Whispers..Shouts and Echoes!!

Long Time......

2011-10-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

Quite long time since I sat on my writing desk, picked up my quill and wrote something.. No matter how inconsequential or stupid it might be, still it would amount to writing. Life has been busy and sometimes I wonder if someone actually filched some of the hours of my day.

Today have been in a position to write only because of a bout of night imsomnia arising due to sleeping through the day. I actually wanted to read something good, but couldnt find any godamnn interesting thing, so decided to write. So here I go.

A couple of things I noted today. Had gone to play a intra company football tournament only to realize how physically unfit I have become. Was losing my breath within the first match and so have decided that will start working out again. Also the fact that I have registered for the half marathon should kick start some jogging again.
The other weird happned at night. Had gone to keep the trash at the stairs at about of 12 ish. And what to I see there??? A group of 4-5 yough lads sitting there and making a roll. In a typical chic style they said " Dude wanna join in?". And crushing my instincts to say an immediate yes, I said a gracious "NO" and bought back the trash bags home.. Whoa.. I was like I was seeing some part of me in them.
So I started thinking.. Am I getting old?? I know I am not getting any younger, but I am definitely not getting any older..
Some food for thought I guess.

Chalo ab i think will go catch some sleep..
More later, alligator!!

New Evens!!

2009-03-09T01:17:00.000-07:00

"Your Journey never ends. Life has a way of changing things in incredible ways"................................. ALexander Volkov

Well my life has been going great guns at a real fast pace. Some of the things that have recently happened to me:

1. I got married!!! Got married on the 1st of Jan to begin a grand new year. Was loads and loads of fun, which ncluded meeting a lot of old friends and also a lot of long long lost relatives (wonder how they all turn up only during the weddings. I mean I dint remember half of their names)
2. Di gave birth to a baby boy. He is by far the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen in my life. The guy (Ahvish) is such a freindly boy, that its crazy!!!
3. Went to Australia & HK for the post mariage vacation (hte to call it by the word it is actually said). Australia was great great great!! Its the most peaceful and funloving place. This place should be included in the list of pilgrimages. You are bound to come back happy and relived!!
4. Got upped from one level to another in job. Doesnt do much in terms of work but does something more in terms of writing on the visiting card!!
5. Took up a new place in bombay!! I am absolutely in love with the place I am staying in. Although some ppl think that I am overpaying for the same, yet I think the place is totally worth the money!!! We are on the 24th floor , with a wonderful Swimming pool, squash court , gym, spa, etc etc!!! It is very close to my dream house!!
Rest Later Alligator!!!

Phir Dekhiye!!!

2008-09-14T02:17:00.000-07:00

Well I am back to some writing business!!
Everything in office is so busy and so just did not have eether the time or energy to pen my thoughts and then post it on the blog. But over a past couple of days I just couldnt resist myself and so I am back in the boxers typing away to glory.

Yesterday I completed a book " Snapshots from Hell" by Peter Robinson about his experiences as a first year student at the Stanford B school. It reminded me of my days at IIM hel[L]. It was pretty fast paced and it made me about the life and the frantic pace with which we lived there.
But that is not the reason for this blog. It also dealt with hopes and expectation of the ppl there and left me wondering if what I am doing today is what I hoped for in my two years at the B School??? JUst wondering that all!!
BUt the thing that finally got me up awake and wondering is the book i am half way through. Its called "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" by Rashmi Bansal (of JAM fame) and it speaks about the few big entrepreneurs of IIM A and tht really did it. These guys like Bikchandani of naukri.com and many others strted with nothing much but dreams and see what empires they have build. And all by sheer hardwork and dreams thats it. I wonder if I would be ever in a position to make something of myself. Something I can call my own. Some of the anecdotes that I really likd were " One of the biggest hurdles to your becoming an entreprenuer is that you become a slave to your EMI's"
" WIth an avg salary of 20 lachs per annum in five years your will probably save upto 50 lachs. In any field that you start as an entrepreneur this is the min you will make in 5 years!!"

It gets me to think if I am capable of a 8to 8 job or I am destined to something more. I am still figuring out!!

