You know you are in India when..

Note: Inspired by a post from Facebook.

Scenario 1
Two guys are fighting and a third guy comes along, sees them fighting and stands to watch. A crowd gathers and they all hoot and shout but do not get involved. Just as soon as the fight begins to lose its color or gets too serious, everyone turns around and walks on.
That’s MUMBAI

Scenario 2
Two guys are fighting. Both of them take time out and call their friends on their mobiles. 2 truck loads of people arrive at the scene. Pretty soon 50 guys are fighting. Some come with swords and a lot of pent up North Indian anger.
You are in PUNJAB !!!

Scenario 3
Two guys are fighting and a third guy comes along and tries to make peace. The first two get together and beat him up. A few people get shot and a girl gets raped somewhere in the background and no one seems to notice. Theres a lot of “Tu jaanta hai mera baap kaun hai?” and such aristocratic showing off.
That’s DELHI


Scenario 4
Two guys are fighting. A crowd gathers to watch. A guy comes along and quietly opens a Chai-stall and passes around cups for Rs 5 each. After all money can be made from any situation. He will probably pay a commission to the fighting people to keep at it for a longer time.
That’s AHMEDABAD

Scenario 5
Two guys are fighting. They make threats like “I will hack the your computer” or “I will post your Facebook pictures in public”. Theres a lot of malicious technical jargon thrown around. Finally they go home without even touching each other as they are both late for their shifts. Infosys and Wipro are not kind to late comers.
That’s BANGALORE

Scenario 6
Two guys are fighting. A crowd gathers to watch. A guy comes along and quietly says that “AMMA” doesn’t like all this nonsense. She won’t give away the free TVs and free rice and sugar if they don’t stop. The fighting twosome shake hands and walk away. Who would say no to the free TV?
That’s CHENNAI

Scenario 7
Two guys are fighting and a third guy comes along,then a fourth and they start arguing about who’s right. Pretty soon the matter escalates to why Sourav Ganguly was removed from his captaincy and how Greg Chappel is the biggest asshole known to mankind. They will all agree to the point but still continue arguing as they don’t want to look like the less intelligent one.
You are in KOLKATA

Scenario 8
Two guys are fighting. One abuses the other and gets slapped. The one who got slapped starts crying his eyes out and runs to mommy. Pretty soon he’s out of the Indian cricket team and making ads for cheap toothpaste.
You are in the IPL
and the best one..
 
Scenario 9
Two guys are fighting.
Third guy comes along with a carton of beer.
All sit together drinking beer at the beach and abusing each other. They take a nice nap in the afternoon and continue with their session as the evening progresses. End of the day they all go home as friends.
You are in GOA!!

Promethe(WHY???)us

Director: Ridley Scott

Stars: Noomi Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green and Michael Fassbender

Rating: 2/5 (Only for the effects)

Synopsis: A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

Review: When a movie nears its end, you want to not go home, you know it’s almost the end but you wish it wasn’t. There are movies like that and then there’s Prometheus. It leaves a big question mark looming over your head “What did I just see?” and not in the good sense! The movie is allegedly a prequel to the Alien saga from the 80s. It has been written by the same writer who gave us the super successful series ‘Lost’ and the guy who made ‘Gladiator’. The movie sadly comes nowhere close to Lost or Gladiator. The highlight of the movie must have been the Batman trailer shown in the beginning.

In the ultimate search for the origin of mankind a group of explorers travel to an unknown planet on the outer rims of the galaxy. It’s worth noting that the directions to this planet are derived from 5 circles drawn on walls by the ancient civilizations that have inhabited the earth over the centuries.  Are five round circles rudimentarily drawn on cave a wall suddenly coordinates that are good directions? FOR TRAVELLING IN SPACE?! 

