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 :)

Wondering...

There is one thing about me which I don't understand.

I had this innate love for competitive exams. Right from the JEE, TNPCEE days to the CAT ones.
But I never used to put the same efforts once I got into an insti after cracking the exam. Actually speaking, "never" is a strong word since I have actually experienced it only once and that was at NITT. But I developed the same feeling about my next 2 yrs at IIM B too.

Why should I feel so motivated to get into an institution but not motivated enough to put in hard work there?

Hmmm.. I think I know the answer.

A complicated world

I started reading a e-book called God's Debris by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame. Know more about it here.

Read this in the first few pages.

Quote:

My solution was to create smart-sounding answers using the skeptic’s creed:

The simplest explanation is usually right.

My experience tells me that in this complicated world the simplest explanation is usually dead wrong. But I’ve noticed that the simplest explanation usually sounds right and is far more convincing than any complicated explanation could hope to be. That’s good enough for my purposes here.

Unquote:

I sometimes thought simplification is very good in this complicated world. I am not sure how I developed that thought. To a certain extent it was because of the awe I had on people who could explain complicated concepts in a simple way. But I feel I did not understand many concepts in detail and in depth due to oversimplification of the concept. I guess there is a thin line of difference in explaining things "simply" and "extremely simply".

I was wondering why I had the urge to oversimplify certain concepts. The above quote in blue answered it.

Bias

I was thinking about the kind of biases we have against certain things.

1. Intelligence - A measure of how sharp a person's thinking is
2. Maturity level (Attitude in general) - A measure of how evolved, tolerant, understanding etc one is
3. Experience/Age/Work exp etc - Age or no. of years working in some organization etc

Bias 1: We assume at times that Intelligence ensures Good attitude, maturity etc

This bias started with the "Ramu is a very good boy. He always gets first rank in the class" dialogue, which used to be dropped whenever a group of middle aged junta (mostly the moms) interact.

This bias gets inbuilt and I would go as far as to say that majority of decisions made to select someone for something in the corporate world do not consider attitude/maturity level at all. Its assumed that it would be in place.

I am surprised that when my dad sent a mail to all his friends that I got admits from BLIK, so many assumed and wrote how perfect an attitude I must have or similar things like that. They did not even know me and some were hearing about me for the first time!

Bias 2: We assume at times that age or amount of experience ensures some level of maturity

I was affected by this bias. I thought that if someone joins an MBA with maybe 2-3 years of experience, he "must" be mature. Though these days I have corrected it to "he must have got an opportunity to become more mature", which I feel is right.

Why this blog?

I have been reading certain mails from people who seem to have excellent credentials, very intelligent and what not. But the mails and the thoughts in the same are so immature and they highlight an extremely offensive attitude with dollops of ego. I am frankly surprised. I somehow unconsciously have been biased, probably because of my upbringing or whatever. I am learning slowly.

That way, I should definitely say, I have been extremely lucky during my engineering days to have got the chance to interact with extra-ordinarily talented people who were down to earth, humble, mature and with the right attitude.

NIT Trichy 2001-05 : What did I gain?

I was just wondering today about the things which come to the top of my mind when I think of my 4 years at NIT Trichy and what did I gain. out of those 4 years.

1st year:

- I went to NITT along with 6 guys whom I knew before and we formed a gang there and had nice time ottifying each other and also others. Some of us were pretty merciless when it came to ottifying others. ;) [ottifying = pulling others leg]

- A lot of my nights was spent on 2nd time JEE preps with a very close friend, Madhu.

- I did not find any class interesting in first year. Not that I found classes interesting rest of the years. ;)

- I was from Chennai and we guys were considered to be "scene parties" by the other junta from places like madurai, tirunelveli and stuff. Even though we were the "local types" from Chennai. Not the DAV educated, Vidya mandir graduated, Bon jovi watching, engleesh speaking types. The best engleesh music anyone would have heard in our gang was "backstreet boys" . That too because every year in our school the dance junta used to dance for that "everybodyaaaaaaaaaaa" song for annual day.

- I hardly studied and somehow did not have the motivation to get a good CGPA. I remember Deepak/CD got 9.85/10 in the first sem and was highest in our chennai gang and somewhere near the top 3 in the college. Amongst the Chennai junta, in that sem, 9 was a low score! Almost all had 8.5+.

I scored a 7.85 :)

- I unfortunately did not feel bad about it. Maybe I thought I would crack the JEE anyway. Actually if i remember right, I felt that these exams were crap of the highest order. Too much to mug and a high score did not mean you were intelligent. I had no motivation. I just took maths as a challenge and scored a S. I scored S, A, B, C,D and left only E and F in the first sem.

- I nor Madhu cracked JEE finally. We both screwed it up.

- I used to attend the ragging sessions and became very close with the seniors. To some extent because I was one among the elite few who could "speak and describe things well" and matched the wavelength of some seniors. Badri and Hari were other two who were PhD's in the "necessary" stuff. :P

- We had many pazham's from Chennai. The fun part is many seniors were also Pazham's but acted like "kewl dudes". The ragging sessions were major fun.

