Hey folks,

I had written a post yesterday night(or today early morning), after a long time. But, it was too serious and I felt kinda bad. So, here’s a post with all the nice things.

Class is getting less rigorous and more funny now-a-days. Many thanks to Saranyan, Sandhya, Arun, Virus, Poorna, Anand et al for keeping me cheerfully occupied on campus.

I kinda initiated a small process to change the content on my institute’s website. The content was/is pretty old, dry and boring. So, I volunteered and wrote fresh content for the website with a lot more contemporary language. It was a nice process of learning, collaborating with the management and arriving at trade-offs on what words to use where without affecting the freshness of the content. I kinda learnt the difference in thought process between our generation and the previous one. It is VERY visible, mind you!

I also showed them how there was no original ‘controllable’ content with respect to my institute, on Google’s first SERP. I myself felt the approach was a bit rude but it was the best one I could use to convince them to have a strong Social Media presence. I gave the management a plan that was approved provisionally. Haven’t begun work on it yet. Will do, after the mini-vacation. The plan is pretty strong and clear. I’m trying to document the plan into a 6-7 post series for the Electrosocial Blog. Let’s see. Should be done soon.

The first trimester exams came and went. With a lot of fanfare, I must admit. Let’s stop talking about it now, shall we?!

Had a lot of fun meeting Saranyan, Vinay and Srinath over a relaxed Sunday breeze at Bessie Beach. Separate post coming up on that!

Woke up to a wild idea one fine morning and ended up thinking on it all week. It’s grown well into a fine, neat plan now. Roped in LVS and Vinay. We’re now trying to see if we can make it a startup company, our first in life (together and individually). Again, let’s see. Should happen mostly.

TEDxChennai is shaping up VERY well. I’m kinda proud to be one of the active organisers! IIT Madras and RTBI have agreed to co-host the event. So, it’s slated to happen at the IC&SR Auditorium inside IIT Madras on November 29th, 2009. We are now looking into the nitty-gritties of the event. Hopefully, things should fall into place soon. Made some nice friends as a result of this commitment! Raja, Jo, Balajee, Benny and the big man himself, Kiruba!

There was initially a plan to work on a research paper on (a topic in) Branding. I had bootstrapped the idea but had to let go of it temporarily, for reasons best left untold here. During the mini vacation, I had the chance to speak to Milind about it and managed to get a lot of gyaan. Roped in Saranyan, the thalaivar. Will begin preliminary work on it soon. Doesn’t look like it’ll get done in anytime within a year. So, this is one of my longer commitments. But the kind of work involved is really wow. Should keep me motivated to work.

Heard of the NASSCOM Product Conclave 2009 and checked out the details. Sounded wow. Roped in Saranyan and registered sincerely, as Students. Macho discounts, I tell you! And, amazing value. Can’t wait to catch Guy Kawasaki! So, will be out of town on October 27th and 28th 2009. Bengaluru, here we come!

Found some amazing people to connect with, on Twitter. Mostly as a result of me attending the Chennai Tweetup on 11th October at Mast Kalandhar. A few more people from LinkedIn and Facebook.

Raja (the total thalaivar) sent me an invite to Google Wave, a deed for which I’d prolly waive the treat he owes me!

Will write more in another post.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. Separate posts on (second) college life, Google Wave, nice people I’ve met in the last 3 months, Social Media addiction, the Bessie Beach meetup et al would come up in the next few days!

Hey folks,

This is my first blog post from college. I’m kinda having fun here. Not started studying, as may be evident from the long gtalk sessions!

It’s been a nice month, this one. I’ve realised that I was more observant than I had ever imagined. I had managed to notice a lot of things that others seemingly missed. Things that relate to most people’s lives for that matter.

Other than that, there has been a lot of progress on the work front. A social media internship for a company called Electrosocial has been the most happening thing for the last 2-3 weeks. I’m kinda liking it a lot. The content is delivered twice a week and packs a lot of insight with relevant links for further reading. I was even asked to post once on their blog and contrary to my guest-post record, the post has come out very well!

