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

After a very long time (~2 weeks), I signed onto Orkut today because someone had scrapped me. I didn’t need to login because almost all the time my Google cookie is active. I replied to the scrap and took a glance of my Home page when I noticed that Orkut had moved to orkut.co.in from orkut.com for India. I dunno anything about how this is gonna affect the Indian Economy. For such expert comments, we’re awaiting word from PSP.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. PSP is said to be busy in training but still I got some multi-coloured forwards from him today! Thirundhave maattaan!

June 13th 2008. This day will be written in World history for ages as the day that changed World Cinema. A day that only a privileged few get to witness during their lifetime.

A day that is equivalent to a miracle of nature but bears the hard work of thousands of people. A day when even the Gods would descend down on the Earth to witness the event, the spectacle, that may not even repeat itself before the end of the World at Armageddon.

The event being the release of Padmasri Kamal Haasan and K S Ravikumar’s Magnum Opus, Dasavathaaram. After 22 months of pre-production, production and post-production, the film is finally to grace theaters.

Frankly, I am not exaggerating at all. It may not be possible for another actor to successfully essay 11 roles. Definitely not in Indian Cinema. There is a remote chance that Hollywood might try to break this record.

The reservations start from Sunday, June 8th 2008. The good news is that I’m going first day surely. I will have to take someone along. Any show, any denomination Sathyam Cinemas. Anyone willing? I think I can accomodate one more person surely, maybe two if possible. Temme in the comments about your availability.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. This is not illicit selling of tickets (like my dad opined) as I’m just asking people if they can come with me. Standard ticket rates apply.

I am sure all of you/us would have given a thought about a perfect soul-mate. It’s perfectly normal to do so. [No tealie! This ain't a post targeting you!]

The process of matrimony, like any other domestic process, has also become computerized (to an extent) now although the commitment called Life still hasn’t!

OK! OK! I’ll cut down on the abstractness!

There are popular matrimony sites like BharatMatrimony, SimplyMarry, Shaadi and all. The thing with these sites is that one needs to register for an account, has to give all account details including a photo and has to scavenge for other accounts based on tags such as caste, religion, language etc.

[I know it sounds a lot similar to what people do on Orkut! oh! PSP! We could use more gyan here!]

The problem with such services is that all your profile details are pretty much vulnerable to the outside world. I’m sure anyone would feel insecure giving out personal details on the Internet to find a life partner. There is a chance that such details are misused.

I had just come across this site called SirfCoffee. It’s a very interesting idea. All you have to do is register just like on any other site. The advantage here is that you don’t have a ‘public’ profile like in other services. Instead, the service provider maintains your profile privately and handpicks people who might suit you by carefully reading through your profile. This way your privacy is also maintained and the chances of you getting a perfect-match are more. It doesn’t stop there. The service provider also arranges for a coffee date between the two people. But, you have to take it from there on.

I liked the idea instantly. But then, this cannot be scaled up to a large extent as it wouldn’t be possible to hand-process applications beyond a certain number of applicants. You can find more details on the service including a good explanation of the various phases of the service on the website.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I didn’t go searching for my soul-mate. Vijay just tweeted the URL and I casually visited thinking it was another version of the Open Coffee Club.

Never ever use Opera to sign into wordpress and write a post! Opera screws up the post aligning big time! I had a personal taste of it today, some 20 mins ago. The previous post was first aligned as if word-wrap was turned off!

I logged onto wordpress from Firefox and pretended to edit the post and saved it. Then everything became fine.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I’m told that Opera is a perfect browser. It passes ACID test 2 and all! I couldn’t help laughing out loud!

I was quite happy that my computer was running pretty fine for a long time. There was literally no noticeable problem! No crashes, no viruses, no partitions missing, nothing! One fine morning, I wake up early and download all that I can till the 8 AM IST free-download-time set by BSNL.

I go to sleep at 8 only to be woken up by my dad 30 minutes later. He tells me that the computer isn’t ‘working’. To him, ‘not-working’ means only one thing. To me, it always means a dozen things. Even a small tilt of the power plug can mean ‘not-working’ for him. I was hoping that it was one of those petty problems so that I can pretend that there’s something gravely wrong with the computer and claim to have ‘repaired’ it.

[Well, that's how I impress the people most of the time]

This time, however, it wasn’t that simple! Windows refused to boot! I had downloaded movies and everything some 30 mins back and it seemed fine.

30 mins later, pop! there it goes! Now, I need to find a Windows XP CD and try to reinstall it.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. Luckily I have Linux! Special thanks to this guy for that!