Verdict at end of year 1: Great friends. Was enjoying life to the core. Sad that I did not crack JEE. Thought need to concentrate on grades from year 2.

Year 2:

- Made a new set of friends in year 2, mainly because of room allocation going haywire. Pretty unfortunate since I took the lead in 1st year to see to it that our gang all were together!

- Became close friends with a new gang of Trichy Day scholars.

- Out of the 4 years, 2nd year was "THE" year for me.

- We formed a film gang. Me, Krishna and Siva used to watch a hell lot of films. We were regulars. Many others also used to join us. I remember that we watched 32 films in Trichy theatres that year. Trichy theatres rock to the core. At 30-50 bucks, a decent film and the traditional dinner at Sangeetha's. That was life.

- I did not find any of the classes challenging. I wanted to maintain a 8+ GPA and that mattered to me. So, worked hard enough during exam nights to crack a 8+. Madhu was the guy to be with during exams. :)

still to be updated..

2nd year takeaways : Films, new

Milagrow meet and about my friends

I had gone back to my office today to give sweets for getting into an MBA program. All were very happy and congratulated me. Felt happy. :)

Milagrow has played a really important role in my life. I did some really interesting work there and it was a exciting time. But frustrating too since work pressure was too high. :P

However this post is more about 2 close friends I got at Milagrow. Not necessarily close in no. of years we knew each other or the extent to which we spoke with each other. But we got along really well. I did not get a chance to interact with really smart and passionate people in L&T. Most had the "chalega yaar" attitude. These 2 were different. They were very smart, down to earth, had great pedigrees, intelligent and more importantly damn passionate in doing something different, something exciting. One of them was from IIT Kanpur and the other from IIT Madras. All were 2005 batch passouts. What was different was, they were not interested in doing an MBA. They were not interested in MS etc. They wanted to start something on their own in a non IT field and were getting damn passionate about it. They may start it anytime. I like the fact that they are not in the rat race. Not because they feel its too tiresome (thats the thought many normal engineering types may have) but because they feel they are destined to do bigger things. Flying in business class does not seem to excite them much. They want to go out and create a big businesses.

I will wait to see what happens. I am really happy to have got 2 such friends. :)

Good news. Joining IIM B as of now :)

Life is funny. When I prepared last year like crazy, I did not get a single call from the IIMs for interviews. I had final admits from SPJAIN Marketing, NITIE and IIT Delhi and a Waitlist from XLRI BM which never converted. I had almost decided to join SPJAIN. But then, got an offer to join a good firm and also I was not so sure whether I wanted to do Marketing. I would have joined XLRI had it converted. But it did'nt. But all for good only.

This year I appeared for CAT with minimum preparation, but due to luck and God's grace secured all 6 calls. I secured a call from IIM Shillong too though was not ready to join and did not attend the interview. I finally converted BLIK and got Waitlisted at IIM A (no. 31). C did not convert.

The WL at A may not clear. But not sure whether to join A even if it clears. I am postponing the decision hoping it wont convert. :) I like IIM B mainly because its in Bangalore and I have some senti on it.

I like the selection process of IIM B, which is different from others and results in more experienced and a diverse set of people getting through,and I hear from B junta that they are more "pseud" and hence more business like than their counterparts. If I tell I am joining B for the above reasons, I will be acting as if I am rational.

But I hope I get to join IIM B finally. I don't have the mind to reject A for B or B for A. Both are great instis. :)

I am seeing the threads and discussions at the yahoo group. Pretty good discussions.
I participated in few discussions too. But really nice that the 2nd years are taking out time to reply to our queries. Replies are received within 4-5 mts. I guess our batch is slowly picking up. I hoped it would not be a very "senior junior" kind of relationship, the engineering college style. I am also in the yahoo group of an another college where I have been selected. Its primarily the same kinda relationship everywhere. The 2nd years thinking the "1st yr kids" have come and likes. It should slowly shift to the ISB style of interactions which I felt are at a more mature level. Its not do with work ex. Guess its because of the past precedence.

Our batch has considerable no. of people with work ex. I am pretty impressed.

Gut feel from orkut polls tells:

Freshers - must be 23-25%
< 1 yr - 8-10 %
1-2 yr - 33-35%
2-3 yr - 15%
3 yr + - 20%

The above is definitely a very impressive for IIM Bangalore since once upon a time, there used to be figures like 70% freshers in IIMs etc. Lemme see how the figures finally turn out. This is just based on some orkut poll.

But I guess some other IIMs have 50% freshers even this year. It should change slowly. Nothing against freshers, but having work experience helps in gaining some maturity and getting a feel of the real world outside, especially for a course like MBA. Anyway, that will be a different post altogether. Will post my views on that too. :)

You can expect this blog to be some sort of a chronicle of real life at IIM B. I hope I do not fall into the bandwagon of "My school is best" or the "B is B" kinda crap which is liberally doled out these days by many students. I hope to post my perspectives about things as they happen here and hence would be useful to future students interested in joining IIM B or any IIM.