Unlike other posts, I am not wasting any time before coming to the topic. This time of the year is certainly one of the most stressful to me and to many others of my ilk.
As soon as India finishes observing a minute's silence to remember Gandhiji's martyrdom, the next big thing on the agenda for everyone is Valentine's Day. But why so, I must ask??
Yours truly is leading a solitary life and my relationship status is well-publicised among my friends and yet, I have already been bombarded with a substantial set of queries asking about my plans on V-day. Further, what is with these colors and how can a color really be used to indicate "if I am on the market"?? Every time somebody asks me the question ..so what color are you wearing this V-day... I am reminded of a stupid gimmick many ppl carried out on social media to increase awareness about breast cancer. Only I am not sure what is more embarassing.. flashing my underwear color on social media or wearing my relationship status all over my physical existence on V-Day. To an average bachelor residing in a hostel, managing two clean pieces of clothing is tricky enough, without the additional of complexity of colors conveying your love life's deepest secrets.
I googled out this whole color coding phenomenon and I am listing here the most popular connotations of colors:
Blue- I’m free
Green- I’m waiting
Orange- going to propose
Pink- accepted just now!!!
Black- proposal rejected
White- already booked
Yellow- broke up!!!
Gray- not interested…
Red- leave me
While I am not contesting these codes, I do have some questions in my mind. Does a deeper shade of RED mean a strong "leave me" as in "dont even think about it!!" or did the people wearing PINK keep it as spare, just in case, and just got lucky?? On the whole this entire coding business is driving us back to racial discrimination in its most sophisticated form, differentiating people on the basis of color. Imagine the scenario, you enter a pub and see a person wearing BLACK or YELLOW, do you really want to sit near this character and hear their sob story (my gender neutrality begs appreciation here!!).On the other hand, you probably want to sit next to a PINKy person and try to grab to a free drink or two as celebration. Bingo... discrimination on the basis of color!!! (Me thinks, worse would be actually landing up next to an ORANGE and end up as his dress rehearsal partner...take that!!) Now that socially essential arguments have been put forward, let me come down to the more personal/emotional arguments. The two broad lines of argument on this topic are as follows:
this is a day for all the lovers to celebrate Love (almost as if its Diwali!!)
this is a day for all the others to find Love
Now lets rip them apart systematically. Argument 1 is nonsense. Don't all lovers make/create/manufacture/concoct love for the remaining 364 days of the year. Its not like Diwali when you are bombarded with sweets and crackers for just that one day. We, the single, have been painful witnesses to your public cuddling, kootchi-cooing and what not!!! So don't tell me that you are celebrating Love on that particular day and abstain on the other days of the year. And what the hell.. when did you folks ever need a reason to gift a teddy bear, a chocolate box or watever else is in vogue now!!! Just don't call it the festival of Love...and to think that you are actually celebrating somebody's death!!!
Argument 2 is offensive. Nobody, take it from me NOBODY, ever finds love during Valentine's day. Not only does it provide false hope to the usual-suspects of solitary living, it also gives the whole romance thing a marketplace atmosphere, feeding on supply and demand. You are either already in love and the mass hysteria is helping you express it or you are just feeling the peer pressure of not being found alone (screw the subtlety, without arm candy!!). In the first case you get your hindside kicked and in the second case you are in deep $h&t with either a wrong decision or worse, a compromise!!! Anyways, in case any of you thinks that it is possible to find love on Valentine's Day, this is what I have to say on it: Planning to find love on Valentine's Day is like selling notional futures contract in love. You will most probably end up squaring up your positions in the spot market!!!
Thus, having successfully and single handedly, sounded the alarm bell on Valentine Day celebrations, I request the powers that be to abolish the celebration of V-Day thus, protecting the society from racial hatred and keeping the population on a realistic leash of romanticism.
My Lord, I thereby rest my case!!!
P.S. Now time for something useful:
Check out this new cool Facebook group, as a designer you might be interested. Otherwise just spread the word.
This is post is continued from an incomplete draft early in September 2008 and it is only apt that this post be published now, with a complete flavor of the Pareto rule in B-Schools!!!
The Pareto Principle, or the alternatively famous 80-20 rule, has been interpreted in the most mundane ways possible. I was oblivious to the greatness and versatility of the rule before I landed on the gates of a B-School. As life at B-school started sinking in, Pareto’s interpretation opened new avenues for conjuring 80-20 relations in many obscure ways. Let me try to put into words, the endless minutes of daydreaming to bring up few of the 80-20s, which I believe make life at B-schools really interesting.
80 percent of the batch is male, generating 20% interest in ice-breaking and the remaining 20%, even if it does not consist of that hot girl you met during your GD-PI, gets 80% attention in ice-breaking activities.
