Parents
When we are children, we want to be just like our parents.
When we are teenagers, we become over-conscious to their slightest flaws and want to have nothing to do with them
When we grow up, we end up just like them.
Links
Why firefox eats so much memory?
The Evolution of Software Development - nice pic :)
History of Computer Science
10 reasons to buy Windows Vista
Multi-Touch Interaction Research
The history of kissing
Some cool cartoons on the Danish cartoon controversy
Firefox extension for gmail space
Being Twenty-Something…
(copied from here)
They call it the “Quarter-life Crisis.” It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn’t know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.
You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don’t recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren’t really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.
You look at your job… and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn’t. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward. You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you know that you aren’t a bad person.
One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself… and while winning the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender!
What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out. Send this to your twenty something friends…. maybe it will help someone feel like they aren’t alone in their state of confusion…..
GOOD LUCK TO ALL OF US :)
- Brenda Della Casa
A post from Bangalore…
Arrived at the city of boiled beans early in the morning today. The AC bus ride was much better than I expected. It would’ve been even better if it would have been possible to switch off the speakers. I was forced to listen to Telugu/Kannada garbage at night and the stupid ‘Good Morning Bangalore’ programme in the morning. The RJ, Basanti was practically stammering - apparently, she was trying to speak very fast to be cool but was failing miserably.
Racism in India against Indians
Bhago has written about how Indians were being discriminated against on their own soil! I did some googling and came across this site which had this to say:
“Having moved, we were now situated near the tourist cop, and what ensued really bothered me. He was preventing Indians from moving North past an arbitrary line in the sand. The locals, mostly groups of fully-clothed, pervy looking men, just sat at the line, gazing into the “white” section of the beach. One kid even had a pair of binoculars. I went over to ask the cop about it, and he said that the locals aren’t allowed past that spot because there have been problems with white women getting harrassed, and sometimes even groped, by the locals here. I was left with a funny feeling, after all, is self-imposed racism a tolerable facet of modern society when that racism serves to better improve the lives of those locals through the tourist economy?”
Power of diversity (Another extract from the same site)
“…This may explain why Indians are so mellow: the Muslims slaughter cows in the face of Hindus, then the Christians eat pork, which would ordinarily piss off both the Muslims and Hindus. Of course, the Hindu boys hold hands, which flies in the face of Christian homophobia. And the Jews just sit back and throw their hands in the air!! See, Indians have to be laid-back, otherwise they’d blow each other away in minutes. Its the ultimate testament to the power of diversity…”
Links
On Gandhian self sufficiency
Yet another site relating to startups
The Harvard Business Review List - Breakthrough Ideas for 2006
The Kozhikode Experience
GD - Very peaceful. We were given an article on Sting Journalism. It was 8-10 minutes and everybody got a chance to speak. I would give myself a 9/10 for GD.
Interview - Longer than I expected. The people before me had 10 minute long interviews. When I came out of the interview hall, people waiting outside told me that I had been in there for 40 minutes! They asked about my final year project for a while. Then we started talking about globalization. They kept bringing out factual info (that I hadn’t heard of and apparently neither has google!) to prove that globalization was actually bad. We also discussed the effects of corruption, direct and indirect subsidies, etc. I stuck to my guns throughout, trying to prove that in the long run, globalization was good eventhough it had some short-term negative consequences. I think I should have mentioned IT, BPO and some more good effects of globalization for India instead of going on the defensive. :(
Then we discussed applications of IT in the real world. They asked me to tell them the difference between a PDA and a Simputer. I gave some answer, but they were not satisfied. Then, we talked for a while about ITC’s e-choupal initiative and e-governance. Here again, they brought up examples of how IT was entirely useless without adequate infrastructure like roads, etc. and again, I maintained that IT was good even though roads were more important now. It wasn’t a stress interview as they didn’t cut me off and were very polite. They called me idealistic as I stood up to leave. I must have looked dejected because they immediately added, “…but it’s good.”
No questions on acads or on ‘Why MBA’. They didn’t even ask me to introduce myself. I guess that makes sense since all these questions were in the form anyway. One panelist asked most of the questions while the other browsed through my file.
I would give myself a 7/10 for PI.
Overspeeding on the highway…
Boot Camp @ Nagarjuna Sagar
CL arranged a trip for all its PDP (Personality Development Programme - basically, GD/PI prep) students with IIM calls to Nagarjuna Sagar. The resort, Punnami resorts was simply amazing. The AC/TV equipped rooms were simply amazing and a pleasant surprise (I’d been expecting a poorly-lighted dorm!). I knew that such royal treatment would be routine after an IIM education - but before?!
We had a lot of fun and also learnt a lot. They showed us a video about IIMA (the video was meant for recruiters) - and one dialogue stuck in my mind - “Students from IIMA are expected to behave in no different a manner than people from royal families. They are supposed to take initiative, aim high and achieve their goals and there’s no stopping them.” I’m really inspired.
Felicity
Won third prize in IT quiz. I was overjoyed as Satvik’s team came fourth >:-). There’s nothing I like better than defeating a worthy adversary :-D
Also, won third prize in BizUnderstanding. I was heartbroken as there’s nothing worse than doing badly at something that you thought you were good at :-(
Mr and Miss Felicity was good. I esp liked the ‘bad dog, mad dog’ song. Contrary to some people, I really think Himanshu Agarwal deserved to win. I agree that all the answers in the ‘question round’ were ‘world peace’ answers but his answers were simply better.