Anyways this song from Rock On I found really really motivating. Its by far the best song in the album. I hope you listen to it. Its called

"Phir Dekhiye"
Aankhon Mein Jis Ke Koi To Khwab Hai
Khush Tha Wahin Jo Thoda Betaab Hai
Zindagi Mein Koi Arzoo Kijiye
Phir Dekhiye ……

Hoton Pe Jis Ke Koi To Geet Hai
Woh Haare Bhi To Us Ki Hi Jeet Hai
Dil Mein Jo Geet Hai Gun Guna Lijiye
Phir Dekhiye…….

Yaadon Mein Jis Ke Kisi Ka Naam Hai
Sapno Ke Jaise Us Ki Har Sham Hai
Koi To Aaj Se Apna Dil Dijiye
Phir Dekhiye…..

Khwab Bhun Yeh Zara Geet Sun Yeh Zara
Phool Chun Yeh Zara
Phir Dekhiye….

Some Moments CAptured in the Camera!

2008-03-23T04:16:00.000-07:00

This is the team that won the award for the BEst Pitch in Frankfurt for the Deutsche BAnk GTB Batch of '07!!! Its an awesome Champagne Bottle witha DB tag and rest on the showpiece in my drawing room!!

This is the entire batch at a medieval Castle in Germany.. Very Old and very beautifully maintained!!

This is the Dinner set up for us in the medieval CAstle... Very elegant.. very beautiful.. very medieval!!!

Everything was ohhk... till the time it decided to SNOW!!!!!! Then it became awesome!!!

This is just before we went to the famous CAsino in BAd Homburg!!!

Well i had a an awesome 20 euros ka win which I immediately encased and more importantly enjoyed!!!!!

That the final one for the shutterbugs!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, The DB GTB Batch of '07!!

HAppy HOli Guys!!!

2008-03-21T23:49:00.000-07:00

Beat Shefs in Chess Yday!!

2008-03-19T00:50:00.000-07:00

Its awesome when after a good game, YOU are the one who says CHECK MATE dude!!!!!
Wasnt really a good fought game, but still, that doesnt really take anything away from my rook checkmating the king!!!

Weekend spent pretty good!!

2008-03-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

Friday: Dinner at Shivsagar followed by LIve music at Jazz by the way where they played awesome Blues. Saw the late night show of Juno at INOX. Probably one of the best movies that I have seen in latest times

Saturday: Went for lunch with Aman and shefs to Copper chinmey, followed by some window shopping at Tanishq. Ended with dinner at Lemon grass and late nite coffee at CCD, Worli and then walk at the Worli Sea face!!

Sunday: Lunch at Sadanand followed by dinner at MAsala Bay at Taj LAndsend!

PErrfect Weekend!!
I think that now that I have started on the job, I have become more appreciative of the weekends!!!

Finally ON THE JOB!!!

2008-03-13T20:15:00.000-07:00

After nearly an year of honeymoon period as a trainee, I have finally been selected to work on a desk in FX in Capital MArket sales!!! Well considering that this is a min 12 hr a day desk, I am not sure how will I cope yp with the pressure and beleive me the experience of last two days has been a bit unnerving!!!!

Germany Jaunt!!!

2008-03-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

Next after a hectic schedule of enjoying and partying in singapore was a whirlwinf training in frankfurt.
I had to go there for a DB training on negotiation skills and presentation skills and was only for the GTB graduates. Since I had bonded (or rather tried to bond) not so well with the people from other continents, hence i wasnt really looking forward to this training.
Anyways we reached Bombay late at night about 1sh in the morning and then almost immediately checked in for the Lufthansa fliht to Frankfurt.

