A Hero's Story

Warning: All characters in the following blog are fictitious; any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental or it may be the gift of the writer to make fiction sound so true J. Wherever I have felt some comments are necessary, its written with a different format within brackets

Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away from earth was the planet OG. There lived the hero of our blog. He was a smart, intelligent, etc... And embodiment of many more adjectives that are part of Other Galaxy’s (OG) vocabulary. He got into one of the premier institutes of OG, OGIM L (Other Galaxy Institute of Management at NoLuck). After having successfully survived one year at OGIM L, he was set to the financial capital of OG, baybom to do his winter internship.

(Winter in OG was during March, April, May. Though they use different names for their months, the names have been translated for the convenience of the readers. Eg: ÑÔšÌ - this is our hero’s name, which translates close to God in English. But for simplicity, let us call him hero)

From here on, it’s the narration of our hero’s experience in his project. I have taken great efforts to translate his language, if you find any weird symbols, please ignore the language of OG and read on….

“You are going to have awesome fun, this is what my senior told me about the winter internship. To be a successful marketer you have to get your hands dirty by getting into the market, I used to wonder why on OG would anyone want to dirty their hands, when there are so many brands of hand wash available???

I don’t know if taking customer surveys is part of this getting ur hands dirty, but I assure you that you get everything dirty in the process J. By the end of taking surveys on a typical OG day (1 earth day = 1.0027 OG day, hence they don’t have any leap year confusion) you think as if you had committed a grave mistake in the previous birth and are reaping the effects of it :)

You find a lot of interesting and funny responses from people. For the past one week, I have been more or less like a tape recorder repeating the same thing over and over again in the hot sun (it’s ironical but it’s true, OG Winter = Earth Summer). This is my pickup line ;) “ Hi my name is hero, I am from OGIM L, I am doing …. and it goes for another 30 sec”.

Some people listen patiently to the pickupline and say “No”… wtf just a No, come-on I talked some 100 words without losing breadth and all you can manage is “No”???? Why can’t you give some lame excuse L

On the first few days, I was counting the number of rejections, but as the days progressed the number of rejections grew so large that, my brain started giving a stack error (just like an earth 6-digit calculator gives a value E for 7 digit calculations). I tried so many combinations of pickup line and nothing seemed to work. Sometimes when they would not even listen to what I am saying, I would shout OGIM L, few people turn back and then answer the question. Thanks to OGIM L brand name. Some are so intelligent that they give a lot of mind-blowing reasons,

“I am very busy” – Yea you can clearly see that I am interviewing people and am jobless.. So relatively you are busy than me. That is not an excuse NЮбФ (His family total damage). Most people who say that go and wait in the restaurant that is adjacent to the shop.

“I don’t really shop much” – Neither do I survey much, but am I not standing in the stupid heat and asking? I also got to know that there was a separate category of shoppers called “much shopper” and I have to go and look out for them J

“I need to go” – Did you think I am going to stay here forever, even I need to go moron. What a stupid excuse (The hero is surely in a bad mood :) )

"I've already answered a survey yesterday" - Even u ate and slept yesterday. aren't you going to do that today? I dont want to call you a stupid and insult stupids :) get lost....

“No” – Just one word, anyway you are pretty, so you are excused miss… J (Well this never changes across galaxies)

Many people ask in the middle of the survey “How long will it take? – When you have said yes for my first question, you have entered a legal contract according to the court of law of OG. Why can’t you honor this contract by spending 5 minutes? Obviously you not the Bill Door of Macrohard® who makes 50 OG$ every second

While taking exit interviews, you will have to stand outside the store. Sometimes you are amongst the company of some salesperson and get misunderstood as one among them. If your fortune is really good, then you will find yourself fighting with the beggars for customer share. But then there are some morons NÔWکژ۷ (this part had so many foul language, most of which I could not translate, I guess the foulest of foul language on planet OG) who just say “tch/Shoo” just like shooing away a dog. Wtf, how much fucking energy will be spent to say “NO”?