You can find it here. About a month of the internship is left and I think it’s only going to be more interesting!

I also got my hands dirty with a small-time market research project for the college involving life insurance. Learnt a lot of things about professionalism and how it doesn’t come with age and 2 years IT work experience for certain people. A lot of networking with some CXOs from the insurance industry as well. Not that I knew enough about insurance to engage them in conversations!

Other than that, I’ve kinda dusted my old stuff a bit and have started working on a small idea I had in the past. I’ve luckily found people to work on it with, this time. So, you can expect a post on that in the future on this blog. It would involve research, more research and even more research. But not the typical geek nerd research! This is more of logical analysis relating to life.

Me and 2 other people here have kinda developed a business idea and would be working on polishing it soon. Hope that works out as well. It’s a nice thing and fits the current market well. There is a funny thingie here! We had actually spent serious time researching for some business ideas and we thought of this one while randomly chit-chatting in class!

I’m going to be involved in organising an event in Chennai in November. Though this is still in the preliminary stages, I’m sure it would pick up momentum in the coming weeks and would be an amazingly fun experience for me.

A couple of conferences, some contests, (hopefully) one research paper, a video for Sit and some work for Mozilla are other stuff in the pipeline.

This post also serves as a reminder for me. I tend to get a little too forgetful and irresponsible if I don’t have my commitments listed in a single place!

As for the post title, I’m kinda experiencing early signs of insomnia. It’s a state I’ve forced onto myself, in a way. I’m hoping to take a week off sometime in end August. Let’s see if that works out!

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. Most of the content on this post was completed in college but the computer guy got mad and drove me off the lab. Apparently, I hear he hates working. Understandable. India still has a lot of scope for change!

Hey folks,

I’ve gotten this sudden obsession with attending off-beat workshops that give you new ways of looking at things in life. I’m even putting aside a sum of money as reserve for my workshop spending.

I’ve been exposed to a few such initiatives after meeting Milind, namely LIFE Academy and The Landmark Forum. I have not tried both of them but will do so in the near future, once I can afford them!

Milind started a group (early this year) called Career Cats Chennai which focuses on exposing young corporate professionals to business skills like workplace dynamics, when and why to switch jobs, negotiation skills, how best to sell themselves & land offers and more. As part of the group’s activities, there would be 2 interesting mini-workshops, one each, on June 13th and 14th 2009.

The first workshop (on June 13th 2009) would be on Creating Off-beat Resumes. It is said that the average time that a recruiter spends on a resume is less than 10 minutes. Given the economic slowdown and related business pressures, this could come down to even 3-4 minutes. I have always believed that a good, consistent and clear personal brand is the best way to land a coveted job. In that sense, a resume would be the first-point formal expression of one’s personal brand. You can make it look like any other resume, namely a collection of facts and numbers about yourself. Or, you can make it look like an outright advertisement selling yourself. The difference is a bit subtle and, probably, I’m not getting it through very accurately. I’m sure you’d have all seen ‘Data Sheets’ and ‘Brochures’ of Cell-phones. This is kinda like that. The idea it to make both available but subtly promote the brochure more.

The second workshop (on June 14th) would be on Cracking Job Interviews. To most of us, this will sound like a highly cliche’d idea. But, trust me. It need not always be. If you’ve had my experiences, you’d probably know that an interview is not just about landing the job alone. There is a lot more to it. I don’t want to talk more on this because I might well be intruding into the content of the workshop.

Both the workshops will be delivered by Milind and would be highly focussed, result-oriented, lateral stuff.

I’d be glad to send you more information about the workshops, the venue, the costs et al if you’re interested. Just put a comment on this post and indicate your email ID.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I am planning to organise a lecture series, soon. Just looking for a few things to crystallize. More info on that in a separate post.

This is my 22nd year of existence on the face of the Earth and I can, quite certainly, say that none has been as special as 2008 has been. There are a lot of reasons, good and bad.

The learning that I could get from experiences in 2008 was enormous. Something that has never happened to this extent so far.