1. Lufthansa is by far the worst flight that I have ever been to. It is worse the the worst Deccan flight that I have ever flown on!! Well it was not on time, the air hostesses were older than my granny and no entertainment channels for the entire flight
2. When we reached there, it was crazily windy and there were forecasts of a storm!!. There was video doing rounds in the news channel in germany wherein a flight tried to land thrice but was unable to do so on the runway because of windy conditions
3.As we reached frankfurt early morning, we took a youth hostel and roamed around the whole city. Frankfurt is one of the most drab cities in the world and so by the time it was 3 in the evening, we had seen the whole city 5 times over! So we decided to catch a small nap. We small is surely an understatement as we only got up at 7 the next day!
4. since we were pretty tired of the place called frankfurt, we decided to immediately take a train to Bad Homburg, an extremely expensive and extremely posh region near frankfurt where DB had arranged for our training and stay.
5. Bad Homburg was easily of the most beautiful places in germany atleast. We took our rooms which were single manned and were damn cozy!! Rushed off to have a pizza at a restaurant where the cook and his crew knew neither english not german, but only Italian!!! Well i think these kind of things only happen in europe!!!
6. We had two days of training on negotiations which were quite interesting. We had rounds and rounds of presentations, all of which were taped and shown to us again and again. But my fav part was one on one negotiations in which I nearly killed the other guy and managed to take away an amazing deal. But in the end the other guy felt that he had too much and decided to call off the deal. The negotiations just fell apart!! it was damn hilarious
7. We had to prepare case studies and were then put in groups and pitted against each other to win deals in front of top managemnet!! It was crazy as to how much imporatance the germans attached to this exercise. Well our went on well. We did not just win our deal, but also were voted as the best group amongst all by the jury. So well I walked away with an amazing DB champagne. I have it at my home and it sure does look really nice!
8. More ..later alligator!!!

Back to work!

2008-03-12T19:41:00.000-07:00

To write "Back to work" is probably one of the toughest things to write! I mean the pressure is not just on the finger on the keyboard (lost practise over last 15 days) but also emotionally. Phsycologically it is amazingly tough to get urelf back to office after days of doing nothing but enjoying.
If the days in Germany were awesome then those in Singapore were par awesome!

SIngapore:
Stayed at Tiki's and Singhania's place. Those two kinda souls were very good friends of mine in campus and it was great meeting them after a long long time. As a matter of fact meeting Singhania who was one roll number before me was definitely one of the high points of my trip. Apart from that Horsie, Tiki and harish were extremely warm hosts! They really made the singapore trip truly comfy!!
Things that we did in singapore:
1. Singapopre airlines is by far the best airlines that I have been on!
2. MAx max beautiful and clean city. Cleanliness in singapore is legendary and so we spent most of our time trying to locate garbage and refute the theory of singapore being the cleanliest city!
3. Sentosa islands!!
4. Dolphin show, 4 D movie, sky rides, luge, cable car, butterfly park, merlion, underwater aquariums.. awesome!!!
5. best part of sentosa was the "songs of the sea" where in there is a 3d laser show on fountains of water. easily the best that I have seen!
6. Night safari, zoo and juring bird park: i mean I dont think I get get any closer to polar bears penguins and lions at the same place. Especially in the night safari, these were alarmingly near. i mean we could vitually touch them.
7. cLARK qUAY: The night lifeline of singapore with a ROaring Night Life! We drank till 2 on a tuesday and it was still jam packed!!!
8. finally the DB networking event for which we had gone
10. Stayed at the best 5 star hotel in singapore "Four Seasons": HAd a big deluxe room all to my self. Went for hour long baths in the shower followed by bath tubs!
11. the event was nice and is always good to hear about how india china will beat the recession!!(I still wonder why my portfolio is down 30 %
:(

Off For VAcation to Singapore & Frankfurt!!!

2008-02-29T04:26:00.000-08:00

I love my company guys!!!
Well am off for a jaunt to Singapore and Frankfurt and will only come back next week!!!!!
cya guys!!!

Back on Campus: Pre placement talk in Lucknow!!

2008-02-15T03:37:00.000-08:00

It was one thing that I really wanted to do: Go back to Lucknow, where undoubtedly I spent some of the best days of my life. I could not go for Manfest, but as luck could have been I had to go to L for the pre-placement talk for DB. The best part was that Shefali also managed to convince her boss to go to L and so it was more like a double bonus!

So we flew together on Sunday evening and were supposed to give the ppt on Monday. We reached Lucknow at about 9 in the evening and were duly impressed to find a person standing with a placard with my name with DB written on it. Well my chest puffed up nearly like the ad of timesjob.com waala guy. Well the sad n scary part was that the driver was new to the area and forgot the way to the campus. All of a sudden we found ourselves stranded in the car in the middle of hinterlands of UP! Seriously it was kinda frightening. But then I decided to take things in my hand and finally got back on track. I was only wondering how others, who had no idea about Lucknow, might have felt in the same situation. So we finally managed to reach campus by 9:30pm where we had a couple rooms booked for us.

