. What is applicable to someone else might provide you a good idea,but would have to be transformed of customized, based on your requirements. I'm sure all this seems quite obvious, but the problem arises when one faces reality. Prior to that, it seems that all groundwork has been done and everything is ready. However, being prepared for failure should essentially be, and in my opinion be the most important and integral part of the strategy, without which it would be almost ineffective as even the slightest deviation from the plan would lead to a debacle.

I'm elated as Abhinav Bindra has become the first Indian to win an Olympic gold in an individual sporting event. What is depressing is the fact that the credit-snatching game has started back home here in India. What should be noted is the fact that Bindra's father was a businessman, financially secure and thus, wasn't dependent on the government for assistance or aid of any kind. He rightfully converted a farmhouse into a shooting range for his son's practise and could afford all the equipment he needed. Contrast this with the numerous stories of sportsmen who are not so well off, spend most of their time and energy in arranging for funds and makedo with sub-standard equipment,infrastructure and facilities. The sporting scenario in India is a pathetic state and can only improve with greater private enterprise sponsorship. Private sponsorship demands not only results, but also popularity of the sport - which is usually the stumbling block. Cricket fanatic India doesn't give a damn if the Indian Men's hockey team fails to qualify for the Olympics for the first time in 8 decades, nor does the fact matters that India is ranked above 130 in the world in football, where small island nations with populations of a few thousand are ranked higher than this country of 1.3 billion people. The major reason being lack of financial incentives in the respective sports at the regional or national level. Cricket is glamorized and it is a known fact that cricketers earn an attractive pay package, apart from numerous advertising contracts. If the governments initiates incentivisation of sports alongside infrastructure development, then private players might find it feasible at a later stage and can be expected to carry on further.

Enough for now, feeling groggy and the fact that I have to attend the first class tomorrow at 7.30 am implies that I should hit the sack now.

Facebook addiction ..

Guys,this is getting serious.. First Vampires,Slayers,Werewolves and Zombies, then 'Who has the biggest brain?', followed by 'Word Challenge' and 'Bowling Buddies', and the latest twin addictions being 'Mob Wars' and 'Mindjolt Games' ! Phew, the list seems endless as one or the other of the million applications on the site manage to hold your attention and sap away one's time. Taking the no. of people getting bitten by the social networking bug,I feel we will soon have terms such as 'orkutting','facebooking', 'orkutomaniac' or facebookophobic' included in the oxford dictionary in the near future. But I guess I've had enough and I feel its time I stop or atleast control the amount of time that I'm spending on these sites, facebook more specifically.

3 down,1 to go !

Feels good to finally finish 3/4th of my graduation. Quite some time passed before my previous post,which means have a few things to write about. Just a few days after my last post, a company called ThoughtWorks had come for recruitment to our campus and was alloted dream staus. Incase any of you are wondering about what having a 'dream status' means for a company, it simply means that students who have already bagged a job can also sit for the recruitment process as it has an attractive pay package. Pay package definitely seemed higher when the company quoted 5.08 Lakhs INR,but then this was given as the CTC figure, or the Cost-To-Company figure,which is generally a lot higher than what will eventually be the take home component. Nevertheless, we expected and assumed to be atleast higher than what TCS (Tata Consultancy Services -i.e the company which I got selected in) had to offer. A list of eligible candidates was taken out by the college based on some very complex criteria,i.e the already recruited students needed a higher cut-off than the still-to-be-placed students. Whatever it was,my name was there on the list and that's what mattered the most to me. Their recruitment process was a different experience altogether - starting with the written test which included flowchart based calculation, was virtually unique and different from most Indian IT companies. Didn't have much difficulty in clearing the paper. Was among the 89 people who made through to the coding round out of the 450 who appeared for the written. The coding round was relatively easy than expected. Two questions were given and we were required to solve any one of them according to our choice. I chose one of them and remembering the point they mentioned in the pre-placement talk about their company looking for good object-oriented programming skills. So, filled my program with all object-oriented concepts that I could think of. Though I must admit that my programming skills was very out of touch. Luckily,that didn't stop me from making it to the list of 19 people who cleared the round. Then comes the technical interview round, where we were grilled on all concepts learned till date and a little more. Was the first to be interviewed. I had a feeling that my interview went fine, if not really well. After they had interviewed all the 19 people, they called me again, which gave me a feeling that I had got past the first round. But I guess I was a little mistaken. Probably, they were a little confused about whether to consider me for the next phase or not and thereby wanted a re-confirmation. The re-confirmation came in the process of a 35-40 minute grilling interview session, which I couldn't do well in,given the fact I was absolutely unprepared for such hardcore technical stuff. After my supposedly 2nd round of interview, a list of 6 names was taken out where I was excluded. Didn't really feel bad as the ones in the list were definitely a niche above me. Wished the others and left for the hostel. Came to know later that the 6 were not allowed to rest in peace and were further grilled and only 2 managed to get through the complete process. The best incentive I was looking for in joining this company was the Mac or the Dell I would get to choose as soon as I join. But then,it became clear- the Mac would have to wait and probably come from my own pocket later.

