Res Ipsa Loquitur

Skype

2010-12-21T23:38:00.000-08:00

Skype

What a wonderful tool! Never realised the significance of it , till I came to Singapore. In the last few days it has helped me save some 100+ dollars on calls to India and abroad. I feel that the voice clarity is far better than the normal cell phone, provides for a conferencing facility and no extra costs. It has also helped me in getting in touch with some of my friends abroad ...

one amazing tool, if u havent used it till now, i guess it is time u install this and start using it

Entrepreneurship journey

2010-12-21T22:52:00.001-08:00

I was wondering for a long time whether I have it in me to actually become an entrepreneur .. but as things go I stopped wondering.. and got into the act ...

I have now started tredding on the path less travelled ...

as Frost says ..

Two roads diverged in a wood, and

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference

Armed with our vision, strengthened by our passion, with great determination and enthusiasm we have embarked on this journey .. hope this makes all the difference .. not just commercially .. ..

its been quite a while now ... the journey so far as been pleasant with few challenges ...

but still we have a long way to go ...

As Robert Frost said,

These woods are lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

-Raghu

Back to Bangalore and Blogging

2010-12-21T22:47:00.000-08:00

After a hiatus of nearly 5 years from Bangalore.. I am finally back in my hometown .. Bangalore. The city has changed a lot since the days I grew up .. the weather, the traffic, eating places, the people... most of these things hav changed... sometimes I feel alien in my own city .. but thats the cost of development or probably I was away from Bangalore for a long time I believe ...

well now I am back.. doing the thing that I like doing .. doing things on my own .. in my own city .. kinda excited .. lets c how things will unfold ...

Its an irony that I am writing this blog sitting in Singapore :) ... its a long story .. how did I end up in Spore .. will write it in another blog ...

-Raghu

North India Trip

2010-09-03T06:36:00.000-07:00

Had been to one of the most exciting, adventurous, educative trips in August . Travelled between Mana Village in the east to Wagah Border in the west, in between trekked in Valley of Flowers, prayed in Badrinath, enjoyed the chills of Shimla, Kulu & Manali, did paragliding near Rohtang Pass, got educated on the Tibetan struggle in Mcledoganj, was awestruck by the moon-lit Golden Temple in Amritsar, Patriotism ran full flow near Wagah Border ....

2500 kms in 15 days in our car evading land slides, heavy monsoons, fog, night-long drives ...

Will pen the experience in future posts ...

Magnetism of books ...

2009-04-30T11:47:00.001-07:00

Even though I don't find time to do lots of things I want to do, apart from the daily routine stuff; it is difficult to resist the magnetism of the books. It is not an attraction towards a particular book or a genre of books, but it is an attraction towards any book that can be read / should be read ... I hope it is not an addiction ... but I simply cannot keep myself away from books for a long time ...

But there is an opposite feeling as well .. If I take a long time to complete a book ... or am not able to make significant progress in a book in a given period of time ... I become restless... and I have this feeling which forces me to complete the book asap leaving other things behind ... the hunger of reading a book is replaced by the anxiety of completing the book ... I am not sure whether it is good or bad ... gud coz the book will be completed soon... bad coz maybe the softer elements of the book are compromised ... .... I hope I am not the only one in this boat !!

In the last fortnight, I was able to read two books. Thanks to the long journey I had to undertake to reach my in-laws place !

First one to be done was "Freedom at Midnight" - this is the book I wanted to read for a long time ... but culdnt manage to get hold of it or read it ... If I remember correctly this is the only book that I have bought, till date, from an airport book shop ... (think the airport was the old Bangalore airport)... well usually people buy books in the airport to wail away the waiting time for their flight... but I bought it when I was rushing to catch my flight ... sometimes I can figure out the rationale behind my actions ... I was passing by the book store .. I noticed the book ... went and bought it... this wasn;t the first time I had seen it in a book store and I know that ample copies of the book are available in lots of book stores all over the country... but I had to buy it at the airport and put it in my bag to open it only six or eight months later ... :) !!!

The other one is "The Book Thief" .... I bought it when I had gone to shop for gifts for my wife's neice !! my wife was busy looking out for the gifts and I was busily searching for things which my wife's neice may read, may be, after 15 - 20 yrs ... !!! I plan to write a review of the book over the weekend ... will provide more dope then ...

Currently I am reading "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" - a book about America's attempt to build post-war Iraq.

Ooopss ....

2009-04-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

Its been ages since I have penned anything new !! Its not that I didn't have anything to write, there were lots of things happening at my end. I had thought about writing sometimes but somehow I couldn't put the pen to the paper !!

So where was I all this while? What kept me busy ?!! ...
Well, I got married in december ... before december ... was busy preparing for december ... post that I couldn;t get much free time to contemplate about stuff and write about it... I hope that I can push myself to blog once in a while ...

Well I dont want to get into the details of my marriage ... but for the curious folks ... i just wanna say that I am happily married man now !!! :)

Commencement Address ...

2008-10-11T06:51:00.000-07:00

Here are couple of commencement address I like.

Stanford University 2005
Steve Jobs made this commencement address and rightly called it "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish"

Harvard 2008
J K Rowling delivered on "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination"

Both Jobs and Rowling share their experience in life in their addresses. They have different stories to tell but the message is more or less similar. Its all about perspectives, the way we want to see things, what lens we want to see them in.

How do Great people happen, r they born with greatness or is it impossed on them or is it how they react/respond to the circumstances that make them great (in the end)!!!

Read them to get your own meaning or perspective!

Sparks !

2008-10-11T06:18:00.000-07:00

One of my colleague at office forwarded me Chetan Bhagat's "Keep the Spark" Speech, the inaugural speech made by him to the new class of Symbiosis.

I am neither a fan of Chetan Bhagat nor think high of his writing abilities. Even then, I read the speech. There were few things in the speech that poked my brain. Some of them were

Nurturing and protecting the spark !
Life is like the nursery school run with a lemon in the spoon. No point coming first if the marble falls
Let Go !
Don't be Serious, be sincere !

Thought provoking and Inspirational!

If you haven't read it yet, you can do so here

Yet another incident packed weekend ....

2008-09-28T11:48:00.000-07:00

Another weekend .... full of incidents ...
Friday was the great run ... I ran 6 km in the evening... well, I am practicing for the Delhi half marathon on Nov 9 ... dinner .. phone ... then I slept like a log ... was too tired because of the run ..

Saturday... was in office... yes, I know... weekend working ... noy my estyle .. but I think sometimes it helps .. it is a problem only when it becomes a habit ... ya ya ... it starts with sometimes .... within sometime it becomes alltimes !!! :)

Was in Delhi in the afternoon.. and there was yet another bomb blast ... well.. this was prettyy close.. the blast happened on the road which I take to reach Delhi from home ... quiet scary .. guess all bomb explosions should be scary !!!

To top it all ... saw 'A Wednesday' just now ... well... whattay movie.. a must watch... I am not going to disclose anything about the movie ... If u havn't seen it yet ... u need to do it rite away ...

read 'Bringing down the House'... a book on which the movie 21 Blackjack is based ... I picked up from my friend's place ... yup.. I visited a colleague of mine on saturday .. had lunch at his place .. actually shamelessly ... since he was not hungry .. and I had his share of lunch what his maid had cooked ... :)

I am planning to go home this week ... need to give some finishing touches to my marriage preparations !! .. hmmm.... yes.. u got this rite.. I am blushing .... :)

I am hope work will be pretty manageable this week !!!

The weekend that was ...

2008-07-16T06:56:00.000-07:00

Today is Wednesday and I am going to write about the weekend. Well, It is not about how I am waiting for the coming weekend but my (mis)adventures of the last weekend. Wow! Writing about a weekend on a Wednesday, I will go places with my sense of timing !!

I cant even remember what I did on Friday. I didn't do much I guess, I was up at 6 on a saturday morning so should have slept pretty early. My roommates parents were here, and they took care of my meals during the weekend!

Had an appointment with my Dentist at 12, so set off to Delhi on my bullet. I wanted to reach there before 12, well my last few appointments were pathetic. Once I reached 1.5 hrs late and the next time 15 mins late, so I wanted to make a point to myself by reaching there early. With all the thoughts and preparations, I could manage to leave home only at 11:15, thanks to the maid, who took her own sweet time in sweeping and mopping the house. I rode fast and managed to be there by 12. :) Bravo !!

My dentist was in a good mood, he was going on a holiday to Pune. I suggested another interesting place, Lavasa, nearby Pune. I think I managed to kill his enthu by some 25%, he was regreting why didn't I come a week earlier. :). I had said the right thing at the wrong time, poor guy!!

I had South Indian lunch with my office colleagues. I spoke to the waiters in my mother tongue and got faster response towards our orders than the rest of the ppl sitting there. Things like this happens in India, you see a person from your town, you walk the extra mile to keep the person happy!

After lunch we moved to Oxford Book Store in CP. The ambience of the store is pretty good. The collection was refreshingly different, books categorically placed. The stafff is friendly, the cafe's menu is inviting, the ambience is superb. I recommend you to visit the store when you are in Delhi. The catalogue is pathetic, I asked for few books which they didn't have in their database and I believed them. During billing, one guy found a book which was not in their database! The staff gaped with an open mouth. The security is not so tight and I dont intend to describe it :) .
I almost scanned through the entire collection of books and bought some three books. 'The real price of everything', 'Keep off the Grass', 'Wise and Otherwise' and a book on China - kinda business book.

I met an Alum from my alma mater over there, exchanged pleasantries, exchanged cards and the usual stuff. An entrepreneur bubblin with lots of passion and enthu.

From there we made our way to IHC, to watch Makhrand Deshpande's play 'Sakaram Binder and the Constable'. Pretty decent storyline, but the performance of the actors were stunning !!! Makhrand takes acting to an entirely different level, and the supporting actors did one wonderful job. The performance was very captivating, well it was one of the best plays I ever seen and to think of it, I have seen more than 100 plays - English, Hindi, Kannada.

The real adventure began when I started towards Gurgaon. It was drizzling, I thought it is just a harmless drizzle and started on my Bullet. There were traffic jams on the way, which is an expected thing when it rains. I had no clue how much it had rained when I was watching the play. As I waded through traffic and to some clear stretched down the road, I came across a huge traffic jam in a place where it should have been a free flow. There were no intersections for a few kms, even then there was a traffic jam. Expecting some Vehicle would hav broken down, I slowly made my way on the left side pavement. What came later was a complete shocker. There was water on the road. Rather the road was in the water. It was more of the road going into the pond and coming out. I had never seen so much of water on the road. There was not even a single inch of road that was visible. Cars were making their way slowly through it. Few cars had smoke coming out of them, I slowly made my way. The car in front of me stopped and I braked and put out my leg for support and my feet couldn't feel the ground till my knees were under water. I had never ridden my bike through something like this. I thought the water will flow into the engine and the bike would stall. Thank God, nothing happnd. Once I came out of the water, I could see cars parked on the edge of the road and I could hear the hissing of the engine which wuldn't start. There were few 2-wheelers, the kickers being kicked 'n' no. of times and not even a single sound from the engine. These people had a long night ahead.

I was lucky that night, I thanked all my Gods for their timely shower of mercy on me and I reached my home some 3 hrs after I started off from Delhi. Afternoon it had taken 35 mins to cover the same distance !! Well, time for Delhites to sing "Rain Rain go away".

Came back home saw Kung Fu Panda and slept!

Sunday was chill. Finished 'Keep Off the Grass' by afternoon. Went out in the evening, bought 'Thousand Splendid Suns' and 'Shantaram', bumped into an office colleague, spent some time in the market, came back and slept off.

Well, Saturday was longer than Sunday !!

I have to write my review of the book 'Keep off the Grass' and also "Splendid Thousand Suns", which I finished last night. I will write about them when thoughts flow freely. Right now, the mind is concentrating on the stomach. I guess it is time for me to go and have my dinner.

India Shining ...

2008-07-03T06:33:00.000-07:00

I came across this shocking article today on my company's discussion forum. It is very well structured, thought provoking article or it is fear invoking article. The great Indian Growth animal has come across a fork in the road. One path puts it back on growth and the other one is what the article describes.

As Robert Forst puts it, "

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference "

I am not sure which path is the one that is less traveled and I am not sure whether it makes a positive or a negative difference. We were at the forefront of change few years back, and we made a choice then which resulted in the growth story India is proud of, but we are not able to continue that growth story for long. We have stumbled on it as soon as we started it.

I think lot of people wonder which path to take. What is that we need to do, to change the destiny that we are staring it. Is this what Nehru meant when he made that historical remark 'India's tryst with destiny' during his independence speech. Well no one can ever be sure of that.

But what we need is a list of things that we need to do, to come out of this mess - if at all I can say so.

Well, we do not have to start the research now. Goldman Sachs has already done it. Based on the research carried out by Jim O'Neill and Tushar Poddar, they have come out with a list of Ten things India has to do to achieve its 2050 potential i.e., to be one of the top two economies of the world.

The list is as follows:

1. Improve Governance

2. Raise Educational Achievement

3. Increase Quality and Quantity of Universities

4. Control Inflation

5. Introduce Credible Fiscal Policy

6. Liberalize Financial Markets

7. Increase Trade with Neighbors

8. Increase Agricultural Productivity

9. Improve Infrastructure

10. Improve Environmental Quality

The full report on the same is available here.

It is time we wake up from our deep slumber and get India back on the growth wagon.

Great Place to Work

2008-06-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

This post is long due. I wanted to write about this soon after our company retreat. A lot of points were discussed during the retreat and one of the major agenda of the retreat was, as far as I understood, to make my division a great place to work. We were into diversed groups and asked to make presentations. Presentations we made, ideas we shared, concerns were raised, expectations were set and hope was revealed. All in all, a whole lot of things were unveiled.

When I look back at it, I wasn't sure what were we harping on. I think each one of us, defined a great place to work in our own way and our presentations were set on that understanding. So there were tangential views, far divergent from the views expressed before. I thought we were not converging on anything. As I feared, the ideas that were shared ended as Ideas without any of them translating into actionable items. The groups were asked to put across an action plan for making their 'idea' happen, and the groups religiously got back and I think that was the end of it.

Since I had not thought about our division in the lens of 'Great places to Work', I started to think on these lines. I was better off than most of my colleagues before I entered the red brick walls of my B-School, I worked in Texas Instruments, which was no. 1 in 2004 and no. 2 in 2005, in the Great places to Work in India survey. I was familiar with the systems and processes which makes a company a great to place to work for. So I started comparing the two. The comparison increased my confusion and I sought some element of clarity. Then I chanced upon this article on Great Places to Work in India.

The article talks about how a company is different from the rest when most of them appear to be similar. How one outperforms the other, how one ensures employee buy-in but the other doesnot, what are the parameters that make a good company great, so on and so forth. It is a captivating article. I suggest one should read this, whether they work in a great company or not, one should read it. It provides different perspectives towards the way a company functions, things which are not noticed will assume prominence, things which were taken for granted come to the lime light, certain things which are obvious are not at all obvious in most of the companies, few of them are small things which have humongous consequences. The author has done a great job in structuring the article and has increased the impact of the parameters by citing live examples from different companies.