Now was the first bombshell shocker. The Alcom (alumni committee) had organized talk by us on “the careers in the banking industry in India”. It wasn’t tough for us, but the fact that I have never landed up on podium for any of the extempore competitions was one of the major reasons for my inhibition. But shedding those was easy and the talk went on fine for about an hour followed by another hour of Q&A’s.
We finally rounded up at about 11:45 and promptly went for a walk around the campus. It was kinda empty as campus (well it is placement times!), but we had an awesome time. We sat as the Nescafe and spoke to Nescafe waala-Alok for a long time. Had a maggi outside and sat near the fire in between Nescafe and Guptaji’s shop. We sat there for a long time before going to the library and revisiting the old times. I mean I have sat, studied and even slept through my days in lucknow in campus. I am sure I must have spent more than 60% of my time on campus in the library. Not necessary;ly studying, but genrally it was the most peaceful place on campus. Then we took the long route behind the library towards MDP centre, then the main gate and finally patanjali. We were chocked with memories and finally decided to call it a day at about 2..

Got up early and went to Fauji! Ordered some dal fry and jeera aaloo to go with it. Vikalpa, the HR from DB Bangalore was there and so went and met her as well. Ajay, my boss who was supposed to give the ppt had run out of battery and was incommunicado. We finally managed to call him up and sent him a pick-up car which meant that there was delay in the ppt by nearly an hour. Since students were already in the classroom, I had to take the stage again and spent about 45 odd minutes giving another gyan session to the guys. Finally Ajay came and we gave the ppt which again went over time (mainly in the Q&A section). One thing I realized over this period was that as a student people are anxious to get good placements, but believe me, the companies are more nervous than the students to get good guys!

I never knew that while on campus, but this is 100% true..

After Ajay and Vikalpa had left, we went back to the Nescafe and had another round of maggi. It was nice knowing that H9 won Sikander this year around. Well in my first year we came agonizingly close to winning it. But the fact that our juniors have done us proud is one of maximum pleasure and satisfaction.
We sat with Mohini and a lot of other guys and talked our way to complete nonsense. It sometimes is fascinating how in campuses you are completely at ease with yourself and have no real worries to think about.

It was like coming home….

Well met up with Chauri, who had also come up for Deloitte PPT and then spoke for a long time with Neerja Pandey, my fave prof on campus. And when it was time to leave, I can say that except for the tears, I was crying like a baby..
I said it was like coming home, and now it was time to leave home…
A home that never really was mine, but will always be a part of me..
I miss Campus Life.
I miss Campus.
What the hell
I MISS LIFE!!

Weekend at home!!!!!

2008-02-15T02:59:00.000-08:00

Apart from that, its been an eventful week that gone by. It was a week of many firsts, like first time going back to campus etc..
I traveled to my alma mater!! Yes, went to Lucknow for the pre placement talk. But before that I spent a couple of days at home. I will go day by day on that:

Saturday:
Saturday was off and so we (shefs n me) took a lazy morning 11Am Jet Flight to delhi. We reached there early and had a good time sitting at the amazing jet terminal in the Bombay airport. The view from that CCD is one of the best that I have seen and that fact it was warm and sunny outside made the sight from inside even better. We heard names of Dia Mirza and Ritesh Dekhmukh being announced at the departure terminal and ended up having VJ Ranvijay of MTV in our flight! Well the flight was nearly on time and for the first time, I had people waiting for me at the airport! Well Shefali’s siblings had come along with her mom to see their soon-to-be part of the family! Well so I was thrusted upon with a bouquet of flowers by a coy and smiling set of brother and sister, who were most interested in getting this piece of history captured on the camera. So I duly stood there and posed like a pro on the red carpet for the shutterbugs!
Lets keep this aside. Mom and Dad had come to pick me up at the airport and we subsequently drove down back to Ghar. Driving in Delhi roads is like driving a hot knife through cheese. Smoooooooooooth…
One new thing was the opening of the huge flyover on NH8 and the start of toll at the flyover. Had tons of rajma chawal for lunch followed by a quick power nap. In the evening went out with mom n dad to the mall and bought a pair of designed saris for my mom. It’s nice to see moms glow with pride and happiness in seeing their kids buy something for them. We called it a day with some coffee and hot chocolate at the Barista Café.