Here’s what I’ve learnt.

1. Never exercise anger immediately. When feeling angry, postpone the impulsive action for 30 minutes. See if the anger still exists. If it does exist, go ahead. Otherwise, get on with life.

2. Always know clearly as to where to draw the line between friends and best friends and between friends and acquaintances.

3. Never judge a person by mere looks. That is the worst way to do it! At the same time, never under-estimate anyone. You never know who would become what tomorrow.

4. Be egoistic if you want to, but never show out anything. It doesn’t help one bit.

5. If someone praises you, don’t blindly brush aside the praise. If you deserve it, take it. There’s nothing wrong. If you dont’ deserve it, pass it on to someone who really deserves it.

6. Never say die. There is always more than one way to do anything in the World!

7. Never talk to people about your aspirations. Keep them within yourself until they have materialized!

8. Don’t postpone anything! You never know if you’d live to see the light of the next day.

9. There is no point talking/cribbing about anything. Get down to action! That’s all that matters!

10. Dont’ get over excited/enthusiastic about something and end up over-pressurizing/irritating peers.

11. Finally, Don’t assume XYZ is your friend/best-friend because XYZ talks well and treats you well. Never ever! There are a lot more things to it. Don’t decide hastily.

Apart from the gyan, there are also a few memorable incidents that have given me the energy to go on with life.

1. The fun that I had with Arun during the project days. We ended up putting slides in a different random order for each review and got the staff mad at us! Changed the algorithm on University Review day just before the External Examiner came to see our project! There were time when I lost interest in the project and Arun has to be given due credit for pulling me into it whenever necessary.

2. Signed up to become a Mozilla Campus Rep. Did little ground work in the end. Contributed to their forums and bug billboard.

3. Started this blog and ‘officially’ started blogging.

4. People like Srinath V, LVS, Arun, Pavithra, Sowmiya, Ash, Sathya and GAPP have influenced my life and lifestyle a lot. They have to be given due credit as well. Some have shown me my positive side and some have shown me my negative side. I’m grateful to each one of them in a distinct way.

5. Dropped Infy. This was something I never realized I could. It’s not something great when looked at in general. Lots of people do it now-a-days. But for me, I never knew I had the courage to take a risk in life. All these years, I’ve been a very safe player doing things the no/little risk way. The encouragement I got from friends has been something startling.

6. Worked hard for MBA. This is another thing I’ve not done in life. I’ve never WORKED HARD for something related to academics so far. Whatever I’ve gotten in School and College has been only what I could do with an ordinary effort, nothing phenominal. The first time I worked hard for academics was while preparing for my MBA entrance tests. For many, MBA entrance tests might not be tough at all. But for me, they are. I do have to admit that I’m just about above-average and I’ve worked really hard this year. Really hope something materializes in the coming days/months.

7. Started the SIT with Srinath V. This is another thing I’m proud of. We have managed to put the idea from paper to practise in these 8 months. We have learnt a lot lot through various experimental measures. Although it isn’t formally an NGO yet, I would say we’ve managed to create a good NGO model for the SIT through a (severely-battered) learning process over the last 8 months. We do have to thank all those who’ve stood with us and helped us do things without expecting any tangible returns. We have set a few personal targets w.r.t the SIT for 2009. I am only hoping that we manage to reach all of them soon.

8. This is more of a learning through a set of events. I’ve learnt that there is no use running behind a single short-sighted target most of the time. I was looking around for a single solid internship in marketing for about 2 long months. Around June-July I guess. Nothing really materialized. I lost heart and dropped the idea as such. Now, in hindsight, I realize that I have learnt a more about Marketing and People’s Minds in the last 6 months than what I had expected to learn from any internship. Maybe I would’ve learnt more from an internship but my personal expectations are met and that’s all that matters.

Apart from all this, there is one thing that has been a bit disappointing for me. Arun left India on July 28th 2008. I couldn’t get to meet him even once during his last week in India (before leaving for the US). Now, it looks like I won’t be able to meet him for the next 2 years! The same goes for Navneeth as well!