I want to list down few interesting aspects of the article. It talks about relationships.

Relationship b/w employee and management : Trust
Relationship b/w employee and job : Pride
Relationship b/w employee and colleagues : Camaraderie

The author does a deep dive into all of the above aspects. To understand and appreciate it, one has to read the article

The Rainy day ....

2008-06-10T20:07:00.000-07:00

It is poetry time again. In the last few days I have been absorbing this poem 'The Rainy Day' by H W Longfellow.

It is a beautiful poem starts off as an observation of a rainy day and comparison of a typical rainy day to life. The best is kept at the last, when the poet feels that it is the common fate across all the people and hopes that every one should go through a dark patch once in their life time to appreciate the best parts in their life. The lines are wonderfully crafted - 'Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary.'

The poem is good stand alone but what made me appreciate it more was the Harvard commencement address made by J K Rowling on 'The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination'. In her address, Ms. Rowling , talks about the advantages of Failure. what propelled her to become the woman she is now. She hit rock bottom and her greatest fear had been realized, and there was nothing to be afraid of. She also takes a strong stance when she says some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure provided her an inner security, made her much more confident about her abilities, she discovered more about her during these testing times than ever before. She realized the strength of her will and her ability to fight back. Failure teaches a lot of lessons, lessons which we would have overlooked during better times. The Darwinian statement 'Survival of the fittest' assumes a totally different meaning than it was before.

Everything said and done, there are better ways to learn about things than just the hard way but learning it that way makes one internalise the learning and adopt it very easily in their life. The perspectives and the attitude towards life and the rest of the things changes. As H W Longfellow says,' Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary'.

The poem 'The Rainy Day' can be found here and the commencement address of JK Rowling here.

In line with my previous post, the line of HW Longfellow was a status message of a friend on my gtalk and so was the URL for the JK Rowling commencement address. I am sure both of them do not know each other. :) Patterns, Patterns and more patterns !!!

The patterns in Gtalk

2008-06-06T22:47:00.000-07:00

There are lots of patterns in the status message of gtalk. To begin with Gtalk is a chat tool provided by Google. There is an option to provide a customised status message by every user, which will appear below their name on their friend's gtalk friend's list. Few of them leave it blank, few of them put quotes, few of them provide the music track they r listening to, few the hot news headline, few of them put their current state of mind, few of them put their aspiration, few provide links to the article or website they like and few others use it as a marketing tool to promote their website !!!
So all in all a simple status message provides a platform for people to say to the rest of the world what they want to.

When you look at the status message, you can make out the state of mind of the individual, whether he/she is happy, sad, gloomy, depressed, so on. Even the people who feel they r not good at expressing themselves in words, come up with a status message with a punch !! Thats the beauty of the gtalk status message. These status messages have introduced me to interesting songs, thought provoking quotes, wonderful websites, and terrific one-liners. It serves as a key to the Pandora's box.

If you want to get the attention of your friends, put up an interesting/sensitive/controversial status message on your gtalk and behold your friends will be pinging you left, right and centre. The message can be something like 'I am in Love'. Your friends will noy just chat with you but they will be discussing about your status message when you are not online as well and you will get all the attention you want.

If you keep track of an individual's status message for some time, you will know what is happening in other person's life. I am talking about people who do not mind expressing themselves on gtalk. There are varying shades here. Few of them just want to put quotes, few of them restrict themselves to what happens in the work place and very few venture into the personal domain. But things are chaning at a rapid rate here. People are moving from nothing to something, from links to quotes, from quotes to work place experience and slowly the personal side of the individuals is making its way into the gtalk status message.

Now, let me talk about the pattern that led to this post. This is the pattern with a timestamp. To put it simply, at any given instant of time if you scroll through your gtalk list and read the status message of the individuals, there might be few patterns in it. The first I time I noticed that was when most of my friends had a status message which reflected negative feelings. Someone had something on pessimism, someone was cynical, someone hated something, so on. Since then I started making a conscious effort to check the status messages of my friends regularly. Once I did that I was very surprised. There are patterns everyday. I must tell you, I have more than 200 people on my gtalk which includes my colleagues at office, my MBA batchmates, my engineering classmates, my sport mates, so on. They are located across the globe. This is not a pattern that is visible across one set of people in one geography. These are the patterns that was always there, but we never noticed. Interesting similar stuff happen to lots of people at the same time !!!

The simple text based gtalk status message has changed the way I see things. I can lock myself in my room and know what is happening with my friend thousands of miles away without actually talking or chatting with him/her.

I think the time has come to change the old adage 'Face is the index of the mind' to 'gtalk status message is the index of the mind of the invisible netizen'.

Alice in Wonderland

2008-06-06T22:21:00.000-07:00

During the course of the week that just zipped past, I read Lewis Carrol's 'Alice in Wonderland'. The book is kinda nice. After reading few heavy mgmt books, this was a welcome change. What interested me in the book is the imagination of Lewis Carrol. The book is for the kids but there were lots of places where I could relate to Alice and I think others can relate to it. It is kinda funny but good. It is a small book, may take couple of hours to read it.

There were few interesting one-liners I came across in the book. Kept a note of it. Here they are:

o I am older than you, and must know better
o The best way to explain it is to do it
o You don't know much, that's a fact
o Which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where–’ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat
o It is love that makes the world go round
o The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours
o Be what you would seem to be

I am smitten by Lewis Carrol, so I am planning to read his 'Through the Looking Glass' as well.

Speeches by Al Pacino

2008-06-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

Al Pacino.. what a great actor. He features among the top actors of all times. What poise, what delivery! He gets below the skin of the character and delivers the dialogue as it is very natural.

This post is not about Al Pacino or his acting. It is about few dialogues he delivered in few movies I like. You may not agree with me about attributing the success of these dialogues to Al Pacino since it is the person who wrote the screenplay came up with the dialogue. But what stands out is the way in which it was delivered. Be it Inch by Inch inspirational speech in 'Any Given Sunday' or his saving Charlie speech in 'Scent of a Woman', the way these dialogues were delivered, I cant think of anyone who could have done justice to them as done by Al Pacino.

Its been a long time since I saw them and heard them, but even to this day I remember them, The inch by ince one, word by word. The inch by inch one featured on the introduction section of the sports notice board in our college. Thats the power of the dialogue, but to make sense of it one has to see the clip, there is no shorter way to it. You can look at the clip and read it as well here. The piece is an inspirational one , not just to the team playing but to any one. It is more of someone sharing his life's learning than inspiring people to play and give their best in the game. The parallel drawn between the life and the game is truly exceptional. I think it pumps the adrenaline in anyone who reads it.

The scent of a woman stands in a totally different light altogether. It is more of someone holding on to a value and standing by it. Here also the life's experience comes into play, when he talks about the fork in the road. With well crafted examples he clearly defines whts integrity, whts courage. It is a revolt against the way the system is. It is not just about saving someone from a bad judgement or a not so good circumstance but it is about preventing the people from making a mistake, a mistake which is going to cost a great deal, about killing the soul of a young lad, about changing the way people look at things, giving prominence to certain terms which is used frequently but never understood - integrity, leadership, courage, spirit, soul. The speech and the video can be seen here.

Both the speeches shows the power of one. The one individual who had the experience, who learnt few lessons in his lifetime and helping the younger lot learn from his experience than the hard way, or the way he did. It is about conveying the experience in a manner and a circumstance where the people can relate to it easily and are in a position to appreciate and inculcate amongst themselves.

My 101st Post

2008-06-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

Till today morning i didn't realise that i have made 100 posts on my blog. The last blog communication 2.0 is my 100th and this post is my 101st.

I started blogging in December 2004, when i came across my a blog written by my senior in college. Since then my blogging has been a bit On and Off. There were periods of intense activity such as my marathon practice, when the "bookworm" bit me, so on. Few of my posts were on what I wanted to post and me getting back to bloggin again just like you meet to discuss when to meet next types. There were several resolutions made to blog consistently and they were broken the next day. I don't know why I didn't blog as I planned to, may be it was the time, may be schedule, may be I didnt have much to share, rather I was not comfortable in penning down things, probably I was afraid that my friends might tease me, may be they might realise that I am stupid, so why risk it. :) . All these were the reasons but not at the same time, but I went through periods for each excuse I have mentioned. Well, over a period of 5 yrs, I think I have been able to overcome some of these and I am still working on some. But new reasons/new excuses have come now, but I will mention them later. ;)

Moving to the content part of it. I started with copying stuffs from the web, sometimes referencing it, sometimes not. Then I slowly moved to writing my thoughts on the article and referencing the article. Then they were poems. I love poems. So I had to share what I liked, so there was this poems fanatic, copying lyrics here and there and putting it in his blog and probably he would have appeared eSmart :) !!!

Then came the personal struggle phase. Where I started penning down my experience in my struggles in the class or on the play field. I think this was the phase I became confident about my writing abilities, and started penning down whatever I felt. I think I wrote few of my interesting blogs during this time. From then on, things became a bit smooth and I started blogging pretty regularly. I didn't want to make any resolution this time around since I had broken quiet a few before. So I decided I will blog only when I felt like doing so. I blogged, when I got an idea or when I learnt a lesson, or when something impressed me a great deal. Then the bookworm bit me, I started writing reviews about the books I read. It helped in recollecting what i read too and helped me in organising and articulating my thoughts too. This way it is kinda nice. I think I am still in that phase and I will be subjecting you to more of these book reviews!

All this while, I have kept my personal life outside this blog and as of now, I have no intention of bringing it on to the blog. Lets see if time changes things.

Thanks to IPL, I have been forced to think on these lines. It took me nearly 5 yrs (4.5 yrs to be exact) to reach my 100th post. I need to see how long will I take to reach the next 100th milestone. I am pretty sure that it will be less than 5 yrs, how short I need to wait and see. Don't worry I will not blog for the heck of blogging.

For all the good times and the not so good times, cheers to blogging !!!

Communication 2.0

2008-05-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

I think I have been smitten by the communication bug off late, otherwise I wouldn't have come up with two posts on communication in the same month. This post is more from a formal communication perspective but it has some application on the informal side as well.

I had some thoughts on communication which as of now i feel are very relevant and apt. I am sure the list is not complete and if you feel i have missed out on something please feel free to add.

Speaker related
-----------------
Confidence of the speaker
Enthusiasm/passion/drive
Analogies
Description
Effectively explaining to all
Humor
Personality of the individual
Relating to the audience / Understanding the audience
Command over the language - Simile, metaphors
Body language
Eye contact
Voice modulation
Choice of words/ Vocabulary / Jargons
Accent
Improvisation
Listening
Responding/reacting to questions
Honest replies
Short and crisp messages
Clarity of thought
Tone of voice
Approachability/ Accomodating

Subject related
-----------------
Clarity / Understanding of the concept
Providing the audience what they want than what one knows
Improvisation

As one can say there is more attributes at an individual level than at the subject level. Most of us classify these skills as soft skills. If one has to reach high up, i think it is a good idea if one keeps a not on the above while communicating.

Face of the Company ....

2008-05-27T10:13:00.000-07:00

Most of you know that I work in a consulting company. We get to face the client on a day to day basis and our top management keeps insisting that we are the 'face of the company', any interaction with the client is an opportunity and it has to be treated so,We need to put up our best at any given instant, so on and so forth. All these had not sunk in till today.

Today i was part of a presentation made by few members from a reputed company. I was one among the audience.

The first presenter was kind of OK, not all that impressive. Given that the Vice Chairman of the company was part of the audience i expected him to put up a good show. But a lot was desired or expected from him. The presenters who followed him were not great too. This actually made me think about the company. All of a sudden i realised that i was trying to judge a company based on the very few people I had met. I was not sure whether it is right on my part to judge the company based on the few people I interacted with ?

I know the company very well, few of my friends work for this company. During my undergrad days I wanted to be part of this company. So I didn't pass any Judgment on it. But I am not sure whether I would have stopped myself from judging it, if I didn't know the company at all. Assume that the company's name was something like XYZ and Co., would it have made a difference. I think yes, I would have built an opinion and next time anyone would have asked me about it, I would have given my not-so-favouring opinion.

So the question still persists, "Is it right on our part to judge a company based on the people we interact with?"

My hypothesis is that most of us do it. We make opinions or pass judgements based on the people we interact with.

It makes sense to a certain extent. These days almost all companies make tall claims, one cannot distinguish the bad apples from the good ones, untill a deep dive is done. Well no one has the time to do it too. So one makes impressions based on the employees of the organization. Interesting thing is, it is such a fast paced world, one might get very few opportunities to interact with different people from the same organization. So that the balancing between good and not-so-good might not happen, and probably the client might create a not-so-correct opinion about the company.

Now, I understand what the top management in our company mean when they make the sentence, "You are the face of the company". Every word we say, every action we make is passing messages to other people and we need to be watchful of that and probably use it to our own advantage. Good people will always create lot of good will to the company, as its face.

Well, as the popular saying goes, "Face is the index of the mind", we are the index of the company we represent.

Pen it, while it is HOT !!

2008-05-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

There were a few articles that i wanted to write for sometime now....

Few of them were
o Status Update
o Mind of a group
o Proof Reading
o Attention span/interest

and this was a long time ago.

Last week i wanted to write on the Great South Indian Entrepreneur, not on any specific individual, buy my hypothesis about the lack of entrepreneurs from South India, but i couldn't manage to find the time to do that. I am happy that i could manage to pen my thoughts on communication though.

My 2 cents on this is, One has to pen it down as and when one feels like. If one waits for the right time or opportunity, the thoughts would have vanished or the desire to pen diminished.

So Pen it, while it is hot!!!

The weekend ....

2008-05-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

It has been a quiet a busy weekend for me. Friday nite i spent my time with Pepsy. Saw 'Iron Man' in a local mall here. The movie is pretty good.

Started reading 'One' by Richard Bach, till the wee hours of morning and completed it too. Went to Delhi on saturday, had lunch with a colleague of mine, visited Crossword, bumped into friends who took my case big time for the free reading i was doin in Crossword. Bought couple of books, came back to Gurgaon, had dinner with Pepsy and Shaddy, saw Mumbai lose to Delhi in a nail bitting match. After the match, i managed to watch 21 Blackjack.

Sunday morning started with 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist', completed it by afternoon, cleaned my room, saw F1, felt miserable for Sutil, saw RCB driving the nail on DC's coffin, went out had dinner and now blogging.

Well kinda hectic weekend with two movies, two IPL matches , two books ... with a long day tommorrow i think i need to rest now. i think i will watch a movie now or start reading another book.

i write reviews of the book i read on my blog, but not the reviews of the movie, i think i will start that sometime soon.... well u will get more to read about if u check this blog regularly...

One

2008-05-25T09:41:00.000-07:00

Read Richard Bach's 'One' this weekend. The book is good but it is not in the same league as 'Jonathon Livingston Seagull' / 'Illusions'. I expected more from Bach than what i got out from One.

