Revisiting the Queen of Hearts

I stumbled upon this post I had written some two and a half years ago. I had drawn an analogy from bridge and had argued that if your achieving something is conditional on a certain uncertain event, you should assume that the event is going to go your way and take your best shot. I want to add a caveat. Let me take you back to the bridge analogy.

Suppose you are playing for IMPs (international match points). You have bid Six Spades. And after the lead and dummy come down, you know that you will make your contract if and only if the Queen of Hearts lies west. As per my earlier advice, you must just assume that and go for it. Unconditionally.

You think again. You see that there is a risk-free way of getting to eleven tricks – one short. And by taking this approach, you know there is no chance of your getting the twelfth. However, if you play for the Queen of Hearts to be with west, and if she turned out to be East, you will end up going say four under, and will be prone to lose heavily.

My earlier advice didn’t take care of costs. All it assumed was a binary payoff – you either make the contract or you don’t. And in that kind of a scenario, it clearly made sense to go for it, and play assuming that the Queen of Hearts lies West. However, when there are costs involved, and how many tricks you go under by makes a difference, you will need to play percentages. You go for the contract only if you know there is a reasonable chance that the Queen is West (you can figure out the cutoffs by doing a cost-benefit analysis).

There is one thing you can explore, though. Is there a play which gives you extra information about the position of the Queen of Hearts? While still keeping your options open? Can you find out more information about the system while still having the option to go for it or not? I think, if there exists this kind of a play, you should find it and play it. And the letter I wrote last week, I think, falls under this category.

Unifying the ladders

Following my post on Alonso and delta hedging, I’ve been involved in excellent conversations with a number of friends. I’ve got loads of advice, mostly solicited, on how I should go about the blading process. And there have been a number of other insights also, with a lot of theories having been generated on the Ladder Theory. Note that a working knowledge of this theory is a pre-requisite to your understanding the rest of the post. If you don’t know the theory yet, I request you to read the Wikipedia entry on the same right now, before you continue to read this.

I’ll start off with some insights from a few recent conversations

  • Anuroop says at the very top the two ladders converge.
  • Vyshnavi concurs. She says that one way of getting into a relationship is to climb the wrong ladder, and then hope that you get invited across the bridge.
  • I told this to Baada, who says that the funda of two separate ladders is not part of Indian culture, and that the ladder unification thing is true, and this is specific to India.
  • A while back, Nityag had told me that she would rather marry a friend rather marrying a raondom guy whom she met at the arranged marriage market
  • Earlier today, MC told me that she was scared about the arranged marriage market. That she was scared about committing to a stranger, scared of marrying someone she wasn’t in love with.
  • One of the rumours floating around regarding my cousin’s broken engagement is that she called it off after she got psyched out by the idea of marriage, and marrying someone whom she had met only a couple of times before.

Ok, now that the background has been set, here is the theory. What sets the scene in India apart from elsewhere is the presence of the arranged marriage market here. Here, if you have failed to find yourself a partner by a parental deadline, you are entered into the great arranged marriage market (in fact, occasionally you can be entered into this market even if you’ve found yourself a partner, but let’s not go into that). The thing about this market is that you need to make your decisions quickly, without giving or receiving much blade. It is likely that when you do commit, you are effectively committing to a stranger.

If you are a guy, you are in the arranged marriage market because no one who was sufficiently high up on your ladder (remember you have only one) was willing to marry you. Similarly, if you are a girl, you are in the arranged marriage market if no one who was sufficiently high up in your “good” ladder was willing to marry you. But what about your other ladder ?

Isn’t there a set of friends on your “friends ladder” who, if given a chance, would love to marry you? Isn’t there a subset of this set who are high enough on this ladder that you won’t mind sharing a house with them? Wouldn’t it be possible for you to convince yourself that you would be able to sleep with a subset of this subset? If this subset of a subset is non-null, then I think you are in luck. You do have hope.

Don’t you think it’s better for you to marry a friend rather than marry a stranger? Aren’t the odds of making the relationship work with a friend so much better than those of making things work with a stranger? That he is your good friend means that there is a certain basic minimum level of compatibility between you guys. Are you sure you can say that about the guy you meet in the market, after you’ve talked to him once, or maybe twice? If you are still reading, it is likely that you are going to accept the unified ladder theory.