80% of the gyan comes from 20% of the seniors, while the remaining 80% sit back and enjoy as juniors are mercilessly slaughtered by these zealots,
Alternatively, after the first 10 days, 80% of the gyan is taken by only 20% juniors and the remaining 80% are deaf by this time.
80% doubts in class arise in the minds of 20% of the student, while the remaining students are content with sleeping (or dreaming up such stuff!!!)
All the team projects will be split in the 80-20 rule as follows:
80% of the PPTs are made by a single person
80% of the presentations are presented by a single person
80% of the data analysis will be done by a single person
100% of nothing will be done a very special single person
80% of your time in a term will be spent on a single subject which ends up contributing only 20% to your CPI
As the summer internships come to an end, 20% of the batch has an 80% probability of landing a PPO/PPI while the remaining 80% have a combined 20% of doing so
Come placement time, only 20% junta has an 80% chance of landing up in their dream job while remaining 80% looks to split the remaining 20% in the best way possible.
If an interviewer is smiling at your answer then 80% of the times he has found a way to nail your backside on the crucifix the remaining 20% he doesn’t have a clue as to what you are saying
And finally, 80% of the people who have read till here have no clue what this was about and the remaining 20% are out searching for me!!!
This one originated right this evening.
It was started by my bro GuGu ofcourse, with whom I have the pleasure of sharing many intellectually intense and invigorating debates... and all this while watching a dismal game of cricket. No, I am not refering to the 'ordinary' India-Bangla test match but to a game of cricket commonly known in the balconies, passages and verandahs of India as one-tip, one-hand cricket.
As to the origin of the name, there have hardly been more to-the-point names in the world, which leave you in no doubt as to the game ( I wish human names were as useful!!!). However, the debate did not rest on the mere nomenclature of the game rather hinging on a more intriguing part of the game. How is it that the rules for 1t1h cricket (1-tip 1-hand cricket..inspired by T20) are more or less the same across the country?
As is often the case, I began my answer in all earnest abstraction and hoped to end my monlogue with the famous "Elementary, my dear Watson" look. However, ever since I have been solicited for services by a name sake of the Jaya Prakash Murugan Chettiar Bank, the time on my hands has enabled me to delve deeper on entirely useless things!!! ( You might wish to argue that it was the case earlier too but let save it for later.)
So I took up the development of 1t1hcricket as a management problem and this is how I guess it must have worked out:
Need Identification: In India everybody wants to play cricket but hey, where is the space!!! So every possible quadrangular (or not so quadrangular space..) is put to good use. Now we Indians are competitive people and no cricket can happen without elaborate scoring systems and even more ritualisitc methods of getting out. Thus, the birth of 1t1h cricket owes itself to the space-strapped cricket maniacs of the country.
Early Adopters: Early adopters are the people to whom any product might give reasonable amount of credit for shaping usage patterns and augmenting product features. So while 1t1h started out as a simple variant, the early adopters to the game decided to add rules for hitting on the wall, hitting the tubelight, minimum runs in an over etc etc etc and more... thereby increasing the ability of the game to handle various tricky situations and obstructions.
Critical Mass: Many new product innovations have perished because of their ill-timed launches. While market timing is as much an art as a science, the rise of 1t1h cricket has coincided with the emergence of housing complexes, having more parking space than playing space (infact substitutable spaces... these two!!!). More controlling parents, who figure children are safer playing cricket in the balcony of their 8th floor apartment than on the ground and of course, the simple truth that any playground is hideously anti-social compared to filling the coffers of some builder bloke. Add to this the stereotypical picture of a cricket field in India.... 5 parallel pitches and close to 100 fielders packed into a regular size field. While the batsman's concerns are not limited to the opposition fielders alone but expand to include the pitch invading goons from other teams, the poor fielders have the additional worry of protecting their nether regions from a well directed pull shot. Hardly a pleasing sight you would say!!! Thus, the new baby in the cricketing world couldn't have come at a better time.
Standardisation: While many sports in India have secured an elitist status, its just impossible to keep any form of cricket away from the masses. Though in essence this penetration of the product into new market segments should be a good news for most firms, it also brings in the additional burden of standardisation. And I guess, we have no one to thank more than the kids of Defence personnel & other folks in transferable jobs for bringing about this standardisation of procedures/rules/rituals and other gimmicks in the sport of 1t1h cricket. These people have travelled far and wide, carrying with them the best practices in the sport and spreading it across the various parts of the country. Thus, many of the rules in the sport are now universally (read "nationally") accepted.