The book is about alternate world or parallel universe.

If you understand trees, i think it is very easy to explain. A tree in mathematics is actually inverted real life tree. It has a root at the top and it has branches going down, and it has nodes where more branches branch out.

"One" talks about one such tree. Here the reason for branching is the choice one has. If you pick up one choice you traverse the branch corresponding to that or if you take the other one the other branch. In life usually one may not revisit the choices again. Effectively in life, each one of us traverse a particular path by making the choices we make. The alternate world or parallel universe is a phenomenon where in, the other choices exists or the other branches are traversed.

"One" connects these branches by making Bach and Leslie move across the tree, thereby making them realise the magnitude of the choices they had to make. Bach has put in lot of imagination into the book.

While reading the book, i could imagine the move 'Matrix' - becoz the movie talks about choices , the red pill or the blue pill, the left door or the right door, so on. The question is 'What If?'. The problem with choices are, it is difficult to estimate the significance/consequences/effects of the choice when we are supposed to pick one of the choice. The reality hits hard sometimes, sometimes one gets lucky. After all that one goes through, there is no way of telling that one can get their choice right the next time.

You can talk about alternate world / parallel universe, but what matters is right here and right now. I am not sure if there is a standard way of looking at the choices or going by intuition/gut feel is the right way to make the choices. But one thing that resonates in the book is "The choice is the difference". One is whatever he/she is, is due to the choices he/she has made during their course of life.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

2008-05-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

I read this book "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid today. I had bought this book couple of months back and could read it only today, thanks to my friend Devendra who slept on it all this while. I had to go to Delhi to fetch it back.

The book is kind of captivating, if you can relate to the story. I could therefore i finished it in a single sitting (sometime lying down).

About the book:

The book is about a young pakistani discovering himself amidst the hustle and bustle of global politics, terrorism and love. The interesting part of the book is its narration style. One has to give it to the author here. The main character of the book Changez is walking back in the memory lane and narrating it to an American Tourist, who never says a single word in the entire book. Hamid throws in some fillers during the narration which acts as stress releasers and gives the book its unique touch. I am not sure it is common, but this was the first time i came across this narrative style, where the other person doesn't even utter a single word.

Coming to the story line, the story is about the young aspirant Changez, who clears several hurdles to get into Princeton. Once there he continues to study hard and manages to be one of the best in class. Post Princeton he gets into a top firm doing valuation and also finds the love of his life.

I could easily relate to he making it into Princeton, his campus life, studies and then managing to get into one of the top firms. I happened to study, during my graduation and post grad days, with set of students who went to Harvard, Princeton, Stern, Stanford, so on. I have personally experienced the hunt for the best company. I think this made me to pursue the book with keen earnest, i walked back on my memory lane with each sentence i read. I had something or the other to think about in the initial chapters.

The love story is beautiful brought about, well i cannot add much to it apart from appreciating it. When it comes to working in the best firm and the competition in it, it is what most of us do. It does not matter, where one passes out from or where one lands up, the race against time, the race to outperform the others will always be there. It is not just monetary, power or ego, i think it pulls someother strings beyond that. So our dear Changez enters the corporate world at an early age of 22, and excels! He is the no. 1 amongst the new recruits, pet of the big boss and there is no stopping him.

Comes 9/11 and the whole thing turns around. Changez starts questioning about the way he is, the way world is, ways of the people. He starts looking at his life in a totally different lens and the whole world changes its colour for him. As with most people, who begin introspection, even Changez goes through a period of confusion. His love life is in a turmoil, not because of him or maybe because of him, poor thing had nothing to do with it. He couldn't understand or completely comprehend Erica's behaviour or her feelings towards him. Her love towards the deceased Chris and his attitude towards the world he had left behind, takes him through a journey of discovering self.

The way this change has been explained and brought about in the book his splendid. The reader feels that the reason for change is pretty obvious. Nothing is thrust upon, the change flows through very easily. Changez embraces 'Focus on the Fundamentals', the tagline of the firm he worked for, in his pursuit and the Fundamentalist rises. Changez transforms from a young career oriented boy to a questioning man! He searches for answers, the land that he had got used to so well, becomes an alien land and he longs to go back to his country. He gives up everything, the job, the pay, the love and goes back to his country, to be with his people.

As per me, what the books fails to capture is what next, he discovered himself, he went back, what nexxt?? A smart, intelligent kid, goes back to his motherland, and then what?? I am not sure whether Hamid should have proceeded further, but i think it stops at the right time for the reader to completely observe what the author wanted to.

Overall an interesting read.

Weather in Gurgaon ....

2008-05-20T20:24:00.001-07:00

As a write on an early Wednesday morning sitting at my table in my room in Gurgaon, the weather outside is terrific. It is raining for the past one week, the temperature has come down drastically, the humidity is superb, the whole atmosphere is so very romantic. It reminds me of my school days in my hometown Bangalore. The weather used to be so good, all those early morning cycling to get to the school, walks in the afternoon, cricket in the evenings, chaats thereafter. During those days i never thought weather is something people crib about. Well i realised it the hard way, when i landed at Delhi airport when the thermometer read 49.5 Celsius.
Bangalore has lost most of its weather, but there are instances such as today which takes me back to those days and engulfs me with the blazes of my sweet childhood memories.

So you can ask me what am i doing inside the room when the weather outside is so pleasant. Well, i have a job and i need to get to that, pleasant or unpleasant, the job has to get done. Moreover, if i want to share a cup of coffee with anyone in this romantic weather, there is no one here, i am all alone and tied to my room. So i think it is better to get to office and join those innumerable conversations about the weather and how v r subjected to sit inside the office and generate revenue for the company !! :)

It is very hard to imagine Delhi/Gurgaon to be this way in the middle of may, instead of the sun breathing down our back it is the rain which is providing an umbrella of clouds for us!

Communication

2008-05-19T07:53:00.000-07:00

The third dimension of communication ...

All this while i thought there were only two dimensions to communication. One Verbal and the other non-verbal. I think these two needs no introduction. I have come across people who are good at both verbal and non-verbal. If there is a good co-ordination between verbal and non-verbal that shows the confidence of the person and his/her command/clarity over what they are talking about.
I have learnt a great deal by watching those people.

Command over verbal comes from ability to express oneself in the vocabulary one has or the vocabulary the audience has. For the communication to be effective, the confidence of the person should be reasonably good and the co-ordination between verbal and non-verbal should be excellent.

There is a person in my office who has exceptional communication skills. He is part of the top management. He chooses his words carefully and when he completes a sentence there is hardly any ambiguity or misinterpretation in whatever he says. He is very particular about communication and he has consciously made efforts to reach that pinnacle in communication. He has lot of energy and pumps in huge amount of passion in whatever he does. His speeches are always captivating.

The third dimension of communication that i talked about came through noticing him. There is an organizational wide process we have to do and this person is driving it. He is very passionate about that. As with most of the organizations and organizational initiatives, most of the people do not feel that the new process is going to do any good and few of them feel that it is a waste of their time and energy.

Time and again he speaks to these people with the same passion and drive i was talking about in the earlier part of the blog. It is very captivating. He takes you through a journey and expresses his vision with crystal clear clarity and lays down his plan of how to get there. Usually people get convinced then and there, but over a period of time they get back to their original state. It is not a one-off case, but most of them oscillate from no-opinion to complete buy-in and then back to no-opinion.

This person has lot of respect in the organization and no single soul doubts his abilities or leadership qualities. Still i didn't understand why the people didn't have a complete buy-in to the cause. After some thought, i think i figured out the reason behind it. This person's communication is good, he is expressing himself very well, he has clarity, he has confidence and he has the power equation towards him but what i think he is failing to achieve is, he is not able to rub-off the passion and the drive he has for the initiative to other people. People listen, understand the words, but not the passion or the emotion behind it. So the third dimension to communication really communicating these emotions to the listener or the audience. If one masters that one can move the crowd in which ever way they want to.

I think history has people like Hitler, Martin Luther King Jr. , Lincoln who could do that. King Khan does it in many of his movies, rather to think of it, i think it is his most significant USP. You remove Khan and put some1 else there and ask them to deliver the same dialogue i think mose of the audience will not be moved at all. King Khan ensures that most of them walk out of the cinema hall with tears in their eyes. He communicates the emotions too. Agreed there is the dialogue, background score but one cannot ignore the Khan element in them .

In everyday life too there are people who do that or instances where people rub-off the emotions, may be due to the nature of the emotion itself. If one is in a very good jovial mood and someone works with this person for sometime the other person will (might) also get into a good mood but the same may not be true if the first person was in a bad mood. There is some rub-off of the good mood across individuals.

So this communication of emotions, is what i refer to as the next dimension in communication following verbal and non-verbal.

Secrets by Rhonda Byrne

2008-05-18T06:18:00.001-07:00

I spent my sunday reading Secrets by Rhonda Byrne. I didn't know much about the book just that it was the no. 1 bestseller in Crossword, Landmark and Reliance Time-out. I had read the preview of the book in the bookstore and thought that it is more of an inspirational kind of a book, so didnt buy that.

Now, how did i get my hands on the book? I got the book as a gift from one of our vendors as part of their relationship management exercise. The interesting part is the relationship manager had written something like 'Sharing with you the spirit that drives our team'. I am not sure whether she meant this or not, it made me read the book.

About the book:

It talks about the secret law, the law of attraction, the entire content of the book revolves around this law. There are quotes by the people who have internalised it and certain illustrations of people who are benefited by it. The book is well structured. It starts off with introducing the law and simplified it further for better understanding. It provides processes for using the law and illustrations of the application of the law in certain aspects one values the most, like money, relationships, health, world, life and the self !

While reading the book what came to my mind was the quote from Paulo Coelho's Alchemist, "When you know what you want the whole world conspires you to achieve it". Secrets is about this and much more, in secrets the whole world is replaced by the entire Universe and the contribution of the self in order to achieve the "it".

Another thing that struck me was, Secrets talks about thoughts. If you have good thoughts you attract good thoughts and you feel good and if you have bad thoughts you attracts bad thoughts and you feel bad. Along these lines, in Mahabharata, Yudhisteera, the elder brother of the Pandavas, goes around the world and comes back and informs Lord Krishna that there are no bad people on earth whereas Dhuryodhana does the same thing and comes back and says that there are no good people on earth. As per the Mahabharata, Yudhisteera is the good guy and Dhuryodhana the bad guy. So is it because of his thoughts that Yudhisteera attracted only good guys towards him and Dhuryodhana attracted the bad guys. I am not sure if the tale itself is true, but if it is it just reinforces the message in Secrets !!!

The book is not heavy and written in a simple language with lots of illustration and does not promise heaven on earth. One can finish it in a single sitting.

There is a movie on Secrets as well. I haven't seen it yet but surely will do so.

Regarding the book, it is worth a read !

The Motorcycle Diaries

2008-05-17T23:10:00.000-07:00

I just now finished reading motorcycle diaries by Che Guevara. The book is more of a diary of Che during his travel across Latin America.

I expected the book to be more about Che, how he became the revolutionary, what influenced him to move away from his profession . Well, the book just falls short of that. There are 3 or 4 pages in the end which talks about the revolutionary Che. It is more like a speech Che is making to the general audience than the transformation. I think i had wrong expectations about the book, but if you treat the book as a travel diary, it is an interesting read.

It gives a brief account of the life and culture in Latin America. It throws in some history of the land as well. The interesting bit about the book it never compares each country with Argentina (Che's home) or to any of the previous countries visited. There are fleeting comparison on the economic drivers, dress and the language. The regions visited were poorer, the mines were a typical owners exploiting the locals. Che is moved by all these, but at any point there is no connect between things that moved him across regions. There is an instance in the book were a couple talk about communism, but there is no build-on after that. He comes across a rebels planing a strike but he keeps away from it. It is more of taking things the way they come and hardly any contemplation thereafter.

What i feel is Che observed the pain of the people during his tour but there was something in the later part of his life which changed him and his attitude towards the way he saw life and the people. And his previous observation of the people in Latin America got new meanings which might have strengthened the cause he believed in and probably fuelled the revolutionary che became.

More insights into this change in nature and the new interpretation about the life in Latin America will be useful and will be very handy to understand one of the greatest revolutionaries of the century.

IF by Rudyard Kipling

2008-05-14T11:57:00.001-07:00

This is one of the poems that i like.

Each time i read the poem a different line stands out. I don't know why. It might be due to the state of my mind then or different things to be significant for me at different points in time. Whenever i read it takes me to a different place and soothens the mind and brings in tranquility.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Heaven of Freedom

2008-05-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

I came across this poem in Kishore Biyani's Retail book "IT happens only in India" . I somehow got hooked onto it and googled it out. Tagore has woven the words very beautifully, it is his vision for the nation. We have the preamble which is about how the country should be but it is no where closer to Tagore's vision.

One of my colleague's in office came to know about my liking for this poem and mentioned that i am looking at Utopia. Utopia is something ideal and anything ideal is kind of impractical (the way i see it), but Tagore's vision for the country i dont think it is impractical, it is something that is doable.

What i feel is we do not have to look at country here, we can replace country here with the company that we work for. Is it Utopia? Is Utopia what we need? Why is our company the way it is? Can we do something about it? Can we be the harbingers of change?

The poem is as follows:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls;
Where the words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening
thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father,
let my country awake.

-Tagore

The Google story

2008-03-31T03:10:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows Google today. Is it the company or the brand or the search engine. I feel there is no line between all these.

In the last decade Google came into prominence through its amazing search engine. As time moved on, Google hit the lime light again with their Advertising initiative. Even thought they have some 120 products under them, Search and Advertising are by-far the most important products Google has come up with. These two are making life tough for its competitors.

It is a company built on technology and strategy, both of them with equal proportions. Their attention to detail and clarity of purpose have resulted in they sweeping the market time and again. As per the CEO, Google has a vision in place, a vision which will take 300 yrs to materialise. The company is focused on "Ubiquity first, revenues later". Their programmers are told "Usefulness first, usability later". If this is the attitude of the company and if they Walk the Talk, there is no way on earth anyone can stop them.

Apparently, the company has a 80-20 rule, where-in the employees will perform their usual activities in 80% of their time and 20% of their time they need to work on new ideas or projects of their own liking. The seeds of innovation are sown here. Google News is one such by-product.

The company is doing good even though the competition is getting tougher day-by-day, but Google has occupied a very important place in the minds of the customer and it will take a herculean task for any company to replace that space.

Well, Google is here to stay !!!

Even this shall pass away ....

2008-03-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

Even this shall pass away nature and beings.

Once in Persia reigned a king,
Who upon his signet ring
Graved a maxim true and wise,
Which, if held before his eyes,
Gave him counsel at a glance
Fit for every change and chance.
Solemn words, and these are they;
"Even this shall pass away."

Trains of camels through the sand
Brought him gems from Samarkand;
Fleets of galleys through the seas
Brought him pearls to match with these;
But he counted not his gain
Treasures of the mine or main;
"What is wealth?" the king would say;
"Even this shall pass away."

