The Chronicles of a Happy Life

I installed Quake 3 on my PC yesterday night. The first time I played, I just about managed to win in hardcore with Major, Sorlag and Doom in DM17, but after a couple of games, I was back to my old self. I suppose this is one of the things one can’t just forget. I can’t describe the pleasure of fragging Major Hardcore with an air-to-air rocket!

Watched a movie - Lucky Number Slevin. It’s slick and has these delightful little unpredictable twists that are getting so rare these days (this probably has to do with the fact that I’ve watched a lot of movies in iiit).

There’s an interesting video resume of a guy who wants to join an ibank… Dealbreaker did an article on it called ‘How not to apply for an ibank job’ :D

Kya Mujhe Pyaar Hai… from the movie Woh Lamhe, by KK. I love it so much that I’ve been playing it in a loop almost the entire time the PC has been on, which in turn is almost the entire time I’ve been in my room.

Watched Omkara. nice movie. What is it about Ajay Devgan that makes him so fundoo as a ganster? I just loved his role in Company and now in Omkara.

Got quite a few of my midterm marks. I’ve made lots of stupid mistakes and strangely quite a few people here simply don’t make them. That’s the bad part. The good part is that I’m hoping that by the time I’m through with this place (rather, this place is through with me), I’ll be able to be consistently fast and accurate under high pressure situations.

We got our HRM mid-term marks yesterday - it was actually more of a strategy paper. I had always thought that I was good at that. My marks are below class average. Today we got our OM marks. I love that subject. It’s got the exact mix of soft stuff and hard math to interest and excite me. My marks are barely above average. I’m doing better in the other subjects and anyway, marks have lost their sting. I’ve seriously started to look at them objectively as indicators that tell me how well I’m doing instead of having some intrinisic value. But, OM still hurts. It’s been less than an hour since the papers were distributed. I should be back to normal after a while.

I’m starting to like ID. I’m still half scared of it because in almost every class, we are asked to take a psychometric test and I worry that one of them will reveal that I’m only a phony and not a very good manager. So far, that has not happened. But anyway, I like it because I think I’m understanding myself and the world a lot better because of this course. Also, I took this Myers-Briggs test. I don’t think I should reveal the results here - they are way too accurate.

Went on the 2nd IIIT-IIM treat in history :D It was fun. Thank you Vipul (I cannot bring myself to call him by his dorm-name!)

I’ve been listening to songs by Dido a lot lately, esp videos ;) Heard my first Dido song only a couple of days ago. Here are its lyrics:

“White Flag”

I know you think that I shouldn’t still love you,
Or tell you that.
But if I didn’t say it, well I’d still have felt it
where’s the sense in that?

I promise I’m not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were

I will go down with this ship
And I won’t put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I’m in love and always will be

I know I left too much mess and
destruction to come back again
And I caused nothing but trouble
I understand if you can’t talk to me again
And if you live by the rules of “it’s over”
then I’m sure that that makes sense

I will go down with this ship
And I won’t put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I’m in love and always will be

And when we meet
Which I’m sure we will
All that was there
Will be there still
I’ll let it pass
And hold my tongue
And you will think
That I’ve moved on….

I will go down with this ship
And I won’t put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I’m in love and always will be

I will go down with this ship
And I won’t put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I’m in love and always will be

I will go down with this ship
And I won’t put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I’m in love and always will be

Watched it on the big screen at IMAX, quite a few days ago. I was a little disappointed with the first few minutes as I had expected something more of a visual spectacle from a project which the Wachowski brothers (of Matrix fame) were associated with. On the other hand, the IMAX theatre is a very good one, I was watching this movie with good friends, the one next to me had a big cone of popcorn which he willingly shared and most significantly, I wasn't spending a paisa (thanks to Meta, Bhaggo and Ghanna for the treat). So a little while into the movie, I was pretty satisfied with life in general (though not so much with what was going on, on the screen).