So, my dear girls, what I’m saying now is not at all in my self-interest but I think it will be useful to you. Do enter the arranged marriage market by all means, but it would help if you could make a small list of boys high up on your friends ladder whom you won’t mind marrying, and who won’t mind marrying you. Use them as a benchmark while you evaluate the guys in the arranged market. And remember that you are more certain regarding compatibility with respect to your friends than the person you are meeting in your market.

Use your friend as a benchmark and all your doubts will melt away. If you do find a truly exceptional guy in the arranged marriage market (trust me there will be some; there will be at least one really exceptional in the market in a year or two) nothing like it. Else, you can think of “cultivating” the friends. Extend a ladder bridge to them. Convince yourself that it is ok to be in a relationship with them. And let them know the change in your stance, that you are willing to give them a bridge. Adn start this process early enough, so that even if all your friends ditch you, there is still the arranged marriage market to fall back on.

Anuroop, Vyshnavi, Baada – what you guys say is right. The ladders do converge at the top. But only in India. And I think i have the reason for that.

Kodhi, and all you others who consider yourselves to be master at being GBF* – there is still hope. This theory shows that there is still hope. Bless the arranged marriage concept for that. There is still a small chance that your GBF^(-1) might want to marry you. Keep up the good efforts. And never lose hope. There can be a bridge high up on the ladder.

*GBF: gay best friend. Refers to guys who are really really close to a girl, without any realistic chance of sleeping with them.

Gym pricing

Earlier this evening, I went to check out a gym here in Gurgaon. The place itself was fairly nondescript – basic and decent but nothing extraordinary. What wasn’t nondescript was the price chart.

Monthly: Rs. 1800

Quarterly: Rs. 3600

Half-yearly: Rs. 5000

Annual: Rs. 7000

The amount of discount you get as you sign up for longer periods is stunning. One explanaitonis that atrition rates (for customers) are really high in businesses such as gymming. People regulalry promise themselves that they will do this and that, rather, they make resolutions. And one of the most popular resolutions is to become fitter. To join a gym. And thus, gyms can bank on people to make this kind of an irrational decision and sign up for a longer tenure than necessary and make money out of not helping people become fitter!

However, the attrition rate that the gym seems to be pricing in while setting their prices seems ridiculously high. By looking at the rates, they are betting that people who take up an annual subscription won’t attend the gym for more than three months. People who take a half-yearly thing will stay for a little more than two months.

This kind of a high attrition rate being priced in to the discount is quite worrying. It makes me think as to whether there is something wrong with the gym, because of which they are making the longer-term plans so attractive. And also from this perspective, the one-month plan looks like a real rip-off. The gym definitely doesn’t look as if it is worth Rs. 1800 per month. The discounted rates, however, look fine.

I’m wondering what to do. In the next couple of days I plan to check out one or two more gyms, and then come to a decision. However, if I decide upon the gym I saw this evening, I don’t know which plan to take. Surely there must be something that forces high attrition rates there, that the discounts are so high? But the one month thing looks like a rip-off. I don’t know what to do.

PS: if you know of any good and reasonable gym in Gurgaon, which is not too far from my place (DLF phase 5), let me know.

The ibank bailout

  • After the Fed bailed out Bear Stearns and arranged for its sale to JP Morgan, I blogged saying that the Fed hadn’t done the right thing, and was now creating a situation of moral hazard.
  • When Lehman was in trouble, I said that this was a good time for the Fed to make amends for not allowing Bear to fail. Reputed commentors such as Michael Lewis backed up my claims (sorry, i’m too lazy to find links). And the Fed seemed to take our suggestion. And Lehman was allowed to fail
  • Now, following Lehman’s collapse (and I’m not sure if there’s a causality here), the entire global financial system is in trouble. No one is lending to each other (remember that in my original post I had said that the point of removing the moral hazard is that no one will lend to bad banks. Based on that it’s like as if all banks are bad now). The remaining banks are going down one by one.
  • It seems like the Lehman collapse is just a small part of the larger picture, and if things continue to go bad the way they’ve been, it’s even likely that the impact of the Lehman collapse will not be major compared to the total size of the crisis.
  • So the real danger is that by the time the crisis is over and everyone has recovered (it’ll take a long time indeed for this to happen), people would’ve forgotten about Lehman. Forgotten that banks are not necessarily too big to fail (and given how bad things have got, the Fed cannot allow more banks to fail). Forgotten that no one will bail out the creditors if someone in the system tells jai. And people will go back to their old bad habits
  • Important question to ask here is the role of the Lehman collapse in the magnitude of the current crisis. There definitely has been some impact, but it would be interesting to see exactly how much. Would this collapse have been as bad had Bear been allowed to fail when it was about to fail? How much incremental damage was done to the system in the six months between the two major ibank failures?
  • In hindsight it seems like the Fed might have done better in letting Bear fail rather than letting Lehman fail; actually we aren’t even sure of this.
  • The question remains as to how discipline will be ensured in the system, without too many restrictions, once the system is back up on its feet (it’s going to take a long time, mind you). Maybe we will see smaller banks. Large networks of smaller banks, with none too big to fail. Yes, there will be continuous churn, wiht banks failing continuously and new banks coming up to replace them. Banks will be more ruthless in dealing with each other.
  • But how does one ensure that the system goes into this particular steady state, and not any other, once it’s back up?