The movie moves along at a fast pace with a lot of questions left unanswered. Why does the Alien guy want to destroy earth? Why are the human-aliens so paranoid about abandoning the planet and running around in holograms? Why did the alien wake up and go on a Homicidal spree? Either you stick to the mindless killing that was Predator and Alien or you make a meaningful movie out of it like Independence Day. Hanging somewhere in the middle leaves the movie at just that – Hanging. The annoying characters die fast enough, big cheer for that.

It is worth mentioning that the special effects, as in all recent movies, are a little beyond top notch. The beautiful realms created and panned over look as life like as an average movie goer can perceive. So are the aliens (or whatever little of them is shown!) intricately detailed. The depiction of technology as it will be in 2090 is mind blowing. Hats off to the visual effects director. 

Performances of the actors are seldom important in a movie of this genre. The roles are too miniscule to come across as noteworthy. Decent performances by Michael Fassbender and Logan Marshall pull the movie through. Charlize Theron looks as smoking as ever. Having her wear that tight jumpsuit pushed the rating of this movie up by half a point.

An analogy I heard somewhere describes this movie the best. Imagine if Steven Spielberg made a prequel to Jurassic Park and there were no dinosaurs in it?! Well if you would enjoy that movie, I’m sure this one is for you. The whole movie had no beginning, middle or end. It was just a compilation of fillers found in typical movies.  However if you are looking for the meaning of life, and as unlikely as it sounds, are hoping to find it by watching movies… You just might be getting warmer!!

6 types of people you meet at the gym

We all have gone to the gym at some time of our life. Some to beef up, some to tone down and some just to have something to do in the evenings. No matter what category you are in, you must have come across these people at your gym.


1. The 'Rocky Balboa Uncle': He comes. He exercises. He conquers. Protein shake in one hand, bandana on his forehead and a music player playing eye of the tiger. They are the epitome of gym dedication. He will come everyday, some days he'll come twice. Rigorously do every single exercise on his exercise chart. Yes, he is perhaps the only one who uses it and follows it religiously. You don't want to be up against him in a marathon.


2. The 'Arnold Schwarzeneggggeradaeioweoiqe" guy: This guy makes you think of your life as the most worthless thing in existence. So you are doing your final set of bicep curl with the bad-ass 20 pounders and he starts his warm up with a 80. He makes all your time in the gym seem like a pitiful waste of time. The trainers all seem to flock to him, even though he clearly doesn't need them. Generally idolizes people like Salman Khan and Sunny Deol. We can all be like him, all we need to eat are 15 eggs a day and walk like theres a stick stuck between our arms and torso.


3. The 'pressure cooker': She's the one who whistles out a long and very high pitched phoooooooooo after every muscle exertion. Well this may not be a generality but every gym memory and gym story I have is incomplete without her. You could hear her as you got out of the elevator. Maybe channelling all that sound energy to food may even help in cooking it, who knows. Physics is a strange science.


4. The "Hot babe": Lets accept it. Every gym has at least one. The ultra beautiful creation of god who comes at such a time that sets the schedule of almost every other gymmer. We all want to talk to her, all want to work out next to her and we all fantasize about her (steam room, changing room, elevator etc.).  But at most the extent of our conversation will be limited to,
Me: Guess what, she spoke to me today. That too on her own!
Jealous Friend: WTF? kya hua? detail mein bol.
Me: She asked me at the health bar, "Please pass me the salt" !!
Friend: wooooowwwww, Im going to eat there everyday now.


5. The "Aaj to pakka body banaunga" guy: He comes in all pumped up. Hrithik Roshan photos inspire him and he dreams of having a perfect 6-pack every morning. His routine usually starts with the most strenuous exercise owing to all that adrenaline. A number 4 or number 2 around from the above categories pushes the macho in him off the charts. Theres nothing really wrong with him except that his workout usually ends with a stop at the local vada pao stall or the sandwich wala.