Then, the fundas started. The movie that had begun to resemble a Mithun-da-fillum with extra special effects (the hero armed with nothing but knives and karate stunts takes out a groups of people armed with machine guns), quickly started becoming deep. It was about 911. It was about the religious intolerance, especially against Muslims, prevalent today in Europe. It was about George W. Bush. I realized that the movie could actually be about justifying terrorism. The man behind the mask could've been Osama Bin Laden or even Bhagat Singh. And, I definitely got the feeling that I was supposed to to root for the terrorist instead of the brave detectives who were trying to save people's lives.

The story was not very interesting - the plot wasn't fleshy enough to justify the full year it was supposed to stretch over. Natalie Portman's role was completely insignificant. They shaved her head! (I don't know why the Wachowski brothers do that to women in their movies, remember Trinity?). The movie ended very predictably too - with big bomb blasts and that slight ambiguity (who was the protoganist really? and did he really die?) which is necessary if the director is smart and greedy enough to plan for a sequel or more.

So overall this was a just OK movie. Sometimes, I think that nothing in this world is absolutely right or absolutely wrong - everything is right or wrong relative to somebody, Generally, we mistake rightness only relative to society (approximately the legal system) and/or stuff that we were told as children (approximately the religious and cultural belief system) and I like to think that this movie expressed this. But blowing up the parliament as a victorious ending and expecting the audience to applaud is just too much. no?

Some dialogues were pretty cool. You can check them out here. Btw, IMDB has given it a 8+ rating so apparently the movie people do know more about their business than I do.

Shiben recently wrote a fundoo story. Like all of Shiben’s previous creations (rmr the list where he compared me to Ambani and the MSBR essay?) it was whacky with a subtle message… more than a subtle influence of South Park :D and it was clear that he had put a lot of hard work into it. As far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t mind not using my arms and legs for a long time (but I would still like to have them around only for the sake of aesthetics). IIIT’s no computer’s day be damned.

I only disliked the part where he has knocked girls. It’s clearly there for no reason other than playing to the gallery. It would’ve made absolutely no difference to the story had he removed that part. I agree that girls here get a lot of advantages including attached bathrooms, free attendance in the Dean’s classes (”Are all the girls present?” “Yes Sir” No counting… No leg-pulling… Nothing!), better grades (Fine Arts is only the tip of the iceberg), etc. but all this is only the trailer for real life - even in top management schools, girls have a better shot at getting placed in i-banks, consulting companies because they want to have a healthy sex-ratio in their employees. We guys just have to learn to live with it and work extra hard.

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.

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.

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.

Decent acting. Nice story. Awesome background music! (especially the nomad scene one). I saw this movie without checking out the rating on imdb and thank God for that! It deserves much better than the measly 6.0 given to it. I guess that’s because it was unfairly compared to the original. And flipping through photos for the epilogue was a nice touch.

Quote from the movie:
Liddle: I think men only need one thing in life… someone to love. If you can’t give them that, then give them something to hope for. And if you can’t give them that, just give them something to do.

Links of the day:
Samorost: A cool online game You’ll atleast like the graphics.
musical resume
Do you have a dirty mind?
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/
Evolution of a Programmer

Memorable Quotes

“In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. Its an aggressive, even a hostile act.” - Joan Didion.

“If you don’t fail at least 90 percent of the time, you’re not aiming high enough.” - Alan Kay

“Why would you say thighs to a man who has an interview?” - Jeff (Coupling)

I just finished watching two of the weirdest movies ever made - Eyes Wide Shut and Being John Malkovich.

EWS is just a porno, with zero fundas. It is the kind of movie for which people use phrases like ‘visually astounding’ and ‘hilarious and tragic at the same time’ when they actually mean that they didn’t understand the point of it and were just plain excited by some eye-candy (in this case, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise). I don’t really understand them. I felt the same way about Full Metal Jacket, another movie by the same director - Stanley Kubrick. It raised a few genuine issues but didn’t entertain. That movie didn’t even have eye-candy! A total waste of time. Watch these movies, but don’t expect to be entertained.

BJM is also pretty weird, but I like the story. I like the idea of being able to walk into someone’s head see what (s)he sees and feel what (s)he feels. Maybe one day, with the rapid strides being made in understanding how the human brain works and in integrating the human brain with computers, it would be possible to download oneself into another body. People could offer themselves or some animals on rent for downloading for short periods of time. The experience would be something truly unimaginable.