Following up on my masterplan

In my earlier post on this subject, I had written that I might possibly put the contents of the letter I wrote on this blog. On second thoughts, however, I decided that those contents were mostly a private matter between me and the person the letter was intended for, and so it won’t be a good idea to post it on the blog. However, there are a few lines which I came up with which I think I’m fairly proud of. So as to not to disappoint you readers completely, here is one of those:

There is no point in my narrating the Ramayana for a year and then you saying that you thought I was narrating the Mahabharata.

To compensate for not putting the full letter as promised, I am putting here Rahul RG’s excellent commentary on the issue. RG was 3 years my junior at NPS Indiranagar, IIT Madras and IIM Bangalore. It’s in the form of a GTalk conversation. It’s slightly longish so I’ll put it under the fold.

Continue reading “Following up on my masterplan”

Breaking engagement

Another wedding of someone I know got cancelled. This is a second cousin, and she was supposed to get married one of these days. And the engagement was called off very recently. I have heard various stories about the reasons behind it, with the sum total of all stories sharing the blame between the bride, the groom, the bride’s family and the groom’s family. However, most of the stories sound speculative; rather, they look like cover ups, so I won’t go into them.

This was one of those typical NRI engagements. Boy comes home from US. Scrutinizes CVs on the way home from airport (ok nowadays this will be a long drive, but this is a slightly older story). A shortlist has been prepared by the time the boy reaches home. Dad sits by the phone and arranges interviews with each of the shortlists. From the boy’s perspective, it is more hectic than the placement process at IIMs. Sees a hundred girls in a couple of days. Vaguely remembers some of them and makes his choice.

Most girls who have lined up would be the types who are desperate for a foreign gandu (disclaimer: the a between g and n has to be pronounced short). Most offers get quickly accepted. And an engagement is hurriedly arranged for. Boy gets engaged and goes back. Girl gets ready to apply for a US visa. Girl’s parents make arrangements for wedding.

I had blogged about a similar topic before, and like I had said then, my take is that it’s a good thing that the engagement has been broken. A broken engagement is significantly better than a broken marriage. It is good that whoever were the parties who were responsible for the breakup, they had the foresight to realize things early enough and managed to prevent a mess. Yes, the boy and girl will have the stigma of broken engagements, but that’s again better than being divorced, right?

I think the blame should go to the generalized model in which arranged marriages take place. My personal contention is that arranged marriage is a great thing – it gives you the fallback option of finding a partner for you in case you aren’t able to find one for yourself in the normal course of things. It’s great that someone (usually parents) does the due diligence for you before you even meet the potential partners. It is great that there is a formal mechanism which gets you introduced to so many people of similar age from the opposite sex.

However, given some restriction that people from earlier generations have put, the full power of arranged marriages is not being unleashed. Ideally the role of the bankers and the brokers should end once the due diligence has been done and the two parties have met. Reality is far from the ideal situation. Time limits are imposed upon the length  of interactions. One doesn’t get the opportunity to collect complete information before making a decision. There are too many people lobbying for their favourite candidates. Multiple rounds of interviews are not permitted. Decisions, sometimes, have to be made “online”, in real time. And in certain cases, it is the bankers that make the final decisions, not the parties.