6. And lastly the "Kal se gym pakka" guy: All of us have been there, done that. Common reasons given by this person range from not feeling well because of last months gym session to having no time in their busy doing nothing schedule. These are people I respect a great deal. Even though they have the urge to do something to better their health, they are quite content in being procrastinators. As I read recently in a friends post, Life is too short to waste away in the gym anyway!


Let me be honest, I would fit somewhere between 5 and 6. Its a nice healthy place to be in. What about you?

Can you win a game without a strategy?

Imagine a game of chess where every piece is not related to the other. They all go out to battle on the board. They all try to win for themselves and not for each other. Put in another way, you play every move only with the intention of not losing on that move. There is no long term vision in the gameplay. What can be the possible outcomes? 
From where I'm looking at it, there can only be one. Fail.
Strategy. The thread that binds together all the individual components, tells us when to sacrifice a pawn to save the queen, when to sit quiet even when an easy target is available. Strategy.

To abstract this thought to a broader perspective, consider every piece on the chess board to be a person in the management hierarchy of an organization. Each piece is related to the other either implicitly or explicitly. Ones performance will influence the other in a particular way. Just like the bishop could influence the queens next move, an engineering tester can influence the plans of a middle manager and how he plans out the work structure.


The binders in a management structure are the different roles played by intermediaries, Liaison, Integration, Cross Linking of different groups and using of formal reports. Think of it as the Pawn telling the Rook, "Ok, so let me die this time around. That gives you a clear chance for his next 3 pieces". Similarly a Liaison role filled between a test engineer and the marketing guy brings them on the same page. He/She acts as a translator. "Ok Mr. Marketeer. The bottom-line is, our 'worlds most efficient' automobile is giving 5 miles/gallon. We need a new selling point!" Fast and efficient flow of information along the structure. The structure in focus here can be formed using one of many, or a combination of many from among,
1. Function 
2. Type of Product
3. Market for the Product
4. Hybrid: Matrix or Front/Back structure.

So now that a strategy that works is in place, with all the necessary connections between the ones who ensure its success, the next step would be evaluation. We did the splitting up of roles into individual parts and connected them using a strategy. But is it really taking us (the organization) anywhere? How do we gauge the effectiveness? Incentive based evaluation to bring back everyone on the same page! 


All these again circumvent to a same point. The importance of a good IT support structure for the management structure. Creating logs at every step keeps everyone in the loop about decisions being made and decisions to be made. It exemplifies that the success of a strategy depends in a big way on a successful IT infrastructure in the organization.


The bottom line of this thinking is, 
Firstly – don’t design your management systems to each be independently perfect – design them as a group to compensate for each other. 
And second, don’t get too hung up on which conceptual strategy, architecture, org structure etc. to occupy, simply use the ones that have the most power for you when you are addressing a specific issue. (easier said than done!!)


P.s. You never know, Gary Kasparov could be the one who holds all the secrets to a successful management strategy. He did beat Deep Blue! More on that later.. 

Tech"no"logy?

(The background behind this post lies heavily in a Management of Technical Organization lecture I attended this week. It was about how being in a technical organization can affect the management. Managing an IT company today is totally different from managing any other Technical company that focuses on physical outputs.)

1. What is technology?

2. Can it be 'defined'?

The answer to both those questions are very ambiguous. My answer to them is that Technology is change. Something, anything that is different.

There are people out there who criticize the premise of companies like Facebook, Twitter or even job hunt websites like Monster. How can they be termed technology companies when they don't have a sound infrastructure backing. Their argument being that tomorrow if Airbus were to go bust, they would have the financial authority to save themselves by selling their assets. Assets that are physical quantities. That are measurable. How would you recover money if a website valued at XYZ billion dollars suddenly collapses? They have nothing that can be termed a liquid asset. Facebook has 3200 employees answerable to 100 billion dollars of valuation! Compare that to 170000 people for a 56 billion company - Boeing. Is it a bubble that can burst tomorrow? I think not.

