Aloha

Today is another easy relaxed day for me. Basically involved in accuring data and trying to form a plan of action on how to approach the other exams. After the CAT fiasco and IIFT being ambiguous want to make sure things fall in place for the remaining exams. The next exam on the B-school calander is that of NMIMS. Not a place i would ideally would like to be, but it is a good safety school.

Watched every ball of the match yesterday and it is simply great to see the Indian team playing well. Its amazing what cricket can do to the whole morale of the country. I seriously think if the team continues to develop in this manner for the next year, we will have a great chance of winning the World Cup in 2007 whcin hopefully i would be watching in the confines of a leading b-school hostel.

Got nothing substantial to add at this point of time but i must say i am enjoying this blogging experience. It gets me to structure my thoughts which generally are always in a tizzy.

Will edit and add in the night after i return from my Financial Derivatives class. I love that subject :))) Will start reading ' The world is flat' by Thomas Friedman which i believe deals with globalization and its inherent complexities- a subject that really interest me.

So now i have returned from my class and was reading the book in the train. Well till now he has spoken of things that i know of so hopefully it will get more interesting later on. But it definately got me thinking about India's position in the world economy in the next 20 years and beyond. People have taken it for granted that we will continue to prosper since all signs lead to that conclusion. Agreed on that account but the country will find it very difficult to sustain this growth. First and foremost , India has to invest massively in the infrastructure sector. People have enough money to buy a car but no proper road to drive on, enough money for all possible electrical appliances but many cities in the country face the problem of powercuts, enough money for a proper education but hardly enough quality school or colleges and the foremost need is proper infrastuctural planning in the developing cities of the country.

Now the most important thing according to me , is education. India can never be a manufacturing giant like China simply because an average Indian is enamoured by the concept of being a 'learned man' and always has an opinon. Opinions count for zilch in a manufacturing process. Also the average Indian loves to advice and is a problem solver. No one is ever short on advice or opinions in this country. Thus we have the potential of becoming the problem solvers of the world. Currently the IT industry and the BPO industry which is leading the Indian economic boom is doing exactly that. We have a huge pool of educated mass from which these industries extract talent and then cater to the world. So it becomes very important that this pool does not dry up and thus this sector should have a really large investment. The current rate of litracy in the country is 65.38 % . Now this figure looks very impressive when you realise that out of over a billion people almost 700 million + are educated. But then if one observes closely majority of these 700 million + literates are functional literates i.e at best they know how to sign ther names and maybe read the morning newspaper. Though it is commendable that the literacy rate has increased from a mere 18 % in 1951, it is high time the government starts focussing on improving the quality of this education. At the secondary level , more specialised streams should be made available to the public as that will break the traditional craze of engineering and medicine. These sectors are already doing well and will always do well in India. But if we really want to leverage our position we need to postion ourselves as the knowledge economy and infiltrate all streams where the application of pure knowledge and brainpower is necessary. Our strenght lies in our thinking capabilities and also we are more conditioned to stress compared to the western countries. So we need to back our strength.

If the country does not adopt this outlook then we will simply remain in the same way, always labelled as a developing economy and country. Now is our chance to move up the ladder so we better be sure of our footing or we shall come tumbling down

cheers

Halo People

Gore is good, only from the gaming perspective. Thats exactly what i have been indulging in since yesterday. My fingers are sore and i have finished playing HALO, shooting shit loads of aliens. Man.. it is really a stress reliever. After CAT i had no respite and had to get into the groove for IIFT, which was a weird exam. I hate such exams where you really cant say whether you performed well or not . And then to add to a wierd paper, there were some quant answers which did not have the correct option amongst the answer. It is highly irritating when you solve a math prob perfectly only to find that answer option missing and mind you i have rechecked and got it confirmed from many sources.
Another irritating thing, the dumb fuck organisers of the exam did not think it necessary to have seals on the question papers. So this resulted in a situation where people went through the paper 5 minutes before the start. Mind you five minutes in such a exam is all you need for that elusive call. Before someone starts saying Hail Mary, hold on to the vocal cords, i have not described what i meant when i said it was a wierd paper. In english , we were given words and expected to find out where the words originated from - Latin, Greek , Spanish,etc....Also there were perfectly archiac sounding words which made up for the rest of the verbal section. The quant section had a lot of calculus and trigo . DI and RC sections were the only decent ones for me, GK was pure luck. Overall out 185 questions , i ended up attempting 90 in 2 hours. I am hoping my accuracy rate is good.
So once i returned home after giving this exam, i suddenly felt very tired and i knew i had to destress and so decided to take yesterday and today off. From tommorow will be back to the grind , since i really want to perform well in XAT and FMS exams which will be held in January.
Adios

