For a change the left seems to be talking sense. They are opposing the proposed amendment to the Right to Information Act. And the BJP is also opposing the move (this is pleasantly refreshing considering that the NDA government was held responsible for stalling the initial passing of the act).
The Congress has reacted saying that they will have a meeting with the left today or tomorrow in order to make them see sense. For a change, I hope the left doesn’t budge from its hardline stand.
Following the planned terrorist attacks 2 days ago on UK-US planes, security has been beefed up majorly all over the world. I reached Mumbai airport at 5:15 for a 6:20 flight to Bangalore and I boarded the flight on the last call. Procedures have been intensified, there are multi-colored stamps on the boarding pass, and all such.
I’m sure these intensified measures will be in place for a couple of months or so after which they will die a slow death. In a few months’ time, things will be back to normal.
Now, I would like to try and figure out whether the “process” of “terrorist attack” is Markovian. Whether the fact that there was a foiled attack a couple of days ago increases or decreases the probability of an attack today.
On one hand, terrorists might have planned a series of attacks all around the world in a short period of time, and hence if it were in London on Thursday, it could be in Mumbai today. For example, the Mumbai blasts last month were serial – the first blast was followed by seven others in an hour.
On the other, having tried to attack 2 days back, terrorists now know that there will be heightened security today so they are more likely to attack next month than attack today.
The net effect could be that the two things (and many more such factors) cancel out, and indeed make the distribution of worldwide terrorist attacks markovian. Can someone provide me the necessary data with which i can test this?
As an aside, due to the strict enforcement of the “one handbag per head” rule today, there was plenty of space in the overhead cupboards on board today.
yeah this post is late by 2 days but never mind…
on tuesday night i wanted to catch the fall of wickets in the England-Pak test match; and some highlights of the SL-RSA match. unfortunately no channel was showing either!
most of the sports news (and also other news) on all channels was dedicated to deano and his terrorist remark. he made the remark, right. he was sacked for that, rightly so. he apologized, rightly so. and the bearded one accepted, rightly so. now why should sports editors of sundry channels in india (i’m not sure of their background in sport) generally bombard the poor guy with some really arbit questions? more importantly, why should we be subjected to such stuff, when we have better things to watch such as two subcontinental Englishmen cutting through the paki lineup like a hot knife through butter!
and then hype about the champions trophy probables list. dada was the issue, i understand. every conceivable channel and newspaper made a huge issue of it even before the meet happened. they ran bets and polls on the strength of the probables list. they came out with their own lists and some of them (like the TOI) made the “probable probables list” the main sports story!
we don’t want no controversies or debates. bring on the cricket, i say
today is my last day on this job. it was supposed to be yesterday, actually, but since yesterday was a holiday i’ve come today to wind up. have got a list of things to return. have to talk to the fin guy (i just found out that i haven’t been paid my july salary… grr) and get all the tax stuff and the PF stuff settled, and of course get my money.
there will be the usual round of goodbyes. not too many people in office today, most seem to be at clients’. i’ll probably send out a mail saying “it was nice knowing all of you. add me on orkut and stay in touch”. and maybe add “read my blog sometime next week, i’ll bitch about all you bitches on that. of course, it’ll be a friends only entry so you get LJ IDs and become my friends”.
there’s so much to do in the next couple of days – return my phone card, make some N phone calls to people, return this laptop to my firm (and delete all saved passwords on it before i do so), try sell my washing machine, try get back my house rent advance, and many other such random stuff…
saturday early morning i’m off… this stint in bombay will be over… i’ll be going back to bangalore, and take up a job as an “assistant cook” at my house. duties might also involve sweeping the floor and running sundry errands. don’t hope to do that job for too long though.
let’s see how things pan out! jai!
yesterday i was telling Fart that nobody likes to bitch about his or her own firm because that would reduce their personal brand equity. Fart responded that it is rather the function of how dependent your personal equity is upon the equity of your workplace.
now my argument is that most graduates of premier B-schools end up with firms which are big brands in themselves, and which go a long way in defining them. which implies that they would rather not bitch about their firm and pull themselves down.