With this my analysis of the evolution of the sport has been concluded and all I now worry about is the survival of the game. You see there was this game we played as kids, it was called book cricket but with the advent of PDFs, laptops and Kindle the children of today have been deprived of the sheer thrill and adrenaline of playing the great sport of book cricket. I hope 1t1h does not meet such an unceremonious end. Amen!!! ======================================================= The above gyan is written without any backing of management studies. It is just a intuitive piece of imagination of how things might have worked out at a micro level, at the same time causing a sea change in the cricketing behavior of an entire nation. Believe it at your own risk!!!
As I mentioned in my previous post, it is indeed disturbing that I have so much time at my disposal. With the approaching placement season, we are all to work our posteriors off figuring out the nitty-gritties of Finance and try our best to untangle the mess of HR (Hamara Rape) questions. And rightly so, I must add. From the interactions I have had with members of the industry and my brethren from the student community, it actually seems that Mr. Porter and his famed 5-forces of bargaining power have undergone a tectonic shift in the recruiter-recruit landscape. Bad timing one would say but as is my wont to take a look at things from unusual (read useless) perspectives, let us try and understand how the fina preparation of a final year MBA student would vary from the Good to the Bad times. Before starting on this rather controversial, and yet soul-searching, quest lets set some benchmarks to demarcate the Gooooood times from the Bad ones:
Good times are HR-killers, Bad times are Placecom-killers
Average packages are cooked up in Good times, they are cooked harder in Bad times
Good time gossips include packages, locations, profiles, parties, Bad times gossip is just one question "sab place ho jayenge?"
In Good times entrepreneurship is a fad, in Bad times it is a different perspective of looking at life
Apart from remonstrating on the various differences that exist between the Good and Bad times, I did get one striking similarity in the two times. The preparation enthu of the students. Yes, come what may the students have distinct apathy towards "placement preparation". The Good times cause this phenomena by virtue of the euphoria surrounding everything in the world while the Bad times bring upon you a depression, almost resembling decay. Most of the time is spent researching (read Google-ing) the Web in search of some arcane topic, which eventually gives way to "Top 10 ______ movies of all time" where _______ is filled by a particular genre, depending on your mood. In Good times, the genres are comedy, romance while in Bad times the focus is on drama and crime (possibly as an alternative career choice!!). While the students live between meals, new passions like untried sports, photography, poetry (the sad type, especially) are cultivated, which we hope will earn us brownie HR points. Sleep knows no upperbound while all the requisite books are neatly stacked near the bed, untouched. Come Boom or Bust boss... we are the King of all times... Good or Bad who cares!!!
The following forms part of the work I did with AB, Sushant and Mandar for the Net.Works competition at Confluence'09 IIM-A. Though the actual paper is more detailed I thought of posting some musings I had while working on the topic..... feedback is welcome
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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
– Arthur C. Clarke
Indeed to a person from a few decades back, the idea of connecting with lost contacts, collaborating across geographical boundaries and obtaining expert advice on a universe of topics, all at the mere click of a mouse would have seemed magical.
Today we live in a world of increased connectivity, more computing power and more social networks. Originating as a fad across college campuses in the United States, Facebook now has more than 300 million users, using 70 languages, half of which login atleast once in a day. The average user has 130 friends and 2 billion photos are uploaded each month on the site even as more than 70% of its user base resides outside the United States. Mind boggling numbers aren’t they and yet we have just talked about only one of the leading social networks of the world The proliferation of social networking websites in the past three to four years has led to the widespread discussion on the future size and form the networked world.
As every individual discovers the power of “communities” and innovative entrepreneurs take notice of latent business opportunities, the question that begs answering is will social networking remain the same, even a few years down the line? Will it become a substitute for the human interaction just as the email has killed the picture postcards? In a culturally diverse country like India, what will be the look and feel of social network with 500 million users? Are the current channels of delivering the network value sufficient or will see a radical shift in the way social networking happens in the years to come? What about the content offered to social network users, will we be happy updating statuses and sharing photos or do there exist opportunities to create new services, new applications and possibly even, new avenues to network in? How will the government and policy makers respond to this avalanche of information and public opinion?
The user experience on any social networking site will arise from a set of contributing factors. Each user will find his ideal experience from a unique combination of these contributing factors. So while we do try to create a scenario for the ‘ideal’ user experience, our task should be list out the contributing factors and figure out how they interact with each other, how they can be tweaked for each user.
In trying to understand I tried to list down what I feel would be the contributing factors, please feel free to add on or debate upon any of the existing items. The factors are:
accessibility – how do I get access to the platform
UI-- how does it look when I log in and when I am using the platform
Applications – okay so I have logged in, what do I do now, how engaged am I in the platform and what it has to offer.