Ok I might be repeating myself but my rant is that arranged marriages are not being arranged the way they should be. This is producing wildly suboptimal results, and surveys won’t show the suboptimality of results. There will be too much selection bias since successful marriages are usually more visible than unsuccessful ones. And my intuition tells me that there are too few data points to get meaningful results for marriages that have been arranged the right way.

The right way? Yes. Bankers do the due diligence. Brokers and clearinghouses create liquidity in the market. Then they collect their fees and quietly exit, leaving the rest to the parties. Unfortunately apart from one friend (who is getting married next week) I don’t know anyone who insisted on this kind of a procedure. And this friend too was roundly bitched about in family circles for “spoiling girls’ lives by going around with them without hte promise of marriage”.

One last point. I must write about what Sunayana had pointed out in a comment on this blog last week. About how you are not supposed to be seen in public with an unrelated member of the opposite sex. For this can create problems in due diligence. I think if this one condition gets relaxed, arranged marriages will turn out to be much more successful. As will arranged engagements. So bankers, listen out. Remedy this before I hit the markets – which is in about two years’ time.

On Alonso and Delta Hedging and Creating Positive Black Swans (and louvvu of course)

Yesterday, on the Twisted Shout blog, I had blogged about Xabi Alonso, and his methods for scoring goals. Complete with videos of a few of his goals, and incomplete because I couldn’t find a few other videos, I explained how he goes about the entire process. He takes long shots, I had explained. From a distance. Hoping to catch the goalkeeper off guard. And accurate enough to get the ball in the net most of the time.

Towards the end of The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb talks about how you can make black swans work for you. He talks about industries such as moviemaking and book publishing, and he says they traditionally thrive on positive black swans. They lose a little money on most projects – books or movies, but make significantly more money when one of them succeeds.

The book industry, Taleb argues, has now lost its traditional revenue model. Nowadays, the norm for publishers is to dole out huge advances to authors who will potentially write blockbusters. This, Taleb says, now exposes the publishers to huge negative black swans. The advances are so huge that if a book sells well they recover their investments. If not, they are prone to losing a huge amount.

I notice a similar problem in the romance industry. Suppose you have been hitting on, or even seeing, a girl for a long time, and it’s now time for measurement. By conducting the measurement experiment now, you are exposing yourself to a huge negative black swan. You have already made considerable investment in the relationship, mostly emotional but also monetary and temporal. And what if the measurement doesn’t go the way you want it to go? You are already in the D (desire) of Kotler’s AIDA. It will take a long time for you to recover from it, and this could even be career threatening, as I had discovered the hard way a couple of days years back.

Now, my theory with relationships (I don’t know how much you want to trust this – since I’ve never been in a relationship) is that in order to succeed, both parties should be at least in the I (interest) zone. And one of the parties has to be in D zone. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the relationship to go thorugh.

So, how about testing whether the other person is in the I zone when you are also in I zone? If she is, then well and good – you can start the process of figuring out if you want to get into D, etc. If she isn’t you can quickly cut your losses and move on. If she does admit to being interested in you, it’s great. It’s a positive black swan. And if she tells K, you haven’t really invested much in the relationship so it shouldn’t be hard. Right? So that’s how my mind ran when I thought about this problem yesterday.

I sent her a mail asking her for permission to put blade on her. I explained to her in the mail (i’ll probably blog the mail at a later date – I’m quite proud of my efforts on second thoughts I won’t blog the mail. I think she deserves exclusivity to that masterpiece) that I ever since I met her a few days back I have gotten really interested in her, and am considering the possibility of blading her. That if she is not interested in getting bladed by me, then there is no point in my continuing and wasting both our times and energies, and so she should tell me that right now. I sent this mail to her earlier this evening and I’m still awaiting her reply.

So where does delta hedging fit into this?  It is like the road to Ithaca as this poem mentions. It is about the journey being more enjoyable than the destination. It is about the process of doing something being more enjoyable than the results. It is from the excitement you get just by doing something for the heck of it. These are all what I call as second order effects. They are, in effect, derivatives. First order derivatives of something you are doing, which is effectively the underlying.

As I had mentioned in my previous post, by going ahead with the blading, the only thing I had to lose was my confidence. My form. And if I had gone about blading the conventional way, poking and probing, and making small inroads, the process too would’ve been excruciating, and would’ve added to the pain of the blade not succeeding. So was there a way in which I could hedge out the loss of form and confidence?