In all, 2008 has been THE single most important year in my life for both good and bad reasons. It will be long remembered in my mind as one year that largely shaped me.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I’m tired of using ubuntu live for 2 weeks now. Is Windows XP even available anywhere in Chennai?

Hey folks,

No! This ain’t a post on actor Ajit. So, if you’re Ajit fan looking for some piece of film gossip, this ain’t the post!

This post, however, is about the recent increase in number of incidents of terror in India. I am sure it wouldn’t have happened if Navneeth Thala was in India. Fortunate for the terrorists and unfortunate for the people of India, Thala is now studying in the US!

This is a photo of Thala when he was his most cheerful self. I wouldn’t dare take a picture of him when he is angry.

Thala is a one-man-army way ahead of other famous one-man-armies like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Captain Vijayakanth, Bruce Willis etc. in terms of capability. After all, he had the audacity to shout at Prabhu in the middle of a class and eventually also scared Prabhu into giving him 10 marks in the OS Unit Test Paper when the entire class dared not to question Prabhu’s evaluation.

Thala’s magnanimity was clearly illustrated when he took the blame and faced the music for copying in an Analog and Digital Communications Unit Test. He did this out of the sheer affection and love that he had for his batchmates GinaRajan and SM Karthikeyan!

There are some who dared question Thala’s sexual orientation after he was frequently spotted roaming around with Raja Deepak. But then, Thala took that accusation also calmly. Again, for the sheer affection and love he had for his Raja Deepak!

He may have failed Engineering Drawing twice but he’s the fastest draw in the South-East! He may not know Data Structures and Discrete Maths well but the discrete mathematics associated with the raw data of his physical structures will terrorize the terrorists!

More to come!

Yours Skeptically,

There’s this junior of mine from college who’s pretty close to me. He’s a regular reader of this blog. What follows is a piece of convo I had with him.

—-

Him: How did IIFT go da?

Me: Went pretty well…but, might miss the cutoff by less than a mark….

Him: hmmmmm

Me: Saw a lot of our seniors there da…..

Me: Met Prateek, D*#@^5&!, P$**7&!, Manish and all.

Him: Was this sentence intended for me? I don’t even know them!

Me: Of course it was intended for you da. Don’t you remember them?

Him: I know D*#@^5&! alone….the rest I’ve not even heard of!

Me: You dunno P$**7&! ?

Him: nopes!

Me: P$**7&! is Aditya’s batchmate from my branch!

Him: Dunno her da….

Me: LVS’ classmate, I think….. or maybe the other class….

Him: Tennis Player?

Me: yeah

Him: That pretty female?

Me: yeah

Him: with that dusky voice?

Me: yeah

Him: working with Infy?

Me: ada paavi! theriyadhu theriyadhunu sollittu ivlo info puttu puttu vekkariye?! nee nallavan da! romba nallavan!

—-

How come is it that this junior always gets caught making controversial statements like these?! I faintly remember Sathya also doing a post or two on him.

Yours Skeptically,

Hey folks!

It’s been a reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaally long time since I posted on this blog. Partly because I was trying to prepare for my MBA entrance exams and partly because I wanted to give a long break and see how much I missed blogging.

The last two-and-a-half months have been really good. Did a lot of things, met a lot of people, learnt a lot from precious experiences in life.

These are some of the things I did/learnt-to-do.

1. Learnt how to diagnose hardware problems and isolate them to the correct hardware on my desktop. Proved to be quite useful when my RAM didn’t work and when I had to change the battery of the CPU Clock.

2. Learnt a lot about journalism, how things are done in print media, what all background work has to be done to get oneself a news story.

3. Learnt that your background made no difference when it came to competitive exams. Found a guy who studied Cartography but is far better at Quants than I am!

4. Made a quiz for the SIT.

5. Worked on a good promotional presentation for the SIT. But dropped it because Ravi Chaitanya wasn’t available for consultation!