Gosh, just one event took up so much space ! Reading more crap will not be appreciated I guess, for the time being. Promise to get back shortly.

Gracias

My Opinion Matters... well atleast to me, it does !

Issues,incidents and 'kands' are what the news channels have been feeding us non-stop. I happened to get an overdose of them during the sine die vacation.. yes that's what I've decided to call it finally(read my previous post for details). The fact that bothers me most is that these channels, which claim that 'enlightening' the masses is their responsibility, cross all limits and make a mockery of all unwritten ethics of the reporting profession in the race to score better TRPs. Creating absolutely unrelated and over sensationalized headlines to a normal incident and projecting it as a matter of great importance is a very deplorable act in my opinion. Whether it is the rising inflation,the Aarushi murder case or absolutely unimportant events like 'The Great Khali' on his visit to India, the electronic media,especially the news channels made it seem like the event in question is the defining moment for entire humankind and have been telecasting the same innumerable times. A few months back there was this Rizwanur case in West Bengal and at the same time a singer from Bengal had won a singing reality show. The insensitivity of the news channel was clearly reflected when they brought the victim's mother and the winner's mother together to a public function and were trying to establish some vague connection. The reporter contrasts the jubilant mood at the winner's residence to the gloomy atmosphere at the victim's home forcibly bringing tears to his mothers eye who is still in shock of her son's untimely death. Instead of leaving the victim's family alone, the channel keeps interviewing them and this according to me acts like rubbing salt on their wounds.

'Character Assassination', which came into focus during the Aarushi murder case when her friends took out a protest was being done more by the media than by the police department. The media should be made to realize that their job is to inform the people about the happenings in the country and outside with a neutral tone and not by sensationalizing tid-bits of information which they feel will arouse the 'curiosity glands' of the public. The incident happens, police reaches the spot and looks for clues, meanwhile the news editors are already engaged at pointing fingers and reaching a baseless, but 'sensational' conclusion. If this is what private news channels have to offer, I would prefer to listen to Doordarshan's monotonic newsreader who gives news as it comes to him. One expects competition to improve standards, whereas in the case of news channels, the result has been pretty much the reverse. I find absolutely no reason as to why 'The Great Khali' needs to be given so much coverage on prime time when more important matters are at hand. I have no personal dislike for the wrestler. In fact, I am proud that he represents India in the WWE, even though I am very well aware of the fact that its all fixed up, but atleast he's equipped with the right physique which justifies his presence there. But, I would like to watch him in an entertainment channel and not a news channel, but I guess in this age of all-rounders the news channels are trying their best to keep us entertained. This surely doesn't qualify as infotainment. This is simply the lack of content or rather the lack of the willingness to show it.

Usually, when issues need attention, the media is the most effective tool of spreading the word around. But what can be done when the media itself is an issue? Any answers, I am eager to hear some...

Here I am, This is me(obvious,isn't it?)!

The credit of this post goes to one of my classmates whose words of encouragement have given me the necessary push to go ahead and post some more 'pseudo-intellectual' crap! Could start by writing about how I spent my summer... coz nothing else more suitable and apt to write after one comes back from a month and half of vacations! Speaking of the 'vacation' reminds me of why it started at such an early date. In fact what was later officially declared as a vacation by the college management had initially started off as a 'sine die'. No,u've not misread anything.. what started off as a sine die for 'students engaging in in-disciplinary activities and violence' had been later declared as a premature summer vacations. If I sit to contemplate as to what actually caused the violence by considering the information I have from various sources as true,then I can rebuild in my mind a hilarious sequence of events. Well, hilarious would be an appropriate word had the outcome not been so gory. But going by the absence of common sense and the presence of an excessive sense of 'pride' in the people who were directly involved, the violence seems pretty childish,immature and absolutely unnecessary.

Well,whatever happened had happened.. the result was that all the boarders of 6th semester had to vacate the hostels within 10 AM the next morning. On my suggestion, some of my friends decided to come with me for a short trip to vizag, naturally encouraged by the fact that my parents were out of station and we would get the flat and the car all to ourselves. And a good decision did it turn out to be, as we had a wonderful time together in vizag. Enjoying the sun,sand,sea and hills with absolutely nothing in mind except the sole aim of having a great time. All good things come to an end, so did this trip. Friends dispersed to their respective destinations and I headed to my brother's place - Chennai.

Reached Chennai the day after my parents departed for Singapore to join the vessel on a semi-world tour. Decided promptly that I can't waste all the time pretending to be doing something and actually doing nothing. Had joined a networking course - N+(Networking+) and CCNA(Cisco Certified Network Associate) in an institute there. And this is how my afternoons would pass for the remaining holidays. Mornings consisted of reading "The Hindu", breakfast,lazying around,reading books or playing GTA :San Andreas.. yes,I played it again.. right from the start. Evenings included taking rest,snacks and watching T.V. In similar fashion the day ends and before one knows, its time to hit the sack again ! Time literally flies when you want it to stay that way, doesn't it ? Atleast one thing I am glad about is that I paid attention in the classes I attended and used the travel time in the bus to go through the course material. Had been to Queensland one day on the occasion of Dada's birthday.. tried out all the rides that can be in a day's span.. ended up having a wonderful time.