Security – How secure is my profile, my data and what control do I have over this exposure
Network effect – how many people I know are on the platform, how connected am I with these people
Diversity of the content – for 500 million people a plain English medium will not suffice nor will they be content with their preferred language
The accessibility is aspect would come into the picture because imagining a broadband penetration in India of 500 million is impossible and we are probably talking about mobile access, not only through WAP and GPRS but potentially even through voice and text apps. The medium of usage will heavily impact usage experience.
The apps part will include photo/video sharing, games, quizzes and other forms of content creation. This is an area where I feel lot of futuristic thinking is applicable and our survey findings have revealed insights into the broad fields on which the future apps could/would/should concentrate.
UI will be an important aspect of experience coz while it needs to be crisp and uncluttered it should also bring forth all the functionalities that are present on the platform and there is a potential use of analytics to see what kind of UI should be made available for what kind of user.
In the area of security we might be looking at futuristic account verifications like biometric systems, especially if we are talking about financial transactions happening on the platform.
As mentioned the network effect will involve my interaction with other members of the platform, my friends, family and members of online communities. The concept of collaboration and how futuristic we are in imagining the collaborative levels will determine how we use this factor to create the intended user experience.
Finally, diversity of content is a factor/challenge that is very India-specific because of our cultural diversity. I am looking at multi language support, real time context based translation and other such opportunities.
Unlike what I had set out to do in the beginning, writing about my ideal user experience, I thought this way of looking at the problem might also provide some insights to what we are trying to do.
What I have been unable to accomplish here is to state the interactions between various factors. For example, the more the modes of access, the greater will be the security risks. Similarly I think we can come up with more offsetting scenarios where some sort of compromise has to be struck. If you guys think this approach might lead some where then that would be a potential candidate for further analysis.
Once we have explicitly (or at least with some level of clarity) expressed the interaction levels of these factors, we might go about discussing how to tweak them to satisfy various user classes (we might have to do some user segmentation in this regard)
Apart from thinking of more ideas to enhance the social networking experience of the future network, I think it would also be a great value addition if we could provide a theoretical framework for future developers to understand how the network can be enhanced to improve the user experience.
Going back to the six factors which I had mentioned before the ideas, I feel we could land up with some kind of user segmentation on the basis of these factors. Thus, we can club the six factors into two major categories as follows:
a.the intangible/aesthetic aspect: consisting of the UI experience, content diversity and the network effect
b.functional aspect: consisting of accessibility, availability of apps (easy navigation) and security
Thus the total user experience = aesthetic appeal x functional ability
IDEAS
Carrying on from the above thoughts, I have few ideas, which can potentially improve the UI experience of the user and also be monetized for financial viability.
Theme based UI: Though theme based UIs are already available and for free, the idea is to link ads for theme related activities and goods with the themes to create a holistic package which will then be available to the user. While the user uses the theme for free, the theme creator gets paid by the advertiser and the platform gets a share of the revenue based on the usage of the particular theme. While the theme creator is free to invite as many advertisers on their themes, they have to balance it with keeping the UI experience simple and unobtrusive to ensure user acceptance.
For example, with the growing following of Barclay’s Premier League in India, suppose the user in India is a fan of the Manchester United football club then he would select from one of the ManUtd themes available on the platform. The theme creators can tie up with advertisers of sports merchandise or agencies which can offer match tickets (with the possibility of these teams traveling to India in future). Taking this instance forward, it offers scope for the official website www.manutd.com another channel to reach out to its followers by broadcasting messages through widget based broadcast messages. Similar theme based activity can be used for popular artists, political and social causes etc.
Online Partying: While social networking gurus contemplate on the latent potential of the network, the origins of the phenomenon still reside in the fun and bonding aspect. So it is not difficult to imagine the potential of organizing online parties on the social media, with the DJ and related effects. The party can be by invitation, where you might need to authenticate your navigation onto a webpage, or simply walk-in, or click-in, and open for everyone in the network. The monetization model is similar to how it works offline, with a host bearing the expenses. The party-page can be visualized as having a shoutcast app, another app to post requests to the DJ and apps to create visual effects on the webpage, which will be visible to others in the party.
Similar to the offline scenario, this can give rise to party/event managers specializing in services for this genre of partying. The online party will be especially interesting for India as it has got a huge expatriate population and this provides them an occasion to join their families in the celebrations in a more personalized manner than just viewing a webcast.
P.S.>> Sorry for the images.. cdnt do a better job!!!