Also there were some NÔWکژ۷NÔW (Dude Watch ur language) who used to sit in the car and answer the questions and then toss the paper over to me. Where the hell does this arrogance come from? From this survey experience, I found a general relationship between arrogance and wealth, which is explained in the graph here (what’s with graphs and MBA’s, a stupid graph and such a big fuss for this simple graph). Well there may be outliers to this general rule, but I am not bothered about it. If you see this graph and you are wealth and you don’t give a damn shit about it, then you are at the top of this red line :P :P :P (thank god OG is different from Earth)

I have been complaining about the a** holes (I am fed up with the swears :() all along. It would give a wrong impression of OG. There were also 100 odd good souls who were patient enough to answer my survey. However inn the whole process, I got roasted in the heat, got cramps in all parts of my body standing for 7 hours a day for 5 days, got cheated by auto-rickshaws, tasted different varieties of food, and more importantly met lots and lots of people.

The whole experience helped me discover a new me. This trip has been an eye opener. Never did I realize that people can be so hostile and so friendly to strangers. I learned a very valuable lesson. If there is any help or anything required, you know who to contact. Too much senti… :) I was just joking, if at all this experience teach me anything, it did increased my cynicism on people and made my attitude worse or else why would I come up with that stupid graph. I will be waiting for my revenge, since OG is a small world, I am sure I am bound to get my revenge… (Hero is pure evil, I am thinking if I should change the name to villain)

Hope you enjoyed the experience of our hero. Comments are really appreciated and I will make sure that it reaches hero in 2 light years. Thanks for your patience. Bye until the next post… :)

H9!!!!!!!!!!! Hniiiiiiiiine!!!!!!!!!!!

I had written most of my blogs when I was utterly desperate and disappointed. Going by that logic, I should have written at least 2 blogs every week in the past 5 months here at IIML. It has been one hel(L) of a time. But here at IIM you don't even get time to vent out your frustration J… There are many reasons why it's called Hel(L)

The campus is 20kms from the Lucknow city (yeah!! Even I have wondered if it should not be named IIM Lucknow given the fact that it's not even in Lucknow). After travelling in Bangalore and Chennai's public buses, when I travelled in UP buses, it was like time travelling into the past. I felt what it would be like to travel in a bus in 1990. A trip to the city is a rare event and I had so far visited the city 6 times and out of that went to the same place 4 timesL. The mess food in my engineering hostel was million times better than its here. I spent the Diwali preparing for my mid-term exams. I have almost forgot how a TV looks and how to operate a remote. 

Ofcourse I have learnt a lot after coming here, to prove that let me give a small analysis,

Number of people who have read my blogs so far = 1000 

Average time per user = 3 mts

People who have commented and follow up comments = 50 

Avg time per user = 5 mts  

So total time spent in this

 page = 3250 mts (Not including my time) = 6.77 man days (1 day = 8hrs)

***Confidence Level of the test - 95%***

So in one year the number of man days wasted = 6.77, if I continue write blogs, it's going to waste 6.77 man days to the World(Considering my global audience J ). Also consider the wastage of electricity that is caused by

• The running of computers for creating the blog and also reading them
  
• Servers at Google and at my Internet service providers location
  
• My effort to market this post to my friends through annoying chat and email ;)
  

This was just an example of a powerful (LOL) analysis that I am capable of doing. Please don't take it in the wrong sense and discontinue reading my blogsJ. I just wanted to make sure that no one from here on asks how my academics is going on. Nothing makes me uncomfortable than lying. It's very sad that people are asking about my gpa when I had actually come here to gain knowledge lol. One wise sage in 100 BC told that GPA is not a measure of knowledge; I did not realize it in my engineering days, but the ignorant days are long gone, I am clearly seeing the true meaning now…

If you are a sports freak, then this is definitely not a bad place to be. I am part of the IIML college team for Badminton, Basketball and volleyball. Here you can see me sporting the IIML Jersey.

Though I was part of my college badminton team, never did I get an opportunity to wear a Jersey with my name and my lucky number. It was truly a proud moment that I would cherish forever. There was an inter b-skool sports fest where we thrashed the visitors (IIM-I and NITIE).

So many times India has won matches only because of crowd support, teams dread facing ManU at OldTrafford. Same is the case with Hostel 9 in IIML.