That's nearly summed up my sine die vacation for you... See.. I fooled u guys by promising 'pseudo intellectual' stuff in the beginning ! Not really my fault, will surely get some in the posts to come.. Don't get disheartened guys !

The hate affair continues ...

It appears that its not going to be easy to end the hate affair with Quantitative Aptitude so easily. The results of my first AIMCAT confirmed the same. Not that its the final verdict on my abilities, but its an indicator that Quant isn't Verbal, which comes a lot more easily to me. Remedial measure has started, but needs to be continued seriously if any realistic hopes of making the cut are to be kept alive.

Unsure about the summer to come, whether I'll be interning somewhere(minute probability) or will be doing a course somewhere and where will that be.. everything is uncertain.. lol.. as a TCS associate, I'm supposed to experience certainty ! The certain thing is wherever I am, can't afford to lose sight of my goal..

Adios..

Employed, yet unemplyed ..

Well, technically speaking from now on I wouldn't be able to use the phrase 'I'm unemployed' to describe a period of leisure, boredom or restlessness.. Not that I'm sad about it, in fact its a huge relief that I'm placed in the first IT company that visited our campus, TCS. Not an achievement by any standards of the word, but something which would have got me tensed had it not come my way or was delayed. There are tons of things one can write about the 'placements' or the 'recruitment process' which has been going on in our college for sometime now, but I guess I've already had an overdose of listening about stories and incidents where luck mattered more over intellect and the like that I'm no more in a mood to elucidate further.

The break after the placement was more than welcome as it provided a much needed respite from the grueling schedule we were forced to put up with. Headed off to Chennai and then for a small trip to Coorg, a small and beautiful hill station some 6 hours from Bangalore. Quite interestingly, it is the birthplace of the river Cauvery, over whose water people and politicians of two states are fighting with each other, and it is also the birthplace of Aishwarya Rai - over whom needless to say, many men have had arguments and disputes.

Now that I'm back here in college, there will be a routine to follow, a schedule of some sort to put an end to meaningless wandering of the mind in trying to find out innovative ways to kill time. Now that there is a job, I have the mental security to pursue the next target i.e CAT 2008 with greater zeal and commitment. Signing off for now.

Gracias ..

Yes, I still can write and I do have the time !

Thanks to an inquisitive friend who wanted to enter the ‘pseudo intellectual’ world of blogging that I realized the fact that its quite some time and I haven’t been posting anything. Well, the fact that I know that not many people are actually enthusiastically waiting to comment on my next post isn’t very encouraging either. ‘Pseudo intellectual’ is perhaps not the best phrase to describe the blogging community, but didn’t really mean to offend anyone. Frankly speaking, I came across the phrase in the flick ‘Dil, Dosti, etc.’ and somehow it has registered on my mind for no explainable reason as such and I was looking for an opportunity to use it somewhere.

Meanwhile, a lot has been happening from the last post. Probably, one of the things that matter to me was becoming a ‘9-pointer’ for the first time in college. Though its not really a significant achievement considering the fact that this time marks were awarded as magnanimously as one can think of doing it. Many people indeed ended up getting a lot more than they expected, but as far as I am concerned, the marks are not really a shock as I was quite confident of doing better than my last semester, which was my best so far. The biggest joke probably is the fact that there also exist a couple of people who have scored a ‘perfect 10’ ! Of course, it was never impossible here, but then it has never happened before and according to my opinion, shouldn’t really happen. Scoring 9’s and 10’s couldn’t have been easier and more useless like it has become here. Nevertheless, I take pride in my achievement as I think I did cross a barrier and I now believe that I can do better. The spirit needs moral boosts and this definitely qualifies for one. The issue to top it all was the ‘mass hacking’ of the college server over which security seems to be unimaginably thin. Just with a few strokes on the keyboard, a student can effortlessly view the files on the college server. Hope the situation improves once e-IMS, the online Information system is operational again.

Some more news is that I am featured on the ‘Information Brochure’ of my college’s entrance exam this year. Not for ant specific achievement or laurel I received, just the fact that we had a computer lab when the photo session was going on and I was seated at a vantage point in the front row. It did come as a pleasant surprise when one of my friends bought the application form for his sister and saw us featured on it !

Regular news includes placement training going on in full swing along with mba prep. Nothing interesting to write about the things which manage to screw your daily life to such an extent when one looses all remnants of a rational mind. After attending various classes for 14 hours a day, the probability of loosing sanity increases by a considerable degree. Frequent mock tests have started with the frequency being too much of a botheration as there isn’t even the time to reveal the scores or discuss the answers. Have so much more bullshit to fill up virtual space, but signing off for now as I wouldn’t like to scare away the few readers who still go through my posts.