Exam Fever

Tommorow is my IIFT exam..... bring it on i say...

One of those days

There are somedays when you simply know things are not going to go right. You wake up and then long for the day to get over soon . Well today i just had the feeling that things are going to go wrong somehow, though every task i was supposed to do appeared straightforward. So around 11 i sat down thinking of what to write in my SOP for my admission form to FMS. I was in no mood to write it though since everyone bullshits in an SOP and it serves no purpose except testing how flowery your writing style is. Simple straight forward honesty like- "Dude, i need to do a PG . Without it there is no scope in this country. Also i want you to place my ass in some comfortable chair in a multinational company. Thats why i need to get into your college" - just doesnt cut the cake. So there i was staring at a peice of paper with enough space for about 200 words in which i had to describe my career goals and how FMS fits into these plans.

After much pondering i managed to key in 123 words and kept my SOP as straightforward and to the point as possible. I thought that my work was done. All i needed now is an attestation by a Gazzetted officer. Thought i would pay a visit to my neighbourhood Police Station. Afterall they are meant for our protection and service. So i landed up there , form in hand and some money incase i needed to bribe my way through. But the inspector totally refused to sign stating that he could not ascertain whether i was the same person in the photograph and whether my name was the same. I showed him my drivers licence too. But what the heck, he must have thought i am Abu Salem's protege and can forge all possible documents. Even though i have a prominent stubble , i in no way appear dangerous or antisocial. So after amusing himself with my presence for another 10 minutes he told me he could not do anything. So off i went towards the station to find an advocate. But even after an hour of futile searching i could not find any , i seriously think they are a dying breed or rather simply brain dead. So i decided to pay the Post office a visit and the person over there said that the post master will be available after 5 pm and he will attest my form. So with renewed energy i went home and hogged.

So at sharp 5 i landed at the post office where the nice post master was there at his desk. But then quickly realised that he is not authorised to photo- attest as he is not a gazzetted officer. Then he proceeded to explain that only a magistrate, central government employees, school and college principles are gazzetted officers who can attest the bloody form. So now quickly decided to rush to KC college and see if i can get the director of my institute to attest the damn form. So after an uneventful train journey i reached college only to be told that the director could not do it since she is a honorary director. By now i was losing it and had to attend a stupid buisness policy lecture , in which she ended up discussing from pani puri to shantaram the book and also how the poverty line is not defined properly in India. Fuck i say .

So after another hour in the train i reached home from my lecture to hear my mom nagging me about always leaving thing to the end. I made a few calls here and there and finally my friend Ralph managed to find someone near his house who could do the attestation. That guy, known as Babu Mestry, a special executive officer, told me that i could come anytime. So at 10 15 in the night i decided i might as well travel another 15 to 20 kms and get this thing over with. Luckily dad was in a mood for a long drive, so went with him. and finally after soooooo much fight , i managed to get my attestation done and i swear i have not seen anything more beautiful today though the food on my dining table came a close second.

