Chennai Rains

Though I had said that I would be writing a series on my interview experiences, I would take a diversion in this blog. Afterall not everyday does it rain in Chennai, and not every person gets to be in 2 deluges in a space of 3 months.

When I was starting from Mumbai to Chennai, quite a few warned me that the difference in temperature would be high. Yes, the difference was high - Chennai is cooler!!! It started raining from the time I reached Chennai allowing me to quote an age-old belief that the arrival of good people will bring rains. Bringing rains is fine, but the deluge that happened last week is something I would have preferred not to have brought from Mumbai. Though I wasn't affected much this time around, the situation was quite bad for the people around. My peril was restricted to my office bus being diverted in few places due to the flooded roads. Otherwise the rains did get me couple of days off from office making it a long weekend.

Once again people have started pointing fingers and stating that it's the government's fault that so much of damage was caused. I was even surprised when I saw such a statement from a person who was in the ruling party previously. Did his government have some setup against natural disasters that the current government has spoiled? It is just that nature thought of playing its game now and not 5 years before. Anyways, leaving these political games aside, I'm actually wondering as to how we can reduce the damages caused by the games of nature. Better infrastructure is something that most people provide as an answer. I'm not sure as to a) is such an infrastructure possible? and b) can we really afford such an infrastructure?
Does anyone know if some new measures/ policies/ developments have been made in Mumbai after the deluge that happened there few months back?

Anyways I sincerely pray for all these heavy rains, train accidents, bomb blasts and earth quakes to stop and let people live their lives peacefully. I wish everyone a fun-filled and peaceful Deepawali.

Interesting Interview Situations I

Before I made the switch of jobs recently, I had the experience of few interesting interview situations. Let me describe them in the subsequent blogs.

My phone rang at 6:00 pm, the time at which my office bus always starts in its long journey to my home. The person at the other end of the call was a HR from a software firm that is into financial products. I had applied to the firm just the previous day and so was least expecting their call at that time.

HR: "One of our senior members from the US wants to interview you now. Can you receive the call in 5 minutes?"
Me: "I'm sorry but I'm currently traveling and so wouldn't be able to take the call now. Can I have the interview tomorrow?"
HR: "We want to finish this today. Can't you take the call today?"
Me: "Ok then. It'll be 8 pm when I reach my destination. I'll take the call at 8:30"
HR: "It's urgent. Can't you take the call now itself? I can hear you clearly."
Me: "Actually, I'm in the office bus. So I can't possibly attend an interview from here."
HR: "Then can you take the call at 8:15?"

The bus generally reaches my place by 7:30. I had given the time as 8:00 giving me some safety net. So 8:15 didn't sound bad at all and I agreed.

7:00 pm: The bus was still near office. There was a traffic jam due water logging in the roads (yep, the Mumbai rain deluge)

7:30 pm: By this time I was sure that I wouldn't be able to reach home by 8:15. What to do now? A friend suggested that we get down at a mall nearby and take the call.

8:10: We entered the shopper's stop showroom and I was ready to attend the interview when all of sudden the sound shook me. It was the usual, "Ladies' salwars at 25% discount in first floor", kind of shop announcement. There was no way that I would have been able to attend an interview with announcements blowing off every 5 minutes. We quickly moved out of the shop and roamed around the mall to find a peaceful place. That's when we came across a section of the mall that was still under construction. Since it was late evening, the work for the day was over and the place had very few people. I felt satisfied with the locale and my phone rang instantly.

The result of the interview was an offer from the company, which I later declined. But the experience of searching for a place to attend an interview during a downpour, and answering questions while walking up and down a shop floor under construction is something that I can think of and laugh about.

Learning Lessons

Positive attitude is good, but not always. When my friend, with about 10 years of stock market experience behind him, asked me to exit the market couple of weeks back I was not in the mood to listen. I had already tasted success in the few months that I had been following the Dalal street. I was positive, and I was foolish. Guess I needed to loose few thousands of cash to learn this lesson - learn from the mistakes of others, you can't make all of them yourself.

One more lesson - education is never wasted. While studying banking in college purely for interest sake I never expected to work on it. I was deemed to move into marketing courtesy my strong IT background. Even when I got through a multinational bank I declined the offer as I somehow felt that I'm an IT guy. But as it always happens, due to a combination of circumstances I find myself in the banking vertical in IT!!!

The Week Gone

It's been a week that had lots to write about. But it was also a week where I couldn't garner the time or the resources to blog, or even visit my blog. Now that I have both, I'm not sure what to write. May be I'll leave the past and look into the future with a positive outlook for my blog.

Well, there is one thing of the past week that I wouldn't like to pass without being documented. Last week was characterized especially by lots of travel. Let alone the travel between Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore, the travel within Chennai was more exhausting. I now know the routes to so many places, which I had ignored earlier. I have never been too comfortable remembering places without a map. But this week made me revisit my weakness and apply a bit of ointment over it.