6. Finally, I’ve learnt how to remain silent about things and/or events and stay underground for as long as required.

Now, the nice people I’ve met.

1. Vijay Prabhat Kamalakara: Vijay is an entrepreneur and runs Storytrails India. I liked his company’s base idea and met him in person. Had a good discussion. Somehow we were impressed with each other and I tried my best to help him out in whatever way I could. He’s a really nice guy. Graduated from IIM Indore, but won’t mention a word about it unless you ask him.

2. Dr Mohan Rao: He’s one of the new members we got for the SIT as a result of that TOI news item. He’s a Senior Laproscopic Consultant at Malar Hospitals. One of the most humble and youthful persons I’ve seen! Brainy, has a different perspective towards everything in life! When he’s around you hardly feel he’s part of the previous generation! He’ll know someone everywhere be it Anna University or RadioOne!

3. Shyleswari Rao: She’s Dr Mohan’s wife. I’d say they’re a perfect couple! They gel well into any crowd whatever be it’s diversity/taste. She’s a HR trainer/Consultant and specializes in Behavioral Training/Research. Both Dr Mohan and Shyleswari add so much value to our (otherwise 20s perspective) discussions and are highly approachable in times of need!

4. Kisu Kisu Geetha: KKG is such an interesting person! Of course that isn’t her name. I’ve been asked to keep her identity a secret. KKG is the name of the show she did on Suryan FM from 2004 to 2006. Now, however she’s in a plum job at the World Bank! She’s a dancer, a trained Kalari fighter, a good singer and an aspiring manager! A very very good humane as well. Didn’t know her much till I referred a job from BIG FM to her. Eventually she didn’t take it but we became good friends!

5. Neeraj Agarwal: Neeraj is the guy who I sit with (mostly) during my TIME sessions. He’s the typical happy-go-lucky North Indian that you see in Hindi movies! Very helpful, very very cheerful and sometimes scores well in tests

6. Jay Patel: Jay is the Marketing Manager at Mozilla Corp, USA. I did not contribute much to the Firefox in India community until I graduated. Once I decided to put my internet activity on hold, the only real pastime that I had was to see what people posted on Mozilla’s forums and reply accordingly. Jay gave me a very good personalized letter of appreciation and I’m very grateful to him for that! Now, he’s also extended an offer for me to become a Mozilla Campus Reps Organizer. Dunno what that means as of now. Hope it’s something exciting. Jay is a very dynamic, young, marketing manager. Much like Aneesh Nair* at WorldSpace!

7. Pramodh Kumar, Ganapathy, Shankha Basu, Tapan Malhotra: These are people I spoke to regarding applying to various institutes. Pramodh and Ganapathy study at IFMR, Shankha at SP Jain and Tapan at XLRI. I am impressed by the amount of humility these people possess. Each one has excelled in his own way but would never tell you what he has done in life so far unless you specifically ask for it.

CAT

Apart from the people I’ve met in these 2.5 months, people like Sowmiya, Pavithra, Vaidehi, Ash, Arun, LVS , KKG, Akshaya, Sriram and Srinath have been very very supportive. Everytime I had a doubt or was down and out, they were always there to get me back on track. I’m very grateful to them for all that and I promise to be there with them during their tough times wherever I am and whatever I’m doing at those times! As for CAT, It hasn’t gone too well. Though I can still get thru some of my backup instis like BIMTECH, my dream instis like MICA, MDI, IMT-G are ruled out now. Of course, there are a lot more exams left and there’s a lot of stake left. Sunday is my day! It’s just a question of which Sunday it is, in the coming month!

Otherwise

I’m beginning to miss college life like anything. All that fun, frolic, entertainment, exams, culturals, vacations, results, agony, happiness! Wish I could go back in time once! Arun, Navneeth and Sudhir have gone to the US to chase their dreams and Sundar has gone to Infy. Raja is absconding and Praveen is busy staring at girls and trying to hit on them at his workplace. Life is a bit difficult when you have only Naveen to talk to!

