The Chronicles of a Happy Life

Twice today, I expected my friends to let me down but they pulled through. Agreed, that the issues under consideration were small, but they made me realize how skewed my thinking has become. A term of Human Resources Management (HRM) classes taught me that every individual has some ‘interests’ and some ‘powers’ and one can get them to work only by appealing to their self interest or by using one’s power over them. Three Organizational Behavior (OB) courses preached that that there’s ‘politics’ everywhere and that asking someone to do something just because it’s ‘good’ or ‘part of one’s duty’ is just about the most naïve thing one can do. Economics did its small (since I had studied most of it before) part in destroying the little ‘naivety’ I had left.

I learned from my peers too. In my study group, I have a Mr. Optimism who sees sunshine everywhere he looks and a Mr. Cynic who sees an ulterior motive in even a baby’s prattle. (Who says IIMA lacks diversity? :D) In the beginning, I thought I was Mr. Rational who would stay midway between the two. Alas, I’ve been converted to the dark side. This has certainly had its advantages. I got some work done which wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Most of all, cynicism combined with rationality have helped me have a better understanding of things around me. I now know why some people lose elections and some people win them and why everybody says the RGgiri¹ is bad but many people still do it. When most people get disheartened, betrayed and angry at some things, I can coolly move past those same things without a second thought. A close friend recently remarked that he had never seen me angry. He should have seen me when I was in school!

For the disadvantages, I don’t need to look too far. A very close friend is ‘putting fight’ for getting a girl he likes. The girl also likes him. Unfortunately, both of them are highly cynical people and full of suspicion over each other’s motives. Their ‘relationship’ drags on, lifeless.

As the song goes, “Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.” I think I need to visit North California, sometime soon.

[1] RG stands for relative grading and RGgiri represents the short-term view that one is better off via one-upmanship. I think that it’s not only short-term but also stupid because when competition is against hundreds, refusing to help a few is only counterproductive. Alas, it still goes on.

[2] After two terms of Written Analysis and Communication (WAC), I use endnotes now :)

When I started this blog, I was most impressed by blogs of mythalez and smr and I guess that’s why unconsciously, I aped their styles. Then gradually as I read more blogs and started getting impressed by them too… the style changed to something more ‘casual’ (no word really fits - I sort of wrote more from the point of view of creating an archive than for producing reading material for other people).

Slowly, came the realization that people did read my blog and some of the stuff I wrote did affect people - won’t mention instances here, a lot of them are still sensitive issues to the people concerned and most of the relevant posts have anyway been deleted / modified. I decided to adopt the thumb-rule that I wouldn’t write anything that I would be too embarassed to shout out to a friend on the opposite side of a room full of strangers. (I think I read this in some site, forgotten where) I’ve also never had the journalistic instinct of ’saying like it is’ and ‘reporting nothing but the truth and the entire truth’ that some bloggers have, so I’ve never minded not posting stuff that I normally would have posted.

Over some more time, probably because of solving all those CAT papers - my writing become more curt and memo-like… which was good for archiving purposes, but probably not too good for reading… Now, I feel that my ideal in terms of writing style would be something like Doug Coupland. I read his book - Microserfs and just loved his style. If I ever write a book, it would be something like that. Logical, precise and yet completely arbit at times.

My dorm has become a very scary place these days. Not because of the hazaar lizards, handful of kittens (actually they remind me of someone so I like them eventhough most people here hate them) and the assortment of insects - but simply because of the mugguness in the atmosphere. There’s a guy in my dorm whom I shall call G who I’m really worried about. He almost never laughs and only rarely can one make him smile. His voice has become so soft that it takes a lot of effort to make out what he’s saying. In contrast, my time with my study group is totally chilled. I really enjoy the time I spend with them, but off late even they’ve become a little edgy with all those project submissions we had recently.

Actually, because the seniors are not here (they’ve gone for their term break), the entire campus has a very ‘muggu’ atmosphere. There’s noone blaring rock music at 2 in the morning and there’s noone posting arbit stuff on the dorm nb (we have a software called dbabble that has electronic nbs. Each dorm has its own nb. Btw, nb = noticeboard). They’re coming back tommorrow. Hope the atmosphere goes back to normal soon.