I think I’ve been fairly ingenious in going for my long shot. I’m doing something unusual by going about it the unconventional way. Add to this the joy of sitting and drafting that letter to her (yes, it’s a masterpiece). And the possibility of the insights I might gain from this process. And of blogging it, as I am doing now. As soon as I had hit upon this method, i realized that the second order advantages from this were huge. And would easily hedge away any blues that failure in my attempt would bring. It was like getting a put option along with a stock. You knew that your losses were capped.

On the other hand – if she accepted – the returns would be huge. It would be a positive black swan. Capped losses and uncapped gains! Once I had figured this out it was a no brainer that I should go for it. And I have gone for it. A long shot a la Alonso. And I’m waiting for the result. Wish me luck.

Vyaasa and correlated hedges (and louvvu)

Some follow-up over my yesterday’s post on louvvu. This is a little arbit so if you are the serious  types, you needn’t read on.

I’ve been told by my “ex-bladees” that i can become ferocious and scary when I’m putting blade. I don’t konw what it is about me, but it seems i become very intense when putting blade and that immediately puts the woman off and she gets scared of me. This reminds me of Veda Vyaasa. Vichitravirya’s wives were paranoid when he came to them in order to help them prolong the Kuru dynasty. One shut her eyes so tight that the kid was born blind. The second went so pale that the kid was born paler than Nicole Kidman and Andres Iniesta put together. And for the third night, they just decided to send a maid.

The difference between then and now was that back then the women were forced to sleep with Vyaasa just to ensure the continuity of their dynasty. They had no choice. Now, though, if the woomaans see a ferocious blader, they’ll just run away. Ignore. Become hostile. And I don’t think it’s been pre-ordained that I’m going to be instrumental in the prolongation of any dynasty. I think I should just stick to writing stories.

Over the last few days, I’ve been on high amplitude high frequency. Hyperactivity intervowen with extreme NED. I realize I’m a flow person. When things are going fine in general, I’m able to do everything else also quite well. Assume that for hedging purposes I do more than one thing at a time. If something goes bad in one of those, then it pulls down my performance in the rest too. It affects my form in general. It’s something like VVS Laxman losing badly in a game of tennis. And finding the next morning that he can’t hold a cricket bat.

So yeah, given that I’m a bad blader, if I do end up putting blade in the case I described yesterday, I have a feeling it might have a much bigger impact in life. Because the different threads in my life are usually so intervowen, I rarely come across a “nothing to lose” case. I cansay “i have nothing to lose but my form… ” but my form is critical. So I don’t know if I should be willing to lose it.

Ok I’ve written this late night so I might be rambling a bit. But I suppose you get the gist of it. As for the case I described yesterday, I think I’ll go for the long shot. I’ll assume I’m just practising. And go for it. If I do succeed, great. Else, all i lose is my form 😛

Falling in louvvu can be hard on the head

It’s been a long time since I hit on someone. Two years and four months to be precise. Actually, even that is not so precise. You could give it a standard deviation of ten days, for I don’t really know as to where to draw the line on my blading. After that, I haven’t hit on anyone. Promise. I’ve had two fifteen minute crushes (one in a bus and one at a cane chair shop) but didn’t have the opportunity to talk to either of them.

Apart from this, I have quit two jobs. I have been through two periods of joblessness (one of them fairly protracted). Things have been very bad on the family front. I have been through a protracted (over two years) period of low confidence. Putting blade on someone has been the last thing on my mind. It also hasn’t helped that I haven’t met a single new bladable interesting girl in this period of time.

So when I suddenly come across this fairly interesting girl, I don’t really know what to do. One part of me tells me that I’m totally out of practice, and will only bring misery upon myself if I go ahead with the blading. This part tells me that I’m not ready to put blade yet. This reminds me of the pain I went through in my previous blading attempts. This tells me that the girl might already have a boyfriend, and that she lives in a different city.

The other side tells me such opportunities are rare, and I should go for it. This part reminds me of the goalkeeper theory in case she has a boyfriend. When I put forward the question as to the probability of making it given that it’ll be long distance, this part tells me about the Alonso theory (I’ll blog about this on the TS blog in a couple of days). This part tells me that if i keep passing up on half-chances like this, I am likely to die a virgin. And that I must go for it.