Sikander is an inter hostel sports tournament at IIML. Rivalries between hostels are historic. Sledging is officially encouraged J. The game is played rough by most; few teams have people in their team with a sole intent of injuring the opponents. I got to learn lot of hindi words during this time, but I am sure I cannot use them anywhere, may be until next Sikander ;)… It was undeniably the best time for me here at IIML, playing for H9 (basketball and volleyball) along with the support of entire Hniners. We reached the finals of both the games, something no other hostel could achieve. We played 60% while the crowd took care of the rest 40%. The adrenalin rush, the heart pounding so loud against the chest, heightened level of reflexes, hunger to thrash the opponent – I experienced all this at a new level. I am sure I would not have enjoyed this as much as I did had I not been in H9… Though we lost the finals of both the games, it was a great experience that I will remember for a long time...

Projects, Quizzes, Assignments, Mid-term, End-term, a house arrest kind of environment, 80% attendance - but there are also things like Sikander which erase all those miseries. End of the day no matter how much I crib or whine, the fact is that I love this place as much as I love my home. This happened 3 weeks back and why I am writing it only now? As I said earlier, time is so precious here. I was busy watching sitcoms and anime(manga). Of late, I have a strong feeling that I am suffering from obsessive serial/sitcom compulsive disorder. I completed all 10 seasons (238 episodes) of friends in 15 days. But for Bleach I completed all 10 seasons(190 episodes) in 7 days. Well for those doing quick math as to how that's possible, I have been getting used to watching videos at 1.5X and 2X speed. Now I can follow videos comfortably at 50-100% more the normal speed. After the madness for the past few weeks, everything that's been happening around me seems slow J, people have started to speak very slow all of a sudden. :) 

Thanks for patiently going through all the above 1056 words. As always comments are treasured , feel free to critize me…

 

New Home from Home

It started 6 years ago when I left my home for the first time; it has only been bigger and better every time I chose a new home away from home. This time it’s IIM-Lucknow. It’s been nearly a month since I had come over to this place. The way I got here was not a very pleasant experience; no one would call a journey in a train for 50hrs all alone a very pleasant experience. Only in movies do interesting things happen in a train ;)…But after that, it has been nothing short of a great movie (of course there hasn't been a heroin intro yet)

There I stood in front of the gates of IIML with lot of excitement, expectations, queries and questions. It was something that I always wanted to do since my third year in college. I always wanted to make the first steps that I take into IIML special, something like “A small step for Esh, but a big rod in the ass for the next 2 years”, but thanks to the AC coach, all that was in my mind was to rush to the loo..:)

The classes were to start on 25^th june for which I had arrived on 20^th, so I had nothing to do except check out the place and one thing I loved about this place was, it had a indoor badminton court very near to my hostel room. One thing that I found peculiar about Lucknow was that when one person travels through a particular stretch of 3-4kms, he gets confused if he had travelled in time 50years ahead. One part of the city is in 1920’s and other part 1970’s. No offence meant just a little observation. I still could not believe that this is a state's capital. The distance of the campus from the city and excellent transport facilities in UP gave me no chance to check out beautiful Lucknow gals :(.

On the first day after the official induction was complete, there was an induction by the seniors. Well in Management lingo Induction = Ragging, the students president gave a performance that was akin to old Sivaji movies, Over acting to the core. Then we were asked to take a test and based on which our concentration (specialization) for the next year will be decided by the seniors. I yawned during the test and that caught the attention of one senior. All the seniors in the room looked at me as I was some serial killer and was asked to come to the “DISCO” at 0000 hrs. I thought this whole exercise will be over today and there was some discotheque or insti party the same night until one of my batch mate enlightened that DISCO stands for “Disciplinary Committee”... WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D

The hostel experience was totally different one which I enjoyed, though I would have enjoyed more had I really known more Hindi swear words. The costume for the hostel induction was very minimal, how minimal is left to your imagination (it was just the next best thing > JOCKEY) ROFL, also it was the first time I was forced to apply lipstick, yuck!! I hated that; I could never wet my lips without eating that crap. There was free booze and smoke during the hostel induction and I don’t take both, so had to settle with the potato chips which unsettled my stomach next day. We were finally let to go to sleep at 4am. I came back watched Hancock and went to sleep at 6am. I am starting to live by the following golden rule.