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. As for the post title, I wanted a lame excuse to continue my habit of writing a PostScript. Hence, the sad news!

* Aneesh Nair is the Marketing Manager for the southern region at WorldSpace India. People who worked with me during Rapture would remember the tough time we had convincing him into partnering with us! The guy has many cellphones and is always on the run

I can understand that it’s been a very long time since I wrote a good purposeful post on this blog. About 3 weeks or so.

I’ve seriously gotten a bit tight with my time management. I’ve put my hands into a lot of things and as usual, am trying to balance all things.

Infy hasn’t called yet and that has given me time to prep well for my MBA entrances. As far as speculations go, I would have to join Infy earliest by Oct first week. Until then, I’m hoping to do a good bit of prep.

One hour of browsing each in the morning, evening and night should do I guess. One movie a day should gimme enough entertainment. Folks at home are also ordering a STB/DTH system sometime this week. I will certainly have to walk the tight rope with that distraction. Let’s see. I am just hoping I can pull it off.

Other than all that, Arun has left to chase his dreams in the US. Navneeth and Sudhir are leaving this week. That leaves me with Raja, Sundar, Naveen and Praveen w.r.t my college gang. We’re in no position to leave India atleast for a year from now. So, that’s about it.

Although I don’t value any of the ‘day’s including my own birth’day’, Happy Friendship Day to you all!

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. This is also not a purposeful post.

Need I say more?

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

It’s been about 2 weeks since I posted on this blog. It’s a long hiatus considering the fact that I was posting once a day on this blog sometime back. A lot lot has happened in these 2 weeks.

The SIT blog:

I worked on the group blog here and learnt a thing or two about hacking Blogger template code. Also realized that creating templates manually was a very very long tiring process. The group blog is up and running now and I can take a slight backseat. The team writing there is a group of good friends and juniors. In the process of forming that team I realized who all really cared for me unconditionally and who all cared for me for the sake of maintaining contact. I was a bit shocked at how a few ‘friends’ reacted regarding the group blog.

Mock tests:

I got 229 on 300 in my first ever mock test attempt since December 2007. Happy news indeed! Somehow, I slipped down to 190s in the next two mocks. The mock I took yesterday didn’t go very well either. It looks like I’ve gotta put in a lot more work on my CAT prep. Gonna start Data Interpretation from today.

Rowdie Gang Treat:

Rowdie Gang is the gang of my best friends in college. We’re a gang of 10 people who always sit together inspite of our diverse branches. We met up after a long time. Sundar had missed the treat due to swelling inside his mouth due to a wisdom tooth disorientation. Praveen is busy at MphasiS getting trained and he missed this treat too. More on this treat will follow.

Arun-shopping-flop:

Arun and I set out one fine afternoon to Saravana Stores to get some budget gifts to distribute to nice people in college. I was to come to T Nagar and meet Arun there. It did happen, only his petrol tank broke from it’s framework and hung inside the scooter’s body! We had a tough time fixing it and finally tied it firmly in place with a mechanic’s help. A good 2 hours or more was wasted in this process and Arun still cribs about that! the whole plan flopped and we had to go to our respective houses.

Now Playing:

Srinath had told me that this song called ‘Anbe En Anbe’ from Dhaam Dhoom was really good to listen to. I got hold of that song and it’s playing in the background round-the-clock inside my room! It’s really good, I suggest that you guys listen to it once. It’s a typical Harris Jeyaraj song like ‘Unnale Unnale’. But I still like it.

Engineering Books:

My dad has been asking me to dispose off college books that I don’t need. We usually go down to a book reseller and drop off the books and take a few books in exchange. This time we disposed a lot of books and got a few old books in exchange for them. Dad was happy that he got hold of some good physics book and mum was happy that there was more free space in my bookshelf.

Apart from all these, I’ve made it a habit to download one movie every night (if possible) and watch it the next day. Depending on the quality of the movie, I either write it into a disc or delete it.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I also realized how nice a pleasant geek like Vijay Bhalaki is when compared to a few others I know!