The good people of Mumbai, I’m going to be there from 15th to 20th September. Lets try to meet up.

Rama (not Lord Rama, my friend Rama/d0d0/mythalez) once observed that people like us usually blog only when they have lots of work to do. I think I blog only when the work I have lies between a narrow zone between minimum work levels and maximum work levels. Too little work and there is just no motivation to blog. Too much work, and there is just no time to blog. Having or not having stuff to blog about is completely irrelevant.

Thanks to Dr. Kamal (my fyp guide), my work-level is now in this 'divine-blog-zone'. I'm in Hyderabad now working on the fyp. A long time ago, somebody I know drew a graph of the high and low points of my career uptill then. The high peaks were 'getting As in tough comp sci subjects' (hey, this was his judgement, not mine) and the lowest point was that moment when I was writing php scripts to fetch and display data from a database. Right now is a fine Sunday morning, a few days before I join the best management institute on the planet (I'm sure that every single one of my future classmates is having the time of his/her life right now) and I'm working on making the design documents for my software, which serve absolutely no purpose but still have to be made for bureaucratic reasons. So, people, if in the future, I ever groan about how pathetic my work is, feel free to remind me of this lowest point :(

Things people expect me to blog about:

1. I converted all my 6 IIM calls. I'm joining A because: (i) My Dad graduated from that very institute 26 years ago. (ii) It has the biggest brand according to most popular literature (India Today/ Businessworld) on the subject (iii) There is really no correct way to rank A, B or C (junta interested in advantages and disadavantages of each can refer to pagalguy) which make reasons (i) and (ii) enough to justify my decision.
2. A lot of my friends are gone. I miss them a lot.
3. This was my longest summer vacation in three years, but I feel sad that I spent too little time in Mumbai. On the brighter side, I felt great after meeting lots of friends after many years. Way too many of them are going to the US :( God knows when we'll meet again.

Things I wanted to blog about but then didn't:

1. Catch-22, the best book I've ever read in my entire life - I wish I had read it before this guy.
2. How people change! I met this old-school-friend who I remembered as the least hard-working person on the planet. And today, he works 14 hours a day, 6 days a week, _standing_, as a worker in a small manufacturing company. On Sundays, he works at his Dad's company learning the business from him. His dad will let him take over the family business only after he knows everything about it from top to bottom.
3. Several random deep observations about life - Nature designed a very buggy data storage and retrieval system :(
4. Bitch about how there is no blogger-like plugin so that I can directly post to wordpress from Microsoft Word.
5. On wriitng - TheSophist already put it better than I could ever have - "Writing's like penance - a very introverted activity, cleansing, cathartic, embracing lucidity. Honoring images with words can be fullfilling; it can also be frustrating if the translation isn't faithful, and the contrast between the picture in one's head and the one painted by one's words is there for one's sensibilities to wince at. But I suppose it is enough in most instances that the picture is remembered."

I woke up today morning at around 8. I usually go to breakfast after washing.. but the newspaperwala hadn’t arrived yet and eating breakfast without ET is so.. I-dont-know-what.

So, I settiled down to read a book I had started reading long ago but couldn’t manage to find the time to finish it. Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland is an amazing book. It’s about this group of programmers who quit Microsoft to work on a startup in Silicon Valley in the 90s. The cool part is that this book is written exactly like a blog (Weird fact 1: A few days ago, Shiben said on the mess table that I was a blog geek and everybody agreed) - Each chapter title is the Day / Date. Dan (the character narrating the story) his friends, memorable / arbit experiences, falling in love (not in a gooey way. Oh, btw check out this link.) and also techie-thoughts… For example, there is this character, Michael who says, “We’ve reached a critical mass point where the amount of memory we have externalized in books and databases (to name but a few sources) now exceeds the amount of memory contained within our collective biological bodies. In other words, there is more memory ‘out there’ than exists inside ‘all of us’. We’ve peripheralized our essence. Given this new situation, the presumption of the existence of the notion of ‘history’ becomes not necessarily dead but somewhat beside the point. Access to memory replaces historical knowledge as a way for our species to process its past. Memory has replaced history - and this is not bad news. On the contrarym it is excellent news because it means we’re no longer doomed to repeat our mistakes; we can edit ourselves as we go along, like an on-screen document…”

A few days ago, in some restaurant, we were having this discussion on whether the Matrix was real or not and Nappy said that he thinks that the Matrix exists because he thinks there are only a few true originals of people units and everybody else are just copies. True… in a non-scary sort of way. I didn’t agree with him then.. but yesterday, I told him how I understood that he was such a big fan of Abhinav because both of them are practically the same people - same homecity, same type of humor, same ideas on love, same experiences with love (I guess!), same ideas on work-life balance, same performance in college, same attitude towards comp sc, the same drive for iims.. Even their experiences with campus placements are the same!