A message to all my dear friends who are wondering why I haven't called them yet..... I'm yet to get a mobile connection :D

au revoir amchi mumbai

It's time to say goodbye again. Goodbye to Amchi Mumbai that has persisted with me for quite some time now. I came here with quite a few aspirations, but somehow things haven't been as interesting as I expected them to be. So here I go. With the rains subduing and the heat picking up in Mumbai, I leave for another city that is known for its heat. I am going to the city that I called to be my hometown for 20 odd years. The irony of the situation is that I'm now going there as an outsider, a person who has to look for a home in there. But anyways, I'm happy to be moving back and getting another chance to see the wonderful city that has etched itself into my heart.

Brave New World - A review

There are times when a writer would wish to write stuff that his readers might not at all be interested in. Well, though I've seen very poor responses to my blogs on books, I'll go ahead with this one just to satisfy myself.
The novels that I have read since my last review are "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown and "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley. Yes, my reading habit has slowed down from the a-book-a-week regime that I followed few months back. Nowadays I'm more absorbed by crosswords and puzzles than by books. May be the change of my coordinates from next week on may spark a change back towards books.
Since most people would have read A&D, I'll write about BNW (Brave New World).
BNW is a picture of the future presented by Huxley in the 1930s. Believe me; the picture looks too futuristic even today. BNW is a world in which the emotions of people are manipulated and everyone is made to stay in a state of notional happiness. It is a world where children are produced and not born, 'Father' and 'Mother' being irreputable words. Children are classified into alphas, betas, gammas and deltas, and conditioned in accordance to their classification - a futuristic way of castism.
The book began with so much description that I felt like returning it before reaching even the 10th page. But the simple fact that it is a small book made me continue with it. I expected the novel to stop the descriptions somewhere and get on with the plot, the way my all time favourite "Devil's Alternative" did. But my expectation was not to be satisfied. Even after completing the book I'm left wondering what the idea of the novel is.
There are surely few questions that the novel puts forth - What is wrong in having notional emotions? What is wrong if your senses are conditioned to stay happy? What is wrong in being drugged to stay happy? There are even stronger questions being asked in the novel in areas pertaining sex and marriage, which I'm not able to write about due to my own conditioning
All in all, I feel that it is a novel that could be left unread. I've heard that "1984" has a similar concept dealt in a better way. But I'm too saturated with this way of thinking and will avoid it. May be people who haven't read either can try 1984, which is supposedly a classic.

Birthday Bash

"Most times in life people don't do what they are qualified to do". Shyam's ears were ringing with his (virtual) sister's words. Yes, that's exactly what he had done/ not done the previous day. Throwing all his marketing research reports (Refer previous blog) into the recycle bin, Shyam went ahead organising a non-booze, non-smoking, vegetarian party. Most people who were the subjects of Shyam's research earlier backed their words and didn't respond. But it wasn't long before our hero understood that he had had the wrong sample space for his MR. The response was overwhelming. People whom Shyam had never expected to reply to his invitation responded on positive notes. "Yes, ofcourse" he thought. These were the people who seldom attended parties. These were the people who formed the target segment of his product (party). Added to the happiness was the favourable nod given by the normal party-goers.

The party was supposed to be at 7:00 pm and Shyam knew that it meant 8:00 pm to most. When the turnover at 7 was zilch, a flat mate of Shyam remarked, "Something's not normal". But when slowly calls started coming in with people saying that they'll be a bit late, Shyam laughed, "Everything is normal"

It was a party with a difference. No singing, no dancing and ofcourse the other 'no's that were earlier decided. People were having a good time just chatting and munching with songs being played by a computer in the background.

Someone from the Gang: "Time for the cake cutting ceremony"
Shyam: "But it's only 10:45. Aren't birthdays celebrated at 12:00?"
SFTG : "This is a party with a difference. It'll now be a birthday with a difference"
Shyam: "ok, but I don't eat cakes"
SFTG : "Who asked you to eat it?"
Shyam: "grrr"
SFTG : "Chill off dude. We have got an egg-less cake for you"

SFTG: "Hey there is no knife"
Shyam chuckles: "It's non-violence day (Gandhi Jayanthi). Let me cut it with a spoon"
Seems to be a bad joke, no response at all.

When Shyam was in the bus stop sending-off his guests, someone said, "Oh! It’s 12:00 atlast. Happy Birthday man"

Inspite of going against his market research results, Shyam decided to prepare this event as a case study. Well, a rose is a rose is a rose, and so is an MBA. His report concluded,
"Market research reports should be taken with a pinch of salt/ common sense. In situations where one is launching a new product, interviews with customers of existing product may not help at all. The new product might attract new customers. Or, may be, it's all the charm of the brand ambassador of the product".
In non-MBA language it simply means, "May be people came because Shyam invited them and not because of the nature of the party"

P.S. Few people said that the previous post is not fully believable (the fainting part I guess). Guys, when Shyam isn't real, why would his stories be?
Corollary: Shyam enters the scene only when a bit of imaginary exaggeration is required to make things interesting. But my imagination is limited to around 5%