Despite my prolific presence on Twitter, I had a lingering feeling of neglect towards my primary passion of blogging here. So here I am at the doorstep of second year of management education in a stifling, congested hostel room ( which btw doesnt belong to either of the occupants) and all I want is to write something silly to appease my blogging appettite. We had our Finance Continuum today and we will be having the Marketing Continuum tomorow to round off a packed weekend and give the junior batch a taste of things to come. The list of speakers was, as usual, illustrious and the experience was enriching. Though I have somewhat become tired of people cribbing about the recession and how everyone's backside is aching because of it, a couple of fresh perspectives did emerge from the day's proceedings. One was that everyone talked about inclusive growth, something the policy makers have talked about since Independence and I have come to appreciate since my internship days. Secondly, a specific thrust on the SME space by the banking industry was also visible throughout the day. Glad to feel that I have worked and learnt some aspects of both these issues during my internship. There was also a huge hue and cry about the budget and to put in my 2 cents to the pandemonium, I guess the FM missed a trick or two by letting the deficit balloon, taking the excuse of the recessionary period. It would have been a good idea to set things rolling on Public-Private partnership, specially in sectors like infrastructure. I think an oppotunity for implementing infrastructure partnerships on the build-operate-transfer model and enhancing the environment for such partnerships to prosper, has been offered and it should not be passed up in favor of the tried and tested, albeit risky proposition of public spending. Thus, the government could have simulated demand and allowed private sector to participate in this effort to bring the country out of this hole. Finally, it was heartening to hear our junior batch asking enthusiastic questions to the speakers. Some of the questions were really wonderful and I am hopeful that it'll be a great experience for us during the next year.
Adios!!!
P.S: Am working a organisation structure for firms based on technology platforms.. haven't been able to finalise it. Once its done that would be my next post. so keep waiting... Meanwhile started re-reading the book "Arab and Jew" while at home and am going good with it. Lets see if I actually manage to finish it this time.
Just to prove that my blog isn't dead, I have comeback from nowhere to post this. Two major reasons for staying away for so long are, one that idiot FakeIPLplayer, because of whom, no other blogs were to be read or followed for the past 40 days and secondly, I began my summer internship at a leading organisation in the financial sector. Ironically enuff, the IPL's over and simultaeneously, my wall of patience has been breached by the rigours of the internship so I am back again to wreak havoc with words and give FIP a run for his shadowy money. Well, frankly, I got nothing against the company... they have been gr8 to me, right to the point of expecting me to deliver on all commitments in one month so that they can give me more learning assignments. Talk about "9-wives-1-month-pregnancy" but I have been humbled by their faith in the bumbling, stumbling buffoon that I am, who's job no. 1 during the internship is to get appointments from the concerned people and then adjust all prior appointments for this latest one. So wat put me really off today was the fact that after 3 weeks, when I want some guidance on the faint gleanings of a solution, I am told that I have been running behind the wrong the target segment. If I felt like a vegetable in my marketing lectures, I really felt like cowdung during this meeting. I cried out all four letter expletives, at the top of my voice, within my mind and eventually, slowly and almost in hushed tones, promised better results next time round, which, by the way, is day after. This event actually opened a barrage of emotions within me and hence, I decided to pour it out on this post. Dude, I mean seriously... the only good things that have happened to me in the last one month have been, number 1, the fact that I have befriended the DJ @ Jugheads, to the extent that he concedes one request per weekend for moi and number 2, I have discovered that weekend trips to Jugheads are also a license to ogle wolfishly at beautiful (read sexy, hot... and all other synonyms for stunners!!!) girls, who are least bothered about a random pack of pariahs salivating, while they down drink after drink. Coming to this point in my post, I suddenly remembered that its the month of May and that this month has historically been unkind to me, so probably its a fitting thing that this May of 2009 be no different. But sorry for the diversion, let me get back to my rantings so that you pervs can get enuff fun off it. So coming back to my work, there is not much of it actually. All I am supposed to do is to gather data and think about the data. I was, of course, dumb enough to ask around for data. It seems we are supposed to get the data but no one has a clue as to who is supposed to give the data. In this intense game of "ricocheting-balls" syndrome, alike pool, I have already been reminded of my limited time here and that I should now start thinking with watever data I have and let the remaining data, rest in peace. And so I start thinking now, which is somehow too big a task for me and all I can think of is the coffee machine, the water cooler, the loo and lunch time (not necessarily in that order). Funnily enuff, I luved the title of the project first up and was already dreaming of all the frameworks I could apply in this particular scenario, similar to our marketing case studies. All my dream of SWOT and Porter's 5 forces vanished eventually when I discovered that applying these would effectively dig my grave because I can never get enough data to defend half of the points that I had written on a sheet on the first day of project discussion. The paper was put to its best use next weekend, when I wiped off 2-3 thick layers of dust from the Bible by Mr. Kotler, thus effectively taking away 1 year of my MBA education with all the slime attached to it. From the dreamy-eyed expectations of becoming Mr. India to the real-life struggle of staying afloat inspite of the teen-guna Lagaan my summer internship has come a full circle in half the period. Of course, this is again in keeping with my company's theory of high expectations. Finally, what keeps me going. I have asked this question myself and the only answer I get for this is a glass of sugarcane juice and malai-wali lassi. =================================================================== P.S: All facts, statements, people and feeling are completely fictitious and modified suitably for reading pleasure. Their resemblance to any real fact, statement, person or feeling is impossible. If you still wanna believe this post I hold no obligations regarding setting things right later.