“It has something to do with confidence”, says Fart. “A confident person, irrespective of his/her firm’s brand equity, won’t hesitate to tell the truth about his/her job”. Linking this with his other statement, I am wondering if there is any implication involved. Is it that being confident de-links your personal brand from your firm’s brand? Or is it that having enough other things than your workplace that define your brand makes you confident? (hope i got that right, i’m sorry for the extremely long and confusing sentences)
The practical deal here is how do you actually know whether a firm is a great place to work? Ask an average guy working there and he is likely to be someone whose brand is defined by the firm’s brand – and he praises the firm sky high. It’s not always that you can find people who are willing to tell the truth. And you find that out the sad way, after you’ve joined!
It was in 1997, I think, around the beginning of the technology boom that V G Siddhartha started his first coffee shop on Brigade Road in Bangalore. He offered a variety of premium coffees, along with a number of dessert offerings. As an added incentive, he installed a few computers with internet in the shop, and allowed people to browse the web on a per-hour charge.
My days in consulting are numbered. I have 9 working days to go, including today. I can’t call it a very happy experience, else I wouldn’t have quit so quickly. However, I must say I’ve learnt a lot. Seen the insides of one of India’s largest organizations. Seen a bhai-bhai jhagda from the inside. Studied a number of other companies and businesses. Got to work with one of my firm’s most famous strategies – which is nothing but common sense with a grand title – “the my firm n-step integrated blahblah strategy”.
One thing that consulting has taught me which I’ll probably use forever. Actually I’m not sure if it was my short consulting stint that taught me this, or whether I always used to follow it but am cognizant of it only now. It is rather more likely that I learnt it as part of Design and Analysis of Algorithms way back in 2002. Or maybe even further back at the Math Olympiad Training Camp in 1999.
I am talking about the “art” of breaking down a problem into a number of sub-problems. When you look at the big picture and break it down into a series of small pictures and set myself internal timelines for each of the small pictures. And then do a deep dive into each of the small pictures one by one, and try to complete it without ever looking at the big picture. The trick lies in dividing the big picture into components so well that once you’ve completed the smaller ones, everything just fits in.
Long ago, when i first started programming, i used to generally split my task into a number of components. Do the components individually. And then spend aeons trying to put everything together. The trick, i think is to do the split in a better and more logical manner. Spend time right at the beginning to come up with a really good split. Saves a lot of time later.
The CEO of a not-so-prominent company X decides that for the sake of branding his firm, he has to write a few articles in a newspaper. This is how the article gets written.
1. Mr CEO approaches the head of a not-so-prominent consulting firm Y and asks him to write the article for him. Now, X has been one of the long-standing and steady clients of Y and Y makes a large amount of its money from X. So the head of Y has to agree.
2. The head of Y approaches a manager and shoves the article down him. “This is urgent and our relationship is at stake”, he says, “so you better put off whatever else you’re doing and write this article”.
3. The manager looks around the office and catches a couple of unsuspecting analysts. “I need your support, for just 8-10 hours, for this very important thing”. The analyst says “but… i am… working on this thing now”. Manager says “i’ll speak to your manager, and he won’t crib. so you better do this thing for me”.
4. Left with no choice, the analyst abandons whatever he is doing, and works on this article. Massive amounts of googling and placement of the data in strategic graphs so as to make things look good. By the end of the day, all the data and insights are in place.
5. Manager takes a look at this work, and takes it to the head of Y. Now, a “writing firm” is quickly contacted and asked to write and edit this article. Of course, Y will pay this writing firm for this. All this has been done under extreme timelines. Relationships with clients is important right?
6. The article gets published in the paper. The sole author is the CEO of X. He gets the required footage, and the paper gets its share of ads.