'Mid the revels of his court,
At the zenith of his sport,
When the palms of all his guest
Burned with clapping at his jest,
He, amid his figs and wine,
Cried, "O loving friends of mine;
Pleasures come, but not to stay;
'Even this shall pass away."

Lady, fairest ever seen,
Was the bride he crowned his queen.
Pillowed on his marriage bed,
Softly to his soul he said:
"Though no bridegroom ever pressed
Fairer bosom to his breast,
Mortal flesh must come to clay-
Even this shall pass away."

Fighting on a furious field,
Once a javelin pierced his shield;
Soldiers, with a loud lament,
Bore him bleeding to his tent.
Groaning from his tortured side,
"Pain is hard to bear, " he cried;
"But with patience, day by day,
Even this shall pass away."

Towering in the public square,
Twenty cubits in the air,
Rose his statue, carved in stone.
Then the king, disguised, unknown,
Stood before his sculptured name,
Musing meekly: "What is fame?
Fame is but a slow decay;
Even this shall pass away."

Struck with palsy, sore and old,
Waiting at the Gates of Gold,
Said he with his dying breath,
"Life is done, but what is Death?"
Then, in answer to the king,
Fell a sunbeam on his ring,
Showing by a heavenly ray,
"Even this shall pass away."

- Theodore Tilton

This is going to hurt a little bit ....

2008-02-20T08:53:00.000-08:00

After deliberating on it for a very very long time, i finally managed to get the braces on. As i sat in the dentist chair, the following song was ringing in my ears.

This is just going to hurt a little bit

One thing I like less than most things is sitting in a dentist chair with
my mouth wide open.
And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen.

Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
But the one that is both is dental.
It is hard to be self-possessed
With your jaw digging into your chest.

So hard to retain your calm
When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line
or love line or some other important line in your palm;

So hard to give your usual effect of cheery benignity
When you know your position is one of the two or three in life
most lacking in dignity.

And your mouth is like a section of road that is being worked on.
And it is all cluttered up with stone crushers and concrete mixers and
drills and steam rollers and there isn't a nerve in your head that
you aren't being irked on.

Oh, some people are unfortunate enough to be strung up by thumbs.
And others have things done to their gums,
And your teeth are supposed to be being polished,
But you have reason to believe they are being demolished.
And the circumstance that adds most to your terror
Is that it's all done with a mirror,
Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say, only
they were referring to a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa,
But all the same how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one
hand and mirror in the other he won't get mixed up, the way you
do when you try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and forget
that left is right and vice versa?

And then at last he says That will be all; but it isn't because he then
coats your mouth from cellar to roof
With something that I suspect is generally used to put a shine on a
horse's hoof.

And you totter to your feet and think. Well it's all over now and after
all it was only this once.
And he says come back in three monce.
And this, O Fate, is I think the most vicious circle that thou ever sentest, That Man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good
condition when the chief reason he wants his teeth in good condition
is so that he won't have to go to the dentist.

- Ogden Nash

Books to read

2008-02-12T18:33:00.000-08:00

Hindu view of life by S Radhakrishnan
Man's Search for Meaning
Fooled by Randomness
What they don't teach you at Harvard

I came across these books when i was browsing the net or through few of my friends. But i have not been able to find time to read them yet, whenever i am pressed with work, i think about them and i get this feeling in my head that i need to read them in a single sitting, which i understand that is not possible, well one does not have much control over their feelings. Everything said and done, these books are haunting me for a fortnight now, dunno when i will get into the grove to start reading them. As i type now, i feel i will be able to do that once i get back home. Well, i have not talked about the new place that i have shifted to. Will talk about that in a little while.

Given the baddy and dinner and the usual bakar, i am not sure i will be able to do it. But lets see how i will be able to manage these things. :)

"My Precious" diary

2008-02-08T20:49:00.002-08:00

It is always a pain to find time to blog. Not that you are too busy or something, whatever free time one gets, they do not want to spend time in front of the laptop. I prefer reading to blogging. I hang out with friends, watch some movie or something. But sometimes i feel, there are lots of things happening in my life and my memory is not able to keep pace with my life. So there should be some way i would like to revisit the experiences i have had. One sure way to do it is to catch up with those people with whom you shared those experiences. A simpler way and a personal way to do is to keep a diary or blog. I am not that determined or disciplined to keep a diary of my own.

During my childhood days i felt that i have to keep a diary. It might be more because of more of what i had heard than the actual need for it. That diary will be 'My Precious', it will have all those thoughts i have in mind. I will pen down each and every experience i will have. I will be truly honest with my diary and it will be my best pal. The euphoria around the diary or the mere thought of having a diary and to be honest with it was a big thing to me in those days.

Well, i thought more about it than actually starting one. I got one of those big diaries my dad had and filled up the contact page with the beautiful handwriting i had then :). Then my siblings, as curious as they are, started peeking into what i am doing with a diary. Well, whoever has siblings understand this. Whenever you need your siblings they are not around or they dony comply. When you dont need them, they are always around and they poke their nosed in everything. Well, this brought me back to the real world. I started to feel that if these people get hold of my diary with my thoughts and experiences in them, they are going to make fun of them and it would be just a matter of time when my friends will be laughing at me. Well i think the fear was bigger than the enthu or i was not matured enough to handle that, my diary started and ended on the same day and i couldn't muster enough courage to revive the enthu back.

Later in life whenever i felt the need for a diary, i had to rationalise it with my bad writing skills and i would rely on my memory. By then, people had started complementing me on the photographic memory i had. Other's belief was my belief and i had decided that i could rely on my memory than a diary and it was an easy and a safer way out.

But very late in my life i realised the importance of penning down thoughts or revisiting the experiences while writing about it. In doing so, one will think more and deeper about it. One will come across different perspectives of looking at the same thing. One will know more about oneself that way, some sort of realization of the self sets in. There will lots of lessons to be learnt all along the way !!!

Well, the boy was 8 yrs then and he is 26 yrs now !!!

Travel this week !!!

2008-02-08T20:49:00.001-08:00

I have been travelling a bit off late. I always loved to travel but the last week's travel got to me.

My travel schedule was Bangalore - Delhi - Ahmedabad - Delhi in 3 days. All of them were early morning flights (5 am to 6:30 am) and one has to reach atleast 1 hr before the departure and had to wakeup nearly 2 hrs to departure, and all these days i had to wake-up at 3-4 am.

Smart thing to do is to sleep early and wake up early, but my engagements used to keep me awake till 1 or 2 in the morning.I am a person who doesn't get sleep in the flight, most of the time i read or listen to music, if i am not engaged in a conversation with my co-passenger. All in all i got to sleep only for 8 hrs those three days !!! not that it is too less or something, but coupled with the tiresome travel and the work committments it becomes a bit more demanding.

I reachned a stage where i couldn't keep my eyes open, then i realised its time for me to hit bed. I left office at 5 pm, bumping into the client, the vice chairman of the company and all those people whom i didnt want to while i was leavin the office that early. There were raised eyebrows but i couldnt even raise my eyelids. It was one of those moments when Murphy scores a point.

I reached home at 5:30 and hit bed. I got a call from the CEO of the company at around 7:30 and i couldnt figure out what was happening. Apparently he wanted to know my views on something and based on the other people who were on the call i did speak some sense, what exactly i do not have a clue. :)

All in all, it was an exciting and a demanding week. There were few lessons learnt on the personal front.

Pending items

2008-02-08T20:47:00.000-08:00

There a few things that i wanted to write about and i haven't got the time(rather enthu) yet.. .but will do so very soon ...

Status Update
Mind of a group
Proof Reading
Attention span/interest

Whats in Web 2.0

2008-01-30T23:48:00.000-08:00

Blogs (short for Web logs) are online journals or diaries hosted on a Web site and often distributed to other sites or readers using RSS (see below).

Collective intelligence refers to any system that attempts to tap the expertise of a group rather than an individual to make decisions. Technologies that contribute to collective intelligence include collaborative publishing and common databases for sharing knowledge.

Mash-ups are aggregations of content from different online sources to create a new service. An example would be a program that pulls apartment listings from one site and displays them on a Google map to show where the apartments are located.

Peer-to-peer networking (sometimes called P2P) is a technique for efficiently sharing files (music, videos, or text) either over the Internet or within a closed set of users. Unlike the traditional method of storing a file on one machine—which can become a bottleneck if many people try to access it at once—P2P distributes files across many machines, often those of the users themselves. Some systems retrieve files by gathering and assembling pieces of them from many machines.

Podcasts are audio or video recordings—a multimedia form of a blog or other content. They are often distributed through an aggregator, such as iTunes.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) allows people to subscribe to online distributions of news, blogs, podcasts, or other information.

Social networking refers to systems that allow members of a specific site to learn about other members’ skills, talents, knowledge, or preferences. Commercial examples include Facebook and LinkedIn. Some companies use these systems internally to help identify experts.

Web services are software systems that make it easier for different systems to communicate with one another automatically in order to pass information or conduct transactions. For example, a retailer and supplier might use Web services to communicate over the Internet and automatically update each other’s inventory systems.

Wikis, such as Wikipedia, are systems for collaborative publishing. They allow many authors to contribute to an online document or discussion.

Work Matrix ...

2007-12-28T04:57:00.000-08:00

why, mr. Vijay, why? why, why do you do it? why, why get up? why keep meeting? do you believe you're meeting for something, for more than your appraisal? can you tell me what it is, do you even know? is it higher pay or promotion, perhaps learning - could it be for impression? illusions, mr. Vijay , vagaries of perception. temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an execution that is without meaning or purpose. and all of them as artificial as consulting itself. although, only the super boss could get something as stupid as this project. you must be able to see it, mr. Vijay you must know it by now! you can't win, it's pointless to keep meeting! why, mr. Vijay, why, why do you persist?

-agent Ramu

this is one of the mails a frustrated Ramu sent to his immediate boss. It has been inspired from the movie Matrix Revolutions

Existence ...

2007-12-28T00:59:00.000-08:00

I found this interesting dialogue from the movie 'Dead Poets Society' .....

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

What will your verse be ...
What will your verse be ...
the dialogue has so much of passion built in the words... even the ppl who havnt seen the movie nor the clip can get the feel of it ... amazingly well composed ...

Collections ...

2007-12-01T23:25:00.000-08:00

I am not sure since when i got interested in quotes... i had my share of likings for cool quotes, motivational quotes, inspirational ones and so on ...

i started searchin for books on quotes in bookstores, on google... i wuld be subjected to plenty of them... few of them appealing ... but the problem was i couldnt remember quite a lot of them
and i culdnt go back and have a look at them too.. since i wuld hav forgotten the source too... i wuld just know the jist of it or what it related to ... but not the quote

then... i started collecting qu0tes so that i culd go back and look at them and try memorizing them... i have collected a good no. since my MBA days .... but the usage has been limited as of now... the collections are not just quotes... any sentence or a statement which i feel is appealing at that point of time ....

with time i guess will keep posting few of them...

Ships ....

2007-12-01T23:22:00.000-08:00

Ships are safe at the harbour... but thats not what they are built for

Marathon

2007-11-18T12:58:00.001-08:00

After i posted my 'Om Shanti Om' post... i realised that i havent updated my Marathon post....
i did run the marathon on Oct 28th in Delhi .... takin my marathon tally to 3 in 3 diff indian cities...

i managed to finish the 21.092 km run in 2h 16min ...

managed becoz.. had sprained my leg on friday, 2 days before the marathon, durin a practise run...
yes .. u can call me a psycho... since i ran...things were fine ... till i hit the seventeen km mark... then the leg gave away... the last 4 km was more than a walk and less than a jog ... and finally i was able to clear the finish line ....

Om Shanti Om

2007-11-18T12:33:00.000-08:00

Saw the movie just an hour back in one of the very old theaters of Delhi... the movie is pretty decent ...
movie is watchable once
but Deepika any no. of times....
she looks absolutely gorgeous in the movie ...
SRK is still giving fabulous performances year after year, movie after movie...

the movie spoofs few of the old actors in the first half...
second half has most of the new actors .....

the story line is a bit let down...
but given the powerful performances of the actors, one is always captivated to whtevr tht is happening on the screen....

if u havnt watched it yet... its time for u to go thru the experience ....

A city life ...

2007-09-21T03:37:00.000-07:00

As some people know, i have moved from one small city to another big city. In the small city i used to be an hitech engineer for a large organization, travelling 22 km daily. In the big city i am a consultant for a small organization, travelling for 22 min daily. Both distances are one - way.

What makes me wonder is in both places, i get frustrated during the journey. Vehicles are everywhere, too much of smoke, everyone keeps honking, no one cares for the rules, the list goes on and on... but by the time u reach ur office or home, u will be completely drained.

What i fail to understand is, why do we have to put up with all that, the kind of work what i was doing before and now, are different but they have one thing in common. Given the telecommunication network we have, 80% of the work can be done from any location. If thats the case, why do we have to put up with all this. Why cant we work in a place where we have some peace, where the mere thought of going to the office or home, doesnt make the hair raise, where the decibel and pollution levels are low.

For my current job, i have to travel a bit, when i have to meet up with clients but in a IT setting u dont have to do that. I am not suggesting u sit at home and work, but we can leave the hustle and bustle of the city and move to quite and peaceful sub urbs and work from there. Since majority of the people working in these kind of companies migrate from different places, relocation should not be a problem as long as basic amenities are present. This way there will be less irritation and frustration among the employees. What a nice thing to happen to all of us.

Why cant the people who take a call on the location see what most of us see.

Demanding Sport

2007-09-18T22:29:00.001-07:00

This discussion happnd in the winter of 2006, when we were practicing for the marathon. It was about what was the most grueling sport. After you have run for some 27 km, the first thing that comes to one's mind is the marathon. We moved to Decathlon and Triathlon. We agreed upon triathlon as the most demanding sport. But what we missed out that day was Tour de France. Arguably, the most demanding, most challenging sport in the world today.

Here is an excerpt of an amateur cyclist who cycled only a single stretch of the tour. He has expressed his experience in a wonderful way. After running the marathon, i couldn;t agree with him more.

Marathon time !!

2007-09-18T22:19:00.000-07:00

yup...
i am running the marathon again.. but only half this time.... as far as runnin is concerned ... this year has been a fruitful year for me .... starting with StanC mumbai marathon in Jan and Bangalore midnight marathon in May .. it has been a wonderful experience. Going on the same note i am planning to take on the gruelling delhi circuit this time around... the marathon is scheduled on 28th of October and i have barely moved out of my 8 month slumber .... its been 3 days since i have started to wear the running shoes again .... lets c how things go on from here.....

My personal times of the marathon

Stan C full marathon - 42.195 km ... 4h 40min
Blore half marathon - 21.097 km .... 2h 30min

well as u can see there is an aberration in the times here.... for StanC marathon .. i had put in 4 months of practise ... for the blore one .. not even 4 hrs ...

hopefully will improve on my half marathon timing this time around ....

running is one thing that keeps me going ... atleast i found something to pursue in Delhi...

