Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Director's Cut Version of my Manifesto

Its Election time and I am standing for Director - Operations & Infrastructure Council (OIC). So here are some highlights of my unpublished OIC manifesto[For illustrative purposes only. Not to be copied. not even the comments]

* I will start an international consortium of a present day industry case study [Go figure out what this means]

* My experience so far, comprises my childhood in the school, a career at XYZ and an active interest in the every high-paying sector.”  - [Child prodigy]

* To empower each and every fellow student to discover and realize his or her full potential and to change the way we think of ourselves, the way we think of each other and the way others think of us” – [Wow, a lot in it for you to think about!]

To truly have a OIC of the people.” – [To hell with by the people, for the people]

To be honest, fearless, neutral, accountable, having great integrity of thought and action. To be affable, open and approachable to everyone. [Talent Personified]

* It is this diversity, leadership experience and ability to interact with people and using those interactions to drive towards the desired objectives (infrastructure building and shopping opportunities in our case) that makes me believe that I will be an effective and efficient OIC Director. – [This sentence is neither effective nor efficient!]

* Redressal forum for individual grievances – [Mommy will be in the house]

* Youngest Belt wearing Professional – [Youngest in the family, youngest in Mars]

* If it is significant for you, so it is for me. Openness is my priority, neutrality is my strength” – [And rhetoric is my forte] 

Saturday, May 9, 2009

S.H.I,T (SomeHow In Time) - 'Kodak' Moments

Day One: 8th May - "Just Postpone It"


We had decided to meet at 9pm on Thursday but Gaurav requested for postponement as he was committed to the Pan-IIT meet happening that evening. We examined the entire issue in context of marital pressures and decided to meet next morning at 10.30am. Next morning Prasanna had a family emergency and had to rush to Chennai. So we had to make do without our Logistics Director for a day. By 10am Aastha woke up on the wrong side of bed and was feeling sick. Result: Postpone to 11.30pm. Then Vishakha mailed and postponed it to 12pm to give Aastha the additional 30 minutes to get better. Then I emailed asking for postponement to 1.30pm in view of my lunch schedule. Then Gaurav waved the magic wand of Marital pressures again and shifted it to 2pm. Then Aastha mailed since she was supposed to be at the Eco tutorial at 3pm.... and so the series went on till Gaurav finally decided to pick up the phone and the Clock stopped at 8.30pm. Our Director - Refreshments welcomed us with Pasta. Dicussed for an hour and half and called it a day !

Day Two: 9th May - "Of Permutations and Combinations"

The Famous Five met again today to solve a new mystery - the Funtime conundrum. And boy, were we not in our elements. We had agreed for a 3pm meeting the day before but it all seems a ploy to keep me out of study group meetings lest the discussions spillover to my blog. So when I walked in at 3pm sharp I see that three of them had been camping there since 2pm.


Aastha, Director - Refreshments, had lured everybody to her quad with promise of free Tea and she lived up to her promise. I was greeted into her quad by 7 different pairs of shoes and 7 different handbags - one for each day of the week I presume. She mathematically proved to me that the permutations and combinations in which she could wear them in unique combinations would last the entire one year. The math must have confused her quite a bit as she was suggesting that we use both sides of the page on Microsoft Word. Probably Bill gates would address this need of Aastha in the next version of Windows.

Prasanna,  Director - Logistics, was bamboozled to see the number of postponements that had happened to our meeting in his absence. After all close to a dozen postponements in a matter of 4 hours is hard to digest even when you are on a overdose of Hajmola. He decided to play the devil's advocate and confuse the hell out of us without much effort. When he looked at Aastha's shoe collection he laughed at it as he had more number of shoes that too which belonged to different countries. His count of permutations and combinations would have lasted all the five of us this lifetime.


Gaurav, Director - Common Sense, put aside his 'marital' pressures and made it to the meeting by 2pm. He was a bit sad that this time he wouldnt be able physically bond with the assignment. But he was cheered up by the amount of value he added along with the number crunching. Its no secret by the way that IITians get an orgasm out of number crunching.  

Vishakha, Director - Communications, started putting it all on the word document. She bonded so much with Aastha's laptop that the laptop too fell in love with her. They say Love makes one crazy ! The Word application too went crazy after that. The formatting just wouldnt come right !

We were almost done - atleast thats what it seemed. Aastha did the clean up job later in the evening and mailed us the rough draft late in the night. We decided to meet up next morning to finalize stuff. 

Day Three 10th May: "The Case of the Moving Pies"

We meet at 9am. There was not much on content that we had to had so we expected to finish it all up by 10am, latest by 11am. But nature presents irony at every given opportunity. Microsoft word decided to test us today. We were doing basically three things: Formatting, Formatting & Formatting. 