Such is life.
long time since i did a random sundry update. so here i go.
i have quit my first job. 2 months into it. currently serving my “notice period”. no clue where i’m headed. talking to people. lots of them. lots of whom i hadn’t talked to for ages. have a little more clarity now on what i want to do than i did 2 weeks ago when i put in my papers.
i’ll be moving back to bangalore at the end of my notice period. hopefully i should have a few interviews set up by then. and then get a job i will like.
on saturday i saw the best and worst of mumbai. late in the evening, i walk on marine drive, southwards. there is a strong wind blowing into my face. it is refreshingly cool. a few droplets of rain accompany it. and i continue walking. into the wind. the drizzle soon turns into rain. drops become bigger and start hitting me from in front of me. it is raining almost parallel to the ground. the wind is so heavy my umbrella can’t open.
i turn around, open my umbrella and hold it behind my shoulders. still can’t save my ass though. the rain is way too parallel to the ground. fanaa.
earlier that day i stepped out of a restaurant into a waterlogged road in Bandra East. a couple of steps and soon i find my left leg giving way. thankfully my balance is on my right and i just fall on the road. my hands find something to grip and prevent my left leg from sinking further. i suspect that was a manhole. i live to tell the tale.
on a few occasions when i’ve asked friends to join orkut, they’ve brushed me off saying “i have N friends and i don’t think i want to keep in touch with anyone else”. orkut, as i see it, is primarily a tool to keep in touch with people you don’t usually keep in touch with. i’ve personally found it really useful in getting in touch with people you never thought you’ll get in touch with again. people whom you suddenly discover are wonderful, and start wondering why you didn’t talk so much to him/her while you were together in school. as i mentioned in the previous post, if you consider your friends to be stocks, orkut is a mutual fund. at one shot you can purchase “small shares” in a large number of people.
suddenly got some work. these guys don’t believe in giving people “garden leave”. try to extract the most out of you as long as you are there.
more later.
i think it’s finally time to spill the beans on this one. don’t ask me who the girl is, though. i’ve sworn secrecy. i begin
lost in thought yesterday, i kinda remembered why i got in touch with her in the first place. it was march 2005. a few days after the dire straits concert. the days when i used to crib that this friend of mine was troubling me with her cribbo SMSs and was expecting me to provide emotional support. and that was the term when we learnt investments, under the wonderful Prof. Vaidyanathan. and that was the time when we learnt portfolio theory.
now, there was some day when i was really bored and had no one to talk to. a little analysis revealed a glaring incompleteness in my portfolio – all my friends whom i regularly kept in touch with was in IIMB. so, with the ongoing end-terms and submissions there, everyone seemed busy and i didn’t have too many people outside of IIMB to generally talk and crib to.
my brilliant mind put two and two together and realized that “investing” in this woman would diversify my portfolio and help me handle stuff better. the investment started paying dividends immediately (in terms of tlaking to me). and i continued to invest more in that.
soon a time came (jan06) when i suddenly realized that i had overhedged and what was originally the hedge had now become my primary investment! and that it was an extremely volatile stock i had invested in (i had somehow ignored the volatility all these months, though i was fully aware of it). and now i had to invest more in friends at IIMB, who were originally my “investment” to hedge the overhedge! somehow at that point of time i didn’t have too much heart to sell the volatile hedge, since it had till then provided pretty good returns and not caused too much downfall. so i invested more in the hedge-of-the-hedge.
however, soon after we graduated that stock started showing its real volatility. like the BSE Sensex at that point of time (and now), it kept hitting new heights and depths each day. and caused much heartburn. and refused to declare dividends even. a couple of falls were incredibly hard then, and i decided enough was enough. i sold the stock, albeit at a much lower price than i had bought it at.
now, once again, i have an unhedged mostly-IIMB-only portfolio! and a mutual fund called orkut to partially hedge it.