-Raghu

Another Links URL

2007-09-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

Sergey Brin's page on Stanford....
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/

Larry Page's page
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~page/

Technical paper on Google search engine
http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

Stanford technical reports
http://infolab.stanford.edu/TR/

Elements of Style
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strunk_and_White

Back again !!!

2007-09-14T03:57:00.000-07:00

Think there are more posts abt me cumin back than actual posts ...

some update...

did my first international travel last fortnight..
was in 4 different countries in 4 consecutive days .. :) ...

it has brought in some difference in the way is see things in India..
wht exactly i am not sure...

one thing is for sure... w.r.t some countries we are not just 1000 kms far but 1000 yrs far... with the rest we are still behind ...

have a vague idea about certain things... will pen down when the vagueness vanishes but not the idea ...

Coming back after a long time !!!

2007-08-08T07:13:00.000-07:00

Not that i was too busy or something ..
not that i didnt have any thoughts to pen...

thoughts were plenty...
time was at hand ...
but what i lacked was the enthu ..

Its been a long time since i hav worked with enthu...
i cant remember when was the last time i had enthu...
may be my TI days... never durin my MBA days...

but yesterday i worked with enthu...
the long lost enthu.... not to the true potential...
but there was passion in what i was doing...

An Irony ....

2007-08-02T04:12:00.000-07:00

Our country is driven by monsoons, but when ever monsoons hit the country, everything comes to a standstill.

The economy slows down if there is a slight delay in the monsoons, once the monsoons hit the cities slow down.

Strange are the way things are !!

Dimension

2007-07-16T10:13:00.001-07:00

All these while, i have been thinking about lots of stuff to a great deal. All this thought have contributed something to my life. But where it takes a back seat is when it comes to work. I have been thinking specifically about general things and generally about specific things, well when it comes to work a general thought will not do any good. I think its time for me to reduce my indulgence is thinking about things that are way too general and start thinking more about the work i have.
Atleast, it pays.

Motivation !!

2007-07-12T11:11:00.000-07:00

This week i had a discussion with the CEO of the company. The interaction was to know and understand what was happening with us, what we were up to, are our expectation being met, so on and so forth. As expected, the discussion revolved around our current assignments, how r v faring, what are the expectations, etc. Then there was a bit of management gyan. Well, if u interact with the top mgmt, you cannot escape the gyan sessions. I don't know whether it makes sense or not, but as i see it now, it doesn't.

Then came the topic, which is the inspiration for this post, well it was about self inspiration and self motivation. The CEO wanted to us to be self motivated and not try to imitate any of the existing employees. If one is interested in the project and he/she sees it as his/her own brainchild, then the inspiration and the motivation comes to get up everyday in the morning and go and give it your best for the work. There will be no boredom. One has to look "inward" for all the inspiration and the enthu.

Well, i would have brushed this off as yet another gyaan, but what stopped me from doing so was the imitating part. It didn't seem to be logical, hence an objection was raised by yours truly.

My ideas and thoughts about motivation are different. To start with, most of us do not have much clarity in what we need to do or want to do. Without this clarity, one falling in love with the project or the work is not possible; if it is possible, it is not sustainable. Therefore this route towards self motivation doesnot work with us.

Years back, i had seen a movie called "Enemy at the Gates", yes, this is the Jude Law one. In this movie, the reporter says to the general that if you need civilians to fight for you, you cannot do so by pushing them on to the battle field. We need heroes who will inspire them to go and fight. Thats what i am talking about here.

What we need in an organisation are heroes. People who are excellent at what they do, people whom others want to imitate. By looking at these people, one gets the desire to be one among them. Once the desire sets in, it will give rise to rest of the things. Others start looking at the qualities the heroes possess. They look inward and assess the qualities they have. They see the difference and try to cultivate what they lack and fine tune what they already have. Through this process, they know more about themselves, they will be aware of their limitations and their talents. Then the rest will be history.

Essentially the point being, one needs heroes for inspiration, with this inspiration, motivation follows. Once you start looking inward, slowly self motivation will follow suit.

I dont hav much clarity about lots of things, but here and there i hav a bit of clarity on the rest.

Thats' Success

2007-07-11T03:52:00.000-07:00

I came across this beautiful poem today through mail. Thought it will be good to have it on my blog since i intend to post my thoughts on success and our pursuit of excellence.

That's Success!
By Berton Braley

It's doing your job the best you can,
And being just to your fellow man;
It's making money - but holding friends,
And being true to your aims and ends.
It's figuring how and learning why,
And looking forward and thinking high;
And dreaming a little and doing much,
It's keeping always in closest touch.
With what is finest in word and deed,
It's being thorough, yet making speed;
It's daring blithely the field of chance,
While making labour a brave romance.
It's going onward despite defeat,
And fighting staunchly, but keeping sweet;
It's being clean and it's playing fair,
It's laughing lightly at Dame Despair.
It's looking up at ! the stars above ,
And drinking deeply of life and love;
It's struggling on with the will to win,
But taking loss with a cheerful grin.
It's sharing sorrow and work and mirth,
And making better this good old earth;
It's serving, striving through strain and stress,
It's doing your noblest - that's success

The below post ...

2007-07-09T05:23:00.000-07:00

The below post on Dehradun was written when i was too sleepy. I noticed myself dozzing off while writing the post. Don't know why i pushed myself to complete the post. I haven't read it again to check whether it makes any sense. Whtevr it is let it be the way it is.

I had plans of writing few blogs during the weekend. But was caught up in shopping and setting up home on saturday and British GP , Wimbledon on sunday. I tried to make a list of it but i feel it is better to post when one is in the flow.

Yet another Dehradun trip !!

2007-07-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

Yup, I had been to Dehradun yet again. This time around i was fortunate enough to visit Mussoorie too. I tried to convince three of my friends to take sick leave to accompany me to Mussoorie, and i was successful with one of them !, but as fate would have it i had to travel alone. Well, during the journey i became friends with the driver and we had a nice conversation through out and he narrated some of his experiences to him. It was different but it was interesting.

This time around the journed was awesome. It had rained the previous night. Early in the morning, dew drops had settled on the grass and it was reflecting the golden rays of the sun. It was a wonderful treat to the eyes. Then came the pine trees, with their long brown tree trunks and the dark green leaves and the lush green carpet around them, it was a sight worth watching. I was very much ecstatic looking at the very sight in front of my eyes. I was happy that i came to this place at the right time.

I set out in the morning at around 2:30 in a Innova. The driver was good, the road was clear and we were in Dehradun by 7 types. Then our little hunt for our little place started and instead of doing the southern leg i ended up doing the northern leg first. Well Mussoorie at 8 in the morning is a wonder by itself. At around 7000 ft above sea level, one can look at the clouds below. The mist on the green tops of the mist will play hide and seek, simply exaggerating the beauty the mountains hold.

There was a wishing well on my path. I stopped the car and looked into the well. At 6500 ft, how can one expect the well to have water within 50 ft. Guess there is some sort of an imbalance in the table.

Whtevr it was, this was one of the most wonderful short trips i had.

Pirates of Caribbean ...

2007-07-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

Its 2 in the morning of July the 5th and i came back to my room just now. I had been to Noida to watch the third in the series of Pirates of Caribbean. I have not watched the first two parts, and the people who understand the movie would have confidently guessed by now that i wouldn'y hav understood a thing about the movie. Well their guess is bullz eye. Even though my friend had watched the earlier parts, he had difficulties in understanding the storyline of the movie. The action scenes are competing with our bollywood ones. It had been a long time since i had seen a movie with miserable and disgusting action scenes. Johnny Depp brings in some fun into a boring ordeal and Ms. Knightley breathes life into the dead souls. :) ...

Overall a movie worth avoiding.

Business in India links

2007-07-03T22:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.ibef.org/
http://www.indiaeverywhere.com/
http://www.investmentcommission.in/
http://www.ciionline.org/ - Confederation of Indian Industry
http://www.incredibleindia.org/ - Official Tourism Website
http://www.pppinindia.com/ - Public Private Partnership
http://www.indiainbusiness.nic.in/
http://infochangeindia.org/

http://www.india.gov.in/ - National Portal of India
http://www.indiaimage.nic.in/
http://dipp.gov.in/ - Dept. of Commerce and Industry
http://finmin.nic.in/ - Ministry of Finance
http://www.fundoodata.com/ - Directory listing of Indian Companies

-Raghu

Brand India ...

2007-07-03T21:49:00.000-07:00

In the 2006 Davos meet, Indians launched 'India Everywhere' Campaign. It was carried out to bring in awareness about India, the expertise of Indians to the world. The campaign was well accepted and appreciated by the people. There was indianess all around the place, with people wearing indian dresses, eating indian cuisine and dancing for indian numbers. Does this mean, the campaign was a success. Well, once could not say anything for sure. The campaing started ripples in the world, but the strength of the ripples depends on how we fare from now on.

Here is a list of few websites which are inline with the 'India Everywhere' phenomenon.

http://www.ibef.org/ - Indian Brand Equity Foundation
http://www.indiaeverywhere.com/

Check this, to find out how brand India was built in Davos.

Another week ...

2007-06-29T06:58:00.000-07:00

The week ending today was my third week at office. I have not written much about my office in the blog. Guess its time to do so.

I work in a consulting company in Delhi. We consult for both government and private parties on infrastructure. The division i work primarily consists of people from my campus. Its kind of new in the campus with seniors from batch of 2005 and 2006 before us. I work in vertical which deals with real estate and SEZs.

My first two days in the office had gyaan sessions or induction , in office parlance. The third day i was introduced to the project. Fourth day i did some work and the next day i had the client presentation. Yes, within the first week i had a client presentation.

From then on i have been working on the same thing. Had a site visit too. Have got most of the information that i require. But it seems there is a lack of direction for me to proceed. My boss is sick and my super boss is too busy with other demanding assignments. So that leaves me all alone in a project that i don't have much idea about.

But everything said and done, the experience has been good. Yup, So far so good.

Thomas L. Friedman ...

2007-06-28T11:02:00.001-07:00

Excerpts from Friedmans' commencement speech at Rensselaer. Check the below post.

First, What you learned in college really matters.
Second, what you learned to imagine in college matters even more.
Third, how you implement, how you implement what you imagine is going to matter most of all.

In the future, the most important competition is the one between you and your own imagination.

If it’s not happenin’, it’s because you’re not doin’ it.

“Always work like you don’t need the money, always fall in love like you’ve never been hurt, always sing like nobody’s listening and always, always live like it’s heaven on earth.”
- Mark Twain

“Tom, I know why you’re an optimist. It’s because you’re short and you can only see that part of the glass that’s half full.”

Commencement Speech

2007-06-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

Following are few of the good commencement speeches in recent times. My friend suggested me to go through this.

The first one is by Thomas L Friedman at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute.

http://www.rpi.edu/academics/commencement/address07.html

http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=1514

The above link is Infosys Chief Mentor N R Narayan Murthy's commencement speech at the New York University ( Stern School of Business ) on May 9, 2007.

Interesting articles. Worth every second you spend on it.

Topics of interest

2007-06-26T01:54:00.000-07:00

Currently, i am pursuing certain subjects / topics because of the interest i have in them or just to satiate my curiosity. Here they are :

Indian Emergency
History of the nation and the world
Private equity
Consultancy
Entrepreneurship
Relationship
Expectations
Sports

As you must have noticed i hav a wide range of interests. I feel that the variety just helps in shifting my thoughts and to remain sane :).
The first two are out of sheer curiosity. I got interested in emergency after i read the book 'The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, it describes what people go through and the trauma they experience in the hands of absolute anarchy. I was very much moved by what i had heard. The next day i saw 'Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi", a hindi movie which touches upon Indian emergency, the movie forced me do start diggin about the subject. The more i dug, the more i wanted. I wanted to know everything about it, thats the way i caught the interest.

The next three are entirely due to the education i have had and to facilitate me to make most of my life.

The next two have kept me busy when i am all alone, in the last two-three years. I still don't know how to handle , to react, to respond to these. I guess i am better now than what i was.. but it is still not up to the mark. Whats the mark, i don;t know that too.

Sports are my passion... they were before.. they will still be for a long time to come... i have to start playin squash and find a track to run... i want to take part in the marathon again... i like swimmin a lot.. with the current weather.. it will be awesome to swim in the mornin... got to find a place to play and to swim .. to relive the best days again.. :) ..

Heaven of Freedom

2007-06-25T22:03:00.001-07:00

I came across this master piece from Rabindranath Tagore in the book "IT happened in India" by Kishore Biyani, the pantaloon chief. This verse has so much of meaning and it is still apt in todays life too. Once you go through the verse , you just cant help but ponder .

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free..
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

My 50th Post

2007-06-25T21:56:00.000-07:00

Well after 3 yrs of on and off flirting with my blog... i have reached a milestone ... as the subject says this is my 50th post... i wanted to publish something else but i happened to notice that i had made 49 posts till date... i think this week has got something to do with numbers... this week is supposed to be the 25th week of the year ( well it happens once every yr too ).. and "The Week" magazine had published some 25 unsolved mysteries of india in the past 25 yrs ... and "India Today" had a cover story on the nation in the past 60 yrs.. so with me readin all this stugg.. i culdn't resist the temptation to contribute one from my side to the number game... and here it goes my 50th post .... :)

Dehradun Trip

2007-06-23T00:05:00.000-07:00

Yup, I had been to dehradun on Thursday... well it was a one day trip and i could not go to mussoorie. It was not a leisure trip but a business trip. As a consultant one has to visit very good places for totally different reasons.

I always Dehradun was a hill station, somewhere in northern India. For me all the hill stations shimla, nainital, darjeeling, mussoorie etc.. is a pack of places which are up there in some part of north india, which is a night journey from Delhi. Before i moved to Delhi, i had made plans to visit all these places during my stay along with my friends. But i did not the opportunity is going to come so soon. Here i went to Dehradun, to get a relief from the scorching heat of Delhi.

The drive was good, since the roads are much better, with hardly any traffic at 4 in the morning. Its a straight road that goes on and on. It had rained in Delhi few days back, as a result of which, the land on either side of the road were covered with lush green grass. Early morning, when you are driving towards the east, u see the orange sun in ur eyes and the light is somewhat different. One can see the rays passing through the fully grown trees with the dew drops reflecting whatever light that falls on them, on a long black road with green grass on either side... thats a scene worth watchin and one cannot help if one's mind drifts away and appreciate the beauty of nature.

As we stopped for a tea break, i read the address of the hotel and behold i was on the grand trunk road. The road which i had read about in my history books. Suddenly the name Sher Shah Suri came to my mind, then Akbar, my history lesson, the teacher who taught me history and the friends i had during that time. All of sudden, i became nostalgic. Its a interesting phenomenon.. when minor things trigger a chain of thoughts and those thoughts touch upon one's feelings.