Even if i decide to go for it, I don’t know whether to take it to heart or treat it like a long shot. My late father used to talk about his “thread theory”. “Imagine you need to move a mountain, and you have a thread”, he used to say. “You put the thread around the mountain and give it your best shot. If you succeed, you’ve moved a mountain. Else you’ve only lost a thread”. I know that if I don’t put my heart and soul into this, I won’t be able to give it my best shot. On the other, putting heart and soul into this would increase my costs significantly. Unlike Alonso, my best shot isn’t my long shot.

I don’t know if it is rational to be irrational when you are thinking of putting blade. This, once again ties in with the above point as to whether I should put heart and soul into the long shot. Vyshnavi is firm when she tells me that I should be completely rational and never lose my head. Neha has also maintained that the most important decisions in the blading process are taken by the head, and not by the heart.

Then there is the issue of the advisor. Especially for an amateur like me, an advisor in the deal can be of great help. However, sometimes the problem with an advisor is that you should necessarily take his/her opinion on things. If you do something against his/her advice, you’ll get blamed for it. Thankfully, Neha, who was my advisor on my last attempted deal, did a fairly good job. She gave me her space, and gave her expert advice only when asked for. However, the choice of Neha as lead advisor on that deal presented a new set of problems.

My mother considers herself to be an authority on relationships, and got upset that I had selected Neha to advice me on that deal (my mom knew the girl I was blading then). She had made me promise to her that I make her advisor on the next deal. However, getting your mother involved in a deal is never a good idea. What if it doesn’t work out? Won’t she feel bad about it then? Shouldn’t I be telling her about the deal only when it has a good chance of becoming pukka? Or should I just keep the promise.

The blading procedure itself is another story. From my long career, I get the feeling that my half-rude half-arrogant half-sugary (i know it doesn’t add up; i don’t care) doesn’t generally make the right kind of impact. After every breakdown of a deal, I jot down a set of “learnings” in my head and promise to make use of those in my next deal. However, I’m not confident at all of not repeating my earlier mistakes. Also, if my own style hasn’t been working, is it fair to assume someone else’s style just for blading? Won’t I be dishonest to the woman by not showing her my true self? Won’t there be the risk of my mask falling off?

And how should I approach this? The last few times, I made the mistake of getting on to the wrong ladder. i suppose I should somehow get onto the right ladder at an early stage. How do I manage that without appearing despo? It’s ok to tell people “i’m considering the possibility of working for your company” but you’ll get slapped if you say upfront “i’m considering the possibility of marrying you. need to think about it”. Anyway.

I think I should first figure out whether this will be a long shot or whether I should put my full enthu for it. Once that is done, then I can either strategically pass, or unleash, as the case may be. I will probably go for it without a formal advisor this time, just using one or two friends as sounding boards. I’ll probably just stick to my own countrax style – I usually believe in being honest.

Even if I take care of all this, there is this old problem of figuring out what things are like on the other side. The old problem of quantum mechanics will remain. The whole process of “non-destructive testing”. The problem which I’d famously called “Schrodinger’s girlfriend“. I request you to wish me luck on this.

More on the IITM Open Quiz

A while back I was talking to Pota about the IITM Open Quiz, and its possible demise. I think what happened was that the quiz was in general closely held. Three of the four original quizmasters  were from the “no questions asked” team, and even after I graduated, people who continued ownership of the event were NQA guys.

We had a large number of non-NQA quizmasters (Ruddra, Chinmay, 10g, etc.) but the overall control of the event remained with NQA people. In each of its five episodes, all incumbent members of NQA contributed as quizmasters. Bhaand, who was the unofficial manager of NQA, was the coordinator of administrative affairs every year. Add to this the fact that the cultural secretaries and core group at IITM were in general hostile to the event, and you know what happened.

NQA was disbanded for all practical purposes in 2007, when The and RG graduated from IITM. Pota was the only one remaining on campus, and he did his job by coordinating the OQ of 2007. However, with the disbanding of NQA, there was no natural successor to take the event forward after pota. There was no one who could claim ownership of the event.

Looking at it from this perspective, maybe what has happened was inevitable. However, I think there is a lot to learn from this. A lot of lessons in terms of leadership, team building, succession plans, etc. I think I want to write a case study on this. If anyone of you has attended one or more OQs, and has any other feedback about this, please let us know. We can include that also in the case study.

All said and done, hope is not lost yet regarding the event. There is still the faint probability that we can somehow take it forward, on a different date. I’ll keep you posted on this.