P.P.S: If you are wondering that why I have written such a post only to deny its truth, then keep wondering, its your own sweet time. I am off to make my 1baby with my 9 wives .. (all notional creatures)
Nothing infamous about this one. We have been having our own football league, which we call SOM Premier League (SPL), in the hostel 1 grounds over the past week. I am part of a team called the Thunderbolts and though we dint start off thunderously in the tournament, we have been able to find our feet after the initial hiccups. And it so happened that due to a manpower crunch, resulting out of corporate internship inductions, I got to play. I had played a total of 20 minutes in the last 3 games and that too in defense, something which I have never done. After much deliberation and strategising, I was asked where I'll be comfortable playing. In a team of 5, with one goalkeeper, you dont get much choices but still I ventured out and said," I'll play forward." Well, that really did change the evening for me. I dont remember the exact timings of all the goals but I do remember how I scored them. Atleast 2 of them were good and 2 were plain dumb luck, while 1 could be put down to a defensive lapse by opponents. As I told everyone present, I was just lucky to be at the right place at the right time. The scoreline at the end of the match read 5-2 for Thunderbolts, with all 5 coming from my boot (OK, one was a header, make that 4+1!!). I felt that if I could just hang up my boots and walk into the sunset of my footballing career I would still be happy (lolzzz!!! nt much of a career actually!!). Anyways, most importantly, I had loads of fun and tons of laughs as I recounted the goals in my mind and probably thats wat counts the most. To borrow a term from my friend Ajit... Joga Bonito!!!!
Talking of Ajit, we have discovered our very own combination of Steve McMahon, Paul Masefield and Shebby Singh in this bloke. I wonder if he should take up sports journalism in all the right earnest... this is wat he had to say about the match...( mind you he was the opponent so the accolades are all the more special!!!)
A 5 star Parsu performance
It was Parsu's day out on the field as an unprecedented 5 goals from himhelped Thunderboltscrush Gunners 5-2. The manner in which the goals were scored were noteworthy with eachone being different from the previous. Although a couple of them were scored as a result of thegenerosity ofGunners defence, whose performance left a lot to be desired, the first of his five stood out for his positioning and deft touch. A goalmouth scramble following a corner led tothe ball rolling to Parsu who had stationed himself at the farpost, one deft touch and it lobbedover Amit into the Gunners' goal. That opened the flood gates as Parsu completed the hat-trick in just 18 minutes, a record that will surely stand for many SPL seasons to come.
The Gunners showed signs of a comeback with Ajit pulling a goal back at the start of the second half. However, a bad mistake at the goal post led to them conceding a very soft goaland the match was all but over. Bala soon made it two for the Gunners but it was all too late. The limelight belonged to one man. With this wonderful SPL performance, he has surely qualified forthe next GPL session.
So another weekend just flew by!!!! Tata weekend!!! Just back to the room after collecting few materials for my Marketing project, its about Apollo tyres and currently, rudderless, inspite of the most energetic starts. On my way out i was wondering that some how the number of things you need to carry while moving out seems to be increasing. Earlier it was just the little watch that Dad gifted for birthday, then came the wallet and gush of pride with it... Much later, of course, arrived the cell phone and now, whenever I move out of the room I carry a pendrive along with me, for some unforeseen data exchange. Of course, the tech-savvy will argue that a capable cell phone will make the pendrive redundant but currently such analysis is beyond my (and many others... with the crisis around) financial condition. Another latest of latest developments has been my new-found love for Lynyrd Skynyrd, which makes them permanent fixtures on my playlist for the next week atleast. Ofcourse, the songs have been generously mixed with Delhi6 and DevD songs. Saturday morning isn't the best time for any kind of industry interaction, let alone financial but then some people really do make us sit up and listen. So was the case this weekend when Mr A.V.Rajwade, visiting faculty at IIM A and SPJIMR and a practitioner in the financial services industry for more than 50 years, dropped by (for lack of better words) for a tete-a-tete with us. He talked about the existing financial crisis and brought out certain new perspectives to the issue, even though I thought there was nothing much left to discuss about the issue. He started of discussing the various economic philosophies, right from Adam Smith to Keynes through Marx, and walked us through the socio-political transformations associated with the rise and fall of each of these beliefs. There was also a brief discussion on laissez faire capitalism and emergence of state responsibility in purely capitalist economies. Thereafter the discussion moved to the banking business and I guess, the whole industry was summed up succintly when he said that it has moved from "lend and wait for repayment" to "originate and sell" model. He went on to explain certain aspects of the industry, especially risk-reward asymmetry and the disadvantages of complex of financial instruments. He attributed the current crisis to the willingness of most investors to invest in risky assets, even though they couldn't make much sense of the products that were being offered to them. He also initiated a brief discussion on various credit derivatives and their complexities. Finally, and probably most importantly, he touched upon the things that a budding finance manager should learn from the crisis. To summarise in three points: 1. understand the risk/return compromise 2. Models are no substitute for common sense 3. Financial services are only slaves to the real economy and cannot be its master.
