The famed query and the Telecom Revolution :P

I am running short of time. Hence cant come up with an original update. :)

Heading to Nepal for a week. Will be back on 10th June.

Till then, an interesting read.

2-3 years back, one fachcha (junior in IIMA parlance and nowadays, MBA parlance itself) asked the following query. Read 'em and most importantly, read the whacky reply she got from the senior. Hilarious. :)

Query:

i need a cell cuz i want to stay in touch with my guy. also i may not be in my room/ be able to come to my room to make/take calls at all times, but i can always carry my cell with
me anywhere!!
ofcourse i will get std activated... but messagin u can do only thru a cell...

i get teh point abt matchin networks to reduce cost... n here is my dilemma

my guy has an airtel connection
my dad has a reliance phone
my brother has idea
and our home phone is a tata indicom.

now what???

i need to have teh most cost effective way out... which wd be covenient fr my parents, bro and guy too!!

help!!!


*Now below is the reply to the above post...*
* The reply was by a now PGP-4 or a 2007 IIMA passout and the query was from a 2008 passout when she was going to join IIM A*

This is a very good query. I also faced a lot of problems when I came to IIMA because I wanted to stay in touch with my guy, bhains and bakri (If I had an elephant, it would have been a simple matter of making a trunk call). Considering the reverence that Indian culture accords to the bovine and the divine, staying in touch with cattle is a very important issue. One needs to only read the Hindi stories of Munshi Premchand, such as Heera Moti and Godaan to realize the deep bonds that people in the cowbelt have for their livestock. Of course, calling Munshi Premchand a Hindi writer is slightly misleading
because his writings have a proliferation of Urdu words, reflecting the degree of intermixing between Urdu and Hindi in pre-independence Uttar Pradesh. The alphabet taught in schools during those days began with Aliph, which interestingly is a derivative of the Greek alpha,which had first made its presence felt in India during the times of
Alexander and Selecus Nicator. And perhaps it is divine happenstance that Alexander the Great had to retreat from the Ganges, thereby completing the UP connection. However the Greek influence in India did not die out with him, his generals if you are still reading this
then I can only wonder how exciting your work is established mini kingdoms from whatever they could salvage of his victories and particularly interesting is the case of the kingdom of Bactria (in present day Afghanistan) , a Greek island in a South Asian sea. The
great king Menander of Bactria is the same Milinda, the celebrated king who had a dialogue with the Buddhist sage Nagasena on the semantics of being.

But let me not digress from the core issue, which is your connectivity query. Well as you know, India has undergone a telecom revolution in the past 10 years or so. It all began with the reaking down of the monoploy of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT)
and the establishment of quasi-autonomous bodies like the MTNL and the VSNL. For the purpose of cellular communications, India is divided into a number of contiguous circles, which roughly correspond to the boundaries of the states (which is very convenient considering that the states of India were reorganized on a linguistic basis in the 1950s, thus going to ahow how farsighted our planners and statesmen were at the time). Initially, for reasons of viable competition, each circle could have 2 private operators and one network from either MTNL or BSNL. At the moment, I think 3 private operators are allowed and plans are to allow a further private player in a circle.

So what you need to do is, locate a map of India, find the telecom cirlces and identify the players operating there. Formulate a matrix to display this information and then apply the concepts of cost minimization (modified simplex method) to identify the optimal network combination for your needs.

Cheers,
PGP-4

ROTFL. :)

The guy replied must have been one heck of genius ;)

I hope someone asks something similar next year and I get a nice time. :P

Or better, someone asks this year itself and a PGP2 sends a gem. ;)

Wanna become a CEO? Work on your hairstyle

http://specials.rediff.com/money/2008/may/14ceo1.htm

Indra Nooyi

What has hairstyle got to do with success? There is a hair raising observation among corporate America that most of the successful CEOs including Pepsico's Indra Nooyi part their hair to the left, says US business magazine Fortune.

Warren Buffett

Legendary investor and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett also parts his hair to the left. The report said that he comes across as the classic left-brainer: rational and assertive.

Jamie Dimon

Jamie Dimon of investment bank J P Morgan Chase also joins the 'left-parted' club of highly efficient CEOs who comb their hair to the left side. In recent years, a pseudoscience has emerged around the theory that left-partedness signals leadership potential, while parting on the right suggest something a little off-kilter, Fortune said.

Rick Wagoner

A look at the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies reveals only three among the top CEOs of 50 firms, part their hair on their right side. They include General Motors' chairman Rick Wagoner.

Lloyd C. Blankfein

Meanwhile, in the Fortune 500 there are highly successful chief executives who neither part their hair to the left or right. Such names include General Electrics Jeff Immlet, Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein.