“When you see the first rays of sunlight, it’s the time to go to bed”.

In IIML there is a peculiar thing called class participation (CP), the degree of activeness that you show in the class proceedings fetch you extra credit when your grades are determined. Well apart from the following questions, pretty much all sorts of questions have come up during the class,

(i)Prof I am trying to ask questions just for the sake of asking, will u give me CP marks?

(ii)Prof, I have no idea as to what u are teaching, but I dearly need the CP, so pls ignore what I have to say for another 3 minutes and give me the 0.5/1000 for CP. (I also included the probability that the prof will remember the question that a student asks)

(iii)Prof, I had slept through the entire class, so I am not aware of which class I am in, can you explain what class is this?? Will this count towards CP??

Well I over exaggerated as always, having said all this even I ask questions sometime. But CP is the least thing on my mind. It’s proven scientifically that when you ask a question, there is an adrenalin pump that energizes you and makes you more attentive.( OK stop the crap, this is another way to define CP).. :P :P

Is the course really tough?? No doubt it is very tough!!!! that is what is being told through the ages and I dare not to contradict that. But it’s more to do with perception (contrast bias to put it exactly) of people to compare engg with management. If engg was squeezed into 2 years, I am sure it would be suicide to choose engineering. Every day I use 5hrs in activities which most of the students here don’t do. I watch Scrubs(2hrs), Play baddy/football (1-2 hrs), Exploring ways to download new movies(1 hr), watch the downloaded movie.

So as you can see, the time constraint is because of the way I had designed my calendar. But I have no complains about it. This place is after all not that “Hell”y as it was claimed, I am starting to really love this place. I have 3 projects to complete, 1 assignment and 2 quizzes to prepare tonight, but that is not going to stop me from doing what I wish. It’s become part of the system. For me the distinction between day and night has vanished, I feel alert/sleepy through the day J, I have a constant urge to work towards mastering the system, at the same time an attitude for having reached IIM not to mention the biggest fear of being screwed by the system,.

Between did I ever tell you that I am taking CAT again this year??? I am not the only crazy person, there is one guy in my batch who wants to get into IIMA. If you want to swear him, pl drop a comment and I would make sure that it is conveyed to him. J I am writing CAT just to experience CAT without any pressure to perform, and I am damn sure that I would not attend any interview expect L even if I get all 7 calls ;)…. I am not leaving HelL for anything, the devil has found safe h(e)aven at Hel(L)…

I am sorry to have wasted your precious time, I am sure you are trying to make out some meaning of this and finding it damn difficult to do the same, well if you are preparing for CAT’08, then consider it as a RC practice. I wanted to record few of my initial moments at L and hence thought of writing it, I could have kept it to myself, but I thought this would give a new dimension to the screwing aspect in IIM. I am not sure when I would find time for the next blog, because I am not ready to sacrifice another episode of scrubs. So until then!!!! I am now signing off to do a boring assignment... ;)

IPL T(rickery)20

IPL has become a spectacle more than anyone had ever expected it to be. It has become one single source of entertainment for most people in the evening after the grueling work for the day. I am sure many people are going to miss IPL terribly after June 1. I am not going to talk about the success story of IPL, but rather a very interesting speculation that might raise few interesting questions regarding the integrity of the tournament.

The most colorful and the most fancy cricket tournament ever is being valued around 1bn$(4000 Crore Rs). More than that we all know an equal or even more money is involved in betting for the tournament. Also conveniently IPL does not come under the ICC and hence they don't have to follow any of the betting rules that ICC has imposed. It directly comes under BCCI and we all know that BCCI is after only one thing,
Developing cricket in India,
provide infrastructure to the rural India and tap the talents of the future...
I was just kidding :) ..

BCCI's only agenda is to make money.
BCCI is the single biggest gainer from the IPL after the bookies. Since the franchises are ready to pay what the BCCI wants, it looks like BCCI has relaxed all the betting laws that are in place.

Betting in sport is fine, it has been happening from a very long time. It becomes a crime when you approach a team member and influence the course of the game for your financial gain. If you have been following the IPL from the beginning, then you would realise that when the teams were purchased, Hyderabad was the strongest team in the league and Rajasthan Royals were the weakest.

