New Blog - The CExperience

16th August, 2007

All the events and happenings during my 2 years IIMC will be posted under the following blog ...
I will retrospectively and prospectively (financial accounting terms) try to cover as much as I can from the wonderful once in a lifetime experience at IIMC.

Keep visiting the http://cexperience.blogspot.com

Nostalgic memories of Worklife

19th June, 2007

15th June was my last day at offish, as I was about to embark on a academic voyage for the next two years. It was like, I was ending everything that was good and fun, in anticipation of something better. There is no guarantee that whatever becomes of the future, will be better than what I had already in my hands. But still human beings take such seemingly stupid steps. That was eczhaktly my state of mind in those days ...

My typical worklife was as follows: Go anytime to offish. Finish your work. Then one has loads of time to do TP. We used to go for movies anytime during the week. We used to play LAN games like AOE, AOM, Warcraft and CS for as along as we could. We all had no insecurity in terms of money or work. Cannot summarize the past 2 years in tonnes of literature. It was one of the best times in my life.

My exit from the company was also pleasant for me. I got praises from everyone for my work. I never believed that I was making substantial contribution to my team, but when it was the time for me to leave, I was made realized. On the personal front, I hope the friends tht I made along the journey do not forget me. I dont know how well I will be able to live upto their expectations, but one thing I am sure of is, I will have a special place for them in my heart.

7-generation meet at Talaja

April 27th to May 2nd, 2007

Our family had planned a get-together. Now let me clarify by what I mean by **family**. We cherish brotherly bonds with cousins who trace back to 5 to 7 generations. We were in all 80 people gathered for doing some family ritual. According to the belief, it is established that our ancestors protect us and take care of us. They have the answers and solutions to our present-day problems. For example: If someone is facig some illness or someone's children are not getting married, they seek answers from the holy spirit. We performed a havan (ancient hindu ritual) and established the shrine for our ancestors and kul devi.

Now let me describe my hectic itinerary. I left Pune, on Saturday 28th April afternoon and reached Mumbai by 5pm. Then I had to catch a train from Bandra at 9:00 pm. We reached Baroda at around 5 am and from there we hired a cab to reach Talaja ( my native place ) by 9 am. Then we climbed the mountain and participated in a religious ritual at the peak of Talaja mountain. The ritual was called adhar abhishek. In the evening we decided to go to Palitana. So, mom, dad, bhai, bhabhi, me and my nephew all of us reached Palitana in the evening. Next day early morning we climbed the holy Palitana. Up there, we performed our usual rituals and then started descending it in the scorching heat around 12:30 pm. Without food, water and shoes it was a testing coup, but I managed it somehow. Then we went to Bhavnagar to meet bhabhi's aunt who had take diksha long ago. We had food at "Food Point, Bhavnagar" and then we reached Talaja late in the evening.

There, back at Talaja we had a family meeting where the nuances of the havan were being decided. I have been religious throughout my life, but I had never witnessed such a ritual. This ritual baffled some of the principles of Jainism. So in a way it was hard for me to believe in whatever was being done. I tried to discuss this with my father, but he also had no conclusively answer to it. There were some stories/incidences which approved of the presence of family-protectors. Also, somethings took me away from it.

On a side-note, this made me relate this all to a classic animated film, MULAN. Mulan is a chinese film which highlights the ancient Chinese family rituals and also shows how an intelligent girl saves the Chinese empire from being invaded by Mongol tribes.

A journey to Yester-years - Ganga Jamuna

May 20, 2007

Lazing out on Sunday, I turned on the television-box. It was showing "Ganga Jamuna", staring Dilip Kumar and Vaijanti Mala. It was an exquisite novelty. Everything seemed to have a novel touch. Those easy and silly dance steps. The touching songs like "Nain Lad gayi hai to manva ma kasak hoibe kari", "Dhundo dhundo re sajna.." and "Do Hanso ka Joda beechad gaya re ..." etc. The obvious sets, hide-and-seek type love story and the dhishum dhishum fight sequences. The archaic cursing style like "Dayan, Bhangan, etc". I appreciated and enjoyed every bit of the movie. Once in a while going back in time really helps enliven one's thought and also generates liking towards the old-ways of doing things.

No Movie since last 2 months

Can you believe it ... I havent seen a movie in a theatre since last 2 months ...
Some my new acquaintances saw my blog and immediately made some comments like
"Are you a movie bluff?" After the reviews of 300 and Namaste London, there were many good movies, but due to lack of company and work-load I dint get a chance to patronize bollywood.
However, I enjoyed some movies on television but still it feels like I missed something during the past two months.