I am sure most of you wouldn’t be in a comfortable position if you had to co-exist with reptiles in your house. I’m not comfortable as well. In addition to this already-existing discomfort, a recent incident has pushed the tolerance levels further down to an all-time low! I just thought I’ll write about it here. Being the noble guy that I am, I don’t want such an incident happening to any of you.

I was searching for this book called ”Made in Japan”. It’s about Akio Morita, the founder of Sony. I couldn’t find it in my living room. I had to go into my bedroom to retrieve it. There was no light switched on in that bedroom. I, unsuspectingly, switched on the tubelight and as usual would take ages to light up. I took a couple of steps forward and felt something unusual rubbing against my right foot thumb. I just nudged it a bit thinking it was some random thing inside the room. Suddenly, the light went on and I saw a lizard running across the room from my direction to that opposite of me. I was shell shocked! I ran into the bathroom and washed my feet and hands with any kind of cleaning liquid that was inside (except the cleaning acid types). Man! It was a terrible experience!

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. If at all you feel something strange next to your feet, don’t ever nudge it!

Yes! I mean it! Most of us don’t know the fact that there are a lot of complex management activities in our day-to-day life itself. This is partly due to a lot of us not being aware of the flashy management jargon. We don’t know clearly as to what marketing/sales could mean and therefore, we don’t know we’re good at it. I ask you to give a deep thought into the things mentioned below. I thought of these things while I had to put on my eye drops and ’sleep’ down on the floor in my living room.

1) You market yourself a lot when you want something from your mom or dad, especially when you’ve done nothing great but are ‘going to’ do something swashbuckling!

2) When you wave out in a cricket stadium, you try to do something more unique than the guy next to you so that the cameras notice you and you become instantly famous. Although the fame lasts for not more than a minute, you get the thrill and that seems to be worth the effort.

3) You go down to your teacher and ask for more marks. I agree that in a lot of the cases, or in fact in most cases, there is little marketing. But, I know a few people who get marks because they market themselves well (especially a few females whose names I can’t mention here).

4) This is not a very compelling form of marketing. But, you do sell yourself when you even try for employment. Ask Arun, Sundar or myself. We’ve got our own stories to tell about the Infosys personal interview.

There could be more scenarios that didn’t come to my mind while writing this post. If I can get hold of some more exemplary scenarios, I’ll update this post or write a new post.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. If you have noticed a few scenarios, do tell me in the comments section.

I had gone to college today and met Arun there. He had somehow collected my Course Completion Certificate from the college and was waiting to give it to me before he left. I took a moment to look at it. It looks a little worse than a typical Anna-University-affiliated-college technical symposium participation certificate. It has some out-of-fashion text and worse than that, it’s written and given on request. If I go and ask for my name they’ll write my name and branch and give it off. If I go after 2 days, I can get one more and after 2 days, one more and so on!

The bottom line is that the college has tried to watermark it’s name in about font size 8-9 about 50 times within one A4 sheet itself! Man! They could’ve tried one large watermark that says the abbreviations alone! In fact, people are even telling me that the watermark isn’t actually made on the sheet but is printed with the text! That’s sick! Hope it ain’t that way!

In any case, the college has certified that I have completed a 4 year mammoth course by giving me a sub standard symposium participation certificate!

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I don’t mean to say my college sucks. If you happen to interpret it that way, you’re welcome! That’s not wrong either!

I was just thinking of a few random things while taking bath today morning and the idea for this post came to my mind. I had a lot of misconceptions while I was in school. All of them have been rectified by the experiences of college life. I just thought I’ll write on a few weird ones here.

Then: Any female with fair complexion is considered hot.

Now: There’s a lot more than that!

Then: An invite came from some University of Phoenix in the US of A. I was proud that some American university had invited me to join some course.

Now: Not even the worst of dunces would go there.

Then: I was proud that the opening page of MSN said “welcome, Prashanth” I was  like “They recognize me! I must be great”

Now: It’s only because of a stupid cookie!

Then: Getting a job in an IT company in India requires one to be of exceptional academic background and possess extra-ordinary skills of negotiation and technical prowess.

Now: Most of that is bullshit! I’m placed and I have none of these!

Then: All fellows who go to IITM are absolute geeks and think of nothing but research and academics.

Now: Aaha! Tiffany’s and Cafe Coffee Day! So that’s where most people went!

Many more to come in this list.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I’ll update this post when something pops up appropriately. So keep checking back this post if you want to see more of these.