I also asked him whether he thinks this is the end of laissez faire capitalism to which he agreed. I, however, do not concur with his view. But more of that later need to publish this before the LAN stops working.
And yeah... I gotta know that I stood 4th in the PG cult elocution competition... Kudos to Vishesh for getting that info... he he he!!! Tchao!!!
Well its 3.30 am and I am writing in my hostel room, simultaneously cursing the LAN-ban in our campus. Another usual B-school day will come to an end for me, in say about an hour. Reading before classes is certainly a first for me, so I have to get accustomed to it pretty fast, besides there is the usual din of totally useless activities in hostels that you get addicted to here. Eating in the night canteen for instance.
Matthew Hayden retired today but I could care less. I never liked him anyways and that has nothing to do with his relationship with Bhajji. He is a typical example of a struggler, who fought his way back in to the Aussie squad after being dropped. He is not a purist’s cricketer and he is big, burly and remorseless, quite unlike the batsmen I like, for example apna Tendlya, small, vulnerable (by the looks… not his cricket. That’s another debate) and emotionally charged.
Of course, it would take a certain degree of ignorance to completely dismiss his contributions to Aussie and world cricket and I, infact, do salute him for his achievements though I’ll still say I am pleased to see the back of him.
My latest GTalk signature says: “Love is the answer, but while you’re waiting for the answer sex does raise some interesting questions. ” Woody Allen
As soon as I changed it, I got a few pings about it. Like all normal things, the reaction was mixed and I couldn’t pick any reaction extraordinaire amongst them. What it set me thinking on was why we attach so much attention and connotations to the word “SEX”. I still remember a particular incident from graduation. Final year, when we were learning the art of drafting our resumes, there was a section regarding personal information. This is what our faculty had to say about it, “And finally, kindly use the word GENDER and then write MALE or FEMALE, please do no use the word S….E…X”". Yeah, that’s what she did. She didn’t say “… do use the word SEX” but “… word S…E…X”. Just the individual letters not the word. As if uttering the word would destine her to the deepest and hottest cauldrons of hell.
Final thought, Indian attitude towards SEX is akin to the American attitude towards Outsourcing. We both don’t like to talk about it but we seem to have no hassles in practicing it. With our huge population and their huge cost cuttings, we have proof enough.
