Different Worlds

I have been reading lots of documents and websites on offshoring over the past few days. There is something very interesting in these documents. The articles authored by western authors present the point of view that only low-end ("code-monkey jobs and grunt work" as one article described) jobs are offshored and the high-end intellectual jobs still remain with them. The ones written by Indian or any Asian author claim that though offshoring was started off as a means of exporting low-end work, it has now developed into a means of getting any kind of work done through alternate geographic regions - including the intellectual work. Which of these claims is true? Frankly, I'm not sure. I see some amount of intellectual work coming to India like the R&D labs of IT firms and the equity analysis work of investment banks. But the bulk of the work that is coming to us is still on application maintenance.

Leaving the issue of what is actually offshored, let us ponder over why different people claim different things. There should ofcourse be some primary motive for these people to be so different at looking at the same fact.
The Americans have to state that they have the high-end jobs, or else the opposition to offshoring will rise enormously. When people are already into calculating the number of jobs lost and other statistics, if we are going to tell them that even the jobs that are left are only of administrative nature, then for sure hell will be left loose. From the offshoring vendor's side (the Indian side in our case), people have to state that they get high-end jobs, or else attracting good talent for the work would become tough. Imagine going to an IIT and telling the aspirants that you are there to hire the cream of the country to do the grunt work of the United States. I guess the students would then prefer the manufacturing industry over the now-famed IT.

So, I came to the conclusion that people are writing only what they are "supposed" to write and not the truth. I even wonder if the authors of these articles themselves know the truth. Is this the way to be? If this is how articles are made, then we would just be stuck with a bunch of biased reports with zero credibility. Well ofcourse, there will be people on either side of the world using these reports to substantiate their point of view and the corporate jungle is making sure that I'm one of them.

William Gordon, The Rising

It would be appropriate to call the movie as "William Gordon, The Rising" rather than "Mangal Pandey, The Rising" as WG occupied most of the movie and had a better role than MP. This is one movie which left me confused both inside the theatre and outside.
"The Rising" was supposed to be a period movie showing the India of 1850s. But it had women exposing so much that I was left confused as to whether it is a futuristic movie. I don't want to get into the details here owing to maintaining decency in this blog.
I had some basic doubts cropping-up during the movie. Let me give a fact from history and then the doubts.

Fact:
According to history books, the rising was triggered by the induction of a set of new rifles into the British army. These rifles required the soldiers to bite one end of the cartridges, which supposedly used grease made from pigs and cows. MP being a devout Brahmin treated cows as sacred animals and so couldn't take the concept of grease made from them.

Doubts:
a) Did the cartridges really use the grease made from cows? I remember reading in my books that it was a rumour. But the movie shows it to be true.

b) Was MP a drunkard as shown in the movie? He is supposed to be a devout Brahmin (isn't that the reason he refused to obey?), and Brahmins are forbidden from consuming liquor.

c) Did MP have an affaire with a call girl as shown in the movie?

d) Did MP actually bite the cartridge? From what I can remember of my history books in school, he refused to bite. But the movie shows otherwise.

I know that movies mix facts with fiction. I just want to know which parts are facts.

Ambigrams

The new logo of BSE looks great.
The first thing that struck me about this logo is that it is an ambigram - a word that reads the same in more than one angle. If you rotate the BSE logo by 180 degrees, you will still get the same logo.



Some famous examples of ambigrams are the Sun logo (90 degree rotations)
and the logo of the pop group ABBA (horizontal rotation)


There are also natural ambigrams like the word SWIMS.


I got to know of ambigrams from the book "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown. Surprisingly both dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster online don't recognize the word at all. Does that mean that this word was coined specifically for the book? A bit of googling suggests otherwise. There are websites with ambigrams, and websites for ambigrams. From what I can see there have been books on ambigrams from the early 1980s.
There has been a book by John Langdon called "Ambigrams and Reflections on the Art of Ambigrams". It is interesting that the lead character in Angels & Demons is also called Langdon. Coincidence or just influence?
One more interesting piece of info that I got is - "Angels and Demons" is Dan brown's first novel. After it flopped, Dan released his second novel "Da Vinci Code", which was a phenomenal success. Piggybacking on the success of DVC, A&D was re-released and it became a best seller this time around. Ain't that one cool marketing strategy or what?

Budget Padmanaban

Two months back I made this equation and took a decision
Flight from Bangalore to Mumbai = Rs.1800
Flight from Bangalore to Pune = Rs.1000
Estimated expense from Pune to Mumbai = Rs.200

Savings if Pune route is taken = Rs.600
So, why not?

Am I intelligent or what? So I thought till the equation shifted like this...
Flight from Bangalore to Pune = Rs.1000
Charge for making a mistake in booking = Rs.500
Auto from airport to bus stop = Rs.90
Bus to Mumbai = Rs.220 (These people have price discriminations based on the day and time of travel. I happened to travel at the costliest time - Sunday evening)
The bus came very late as the diver fell sick and we had had to wait for a new driver. By the time I reached Mumbai (1:00 AM), the railway services were stopped. I took a taxi to my friend's place considering that the same to my place would burn me out, out of money that is.
Taxi to Andheri = Rs.280
Total = Rs. 2090
Savings in not travelling from Mumbai airport to home = Rs.250
Net Loss = Rs.40 + Physical strain + wasted time
Mental anguish on bad planning = priceless

For everything else there is 'mama biskothu'

Independence Day Message

I know I'm a day late in posting this, but the message is do our little bit, and it is better late than never.