Reached Dehradun at 9. It is not the place i expected to be. The weather is more or less similar to Delhi. It is highly crowded. Narrow roads and it is too commercialised. Guess, capitalhood has harmed the place. After a day in Dehradun, i felt my hometown Bangalore is much much better. Alas i left the garden city and came to delhi for work. When rest of India moves towards Bangalore, i moved away from it. People say it helps to swim against the tide, well i am sure that they didn't have this in mind when they said that.

The return journey was terrible. I had a stomach upset due to the lunch i had. I slept through the return journey, no more thoughts, no reflections. It was a simple drive back home. Reached Delhi at 1.

Thats the end of my Dehradun trip. Fascinating and interesting. I will be visitin it again very soon.

Delhi !!

2007-06-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

Yup... i am in Delhi now... after 2 wonderful months in Bangalore... i came to Delhi to start working after my MBA ... i am not of that types.. who keeps their fingers crossed, with butterflies in stomach before they embark on a new journey...

Well i knew that Delhi was hot... but i didn't expect wht i had to bear whn i landed at the IGI Airport... i boarded the flight in blore in the mornin of 9th June, the temp. read 22 C .. thanks to the showers the previous nite... i landed in Delhi.. and the thermometer was screamin at 49.5 C.. for someone who has spent their entire lifetime in Blore... 49.5C is like an oven... i felt i was fried... the hot blasts of air didn't ease the situation a bit.... i didnt know how i would survive in a place like this...

the newspapers next day made my life a bit bearable... as per them the previous day's temp. was the highest recorded in delhi in the past decade... it didn't mean nethin... but only respite was that i hav experienced the worst and whtevr will happen now will only be for the better...
did u call me an optimist?? ... well .. i dont hav ne options u c... :) ...

The pursuit ....

2007-03-08T11:34:00.000-08:00

Today, I had a discussion with a very close friend of mine, Bhushan. It was about '****** is the end of the world'. It all started when i saw those tense faces with hands trembling, knucle breaking, sweaty palms.... ppl put in so much of fite for this particular thing.. and if things do not turn out the way they want it to.. they will not be able to accept the situation.
I am a strong believer in the process.. for me the means are important than the end... i will enjoy the pursuit more than the outcome of it... therefore i never get tensed under these conditions.... but what i learnt today was that... this attitude of mine has costed me dearly... i hav lost the passion , the drive to do achieve things... i get satisfied very easily... i never put major fite .. i think i used to do it once upon time... but recently never... the sense of satisfaction is absent.. even though in the long run it does not mean anything....

the point here is , it is just the means or the ends that matter... what matters the most is the combination of the two....

My LL story

2007-02-24T05:47:00.000-08:00

I finally managed to find time to get my learner's license for a LMV. The last time i had been to the RTO they rejected my application since i didn't have the proper proofs about my residence. Well, they didn't accept my college id card as a proof for my DOB and my 2-wheeler license even though both of them had used the same proof.

This time the setting was different. It was not in the RTO, but in a place called WIAA, don't know what it stands for, but u can get licenses from here. I had all the required documents, i filled up the form and was waiting in the queue admiring the picture of the handsome man on my form :) . i got my number and sat in a corner waiting to take the test. I had a book with me and started reading it. The choice was bad, it was a heavy book. Since i had nothing else to do i continued reading. I could see others in the room mugging away to glory to clear the LL test. The criteria to clear the test is to score 11 right answers out of 15 questions. I felt 4 wrong answers on a traffic test is too liberal, and i felt passing criteria should be 15 on 15. Well, how difficult can a LL test be.

When my turn came, i walked in and paid the fee. Went into the biometrics sectio, got my photo clicked, gave my thumb impressions for the first time along with a digital signature. The system was smooth and well organised and automated. Then it was time for the test.

It was an objective test and one had to choose 1 out of 3 options. I sat in front of the comp with confidence sky high. The insrtuctor was explaining to me how to use the comp, i didn't listen to him and started taking the test. To my disbelief i got the first 2 questions wrong, one was on identifying a HTV through a license plate (?) and another one was punishment for blocking traffic ( ans is supposedly revoking the license ). I came back to all my senses, my 15 on 15 saga had vanished and i was trying hard to clear the test. The next ten Qs were a cake walk since i got all of them right. The thirteenth one i was hasty enough to choose hospital for a plus sign instead of a first aid box. The challenge had come down to the last 2 questions. The 14th Q was a blinder, what is the punishment for illegal parking, due to my experience with the second Q , i didn't click on " the driver will be fined" but i chose cancelling license and behold that was the right answer. All my miseries were put an end with Congratulations flashing on the screen. At last i was able to get my hands on my LL, i crosschecked and left the office as soon as possible. It was one hell of an experience.

My Bombay trip ...

2007-01-23T02:53:00.000-08:00

Ahd (20/01/07 - 5 am ) - CST - Bandra Reclaimation - Andheri (W) - Matunga - Wadala - Azad Maidan - Dombivali - Dadar - Andheri - Bandra - Bandstand - Borivali - Kandivali - Andheri (E) - Santa Cruz - Mulund - Vile Parle - Ahd (23/01/07 - 2 pm)

These are the places i visited in the last four days... started from Ahd on 20th Jan returned on 23 rd Jan... tasting the delicacies of Mumbai. Started off with Dinner at Matunga, followed Shell fish food in Dombivali then the chicken biryani at the Hersche bakery , Dosa from Andheri ,then the gujju food in Mulund... It has been one of the big time hogging long weekends i ever had... i hogged like crazy.. hogged like mad... hogged whtevr i culd lay my hands on... blurp !!!

Few more quotes on running ..

2007-01-18T09:18:00.000-08:00

was browsing for some quotes on running, came across a few....

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running." - Inspirational sign on a runner's office wall

"Out of the silver heat mirage he ran. The sky burned, and under him the paving was a black mirror reflecting sun-fire. Sweat sprayed his skin with each foot strike so that he ran in a hot mist of his own creation. With each slap on the softened asphalt, his soles absorbed heat that rose through his arches and ankles and the stems of his shins. It was acarnival of pain, but he loved each stride because running distilled him to his essence and the heat hastened this distillation." - James Tabor, from "The Runner," a short story

"I like running because it's a challenge. If you run hard, there's the pain - and you've got to work your way through the pain. You know, lately it seems all you hear is? Don't overdo it' and? Don't push yourself.' Well, I think that's a lot of bull. If you push the human body, it will respond." - Bob Clarke, Philadelphia Flyers general manager, NHL Hall of Fame.

"It's at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys." - Emil Zatopek

"It's elevating and humbling at the same time. Running along a beach at sunrise with no other footprints in the sand, you realize the vastness of creation, your own insignificant space in the plan, how tiny you really are, your own creatureliness and how much you owe to the supreme body, the God that brought all this beauty and harmony into being." - Sister Marion Irvine, 2:51 PR and 1984 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier

"Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired. When you were younger the mind could make you dance all night, and the body was never tired...You've always got to make the mind take over and keep going." - George S. Patton, U.S. Army General and 1912 Olympian

"A lot of people run a race to see who's the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts." - Steve Prefontaine

"Once you're beat mentally, you might was well not even go to the starting line." -Todd Williams

"Marathoning is like cutting yourself unexpectedly. You dip into the pain so gradually that the damage is done before you are aware of it. Unfortunately, when the awareness comes, it is excruciating." - John Farrington, Australian marathoner

The week has come .....

2007-01-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

After a gruelling four month long practise session, we have arrived at the last week of our training schedule. Three days from now we will be running the StanC mumbai marathon. We followed the training schedule religously for the first 3 months, then came the term break and all hell broke lose. We had injuries with our runners, thank god me and Paro were spared from it. Then we hit on our busy schedule and couldn't find time to carry on with our training. Its not just lack of time, at times we were lazy too. I remember myself frauding one day, so that i could get a couple of hrs of sleep. Eventually i was christened FFG for my act.

With ppl coming back from injuiry we resumed our marathon practise only to realise that our body had relaxed a bit too much. We had lost our running ways - the stamina was gone, the pace was lost and so was the morale. Fighters we are, we pushed ourselves more and more till couple of them got injuired. It forced us to reduce our training schedule to such an extent that we couldn't run the 32 kms part of training.

The maximum i have done is 27 kms at a stretch as of now. I need to carry this to 42.2 kms. A mere thought of it makes my mind go bonkers. Will i feel i will be able to do it, atleast crawling the last few kms :) . Not sure about the weather though, most of our runs were late in the night at around 1 am - 4 am. In the actual run we have to bear the Mumbai afternoon sun and the hard surface of the road.

All i hope is that we go in one piece and come back in one peace, completing the marathon.

Runnin post ..

2007-01-17T11:43:00.000-08:00

got a couple of quotes on runnin...

" I ran and ran every day, and I acquired a sense of determination, this sense of spirit that I would never, never, give up, no matter what else happened."- Wilma Rudolph

Run with me, Run for the year
Run for the laughter, Run for the tear
Run with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away
- Adapted from "Dream On" - Aerosmith

India Poised

2007-01-06T16:55:00.000-08:00

India Poised is a new initiative from the Times of India Group.

The campaign brings to light the happenings in India. They have a well written Anthem. It is as follows :

Me back !!!

2006-12-28T06:57:00.000-08:00

After a few days of introspection, a rajasthan trip and a wonderful time with close buddies i am back in the campus. The mundane campus life has started. My marathon practise is yet to start full swing, owin to the tough schedules we have. :) ...

I have been readin these days... read a bit of works of vivekananda.. its kinda heavy... so moved to other lighter stuffs such as Don Quixote and Joan of Arc... both of them are an interesting read... they talk about leadership ...
currently i am readin 'Thinking Strategically', strategy is what i like ..and this book is all about game theory and its application in strategy... truly an awesome combination...
dont be surprised if i pitch in with few examples from the book time and again...

thats it for now.. will keep posting.. regularly from now on...

a startling fact... there are about 200 million blogs which were dormant the whole of last year.. thank god..i rescued my blog from it... :)

An evening well spent ....

2006-12-04T10:24:00.000-08:00

Me and my friend Asuti, I have not introduced him to the blog yet but will do so later, were coming back from shopping, on the way we saw this huge hoarding of 'Janata Raja' on the road and felt like going to the play. It was already 7:50 pm and the play was supposed to start at 8 pm. Since we were on out bike, we zooomed past the traffic and reached the place at 8:10. We somehow managed to get an entry into the play even though we didn't have passes. These are the few times u feel good about the way things work in India, if not we would not be able to see the play.

I will write about the play in another post. In the break we went out to get some dinner, the Qs behind the counters were long, we stood in the Q, played with the kid in front of us and managed to get hold of some coupons. We ordered a masala dosa, a pizza, paav bhaji, 2 coffees. After a long time I had an awesome masala dosa, even the coffee was amazing.

The play was interesting. I met one of my gujju buddies during the play. Had a chat with him too.

All in all, an evening well spent... bahut majaa aaya !!!

Times wastin...

2006-12-02T22:06:00.000-08:00

With reference to my earlier post, i came across this song in the movie 'Walk the Line'. I liked the way Cash and June, sing this song. The lyrics is too good. I have pasted the lyrics for ur convenience.

Carl Smith - Time's A Wastin' - June Carter Cash

Male: Now I've got arms
Female: And I've got arms
Together: Lets get together and use those arms
Female: Lets go
Together: Times a wastin'

M: I've got lips
F: And I've got lips
T: Lets get together and use those lips
F: Lets go
T: Times a wastin

F: A cakes no good if you don't mix the batter and bake it
M: And loves just a bubble if you don't take the trouble to make it

T: So if you're free to go with me
T: I'll take you quicker than 1-2-3
F: Lets go
T: Times a wastin

(Instrumental Break)

M: Now I've got blues
F: And I've got blues
T: Lets get acquainted and lose those blues
F: Lets go
T: Time's a wastin

M: Now Ive got feet
F: And Ive got feet
T: Lets start to walk with a lovers beat
F: Lets go
T: Times a wastin

F: You've got me feelin love like I never have felt it
M: You're full of sugar and Im think I'm the burner to melt it

M: Now I've got schemes
F: And I've got schemes
T: Lets get together and dream some dreams
F: Lets go
T: Times a wastin

Walk the Line !!!

2006-12-02T21:48:00.000-08:00

The other day i was watching 'Walk the Line', its a movie about Johnny Cash, rather its the story behind Cash and June Carter, his second wife. It has few insights into his childhood but focuses mainly on his singing career - how he approached sun records, how he performed on stage, the way he started introducin himelf as 'Hello, I am Johnny Cash'. Then June Carter enters the seen, and the pace of the movie quickens.

The movie goes into the usual guy meets girl, girl likes the guy but she has constraints, guy is already married with 2 kids and so on. Cash will become a drug addict, due to which his performance suffers, he loses his wife, his contracts and friends. By then even June is also divorced from her second marriage. She stays with Cash to help him come back to his normal self.

There r a few gud songs both of them sing together before he proposes to her on stage. That part is truly romantic. Overall its a gud movie to watch. After watching the movie, i have downloaded Cash's songs and listening to it. They are pretty good.

By the way, the female lead, Reese Witherspoon won Oscar for her role in the movie.

Email Links ...

2006-12-02T21:12:00.000-08:00

Here is a list of email providers with their capacity..
came across this on the net.. thought it will be helpful for a few

Yaycos 3GB http://www.yaycos.com
XasaMail 2GB http://www.xasamail.com
MasBytes Unlimited http://www.masbytes.com
Walla 5 GB http://www.walla.com
FreeOla Unlimited http://www.freeola.com
GMX 3 GB http://www.gmx.net
Intper 2 GB http://intper.es
Maktoob 1 GB http://www.maktoob.com
Interwaysmail 1 GB http://www.interwaysmail.net
SpyMac 1 GB http://www.spymac.com
Rediffmail 1 GB -> 2GB http://www.rediffmail.com
JLMail 1 GB http://www.jlmail.com
Suredid 1 GB http://mail.suredid.com
Omnilect 1 GB http://www.omnilect.com
GMail Unlimited http://gmail.google.com
EmailPinoy 1 GB http:/mail.emailpinoy.com
Yahoo! China 1 GB http://mail.yahoo.com.cn
Gawab 1 GB http://www.gawab.com
Megamail.cc 1 GB http://www.megamail.cc/

Here is another interesting link .. to send large files via mail...
http://s2.yousendit.com/

You find a file too big to send by email try YouSendIt, a free service that lets you send a file up to 1GB to another PC or person. Just type in the recipient's email id and upload the file. The recipient is then notified by email and has upto 7 days to download the file. No passwords, no software to install, no accounts to create, and normal/secure transfers. This free service can even provide Data Security Encrypted HTTPS session (SSL/TLS) to make sure your data is secure.

Khukri Memorial

2006-11-22T14:07:00.000-08:00

During my Diu trip, I happened to visit the Khukri memorial. It houses a 25 foot long replica of INS Khukri which went down 40 nautical miles off the coast of Diu on 8th December 1971. It was hit by 2 torpedos fired from the pakistan submarine PNS Hangor. INS Khukri has been the largest war time casualty India has ever experienced. The sinking was a great learning for the indian navy who were over confident of their prowess. 18 officers and 176 sailors went down along with the battle ship. The memorial is erected on the shores of Diu. Do visit it once if you happen to be in Diu.