I will break this theatre abstinence with a bang ... going for pirate of carribean ... world's end on Saturday morning at Gold Adlabs, Mariplex. All the pappirazi's be there, if you wanna catch my glimpse.

Reincarnated on Orkut

With a lot of enthusiasm I am again throbbing on Orkut.Com. When I last deleted my account in October 2006, I had 336 friends and 50 fans. And now I have to start from scratch. When I see some people who have more 600 friends I wonder, how deep their relationship will be with each of them. This time round I have resolved that I will not have any "havent met" category of friends.

Keeping a lot of scraps on orkut can give one a lot of personal details abt a persons life by reading it. So, it is advisable to periodically delete your scraps. If you are too picky abt it, least you could do is save the scraps locally on ur machine. Thats what I did :). I had saved all the relevant webpages from my previous orkut account, now I dont have to rethink the testimonials that I had written, I can reuse my previous effort.

Also, last time round I got some matrimonial mails ... stating I read your profile on orkut ... liked it ... so I am looking for a person like you to marry my sister ... let me know if you are interested. So I have also resolved to reveal as less as possible on orkut. If you have some questions about me then u can ask me through contacting me ... I would let you know my passions, turn-ons, turn-offs, what will u find in my room, etc..

That gives me an idea for orkut team to mull over. Why not have complete customzied profiles for each user, as to allowing each user to have 5 different profiles visible to different category of friends - acquaintances, good friends, best friends, etc. Even now they have implmented such a thing for birth-dates. You can make your birthday visible to friends, friends-of-friends or everyone. This must be extended to all the fields, so conscious people like me can micro-manage the information they wanna give to other people.

Nonetheless, happy orkutting!!!

Dearth of industry jobs for PhD scholars in India

I was shocked to know that the job prospects for PhDs from elite Indian institutes are pretty bleak. Most of them either go for a post-doctoral research program in some foreign university or join academia or research labs. People who would want to make a career in the industry have to fight hard to find an appropriate job. One such article highlights that 4 PhDs were placed in industry in the last three years.

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=151575

When we talk about BRAIN DRAIN, we should take this condition into consideration. Government should do something to create employment opportunities for highly skilled scholars, so that they do not have to flee out of their country.

Delicious Home-made Raita

On food front, I am having a better time than before. When we had a maid for cooking food, the process of procuring food was very convenient. Every evening we find pre-cooked food ready to be gobbled. However the quality sucked many times. Then came a decision to get rid of the bai.

Since then we have been cooking food at home and eating outside mostly at Cafe Diamond. One fine day, Kshama had an idea of making a raita. So she bought a pack of Masti Dahi and some tomatoes and cucumber. Then she applied some magic on the ingredients and voila. I was treated with the best raita ever.

Copperchocs Strawberry Cake

Spelendidly decorated Strawberry cake was delicious. We had ordered this cake to celebrate Deepesh's Happy Birthday at offish, on 23rd February, 2007.

Electronic Cheque Acceptance System

I had been to HDFC Magarpatta city branch to deposit the cheque issued to me by someone. I was all set to fill in the cheque deposit slip and submit it to a specified counter. Consequently, the banker on the other side would collect the cheque, stamp the slip and return me the acknowledgement slip.

However, things did not go as I had thought. I was introduced to a machine by the security guard. It had an impressive display and the software was easy to use, especially for people who frequently use ATMs. I keyed in the account number and inserted the cheque into the designated slot. The cheque was scanned and an acknowledgement was printed. I collected the acknowledgement slip that had the scanned image of the deposited cheque and happily left the bank.

While riding the bike, I thought as to why do they require a separate machine for this task. Why cannot they extend the ATMs to accept cheques? May be the next generation ATM machines would have this facility too.

Luggage racks removed from locals

This is some unknown General knowledge to me.

I travelled by western railway local train from Borivali to Dadar while returning from my recent Water Kingdom Picnic. One most striking thing that I noticed was the removal of overhead luggage racks from the EMUs of local trains that ply on the western suburbs of Mumbai. When I enquired a bit about this seemingly unusual thing to happen. It revealed that this has been done on account of 7/11 bomb blasts in Mumbai local trains that tested the city pshyche. Once the reason became known to me, I could not help but appreciate this decision. No doubt that this would add to the inconvenience of local train travellers who use it to commute with heavy luggage. But this would mean that terrorists will have a hard time finding a place to leave their bomb-laden baggages in railway compartments. This was one such bold decisions that could attract huge criticism, but nonetheless it is justified by the safety criterion.

However, no such steps have been taken in the local trains that ply on the central suburbs between CST and Karjat/Kasara. Are the authorities waiting for the terrorists attacks on central corridor before they can implement similar preventive measures on the central railway local trains?