According to the magazine, Walter is credited with the theory (of parting hair to left) three decades ago, after he discovered that only a few American presidents parted their hair on the right.

Rediff articles are hilarious and only thing to beat that would be the comments the readers make!!

One rare out of the blue sensible comment:

The author does not provide figures of the proportion of the general population which parts its hair to the left. One just needs to walk downtown and see for oneself the proportion of population parting hair to the left. Common... u fellas ... we all know that the default option is to part hair to the left. No doubt most CEOs are from that group. If i study the number of convicts on death row the most likely outcome would be 'Most part to the left', just as with CEOs.
So i suggest rediff ponders into the details of such research and provide evidence based findings rather than make eyecatching headlines. Unfortunately, eyecatching phrases seem to dominate and apear to be rediff's mantra on certain occasions. Isnt this daft....

And oops! I part my hair right. I just lost a easy CEO berth. :(

Query in IIMA Yahoo thread :P

Junior:

> Q. Is grass available in IIMA ?
>
> P.S. I dont smoke :D

Reply from Senior:

I hope you don't graze either. :-P

The "ennakku mattum enda figure'ey matta mateengudhu" syndrome

I had received this forward long time back. Its a wonderful forward created by some genius and meant only for a niche audience/makkal.. ;)

Its why "certain" types never get a girl. :P

Oh, before you start thinking, its not just another educational article swiped from TOI (which, usually, talks of six pack abs, 8 figure salaries, 9 bed room house and 10 course dinners as the "bare minimum" necessities to date a decent girl.)

Anyway, here it goes.

· You always sit in the last bench with the other class comrades who feel that its possible to get marks sitting in last row. In case of workplace, no girls are there in your project and you have like minded ppl like you as colleagues and wherein your entertainment oscillates between
the bars and cinema theaters.

· You cant sing a Bryan Adams, Sting, George Michael's song. When someone talks about Linkin Park, you cannot even imagine who they are and the closest link you can associate with them is Cubbon Park.

· You perceive discotheque to be a place where you will have a chance to unleash your dancing potential (dappankuthu) and occupy the center stage with 10 other fellow rogues, immediately throwing out the babes from the vicinity of the dance floor. This automatically repels the
women from you (they consider you as out of civilization. But, unfortunately we think that we are the only ppl who can really dance)

· You cant eat Spanish, Chinese foods and your fav restaurant invariably happens to be Vasantha Bhavan, Anandha Bhavan, Shanthi-Sagar, types . Of coz we cant forget Karpagam Mess, Mami's kadai and Murugan Idly and max Anjappar, Ponnusaamy. We frankly are clueless as to what are Bella Ciao, Wang's kitchen and things like that, unless we happen to go an a treat organised by the other guyz.

· You dont see a reason why you have to go to Barristas or Qwiky's when the local corner "Nair Kadai Chaaya" tastes like nectar and satisfies you more than a Barristas. Lime tea is the best tea to have been invented by an human and you are thankful to nair for providing it to you.

· Most of the jokes you know are adult jokes which you can discuss only with your other fellow comrades and which again takes the oppurtunity from telling a joke to the girl and impressing her. But when you seriously tell very good jokes, the blondes can't comprehend. You have to tell some absolutely "Kadi jokes" (terrible bores) to make them laugh, which you try however, will never come close to.

· You obviously dont know how to make use of Yahoo Messenger, and you use it to scold your online friends with the best choice of invectives, spread rumours abt other guyz, and ask them to book the latest movie tickets. You unfortunately dont know how to flirt using Yahoo Messenger and are frequently at loss of topics when you want to chat with some girl. Whereas you are deluged with strange topics to discuss with your friend with whom you had lost touch for the past decade or so.

· While chatting in messenger, you seriously cant start a topic with a member of the oppoisite sex. I have seen guyz chatting with girls purely with emoticons for more than a hour. You can never do that. You will have to crack real dumb jokes to start the conversation or falsely extol
them. And bet, you can't do the following:

Boy : What did you have for breakfast??
Girl : I had idli ....
Boy: Is it??? Same pinch, no back pinch, I too had idli. (he slyly pinches her) and laughs.
Girl : Ouchhh (artificially). It hurts.
Boy: Ohh.. I am sorry and (tries to apologise).............then says "I had sambhar for idli."
Girl: (excitedly)..Sambharrrrrrrr............ i had chutney....and giggles...

I swear, I cant tolerate any longer than this................ And this is not a figment of imagination, by any means. I have seen this...Though I agree there may be exceptions..

· You seriously are clueless as to what rock music is.

· All through college life, you belong to this boyz gang and even in your gang, nobody has a girlfriend. So there is absolutely an absence of the inspirational factor.


ROTFL :)