Reporting from room number 307 of hostel A in SIC campus. Cosy room, cosier blanket and the perfect time for garama-garam chai and pakode. Well, i aint here to enjoy the hospitality though. I came here yesterday, about the same time of the day, for participating in a marketing event Out2B in the business festival of SIIB, Ignisense. Eventful journey to say the least, we worried about missing the event because of the delays caused by the bus-wala. Anyhow we didnt have to face our worst fears and managed the reaching the campus and registering in time. We had a 20 minute presentation and i was supposed to present it. But guess what, I haven't even seen the slides more than 2 times and not one rehearsal. So Sachin made me do a couple of practices with the slides and I guess I really need to be thankful to him for ironing out a few chinks in the armour. We risked being late rather than being shabby at the event and it paid off handsomely as our presentation went off well. We were applauded for our well thought out and prepared presentation and that for me was battle won. However, we still had to answer a few tricky ones from the judges and I think really Sachin did a great job at that. We got off stage with a general feeling that we have done a pretty good job if nothing exceptional. Some of the participants were really good with their product ideas or market strategies, however I felt they missed some major point or the other while making their presentations. These things came back to haunt them during the question and answer round. The results were out shortly after that and we were declared the WINNERS of Out2B!!!!!!!!!!!!! This culminated our continuous slogging over the past 2 days and after a round of congratulations, we moved for lunch. After lunch, with not much to do for the day, I went to meet Neha, my friend from school. Reached her flat around 4.30, nice place I must add. Usual round of gappe-shappe over Frooti and Haldiram's khatta meetha followed by a quick nap for me. I was woken up with some wonderful coffee and another round gappe ensued. I left her place around 8.30 after a dose of some Roadies action and a meal of 2 aloo paratha and anda bhurji with dahi. It took some effort to reach campus, especially because I could not figure out the rationale behind the pricing strategy of the autorickshaw drivers in Pune. But after some time, my body didn't have the patience to stand and argue with them so I just took what seemed to be the least exploitative price and headed back. Reaching campus, I heard there was a fashion show at 10 and I had reached in time. But could my body take any more exhaustion ? Yes Sir, it could. So I went to the show, had a nice time for about an hour and came back to my room for the first proper sleep in 3 days. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ......................................... That was when I was sleeping. Got up at 9am. The SIIB guy put up with us in the room was supposed to get up at 5 to help with the event but its 11 now and there are no signs of him getting up. Pleasant surprise at breakfast was the meeting with Harsh Maskara (The Mask) of PagalGuy.com. I know Harsh as he had come to campus a few days back to do a writeup on SJMSOM. Interestingly enough, yours truly has also been mentioned in the article for one of the many wisecracks during our interaction. Thereafter its been boring, so now I am planning to move out of the room. Next post will be from Mumbai... Tata !!! And yeah ... SOM Rocks!!!
I have nothing else to do today so i am clearing up my backlog of posts and now i have settled on writing this too. Interesting things have happened in the last 24 hours. When I went to Pizza Hut last night, fighting with a bottle of tomato sauce was not on my agenda however i landed up doing just that. For about 2-3 minutes I struggled to get a single drop of sauce out of the bottle while my whole body jerked up and down to the rythmic movements of my hand. The sauce finally yielded to my repeated attempts and finally, out came from the bottle some fresh, tasty looking tomato sauce to go with my Garlic Bread Exotica... yummy.. which brings me back to the question... is there is no standard viscosity for tomato sauce ??? shouldn't somebody look into this matter!!!! Standardisation also involves weeding out the errors to maintain conformity. I was never a fan of proof reading, blame it on my impatience, but this stance has changed over the last couple of hours. If you have been patient enough to read through my story "Coffee Machine" i have used the word "pantry" a number of times and a crazy typo, in JUST one place, left one of my friends moist eyed, flushed and out of breath, because she (yeah SHE!!!! can you believe it !!!)couldn't stop laughing... If you have understood the whole situation I expect you to be in a similar state as she was and I am now the newest member of the "Proof Reading is Essential" fan club !!! Tragedies apart, there is an eerie air of political activism in my surroundings for the past few days. Suddenly the most insignificant members of the group are becoming the most-soughtafter souls and words like agenda, responsibility, voting, lobbying and parleying have become common day parlance. Welcome to the world of elections and democracy!!! The strength of democracy rises from the representative nature of power in the system, "Of the people, by the people, for the people" as it is often referred. It, of course, goes on with the assumption that all people have equal access to the power and the utmost willingness to exercise the same. What this idealism discounts is the inherent self-centred nature of the people and the various "facilitators" that thrive in the system, acting as if on behalf on the masses while in fact serving their own agenda. These "facilitators" are whom we call the politicians and should not be confused with the great leaders of yore, instrumental in envisioning the system. The great leaders of previous era have been replaced by this self-serving polity because the next generation of kurta clad, dreamy-eyed, ideological evangelists could never graduate to leading from following and were promptly replaced by a breed of sycophants, weak on idealogy and unyielding on ambition. Thus, the failure of democracy lies in a short-sighted bourgeoisie, a legion of self-serving, power hungry polity and most of all, the inability to create a stream of leaders, who are ideologically lofty yet grounded hard in political reality. It might intrigue people as to my ranking of the three major causes of democratic failure. It has been debated quite frequently, and none less in management circles, as to the procedure that will ensure a steady stream of leaders. Leadership has been mystified over the times and worse still, deformed. However, in its original form, it is the primary responsibility of leaders to envision long term goals and help the bourgeoisie understand the same while marginalising the self-seeking political class. With the advent of leaders, a dramatic power struggle is imminent. The bourgeoisie has to play its part in this drama, no doubt, and so will the incumbents, the current holders of political power but as of now, the stagnation in democracy is resulting from a major crunch in leaders and huge influx of politicians!!!! Hope the times throw up some good leaders. Amen!!!!
PS: Article has proof read. If you still find typos, please feel free to slaughter me!!!