@ 10am: We had a few tables in our analysis. Formatting them was painful. They would shift left - right almost replicating Madhuri Dixit's thumkas. The lines above and below had also joined the Salsa party. While Gaurav, Aastha & Vishakha were fine-tuning content, Prasanna and me spent one hour formatting the tables. Success?? No

@ 11am: This was the time when the mysterious Force hit us. First Prasanna: "Arrey yeh Pie chart kidhar ko gaya?". Next 15 minutes he spent searching for it in the Excel sheet ! Finally we had to constitute a special task force for the search and rescue operation to resolve the issue. Then Gaurav: "I think the Pie charts are moving". He kept trying to put these 'moving' Pie-charts on leash but they were wild horses who refused to be subdued. After a long struggle we managed to tie it down.  


@11.20 am: At this time the case decided to come alive and all the contents started dancing. The tables and the moving Pies decided to push it again. Finally we all had to don the Cowboy caps and whip the wild horses. Adrenalin rush had begin as the deadline came closer. This was when Shweta Divecha decided to up the ante and send across her group's submission to the entire section - Sleep deprivation, lost mind and marketing are a deadly combo. I wonder what would have happened if she had mailed it to the entire Co2010. Mailing lists can be cruel !

@11.45 am: Time for headers and footers.   Formatting Jhamela - Reloaded ! 

@ 11.50 am: We were done finally ! We decided to convert into PDF before uploading into Turnitin. This would ensure that our formatting didnt go awry. We converted it and saved it. Oh not so easy ! We forgot we had saved it ! Redo to save time rather than search and rescue.


@ 11.55 am: Submitted successfully ! We had Aastha bring her 'Kodak' camera out and Sushmita click a Kodak moment !

It was a full on Bollywood masala with everything in it - 
  • Romance: Vishakha and the Laptop
  • Suspense: Prasanna with the Lost Pie chart
  • Thrill: Gaurav with the Moving Pie charts
  • Action: Aastha with her PDF conversion
  • Comedy: Me ! (Need not elaborate I guess)
At 12pm finally we parted ways only knowing that the next Bollywood Flick is round the corner. Stay tuned folks !

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Assignment 1: Birth of the Study Group

A common myth: One of the ways in which Profs ensure you do your studies like a good boy or girl @ ISB is by putting you in a Study Group. Wrong Answer Buddy ! You'll find the real answers in places where you look for them the least !


My study group met up at the Library on Friday to complete our first Group assignment. First thing when we met we decided to distribute responsibilities:

1. Prasanna: He is the Director - Logistics who ensures everybody gets to know what time we are originally planning to meet so that we can have it postponed as per our convenience.

2. Aastha: She is Director - Refreshments. She has been priveleged with the rights to arrange for resfreshments every 15 minutes for us.

3. Gaurav: He is Director - Common sense. He is the one who is supposed to collate the inputs, strip them into minute details and give the official 'go-ahead' for finalizing the answers only if they made sense to him.

4. Vishakha: She is Director - Communications of the group. After getting the go-ahead from Gaurav she is suppose to, in extremely neat handwriting, write down the answers on the assignment paper.

5. Myself have decided to take on the toughest job: Director - Credits and Blames. Yes I will take all credit for jobs well done and pass on the blame for assignments botched up to whosoever is willing to take it (within or outside the group).



It was all perfect. We were like Enid Blyton's Famous five unravelling the mysteries of Managerial Economics together. This way we tackled all the problems with great ease.  

Since we all realized the importance of "Bonding" we decided to take 4 hours for a 2-Hour assignment. In the end the experiement seemed to be working. 

1. Vishakha bonded to the white sheets she was writing on. 

2. Aastha bonded with the Tea cups from which she was drinking. 

3. Gaurav bonded emotionally to the Assignment (Excuse he used: I'll drop it in "alone" after the final answer makes sense to me)

4. Prasanna bonded to the desktop picture on his laptop which strangely was rotated 90 degrees and in which you could see all the different stuff he got while processing loans for different countries at World Bank. His sports shoes looked Pakistani, Wrist watch Vietnamese, Pants Italian, Shirt Thai and Sun glasses Hawaiian. But he never got bribed. Try and question his integrity and you'll know how he got all those 'gifts'.
 

5. I bonded to the notion of having a fixed audience of 4 people who have no option but to bear the brunt of my (poor) jokes !

But all of them seemed to be treading the paths cautiously as has the been the case with 500+ other people on the campus whenever they are around me. I wonder why !