A few people ask me for advice these days.. and I feel so inadequate giving it. I mean, there is no universal pre-requisite to success.. at anything, anywhere. I cannot tell them to get a good CGPA (there are so many examples of people who’ve done well - good b-school / us univ / job without having a good CGPA. I cannot tell them to focus on only one thing at a time - I feel Su is the best example of doing everything, extra-curriculars, hanging out with friends, working on his project (he must have done sth to get Dr. Sangal to give him such a good reco), preparing for gre, cat, job.. and he’s succeeded in everything too - good us univ, good job.. CAT mein chot ho gayi.. but that was just chance. I can’t even tell them to plan ahead - I’m sure Mux didn’t think he’ll be going to an IIM and all his previous ‘chot’s will not matter at all! Any advice on how to give advice?

Another thing.. I realized that spending too much time reading great blogs can actually be demoralizing and demotivating to write a post - because you feel you will never be able to measure up to their level. So, from now on, I’ll first post and only then check out bloglines. Shiben was right. I am a blog geek.

1. Reading about the ‘25 most important days in the history of the Indian republic’. (covery story in ‘The Week’)
2. Being given the topic - ‘The ten most important days in the history of the Indian Republic’ for a GD at CL yesterday.
3. Doing well at 2 because of 1 :)
4. Enjoying a full-day holiday. (Did you know that it’s illegal for educational institutions to remain open on this day for any reason other flag-hoisting)
5. Catching up on reading blogs because of 4.
6. Listening to a really good song after a long time. I just love songs with fundas.

Unpatriotic? What do they expect us to do? Hoist the flag? What’s the point?

1. This blog turned one year old.
2. After my first mock interview, I was told that I need a really strong answer for ‘Why MBA?’ since I’m giving up a 6L job at a great company.
3. I realized that I’m not really convinced that I should do an MBA now.
4. Musa and Patel gave a treat at Gufaa. The best ambience, ever!
5. Lots of congress delegates have come from all over the country to pee in our campus.
6. The Dean’s Merit List Party happened and I missed the fried fish. I’ve the highest regard for my professors’ choice of reading material (the books are not at all bad in a literary sense. One could carry them on one’s arm at a literary critic banquet without being the slightest bit embarassed) and I’m thankful to them for organizing this event when they needn’t have done it, but I’ve absolutely no use for a fifth Gitanjali or books like ‘500 great personalities’. Give me cash.
7. Went to CDAC today. Almost starved to death, thanks to the dedication of DVD.
8. I’ve found that I think in bulleted points - not paragraphs or poetry as I think most people do!
9. No, that still does not give me the answer. No.

Links:

A very nice photo blog
An idea I liked
Open source Introduction to micro-economics

I’m too bored. It’s not that I don’t have anything to do. It’s just that I seem to have no interest in doing anything. These days, I can’t do one thing for any period of time longer than 15 minutes. I turn on a movie and then pause it, so that I can read somebody’s blog for sometime. Then, I stop doing that so that I can chat with a friend. Then, I suddenly feel like blogging myself. I keep arguing with myself on whether or not it makes sense to post something for the whole world to see and whether or not it is any good, until I give up and unpause the movie only to restart the whole cycle after a while. I alternately feel lonely and crowded (can you suggest another word?). Sometimes I wonder if I’m supposed to be somewhere else, like in a different universe. Sometimes I wonder what race it is, that I’m running. Why I’m in it. What I’m running away from and running towards. Maybe, this is what they call existential angst. Maybe, I just need to play Quake 3. Will go do that now. Blogging really helps :D