And to add icing to the cake, i have to grapple with trignometry problems late into the night for my forthcoming exams.

cheers

Goal

A paper is set by a human to test another human. How ironic is that, since no human is perfect, nothing can test your skills to the optimal level. So one has to believe in his/her skills and back himself/herself to the tee. Achievement is a summation of numerous small strides made towards the realisation of a goal. The way you define this goal, will indicate how much you achieve in this life. I am just about now realising this goal of mine, though still not able to clearly define it. I believe somewhere in the near future i will exactly realise what this is. To make things clearer, it is not a Kg class student,' I want to be an astronaut , kind of goal." If the particular goal can be achieved then it is a mere step to a greater goal. The satisfaction in achieveing something always lies in the process and not that much in the final result. Thus your goal should drive you for the rest of your life and it is the best way to live a happy , contended life. Too many of us are content to let the external forces dictate our existence and we merely get along with life. I too , as of now , am guilty of that.
In real life, it is very difficult to look at this macro perspective with the present always poking at you and the past haunting you. Often in situations when we are tested, our sub-conscious carries so much baggage of the past that we are never able to perform to our maximum potential. This is where the question of focus arises. With so many distractions that aound in the modern world, it is increasingly getting difficult for a person to focus. This i believe is a humungous problem that people are not realising. Short attention spans really curtail ones potential. The only solution to this lies in the realisation of ones goal in life.
All this is not as simple as it looks as one needs to identify the inherent motivation on which you can identify this goal. This inherent motivation is very elusive and also at the same time the most obvious.

I feel the above post is not conveying exactly what i feel, so i will abandon it as of now ... will edit it later if i can word it better

Rode the Rake

Ahh i travelled by the Millenium Rake today, the new train which the western railway has introduced in Mumbai. Must say the journey was much more comfortable in this train, though the crowd remained the same. The good part of catching a train from Churchgate at peak hours is that, if one learns how to get on the train before it halts at the station then that person is assured of a seat. I have mastered this art form over the past few months. So today i perched my ass on the seat next to the window seat. There are extra fans , an excellent ventillation system and lots of lighting. So even the long, arduous journey has an element of comfort just cause the train is clean and bright. Though the travelling conditions remain the same , with recent research suggesting that even cattle travel in better conditions than humans in a Mumbai local train. The windows coupled with the excellent ventilation system allow a lot more fresh air inside than before. Also there is an annoucement inside the compartment about the approaching station. To someone living abroad , these must be basic hygiene factors but for India this is novelty. The western railway plans to introduce 6 more such trains next year and gradually change its entire fleet in the coming years.
But this change is simply superficial, what Mumbai needs desperately is another transit system. Talks have been going on since time immemorial about sky bus or the metro, but nothing concrete has surfaced. If in another 5 years a new transit system is not introduced people might end up spending upto 4 hours a day just on travelling daily. Already on an average a working citizen of Mumbai must be spending 2 to 2 & 1/2 hours a day travelling. However setting up an alternate system of transit will have to be an engineering miracle. The city has severe resource crunch and land is at a premium. Though i am not an engineer i can envisage one solution that might work. Since both the western and central railways already have so much land occupied and a network across the city , if we have a sky bus service running over the tracks parallel to them and construct another floor above the existing stations then we will automatically double the capacity. Also there will be no need to occupy more land which is already a scarce resource in this city and also no need for evacuations.
So in the end , my journey was nice and comfortable and now i am retiring to my books.
cheers

Just like that

In response to my previous post and my general attitude towards CAT , my girl mailed me and had this to say....

Oh men! when you say you have to compete with yourself and not with the others then it means a lot of things.....a test can never prove your calibre.....i sometimes screw up my exam coz I get bored or irritated ......so when a test cant test ur mettle so why to worry about it......we give a test for getting something we want real badly not to prove ourselves and then show it to whom? people hardly bother about neone.....they will just interfere coz tats the human nature and won't even give a piece of shit what you do later on in ur life coz they will be bitching about someone else......so don't give an ear to neone.....just do everything for yourself......I might sound somewhat scattered with lots of things macronitized in my cerebrum....so be it.......just be strong coz thats what is the purpose of living.....to face what comes at us and then to see how better we just go with it......a situation cranky......fight with it and just mock at it.....are you getting what i wanna say? there is hope always and faith is a word you know so well......