What makes companies like these successful is the Idea, the Idea of something different. It makes them a technology. Facebook has acquired cult status. But what makes it so different is the amount of information it has. It has managed to do what no one else could, it makes information sharing 'Cool' and essential at the same time. No single enterprise has had so much information about people ever before. In the economic sense, technology can be anything that will lead to an objective. The objective may or may not be tangible. It can be money, happiness or innovation. Emphasis is change again.

However the drawback of an IT company is the environment in which it functions. They seem to dig their own grave. Lenin once said that a capitalist will sell you the rope to hang yourself. Its an exaggeration of a basic idea, can you keep up with your progress? The IT world is changing at a pace that is hard to keep up with, even by the companies involved in the trade. Management of such organizations cannot be on par with something like Boeing or GE. They cannot function in bureaucracy. The rules and limitations of it will act as barriers and not guidelines.

Change is good. Change is needed. Facebook updates its features every few months or so. It might be annoying to get friendly with them initially but thats what makes it tick. And it completes the circle by coming back to the same point.

Technology is change. Change that is good.

This post critiques some ideas and is an abstraction from this article from The Economist.

Approved.

Location: Mumbai Consulate

Time: 12:00 pm

Counter number 5

The final hurdle - the visa interview is behind me! USA is on!!

Reached the place at 11:30. Its almost like a fortress with the huge walls and all those armed guards and commandos sweeping the area. Surprisingly the security check was very lax. No frisking, no checking of my documents folder. Post the finger prints, i had to wait for an hour i think. A couple of trips to the bathroom later my number was finally called. 

I was 5th in line queuing outside the interview box. 1,2,3,4 all got rejects, that guy was on a roll!! Its a little ironic that they give you a 'GREEN' envelope with your passport when your visa has been rejected. 'better luck next time' maybe? Anyway, at this point I began to freak out… 

The guy looked very stern but once we started talking he got me totally relaxed.

VO: Hi, how are you today?

Me: Hey!! I'm good. What about you? busy day, right?

VO: Very busy. So, Mr Karan. Which school are you heading to?

Me: The George Washington University in DC.

VO: Thats a nice school. I know someone who went there. Tell me about your course. 

Me: I intend to do my Masters in Engineering Management with specialization in Finance, Economics and Cost Engineering..

VO: Interrupted me mid sentence and said "so tell me more about cost engineering"

Me: i was actually going WTF?! but i did not stay quiet for more than a couple of second. told him a few things related to it. (thank you IEERP)

VO: Interrupted me again mid sentence "So what you are saying is it is related only to the accounts department" (I don't know if he really did not know or was trying to confuse me)

Me: No sir. It involves all kinds of resources, blah blah so it affects all departments

(starts typing into his computer and seems to lose interest in what im saying at this point)

VO: Who will be financing your education?

Me: My parents

VO: What are their professions?

Me: They are both doctors.

VO: Do they work at a hospital?

Me: (i wanted to say obviously!) Yes they work at a hospital in which they are 50% stake owners.

VO: And can you tell me their annual income?

Me: xxxxx

VO: What do you plan to do after your education?

Me: Come back to my family in India and work as a consultant in the finance sector.

VO: Ok. Your visa has been approved. Your passport will reach you in 3 working days.

Me: Thank you! (with a big-ass smile n punching the air) Bye. Have a nice day!

It might seem very long, but my interview lasted only about 1 minute or lesser. I did not have to even open my folder containing the documents. 

I think being confident and well prepared with your answers is the key here. Eye contact does wonders too.

Its time to book the air tickets. And start looking forward to how the next chapter will unfold..

Jack Sparrows compass

jack sparrows compass. the one which takes you to what you desire most. now thats something i 'desire'. until i find out where to get one, here are some of the best inventions of man (in no particular order). my analogy might be flawed, but it doesn't really matter..

1. tandoori chicken: because its comfort food! i can have it from monday to sunday and still want some more the next monday.