Landing my first job.
Being called a ‘bada aadmi’ / CEO by friends, especially when they are ‘bade aadmi’ themselves.
Hearing my parents’ voices light up when I tell them I’m coming home for an unscheduled vacation.
An unscheduled vacation.
Sipping ‘Cool Blue’ in CCD, chatting away for hours with old friends.
Having a large family get-together after years.
Having cousins who pooled in their year’s pocket money savings to buy me a birthday gift.
Being fussed over by a mother, 2 aunts and a grandmother.
Getting a perfect BLACKI.
Finding out that my friends have gotten a lot of IIM calls too.
Calling up a very old friend who I hadn’t spoken to in years, to wish him a Happy Birthday.
Being called up by a very old friend (different guy) who I hadn’t spoken to in years, for being wished a Happy Birthday.
Having several people who I don’t even know, say to me - “So you are Sagar Rastogi, I’ve heard so much about you”.

Touch wood.

Witty writing style. Populated by amazing characters - from real life. A very interesting subject (It’s about the life of a bond salesman on Wall Street). Overall, a very good read. Here’s the link.

I’ve been wanting to read this book since a long time, because until now, I had absolutely no information at all about the life of an investment banker which is the ‘dream’ career for an MBA. Hopefully(?) sometime soon, I’ll have to decide between a career in the IT industry and an MBA. Why finance? Well AFAIK, MBA gives you the opportunity to work in the areas of marketing, HR, strategy, systems, consulting and finance. Since, I’m not a born salesman (as some people supposedly are) and I don’t like travelling a lot, marketing is out. Jack Welch says that a good HR person should be a mix of a pastor and a parent - I’m not even remotely close to either! Plus, HR doesn’t pay very well. So that is out too. I don’t want to do strategy because I don’t want a back-office job - I need to be in a place where my performance directly affects the bottom-line and hence can be easily measured (and then adequately rewarded :D). Systems doesn’t make sense. AFAIK, in most good IT companies, an MBA is not necessary even in the top management. And in other companies, I don’t want to be some back-office flunky whose job is the first to go in times of recession. Joining consulting as a fresher implies doing a lot of grunt (read low-brain, clerical) work which sucks. Here again, one’s performance doesn’t directly affect the bottom-line. So that leaves finance. Not only does this pay the most, but also in this field, your performance directly affects the bottom-line. You are closest to it, you practically draw the line yourself! Also, I think I’ll be a good fit for it since I have strong analytical skills and ability to work hard. I sometimes also think I’ve a special money sense - I grasp money-related stuff quicker and better than most people I know. Of course, finance does have its downsides. People in finance are busier than those in any other industry. Even this is somewhat of a plus point for me. Give me a job that I enjoy and that pays well, and I won’t mind working day and night for it. Strangely (almost never does anything have everything going for it), there is also a lot of independence in this business. A 26-year-old hotshot in an investment banking company has full control over billions of dollars - he can put it wherever he pleases. Just think of all that money and power!

Of course, all this talk is moot if I don’t get into a good B-school. If I don’t get in now, I’ll just drop all aspirations of MBA (unless I hate my job or sth) and try to build a career in the IT industry. Let’s see what happens. Any advice would be most welcome.

..when as soon as he wants to blog about something, he discovers that somebody else has already blogged about it. I wanted to write posts about Soft skills, the pre-placement talks and bitch about the placement date and each time, Khurana got there before me.

Then, I thought that I’ll write a general post about life in general - a post titled ‘stuff‘ or one titled ‘things that make my day‘… Nah! no can do - the links work, don’t they? Sid beat me to the punch both times.

I discovered that I can’t even talk about the weather and still feel original!

I could write about the book that I’m reading. But, Selective Memory by Shobha De is something so indescribable (given the constraints of space and time) that I don’t even want to attempt it. All I can say is that she really seems like a person that I would like to have know personally.

Now, you are probably thinking that I should write a post about not finding the time to write a decent post with the pressures of CAT, FYP and placement prep. At least that will be original, you smugly suggest. Nope, no-can-do. CoolCat (I don’t like the name that she calls herself nowadays) already did that.

Oh and before you suggest me to write a post about being confused about the future, check out Ranjith’s blog.

I give up. So that’s all for now and guys (again as Rao has already said) gl and hf for the placements and CAT.