I love you.....and thats one of the best things i can do.....hehe....good luck with what all you are doing

No wonder i love this girl.....

Chewing Gum

Thats what the CAT exam is all about. The exam chews on you as if you are a gum , extracts complete devotion and hardwork and then simply spits one out of the system, swallowing a select few. Well yesterday was D-day and i got spat out. It seems to be more of rejection procedure than a selection procedure. The difficulty level of English took me by surprise and well now will end up with an overall 92 - 93 percentile. When i first got the question paper in my hands and saw that there were only 90 questions, i felt i had a good chance of cracking it . But now thanks to the difficulty level of English ( the toughest ever in CAT history) and DI , forget about cracking, i hardly managed to make a dent.
I dont think i will cross the 95 percentlie mark in English so a call from MICA is highly unlikely, so really will need to crack the XAT english section . Right now i am in the proces of refocussing and getting ready for the IIFT exam.
However , as Albert Einstein once said, "In the midst of distress, lies oppurtunity." The MBA season is far from over and with exams like IIFT, XAT and FMS; i have ample chance to redeem myself.
So, finally, trying to come out of the chewing gum phase....

Me Homer

I am starting to look like Homer Simpson .. what with my belly coming out..and my close association with jaundice... so that lays rest to my dreams of becoming a belly dancer in Ukraine. On a serious note, i really need to do something about my weight. If this continues pretty soon , when i enter a room the first thing a person will see is my belly and then the rest of me will follow and might even get susceptible to breast cancer.....
Hmm just read the first para again and i am certainly in a quirky mood today.. but thinking about it i definately have a wierd sense of humour and can make anything sound perveted when i am in the groove.
will update later

Impasse

Feels like my abilities are stuck in time... i have not seen any improvement in myself for the past 3 to 4 months. i had got hooked on to the CAT fever... but ever since then i have hardly done anything productive or constructive. Just tiding away with time . Flowing with the pace of the world, offering no resistance, makes one feel so mechanical and lifeless. I really want to go round the world and experience things, there is so much to see in this small world of ours that a lifetime is not sufficient. And i feel like i have already wasted 22 years of my life, just going through the everyday rigours of life which everyone is subjected to . I believe this is my core motivation for doing an MBA, so that it opens up an oppurtunity for me to earn enough money and then simply roam the world. Hopefully , another 22 years down the line , i do not find myself as an hot shot top executive caught up in the rigours of making a living that i bury this desire somewhere deep inside me.

But now what can i do to tide over this impasse. i have pretty much a set plan for the next 2 months. i am done preparing for CAT and really do not know what kind of result to expect, so i have stopped expecting anything. I really want to toil hard for the next 2 months and make sure i land up somewhere decent. I know i have enough in me to crack apart any exam i give but still i dont.. because somewhere down the line during my preps there is always something that veers me off my course... this time i really never had the motivation to study Maths . it was more like a survival instinct and i have covered oinly the bare minimum. At this moment i should be brushing up my formulaes, but i really dont find any satisfaction in doing any of that. I had really wanted to work after i had finished my graduation this year and i tried real hard for it, in a span of two months i visited and applied at as many places i could. I wanted to be an Account Planner in a proper sized advertising agency . I know i have the knack for it . But they wont interview me since i am not an MBA. Fucking sweet. I have done my graduation in Mass Media, specialising in Advertising but that surely doesnt count in the market place. The three letters- MBA- seems to have become some sort of a rubber stamp on resumes in India. You have this rubber stamp and your career gets some kind of a thumbs up signal. Now this rubber stamp comes in varying degrees of quality .

Spank me really hard with all the money baby

This rubber stamp is of the foremost quality. If one has this on their resume, then well it means that they really busted their ass studying for an exam and spoke unbelievable levels of fart in their GD / PI sessions. This rubber stamp will ensure that you are never out of a job and you get free meals at least three times a week in conferences.