The detailed article on the sinking of INS Khukri can be found here.

Friends ...

2006-11-21T21:18:00.000-08:00

I was thinking of old friends today
And how many of them have slipped away.
Moved, got married, or stopped calling so much,
Found new friends, got busy, and just lost touch.

It reminded me of falling leaves.
Every autumn the leaves fall from the trees.
Some stay longer than others,
but eventually - Each leaf must fall, I'm told,
Leaving the tree alone to face the cold.

Why is it that in the time of utmost need
The leaves would seek to leave the tree?
And when we need our friends around
We look and they can not be found?

Of course these friendships come and go
And in the spring new leaves will grow.
But I prefer autumn friends of old
With crackling laughter and colors bold.

It saddens me now I must admit
How somehow, someway,
I did forget Laughing with old friends of mine
During summers when the sun would shine.

And then I thought of you.
That one stubborn leaf that won't let go.
That clings despite the winds that blow.
Fighting ice, and snow, and winter's stings
Hanging on right through till spring.

So I guess that's what you are to me -
The very last leaf to leave the tree.
I know it seems silly, but it's true.
When I see that last leaf...
...I think of you.

Not my own... got it from my friend... hence can't reference it.

Dimension Z ....

2006-11-21T20:33:00.000-08:00

In dimension Z, there are strage moments. Euclid was not always right. He assumed parallelness, in constancy, right to the end of things; but a non-Euclidean way of being is also possible, where the lines come together, far out there. A vanishing point. The illusion of convergence.

Yet one knows it's more than illusion. Sometimes a coming together is possible, a spilling of one reality into another. A kind of soft enlacing. Not prim intersections loomed in a world of precision, no sound of the shuttle.

And one moves slowly over this other reality, beside it and underneath and around it, always with strength, always with power, yet always with giving of oneself to it. And the other senses this, coming forward with its own power, giving itself to one, in turn.

Courtesy : The Bridges of Madison County

The Bridges of Madison County...

2006-11-21T20:11:00.000-08:00

I completed the book during my journey back to the campus. Its a lovely book, read it if you can get your hands on it.

Here are few excerpts from the book.

The old dreams were good dreams, they didn't work out, but i'm glad i had them.

I move in dimension Z, the world goes by somewhere else in another slice of things, parallel to me.

You are always dealing with markets, and markets - mass markets - are designed to suit average tastes. Thats were the numbers are.

Profit and Subscriptions and the rest of that stuff dominate art. We're all getting lashed to the great wheel of uniformity.

The virtues of Amateurism - The market kills most artisitic passion than anything else. Its a world of safety out there.

With time in my pocket, weather on my side .....

W.B. Yeats : Realism, economy, sensuousness, beauty and magic.

All marriages, all relationships are the inertia of protracted custom. Custom brings predictability, and predictability carries its own comforts.

If time permits, probably i will write a line or two about the book, the way Robert Kincaid and Francesca Johnson danced together and fell in love, those four days of passion and a lifetime of memories, their sacrifices and their ends.

Author : Robert James Waller

India Everywhere phenomenon

2006-11-18T05:04:00.000-08:00

After 'Feel Good' and 'India Shining' phenomenon, its time for 'India Everywhere'. This was the theme in World Economic Forum meet in Davos in Jan this year. This phrase coupled with 'Fastest growing free market democracy' builds a strong 'Brand India'. As i see it, its an attempt by India to reach out to the world. It has noticed the potential the world has in store and Indians want to have a piece in the pie. The govt. has adopted a focussed strategy to woo in investments and have a steady and an increasing flow of capital. India ensured that it is 'hot and happening' at one of the world's most powerful networking events.

The event presented the country as an attractive destination for foreign investment, as an emerging manufacturing hub and as a credible partner for world business. In addition, it highlighted the Indian government's policy reforms and showcased the country's cultural diversity, with the overall goal of helping Davos participants gain a deeper understanding of Indian people and markets.

Knowledge wharton does a thorough analysis of the Indian hope trick in this article.

Few of the associated sites in this front are
India Everywhere
Indian Brand Equity Foundation

A great PR job, a well thought out marketing strategy has made the world to sit up and notice India, it all depends on how we take it forward. Whether we capitalise on the opportunity or falter as we have done before, time will only tell.

Kumaon Regiment ....

2006-11-18T04:56:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across this article while surfing the net. It talks about how the 13 Kumaon regiment stood against all odds and the govt. apathy towards recognising them. Kumaon regiment is one of the crack troops of the indian army receivein many honours, but the recognition ends there. No one knows about them. Their sacrifice has gone unnoticed, only few quizzers apart from the soldiers families have some idea about them.

13 Kumaon's Last Stand: Chushul, November 18, 1962

Most of us studied the Alfred Tennyson poem 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' in school. The Battle of Thermopylae we read of with goose bumps. We all know about Custer's Last Stand. And the battle cry 'Remember the Alamo!' resonates with us.

Yet, none of us has heard of the 13th Kumaon Battalion's Last Stand at Rezang La, Ladakh, in the Battle of Chushul, on November 18, 1962. I think this is a great pity.

For, let us remind ourselves of these examples of heroism:

· The Battle of Thermopylae in ancient Greece in 480 BCE, where 300 Spartans under Leonidas stopped a Persian army of 250,000 at a narrow mountain pass. They died to the last man, but provided enough time for the rest of the Greek army to escape to fight another day.

· The 13th Light Brigade of the British Army at Balaclava, the Crimea, in 1854. Six hundred and seventy-three men rode at Russian artillery and were decimated.

· At the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, in 1836, several hundred Texans held out against the Mexican Army before they were killed to the last man.

· Custer's Last Stand was the Battle of Little Bighorn, 1876, in Montana where the Sioux nation under Chief Sitting Bull wiped out George Custer and 265 men.

And finally:

· The C company of the 13th Kumaon Battalion, under Major Shaitan Singh (Param Vir Chakra, Posthumous) held off a fierce Chinese attack on November 18, 1962, at the Rezang La heights that they held. Massively outnumbered and outgunned, the defenders died almost to the last man, and expended their last round. All 114 men were killed or wounded. But they succeeded in blunting the Chinese assault, killing as many as a thousand Chinese in the process at Rezang La and at nearby Gurung Hill. Thereafter, the Chinese did not push further towards the Chushul plain. It was a critical checkpoint on a potential Chinese advance on Leh.

The story of 13th Kumaon is the kind of thing that would make the patriotic Indian stand tall with tears in his eyes. Yet, we do not stand in silence for a moment in memory of Major Shaitan Singh and his gallant men. No poet eulogizes them as Tennyson did the Light Brigade. There is only a small memorial at the site, which says:

How can a Man die Better than facing Fearful Odds,
For the Ashes of His Fathers and the Temples of His Gods,
To the sacred memory of the Heroes of Rezang La,
114 Martyrs of 13 Kumaon who fought to the Last Man,
Last Round, Against Hordes of Chinese on 18 November 1962.
Built by All Ranks 13th Battalion, The Kumaon Regiment.

I am indebted to the Bharat-Rakshak web site for this information as well as a long article on the Battle of Chushul by L N Subramanian. Yet, why is there nothing written about them along the lines of what Tennyson did, as in these excerpts from his stirring poem:

Half a league half a league
Half a league onward...
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred...

Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd;
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die...

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;...

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade...

Why have Indians so consistently ignored the great sacrifices made by our soldiers? Why isn't the story of the valiant 13th Kumaon a part of every child's textbooks? Why have we let these brave men die unwept, unmourned, and unsung? Just as we let thousands of soldiers die in Kashmir, in Kargil, everywhere, they are mere cannon fodder. India needs a draft, so people in power feel the pain of their children dying for the nation.

I think I know why there is no official celebration of the Battle of Chushul: the government can hardly bother to honour the Unknown Soldier on Kargil Day. Then how will they remember something that happened forty years ago?

There is also an element of shame. Congress governments were unwilling to talk about 1962 because it brings out the fact that 'someone had blunder'd' and that was their deity, Jawaharlal Nehru, along with his defence minister, V K Krishna Menon. Admitting this would leave them shamefaced, so they just let the soldiers 'but do and die'. Even the current government is unwilling to publish the Henderson Brooks report. Why? It will at least shed some light on what happened.

The media in India should have taken this up in the absence of governmental action. But the media, influenced by Chinese propaganda, has portrayed the 1962 war on Chinese terms. Aping the Xinhua propaganda agency, Indian media mavens have taken the stand that the war was India's fault. As though Indians, with no mountain divisions, would go over the Himalayas and attack the Chinese in Tibet and Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh!

The Marxists in India say the 1962 affair was an internal matter for the Chinese, as they have generously 'awarded' Arunachal Pradesh to China. The Chinese believe this, too. They told the CM of Arunachal Pradesh recently that he did not need a visa to go to China, as he was a Chinese citizen! Americans, Britons and Australians accept China's lies, for it suits them to support China.

But we know that all this isn't true. Individual Indians must remember the 13th Kumaon. As the Quebec motto goes, Je me souviens: I remember. And I shall always remember those brave men of C Company who died in a frozen wasteland. For me. For you.

One day ...

2006-11-17T22:20:00.001-08:00

One day i shall fly
One day i shall soar high
One day the world will watch
One day i shall shine.

Hope i live long enough to see this day...
even though its me who decides how soon i see the light of this day..

Nostalgia...

2006-11-17T22:18:00.000-08:00

For all you have done... thank you mate...
For all that you are .... I love you.

Love ....

2006-11-17T22:14:00.000-08:00

I wish i knew a pretty song
i could sing for you ...
Special words of joy and love
so we could start anew

I wish i knew a story
to tell you every night
A sweet, romantic one
to make your heart feel light.

I wish i could write a poem
A verse to make you see
you mean more than all world
and all it holds for me.

I wish I knew what i could say
or knew what i could do
To make you feel the love for me
That i've always felt for you.

Schedule ...

2006-11-17T12:48:00.000-08:00

Sit in front of the comp .. start givin finishin touches to the software already developed by some1 else :) .... work on this , work on tht... teach ppl how to use the s/w u developed for them... help them with their difficulties...

feed the data ... arrange for the logistics... hav pizza breaks.. coffee breaks in b/w... brainstorm the rules... build the framework for next days activities.. hav a meet .. .discuss issues , queries... speak over phone.. hav more pizzas more caffeine.... snatch some sleep while u can...

handle HRs ... speak to ur batchmates... help the needy... guide the greedy...
all in all... do whtevr possible frm ur end...
take up many roles... assume responsibilities...
accomplish wht needs to be done....
with no margin for error...
to ensure tht...
"alls well tht ends well"....

this is how i survived the 1 week of high stress, high tension and high drama...
but in the end it leaves me with a wonderful experience and a good bunch of friends...:) ...

no 1 outside this place can understand y ne1 should put in 20 - 22 hrs of work everyday for somethin that doesnot give you anything in return apart from experience...

well.. this is wht we want to do.. like to do... wht we get in the end of the day is the sense of satisfaction... for this we are ready to give whtevr we hav got time and again....

"one for all and all for one" ....

Marathon ....

2006-11-17T12:33:00.000-08:00

Its a wierd experience i must say, the connect between the mind and the body.

I realised it while i was running. I run with a friend of mine who is a bit slower than my comfortable speed, since i like company while i run... i prefer to run slow than to run alone.

While running my mind tends to wander a lot... sometimes i dream .. sometimes i think... thats when i noticed the pecularity. When i dream, i instantly switch to my comfortable speed which is faster than the speed at which we are running and when i start to think i tend to slow down.. the more i get involved without my thought , slower i become... dunno why it happens... in both the cases i am not focusin on the run.. sometimes i run fast and sometimes i run slow....

i think even our mind behaves like a processor ( rather it must be the other way round) ... when ur thinkin .. u consume lot of ur mind space hence the legs do not get so much attention from the mind as required... but when ur dreamin .. the mind is relatively free.... it eases down at u switch to ur comfy levels...

hence i come to a conclusion that ..thinkin is a heavy process but dreamin is a light process....
dunno which is better ... but thts the way it is....

CCCS presentation

2006-10-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

Another CCCS ppt down the drain. The prof makes u feel tht u hav done nothin.. that u r unfit to be in the place where u r.. u r the dumbest creature on the planet...

all those 8 hrs of work for the presentation ...
u just stand there and take what ever the prof throws at you.. any cross point will be turned out as somethin fraud... the problem lies in the articulation..

everything boils down to the general strategy of the company.. wht it is i am unable to fathom... whether it is focusses, differentiative, me too... whtevr doesnot mattter... u cannot hit the nail on the head...

General Reading

2006-10-23T06:59:00.000-07:00

U know wht.. it is very important for people to be abreat with whats happening in the world outside... so one has to read newspapers, watch news channels, read bizz mags, do this and do that... blah..blah....

Its not just the knowledge of current affairs which make few ppl great... its their voracious reading ability that makes them what they are... i subscribe to the view that reading builds character, it makes ppl of substance...

One of the few good things i have learnt from my childhood is to read... i used to read a lot ... yup mostly novels, fiction, cartoons.. i started with Jeffrey Archer's "Not a Penny more Not a penny less' and Sidney Sheldon's "If tomorrow comes" while i was in my eight grade... i kinda liked these two... they still remain as my favourites... I went on to Enid Blyton.. reading through Famous five, secret seven and whatever i could lay my hands on.. then it was the turn of John Grisham, Robert Ludlum.... Frederick Forsyth and Michael chricton couldn't have to wait long .... with cartoons filling up the gaps... i was on a reading spree... In engineering i got hold of few of them who had an interesting collection... i went on and on...

As i grew.. i moved to a bit of seriors reading... moving away from fiction was boring initially... but it became interesting whn it made me sit back and think.... hav learnt few things frm books ... more is in store in the future...

I feel Books are man's best friends. U can read them at ur leisure.. well not entirely true.. once u get into the book... u can hardly close it ... one cannot resist the temptation...

In order to keep up with the readin i hav decided to do general readin for atleast half an hour a day.... i hav a bet with my friend Bancho.. that if any one fails to do the gen. readin on any given day... each one has to pay the other 100 bucks... a gud disincentive to persue a good habit...
hopefully i will continue this...

The marathon exercise

2006-10-23T06:55:00.000-07:00

The practise has helped in discovering myself. IT might seem to be a bit far fetched, but nonetheless it is true.

I am not a selfmotivated person. Until and unless someone is breathing down my neck i don't push myself to do anything. Not that i am lazy, but i lose interest in what i do after sometime. Initially i used to start things on a grand scale but couldn't sustain it long enough. Instead of working on the sustaining part, whenever i came across a good idea i would think it through and later feel that i would not sustain it and stopped taking initiatives. I solved the wrong problem here. I have tried to push myself to do things but after sometime i lose interest, motivation, dedication, determination.. u name it, I have lost it... but bcoz of these ppl i hav managed to do it...hopefull i will be able to sustain it till Jan 21st... i am still working on the learnings form this exercise... hopefully it will help to get me back on the track of self motivated, enthu, cheerful guy i once was...