Home Coming

Seems this is the first time that this has happened. Why am I so surprised?
Now, are we supposed to be happy that none of the MLAs have been fined before, or be sad that no one, till now, took the initiative of teaching the representatives some manners. It is high time we get some diplomatic discussions in the assembly rather than fish-market fights. Hmmm, I sound like giving one of those thoughts for the Independence Day. Don’t I?

Moving on to the personal front, it is Bangy time again. After spending 4.5 months in amchi Mumbai, I'm leaving to namma Bangaloru for a week. This is one Independence Day when I literally fly home!!! To save some of my hard-earned (?) money, I've booked for a flight from Pune. Hope the expenses to reach Pune don't compensate for the gain I'm making by spending the few extra hours. I'm also pondering over the decision of the Spicejet authorities of not having a Mum-Bang flight. It is quite surprising. With most corporates operating out of either Mumbai or Bangalore, wouldn't this be the stretch to offer maximum traffic and returns?

Cricket Cribs

It's not too rare to hear the commentary, "One-day cricket is about what happens on the day. It is a funny game and everything is so unpredictable". If that is the case, why is it so predictable that Australia will win most of its matches, Bangladesh will lose most of its, and India will lose most of its finals?
I am not as disappointed watching India lose yet another final as I would have been few years back. But still there is this "So near yet so far" feeling watching them slip from the comfortable 186-2 position to 263-9 falling short of the target by 18 runs. Atleast it is better than matches like the world cup final where we got pounded miserably.
Not being an ardent follower of cricket anymore (ok, that's relative), I now get to hear the disappointment-soaked comments of others from a third party perspective. When I see people cursing Yuvraj on getting out, I get to see their frustration rather than making literal sense of their words.
I know that even after making resolutions not to watch cricket anymore, these people will get back to their seats once India plays its next match. They exhibit enormous excitement and enthusiasm while sitting glued to the match and keep postponing dinner, which my flat-mate did yesterday. But once again the question is, "Is it all worth it?" If you are thinking about leaving the match in joyous mode, then may be the answer is "no" with this Indian team. But if you are thinking of enjoying the match, then this team provides quite a good number of close matches to relish.

Excitement? Yes
Expectations? Yes
Disappointment? Yes
Withdrawal? No
phir bhi dil hai Hindustani

Companies Fuse; I Confuse

Businesses seem to follow a very cyclical trend. From what I have read, in the 1980s companies were asked by consultants to concentrate on their core competence and shed the non-core divisions of work. Most companies took this suggestion and ended-up being specialists in some segment. With the other part of the cycle coming up now, companies seem to be diversifying again. No IT company wants to be limited to one vertical and every other company wants to diversify atleast within its own vertical. Look at the mergers and acquisitions happening around us these days - Oracle acquiring i-flex, Adidas taking over Reebok and plans of Cisco buying Nokia
All of these make me confused. How does concentration on core-competence pay in one decade and diversification pay in another? Are businesses really cyclical, or is it just the need for some sort of change?
Why does MBT want to diversify with less dependence on Telecom and why does Sasken want to restrict itself only to Telecom?

As I try understanding
About banding, branding
and things that are demandingly confusing;

Business, to me, still remains cryptic
If nothing, its being cyclic
Only makes my head’s orbit elliptic

Mastering Globality!!!

For all those who think that a b-school is only about getting a brand name behind you.... Believe me, B-schools change you so much that you forget the normal way of living and thinking.

Below are some of the comments that came from our group while watching the movie Sehar. Mind you, it was a serious movie, and a good one at that.

From Movie (FM): A police guy says, "The culprit is getting many youth to join his gang. He has also outsourced some of his work"
J: Outsourced? We should ask him if he needs an outsourcing consultant or, may be, the frameworks that I've developed

FM: Policeman asks, "What does the don offer that makes the college students join him?"
J: Onsite opportunity?

FM: The Don wonderfully convinces a college grad to join his group
J: Wow! Man he should join our HR department. We would easily achieve our man-power target

FM: A guy says something that is difficult to decipher
R: Global, global. Which b-school is this guy from?

FM: "The criminals were using cell phones to communicate. In 1997, cell phones were a mystery to us, the police department"
Us: Now we know who the preferred employer for high-tech jobs would be. Would they be participating in the best employer survey?

FM: The policemen get a university prof to help them solve the cell phone mystery
J: External consultant!!!

FM: The prof works late nights
J: Night shift!!! Hope the guy gets paid on an hourly basis. If it were a fixed-bid, he is on the loosing end.

FM: The prof goes to the scene of crime along with the policemen
J: Now that's what I call a real onsite

After the movie, a friend commented "The movie was good. It gave good ROI"!!!

Now, would we be conversing this way if we weren't from b-schools? Still sceptical? Read further

J: "I'm going home on vacation and am thinking on what to buy for my mom from here"
K: "That's a tough question. Why don't you send a mail to our analyst group? They are supposed to answer all queries"
J: "So what do I say? That I need suggestions for gift to my Mom?"
K: "In this situation your mother is your client. So you should say that you are going to meet a client soon and that you need recommendations on how to impress the client. Also add that you will be going to the client's site for a week or so"

Disclaimer: Just chill chill, just chill

No sleight, just trite; Cool, have a Sprite

Exposed to early morning light
After a movie the previous night
By itself gives me a fright
Omen that this day isn't to be right?

But after another 2-hour plight
Even missing the breakfast bite
Having just 3 colleagues in my line of sight
God! Give me some respite

Albeit there is the holiday news byte
There's no happiness, I'm just quiet
Thought of the way back turns me white
With the rain infested roads, it'll be a fight

So in office I sit tight
With nothing around to excite
This poetry I indite
Which I would never dare to recite