No one can crap on my face


This is next in the hierarchal ladder of rubber stamps. These guys too work hard for the exams, but do not have the same level of focus and determination as the spankers. So they end up with a rubber stamp that does not have the same level of durability. The two peer groups do not differ much in motivations or aspirations. Thus the spankers and the crapers end up in a symbiotic relationship in an organisation. They too are entitled to free meals and are generally besotted with good job offers should they lose their job.

My mama told me to beep her

The beepers are the mass , they get the rubber stamp simply cause it has those three letters MBA. Durability or the quality of this kind of rubber stamp is nothing to write about. It often ends up as a mere differentiator and these people will have to prove their worth at every step of their career, as their rubber stamp wont carry any extra burden for them. ( this is not to imply that the spankers and crapers do not have to prove themselves on the job. What i am alluding to is the job interview process. In an actual job scenario thankfully everyone has to prove their worth)


Well i had started this post on a totally different note and ended up with something else. Well that is life for you , you start off with certain intentions and midway things take a turn for the unknown. Wonder whether i will be classifed under a spanker, a crapper or a beeper.

Adios

PEP TALK

Howard Whitman said, "Success is no straitjacket. It is no mold into which all must be poured. It is no rigid stamp. It is as individual as our fingerprints or the look in our eyes. All we need is the courage to be - and realize - ourselves." What a truly powerful reminder that thought is of how important each one of us is in the universe.

With the competitiveness that we all deal with every day in our fast-paced society, it is too easy to feel inferior when you compare yourself with someone else. Yet the truth of the matter is that we should never compare ourselves with other people. The only person you should be competing with is yourself. Do YOU feel fulfilled? Do YOU feel successful? Do YOU enjoy your life no matter how much money you have or don't have?

Life tends to be a series of moving two steps forward and one step back. There will always be challenges to face no matter what stage of your life you are experiencing right now.

"Success in life comes not from holding a good hand but in playing a poor hand well."

When you allow yourself to think of the thirty-five tasks you have to do instead of focusing on just one, you simply cannot get anything done. Your mind is
like a mirror ball going in a hundred different directions except for in the direction you want and need it to go. This is when you need to stop and mentally make a firm choice to just focus on one thing at a time

Stop beating yourself up for the past. No matter how painful it was or how poor of a decision you made, if you do not let go of it your life will be in the bondage of unnecessary emotional baggage. Everyone has made mistakes, some more severe than others, but learn from the mistakes and move on. However, it is important that you do not casually shrug off your indiscretions as meaningless. Realize what was not right so you can correct it in the future along with helping others to avoid
the same mistakes.

Forthcoming Feline Encounter

The gruelling MBA admission season is about to start this Sunday. As always it is the most dreaded of all MBA entrance exam CAT flagging off the proceedings. If i take stock of my situation now .. then i feel i will perform well in English and Data Intepretation but Quant is where the chances are i might flounder. But with about 2 days left, it really does not bother me.. somehow have this feeling that i will perform well and will back myself till the last minute in the examination. Whenever one gives such a competitive exam , one needs the necessary emotional support to get that confidence flowing and i have been lucky in that regard.
My only focus these days is not to get worked up and treat it like any other normal exam and not to succumb to the hype created about it in the media. I hope the exam goes smoothly since the next sunday i have my IIFT exam. Hopefully wil crack one of the varied admissions tests i am giving this year..
so long

Something Stupid

Thats what i want to do .. something really stupid .. and one may wonder why. I guess it is my way of protesting against the Rat race that life often boils down to. Do something stupid and not conform to the perfection expected of me. But will i manage to do that without a remorse... i really doubt it . So there lies the dichotomy ... this is exactly how i am .. always caught up between two worlds.. and can fit perfectly in either of the two worlds but cannot decide where i exactly belong . So in the end i eventually settle for the alternative that puts my mind at ease. This is precisely the reason i have started this blog... to write about issues that plague my mind , get it off my mind and achieve Ataraxis