Before going into that, there are so many bet that you can place for a match. they are,

• who wins the tournament, who are the last 4?
• who wins the toss, who wins the match, man of the matchmaximum 6's, maximum 4's, maximum dot(I am not kidding), maximum wide, no balls
• whether Sreesanth gets slapped in a match??
• Who slaps Sreesanth... (lol)
• Even who farts the most in the dressing room.. (well the last one I exaggerated a bit, but the rest are all valid bets)

When the tournament started the odds on Rajasthan Royals(RR) was like 10-1(i.e. if you pay 1 re if Rajasthan wins, then you get 10rs from the bookie, i.e the prob that RR will win is 1/11), similarly the odds on Hyderabad and the likes of Chennai would have been very high(2-1, 3-2 etc). I am not too sure how this entire system works. It's like you place a bet with the bookmaker/bookie by paying the amount and also the brokerage. Bookie's are very intelligent people and have strong probability logic behind all the odds that they offer. So whatever be the outcome, they earn money out of it.(just like a lottery agency, it always makes money)

So the likes of UB baron (sorry can't say Ma***a) and other heavyweights can bet heavily on RR and rig the entire tournament to multiply their money. That is exactly what has happened here. I will give some instances and it would be hard not to believe that the entire IPL was fixed beforehand.

I am writing this blog on 27th-May two days before semifinal of IPL. I am going to give some predictions as to how the IPL is headed in the last week and if they somehow come true, then it's not that I am having some extra sensory perception but, it's because I realised the entire trick just before the end of the IPL.

Mumbai hosts the semifinal and the final, so it has to definitely get into the semifinal stage. But after the first 4 matches everyone thought it's going to end up last, but alas it did not happen. They won miraculously 6 matches in a row. I don't think slapping Sreesanth brought the good omen to the Mumbai team.

RR started off very poor, were mauled at the hands of Delhi. But later there was nothing to stop them?? Why?? Someone wanted to odds to be still lowered for RR so that they can bet heavily on them..

Chennai is the classic case of a bookie's loser. It started out fantastically and no doubt everyone would have better heavily on Chennai (By everyone I refer to the people who don't have the power to influence the course of the match, poor ppl who bet and count on something that is non-existent-- fate) so the only way bookies are going to make money is to make Chennai not reach semifinal. In order to do that, they lost against Bangalore (come on, I can lead a team to win against Bangalore). So the only outcome from the next match is Chennai is going to lose against Hyderabad and earn the bookies a lot.

Also Bangalore which as a team is the weakest team performed superbly in the last 2 matches against Chennai and Hyderabad. The logic is simple, a weak team if it wins then it rains money for the bookmakers. End of the day you can have only one team to win and that team is already decided. But you can also make a lot of money by making a team lose continuously and then make them win a match when the odds have been so low for them to win. This is what has happened here. In the same lines, I expect hyderabad to win against Chennai in the last game and thereby making double bonus for the bookies.

Here are few more predictions that I have for the rest of the tournament, Delhi is going to win against Mohali and reach the finals.. Mumbai will win against RR to reach the finals and is going to win the cup.. I may be totally wrong, may be I am giving the predictions of some crazy bookie, or some wild imagination that has gripped me due to lack of any work at work place, but the point is that we are glued to some sport that is not even being held in the right sense of sport.

There have been instance of slapping, arguing and all sort of nonsense happening. Even street cricket is more orderly. Why do we ever need cheerleaders for games (I do like them, but then that does not make them a necessity). Is IPL trying to compensate for the lack of "legal" strip-clubs in the country?

End of the day all I want to ask is "Is all the money and time that we invest in it is all worth it??"I paid 550rs for a match between Bangalore Vs Hyderabad. Damn even the cheerleaders were disappointing on that day. Please treat this post as a frustration from a man who has been robbed of 500Rs(the match was worth for 50rs :D )

All that I had written is in electronic form and has not legal validity. Even the facts that I had presented may not be entirely true. But hope there is at least some amount of truth in it. All this never struck my brain until my roomie mentioned about the certain speculation and it really inspired me to write this piece of "whatever". Thanks Rk... :)