2. the internet: because Facebook, orkut, youtube, savitabhabhi… whatever works for you is accessible only through it. (thank you harsh!)

3. the football: without which manchester united might have been playing cricket! 

4. escalators: because they are stairs that move! 

5. remote control: everything is so much better when it comes with a remote. the tv, the air conditioner, the car door, your playstation, xbox.. (lets face it, without a remote they would be as good as a 'station' or a 'Box')

6. the television: it has been our constant pillar of support through thick and thin. it was there when india won the world cup. it was there before every Agnel prelim when studying was the last thing on my mind. it was even there when sparrow said, "but why is the rum gone?"

(it will also be there when manchester united win the champions league. GGMU)

7. the ipl: not that india has any less reasons to divide the populace. i love everything about it. right from bhajji and symonds playing in the same team to chris gayles sixes which make spectators renew their insurance policies before coming in.

8. boxer shorts: because being comfortable is what clothes are about!

9. cheese: and i mean all types of cheese. cheese spread, cheese cubes, cheese slices, mozzarella, cheddar, blue cheese. everything tastes better with cheese. i should try karela and cheese, see how it goes. ("cheej pijja!!")

10. the iPhone: because i don't need to say anything about it ! <3

not everyone might agree with me. but you are free to tell me what makes you tick…

Handle with care...

just heard some very disturbing news. one of my old class mates met with an accident some time back and is no more. its one thing to read about such incidents in the paper but the fact that its a real tangible person that had some place in your life makes it worse. even though i did not know him personally, it did stir something in me. i can call it grief or sorrow but its more of a humbling feeling.

such incidents only emphasize how insignificant we are in the whole wave of life. 

as an outsider i don't know if i can fully understand the magnitude of their loss. all i can offer is this note as a tribute. may they rest in peace. 

look around you, the people, the relations and everything else - life is fragile. you don't have to believe in a god, just be thankful..

Power(less)ful Sunday morning!

sunday morning, a time to sleep. SLEEP!! something i've been getting very less of now days thanks to 5ps/min night speak on vodafone!

its one thing to be woken up from a imthesaviorofmankind-icanmakeAngelinaJoliepurrforme dream just because you have to piss. (you can probably take on the joker, the trinity killer, gabbar singh and even mugambo while fooling around with Jolie, but u cant hold your pee!) what makes it way more worse is waking up on a sunday at 8:30, when no one is at home just because the power is out. 

just how dependent are we on electricity? VERY! i know that electricity has complete control over everything i do. that is not the problem. the problem lies in the fact that i can do nothing about it. how do i disconnect 'myself' from the grid? benjamin franklin, faraday, thomas edison and such charged ones must be all looking down with contempt at me. "what does a guy have to do these days to earn some respect?"

i head down hoping that some anda-toast will disconnect the 'i-want-to-disconnect' guy from me. with considerably lifted spirits i begin studying automobile engineering from Kirpal Singh (i really like the name Kirpal!). after 2 hours of grumbling i check my watch.. it says it has been only 25 minutes. maybe i got warped into a parallel universe which magically appears every time the power goes off. 

my productivity seems to have dropped a few hundred percent. i managed to complete only 3 pages in half an hour (normally would have done about 10. and yes, it IS a big number)

above the deafening and mocking roar of the generator next door, i hear the whisper of my laptop calling me… begging me to put it to use. thank god (read steve jobs) for the brilliant invention that is the macbook pro and the brilliant-er invention that is its 10 hour battery. it gave me the inspiration to start penning, or clicking down my thoughts. and thus begins the long wait...

nonetheless there is light at the end of the tunnel (figurative light, because the power is not yet back) the leftover ice cream from yesterday was lurking somewhere in the freezer. someone had to eat it, cant let half a tub of naturals ice cream go waste, can we? throw in a few episodes of modern family and you have a power cut well spent…

P.S. the unit for electricity is WATT (what… what… what???) :D