StanC Mumbai Marathon

2006-10-23T06:54:00.000-07:00

Since childhood i liked to play, run.. i am not sure whether this is correct... I feel i like the smell of my sweat or rather sweat dripping from my forehead... my sweat all over me gives me kinda high.. :) .. maybe its kinda wierd but this is wht i like... due to which i liked runnin.. since thats the simplest thing which makes u sweat..

Then i met these set of ppl from my coll. A major, a CP king, the reserved Tulli and the Amazon Paro who had just began their marathon practise. It was a perfect match. I needed company for me to run and here they were. They needed more people to take part in the marathon. Hence i joined hands ( or legs) with them and then our marathon practise kick started. Running almost daily, following the prescribed schedule sacrosanctly, with disincentive schemes for ppl who miss the training, the marathon practise is on for almost 7 weeks now. Well thats one heck of a time period to sustain something.

The marathon is on Jan 21st but its a 20 week training schedule. Sometimes its kinda interestin, sometimes highly boring, sometimes thrillin and fewtimes extremely painful.. but the gang we are we just motivate eachother and carry on.

I bet if left alone i wouldn't have persued it even though i feel i can run the full marathon with a bit of practise.

To write !!!

2006-10-23T06:22:00.000-07:00

I am back...
again after a long time.. failin to keep the promise i made in the previous post. I dunno why i keep doing it quite often. Guess I am not a great writer which stops me from posting frequently or rather i take refuge by considering myself not a good writer. Well if i don't write how am i going to become one. With all these writing takes the last priority. If i have absolutly nothing else to do, i login to blogspot. Well u guessed rite, I am kinda free now or rather i have made myself free :) .

For a long time i wanted to pen some of the work i do, things i did, or things i intend to do. I will provide u with a list of post i plan to write. Since i have posted here probly i will be motivated enuff to post them pretty soon. Here they go...

First things first.

1. StanC Mumbai Marathon - Jan 21st

2. Runnin on the street- late nite/ early morning

3. Jodhpur/Jaisalmer Trip
The desert safari.. my expectations.. how it matched, exceeded and failed...

4. Delhi trip part II.
I have written the first part and the second part is due for quite sometime.

5. Relationships...
Yup, I plan to write few things about relationships, things i cherish about them, things i despise, things i have learnt, things i am unable to fathom.. well to put in a nut shell.. it will be Relationships through my eyes.

6. Classes / Group preps
The unforgettable moments ... things which hav taught me those little stuffs i have learnt in this place...

7. Flash - Success rate of 100%
From a debutant to ....

8. Competitions - how i manage to fail all of them

9. Dangs - The place to visit...
One awesome bike trip with an exciting group of friends .. probably i will post some pics as well....

I want to make the count touch 10.. i am thinking very hard to find the tenth one... i should be able to think something.... hey.. here it goes.. not an interestin thing to write about but at a later date it mite bring a smile on my face.... hopefully...

10. Our CCCS presentation

By this weekend i hope i will be able to write about them.

To Delhi and back Part I

2006-09-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend i had travelled to Delhi to visit one of my good friends. I had never seen Delhi before and I always wanted to see it. Even then i had not made any plans to visit Delhi. But my friend forced to make my trip and off i went to the national capital.

Way to the Railway Station...

All my friends know how punctual i am. When it comes to boarding the train too i was late not that i was doing timepass, i had couple of meetings just before i left. I was delayed considerably and i was all ready to go by 5:30 pm for the 5:45 pm train. Alas it is half an hour from the campus to the railway station. I didn't have any other go, got on the auto and told him to go to Sabarmati station which is half an hour from the campus and from the main railway station, thought with some luck i will be able to catch the train. The autowalla rode as if he had all the time in the world, with a little bit of pesterin and pushing, i managed to get to the station by 6 pm and was wondering what will i do for the next 15 mins since i am early. Went to the railway station and saw the tracks were narrow gauge, i was taken aback. when i cross checked with the station staff, there were considerate enough to tell me that the train comes on the main line which is half a km from the station on the other side.. i culdn't see the main line because my view was blocked by 4 goods trains. Cursing myself, i ran with my bag to reach the main line, crossed 2 goods train since they were smaller, the third one was a long one and i was right in the middle of it. Then the real adventure began, i started to climb between the bogies but the train started to move all of a sudden. i got down and waited till the train passed. Now the last one, no luck either, i was again in the middle of it. Thought of crawling below the link, it was low enough to not let me thru easily and the grease would have spoilt the white shirt i was wearing. The link was high enough so that i culdn't jump over it easily. After examining the gap between the bogies, checking the strength of each of the metal pieces that were placed inbetween i climbed on the link. During the climb, some part of time i was freely suspended in mid air. With all sorts of acrobatics i culd manage to get on the other side of the train. Never knew crossing a train was that difficult, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless. Once i crossed, ppl who were waiting for the same train started giving me dirty looks because it is not common for passengers to take that route to reach the railway station :) .

The train arrived and i was very happy to board it. If not for the adventure it wouldn't have been so satisfying to board the train !!!

The Journey

I went to check my seat and behold i see a young pretty girl sittin in the seat next to me. Well not everytime u see pretty girls travelling with you in the same compartment as yours :). The "shy" guy i am i did not strike a conversation or exchange pleasantries. I just went and sat there, when the train started to move i started readin "Elephant Song" the book i carried to read through my journey.

After readin abt 10 pages i see the seat next to the window empty and i parked myself on it. I started speakin to the guy in front of me. he was a businessman from UP and was travellin whole of India on some business. He started narrating his life to me. His education, marriage, his passion, business and football. We discussed football to a great extent since that was the only common thread we had. He had played for few clubs in the past and was into coachin now, and i play football. Its always interestin to discuss a sport with someone who is knowledgeable about the same. We discussed the technicalities, strategies, curving kicks, flank defense, front attack and what not. After that i received a call and was on phone till i got out of Gujarat. since roaming was not enabled on my cell, thanks to the telephone dept, i culdn't take refugee in my cell after i crossed gujarat.

This was just the beginnin. There is more to come !! will pen it down probably tonite.....
if i dont go to Rajasthan.

Perfect 10

2006-08-15T22:20:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of people who achieved perfection in the games they played. These are not any miniscule achievement. These were played when the individuals represented their country, when the media had made them superheroes, expectations were sky high. They never disappointed anyone and etched their names in the books of history. The accomplishment reflects not just the talent they had but also their mental strength, their grit and their passion.

1. Jim Laker - 10/53 at Old Trafford
2. Geoff Hurst - 1966 World Cup Final Hat-trick
3. Torvill & Dean - 1984 Winter Olympics 9 perfect sixes
4. Anil Kumble - 10 wickets against Pakistan
5. Mark Spitz - 7 gold medals in 1972 Olympics
6. Frankie Dettori - Winner of all 7 races on Sep 28, 1996
7. Steffi Graf - 1988 Golden grandslam
8. Jesse Owens - 4 gold medals in 1936 Olympics
9. Nadia Comeneci - Perfect 10 in 1976 Olympics
10. Jonny Wilkinson - Golden left boot in 2003 Rugby World Cup

Here is the source.

15 yrs of internet ...

2006-08-15T02:23:00.000-07:00

OMG.. its been 15 years since internet has entered the world...
what a phenomenol growth it has seen in these 15 years, it has been a part of everybody's life...
one cannot imagine a life without browsin the net... its a one stop solution for nethin under the sun.. well beyond too...

on the 15th anniversary here's a list of top 15 sites on the net ... courtesy guardian

1. eBay.com
Founded: Pierre Omidyar, 1995, US
Users: 168m
What is it? Auction and shopping site

2. wikipedia.com
Founded: Jimmy Wales, 2001, US
Users: 912,000 visits per day
What is it? Online encyclopaedia

3. napster.com
Founded: Shawn Fanning, 1999, US
Users: 500,000 paying subscribers
What is it? File sharing site

4. youtube.com
Founded: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, 2005, US
Users: 100m clips watched a day
What is it? Video sharing site

5. blogger.com
Founded: Evan Williams, 1999, US
Users: 18.5m unique visitors
What is it? Weblog publishing system

6. friendsreunited.com
Founded: Steve and Julie Pankhurst, 1999, UK
Users: 15m
What is it? School reunion site

7. drudgereport.com
Founded: Matt Drudge, 1994, US
Users: 8-10m page views per day
What is it? News site

8. myspace.com
Founded: Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, 2003, US
Users: 100m
What is it? Social networking site

9. amazon.com
Founded: Jeff Bezos, 1994, US
Users: More than 35m customers in over 250 countries
What is it? Online retailer, primarily of books, CDs and DVDs

10. slashdot.org
Founded: Rob Malda, 1997, US
Users: 5.5m per month
What is it? Technology news website and internet forum

11. salon.com
Founded: David Talbot, 1995, US
Users: Between 2.5 and 3.5m unique visitors per month
What is it? Online magazine and media company

12. craigslist.org
Founded: Craig Newmark, 1995, US
Users: 4bn page views per month
What is it? A centralised network of online urban communities, featuring free
classified advertisements and forums

13. google.com
Founded: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 1998, US
Users: A billion search requests per day
What is it? Search engine and media corporation

14. yahoo.com
Founded: David Filo and JerryYang, 1994, US
Users: 400m
What is it? Internet portal and media corporation

15. easyjet.com
Founded: Stelios
Haji-Ioannou, 1995, UK
Users: 30m passengers last year
What is it?: Budget airline

Its a very interestin article.It talks about how gutenberg revolutionised the thinkin of the common man and draws parallel from this to Tim Berners Lee's invention of the WWW.

Unnecessary formality ...

2006-07-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

As usual, i am back after a long time...
its not tht i dont hav nethin to write or time to write... its just tht i dont push myself to write... however hard i try .. the last thing i do is to write ... well sooner or later i need to get rid of this habit of mine...

now cumin back to the topic...
i came across the title as a description for a ceremony we regard in high esteem... the response was on a class survey that was circulated in the class..
regardin class surveys .. we used to hav it durin my undergrad days.. it was very much fun and the whole class used to be part of it... we used to pick somethin thts of common interest to the class and pass on the survey across the class when the class was goin on .. at the end of the class i used to write few of the responses on the board.... man, life was so interestin then.. i miss those days.. well almost.. not those where i hav been the victim of the survey :) ...

since i entered into post grad.. didn't hav nethin similar to it durin the first year.. in the second year .. in order to kill time me and my neighbour started this survey on "wht do u think marriage is".. as it made its way thru the guys.. it had only lustful remarks such as licensed sex ... unrestricted sex .. so on and so forth .. we had to chip in with couple of senti lines to
keep the sanctity of the survey.. well there were few interestin responses but the one tht caught me is the topic of this post...

there was plenty of discussion over the topic.. but i am not goin to write about it now...
will surely do it sometime later....

The Quote ...

2006-07-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

Well.. comin back after a really long time..
i hav promised myself yet again tht i will be a regular blogger...
but this is one promise i hav not been able to honor... but the promise saga continues..

ok.. back to bloggin...

i luv quotes.... ne witty retort impresses me...
i used to hav a gud collection of the quotes i had come across...frm the books i read, newspaper, conversation and evn i subscribed to quite a few quote sites too...

these days i hav started browsin thru wikipedia very often... thts one place u get info abt everythin.. i don't vouch for it.. nonetheless it gives u whtevr info u need ... i agree there are some doubts regardin its authenticity.. but thts the last thing tht bothers me....

while generally browsin thru wikipedia... i came across the Richard Bach page...
came across his quotes... i tell u i hav come across lots of them.. but his is a class apart...
i luv the quotes because it helps u to stop and contemplate on things.. gives u a different perspective to think about... eventually one feels it shuld be obvious...

my favorite quote from his collection is...

---->
I used to think that the purpose of language was to communicate. That if we were clear enough and careful enough, we could make anyone understand anything we write, make them see anything we see. Not so, I found.

The only people who can understand us are the ones who already know what we want to tell them, and then the best of our writing can merely remind, can simply whisper, "I know that, too."

Have you ever wondered why some readers love a book and others just don't get it? I'll tell you why (but you'll understand only if you already know)

------>

gud isn't it...

one of my good friend culdn't get thru an interview... she was down in depression.. she was not the rite fit for the profile.. she felt bad because she failed in the interview.. and she culdn't digest the fact....

That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.

"The Bridge Across Forever"

guess.. this will do her some good..

ok..
folks.. bye frm me ...
will try to keep the promise i hav made...

The WACky Time

2006-01-14T21:14:00.000-08:00

Well... comin back after a long hibernation....
my first since i joined MBA....

will post my experience of "MBA" sometime later
whn i find some spare time

WAC as for the non MBA junta is Written Analysis and Communication
wht crap each one of us written somethin or the other in our lifetime
and done lots of analysis b4 we got here...
people with workex would hav created lots of reports
so y spend time on something which doesn;t add any value to u...

well my friend, the simplicity ends here
WAC is one thing where even the native english people might falter ...
the subject curbs the natural talent and the free flow of thought
and claims to provide a structure and logical flow to the thought process

believe me thts the last thing u get out of here
if u haven't got out of the insti yet... (only for the ppl who understand wimwi ways)
atleast as far as WAC 1 in term 1 is considered

u do some shitty analysis, spend ur weekend pouring thru hazaar internet sites
churned out by google... discuss with ur friends..
and come up with out of the box alternatives.. creative thinkin will be awarded
thts wht they say...

u see to it tht ur thoughts, ideas, analysis everything combined do not exceed 1000 words...
well it boils down to sort of precis writin for few and OMG ttthhhhooooouuuuussssssaaaannnnnddddd words for the rest...

the deadline is fast approaching...
clock strikes 3:45 .. the submission window opens...
then comes the gruntin sound of the printer...
whn it starts churnin out papers and more papers..
a small group assembles around the printer...
whr they "thank" the profs and the TA for the assignment

how can people realise technology if it doesn't fail...
the printer says Jam in tray 2....
intellectuals as we are... we don;t knw how to rectify it...
u need the printer mgr and set it right...
the worse part ppl don;t learn anything they want the printer mgr to come for the same error umpteen no. of times..

with the report all done and one glance @ clock which reads 4:25 pm...
shit... the submission ends @ 4:30... thn comes all popular WAC run...
whr u run to ur classroom to submit before time... which most of us manage to do so..
thn comes the time of relief... whr one forgets to submit the soft copy

we need to submit the softcopy of the assignment at two places..
ya.. u read rite... soft copy to be copied to two places..
well one is impressed with the intellectual level of the system..u see..

u hav ample amt of time for submission... well by 11:59:59 !!!!...
evn then manage to forget and lose a subgrade...

and now regardin the grades...
the guy who gets a C and a B ... doesn't hav a clue of
how he/she got wht he/she got...
its a random grade generating algorithm these ppl follow...
whtever is the reason they will force u to get convinced tht
the gradin is right for ur report...

this is WAC for u...