The best browser
Using opera is so cool. It’s quick to open. There’s the easiest possible shortcut for increasing the text-size (+) and there’s even one for increasing it in large jumps (C^+). It also eats up lesser RAM than Firefox. And importing bookmarks from Firefox into Opera is so easy…
Open FireFox -> Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks -> File -> Export -> Save (as html).
Open Opera -> File -> Import and Export -> Import Netscape/Firefox Bookmarks.
I just realized that some of my earliest blog posts were on finding a good browser. I feel so stupid for using firefox for an entire year X-( Btw, all my blogger posts have been successfully imported to wordpress. Thanks, Pati. Also, now that I copied and pasted this text from notepad onto wordpress editor - the wordpress editor looks primitive. Opera is also not perfect :-(
GD/PI prep
I really need to build content. And I need to get at least a basic understanding of _primitive_ sports like cricket, olymics, etc. And I hate keeping abreast of current events unrelated to business and technology - like reading about two brothers who’re fighting, again! There are also several subjects that I need to brush up study (why did I take up Project Management?!!) before I go in for the interview.
At least, I’m happy that I’m ok with the introspection questions - One tough question was, “Why MBA?”. I did a lot of soul searching to zoom in on my answer, “blah blah tech consultant blah blah”. As for the other tough question, “What are your chief weaknesses?”, friends and family quickly rose to the ocassion. My mom gave me _five_ major weaknesses in a flash - she didn’t even have to think for a second :-|
Fate?
Ever come across a person, or heard about one that you think could’ve been you had just a few things in your life turned out differently? Last night, I was cleaning out my ‘Bookmark’ archives and stumbled onto Ashish Kumar’s blog. Check out his profile:
IITK, B.Tech, CSE -> Microsoft, Redmond -> Entreprenuer, Tekriti
Tekriti has one product so far: TekUnity a solution for managing a housing society (corny? I know!). They also provide services - outsourcing and product development.
Cool Links
Make money by selling companies, not products!
Find music that you’ll like. (It didn’t work for me - I disliked two out of every three songs their engine recommended, but I think it was a nifty idea)
Bill, watch your back!
New Google Desktop grabs more of MS’ turf
Google Sidebar
Google launches operations in India
Help Wanted
Does anybody know how to make sure that smiley’s remain in ASCII form? The pic-form completely distorts the text, esp for someone like me, who uses them extensively.
SOLVED: There is a checkbox in ‘Writing Options’.
Also, is there a way I can get a paragraph format (the first sentence is indented to the left for each para) in wordpress?
The pros and cons of a ‘post-work-ex’ MBA
I’m now convinced that I want to do an MBA asap. I’ve done a bit of research and talked to a lot of people, including a director of a reputed foreign university and come to the conclusion that though B-schools want people to have some work experience before doing an MBA so that they can relate better with what they are taught (there is some truth in that, the ‘work-ex students’ do not get any significant advantage over their fresher peers. First, during placements, they need to prove that their experience is relevant to the position they are applying to and this is rarely the case. Second, they’ve already wasted a few years of their life doing not-so-good (if it was so good, why do an MBA?) work at low (compared to their post-MBA salaries) pay. Third, even if the ‘work-ex’ is relevant lateral placements are not that high up the corporate ladder anyway - it’s very much possible for a fresher with an MBA to reach there in lesser time. Fourth, (this related only to foreign MBAs), the cost is high and placements are not as simple as here in India. There, companies expect you to negotiate for your salaries on your own and it’s easy to get suckered into a low-paying job.
Of course, there are significant pros for doing an MBA after work-ex too. One of them is that after work-ex, the doors of foreign MBAs open wide for you. There are various advantages of a foreign MBA: 1) you can get a high-paying dollar job (possible, but not 100% guaranteed in an Indian B-school) and 2) The education will be much better (no offence to my potential future profs at the IIMs but this is just what the world-wide perception is). Even the IIMs don’t rank very high in the world-rankings. However, that is probably because they don’t do much research and the salaries are lesser in dollar terms.
So to conclude, I think that getting work-ex first makes sense only if 1) You couldn’t crack CAT the first time 2) you are certain of where you want to go and you’ve got a job that is a useful stepping stone to achive that goal. (I’m pretty certain that I want to get into Tech consulting and a programmer job would be a lot of fun, but it would be a detour from where I really want to go) 3) You can afford enough money to do an MNA abroad (working for a while and then doing an MBA from India is asinine, IMHO).
Related links
Salary Statistics at Harvard Business School
Placement Statistics at IIMA - Note that 70 (out of 249) students were placed overseas with salaries comparable to their foreign counterparts.
The Matrix becoming a reality?
I just read Imagining the Google future (thanx, Slashdot). This is a set of four different future scenarios for Google. The Ray Kurzweil one is shocking - his scenario is cheekily titled: ‘(Circa 2105): Google is God’. What is even more shocking is that it’s difficult not to believe him. Read his books - The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence for more information.