Sunday:
Woke up really really late. After all it was a Sunday. Had my customary cup of tea along with the newspaper (waah waah waah).. We had a late lunch and then rushed off to DSOI where we were scheduled to meet Shefali n her mom. Everything was in order till the time I managed to see the correct time on my ticket. I was under the assumption that the flight was at 8 and had told mom dad accordingly. All of a sudden I discovered that it was instead at 7. Thus started a hurry up process and so we rushed off to DSOI and almost immediately left for the airport where we had to catch a flight to Lucknow!!
More on this in the next blog!

End of Rotations: Shackling My Freedom!!!

2008-02-15T02:58:00.000-08:00

So this is pretty much as vella as you can get. Well I am on the verge of finishing my one year rotation (read complete uselessness). I have been completely futile and have not contributed a single penny to the banks top line, but have created a major dent on the bottom-line..

So how do I feel? Well for one, I am wondering if its just rust on me, or have I been left fatally incapable of putting in hard work. Past one year, that too after the hectic MBA regime, has been a cake walk, or for that matter, only a cake, no walk at all! But now as I look forward to joining capital market sales, I am just wondering whether I can manage that or will be left puffing for breathe. But on the positive side, I feel a know thousands of people in the bank, having learnt from them and now will work with them. I feel I know more about the different aspects of banking than most people can ever imagine. How good it turns out to be in the long term will be seen only in long term!!!

Yesterday!! Surprise Surprise!!

2008-02-07T03:24:00.000-08:00

Well yesterday was not really a special day, but there was something special about it.

Yesterday I booked a table at the Intercontinental in the morning for myself and Shefali at their renowned Kebab Corner. I kept Shefali totally out of the loop while doing so. It was only after I met her in the evening that I told her about eating out. Even then I told her that we would go to a cheap place in Marine Drive. And so it was nice to see her smile and be happy on finding that cheap place to actually be Intercontinental.
Personally I have been to places that have the ambience and places that have good food. This was one place that had both and that too in large volumes!

The Galawti Kebabs (Shefali’s Fave) were simply fantabulous, and so was the lamb stew. Finally we feb ourselves fat to some wonderful Mughlai Daal along with some Shahi Aaloo!
The place buzzed with activity. While I was doing the booking in the morning I was wondering if there was at all any need to do so on a Wednesday evening. I was expecting not more than 10% occupancy, but was astonished to infact find a waiting there!! Blessed be my foresight!!!
The sumptuous dinner was followed by a couple of pans on offer at the exit of the reception (Thank God they were free!!!)
Another hole in the pocket, but another evening well spent.

Mediocre But Arrogant: A Review!

2008-02-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

Another from the list of ever increasing books written by B School grads. It again shows that one thing that all MBA’a are good in is “bakar”.

When I started reading this book and was about 50 odd pages into it, I had a feeling that this was a completely useless and utterly hopeless read. It went on and on explaining the place MIJ (read XLRI) and also the teaching methods of the various professors. It looked like another brick in the wall or even worse another straw in the hay. But half way down the road and it did change gears a bit. It became a book not just for people from XLRI, but for the student community as a whole. The triumphs and tribulations that the Abbey faced was irrespective of the campus that he came from, and that is what relates to an average reader. Though it does go the ‘5 point someone’ way, but on the whole you enjoy the whole experience.
Well though the best part is that you can read it wholly in probably not more than two sittings!!!!

And I would be frank enough to say that books like these makes me want to write a book myself on campus life and all.. !!!

The Great Indian Novel: A Review

2008-02-06T01:58:00.001-08:00

It is by far one of the best novels that I have read in the recent times. This is product of sheer brilliance.
It draws a direct mapping of the characters from the Mahabharata, the great Indian mythology with the contemporary modern India History. So Bhishma becomes Gangaji, who infact is Gandhi, while Dhritrashtra becomes Nehru. Similarly Pandu becomes Subhash Chandra Bose while Duryodhan become Duryodhani or Indira Gandhi. But the book goes further than simple characterization of the political heads, it goes all the way to drawing parallels between them both in deeds as well as behavior.
It is a very well written book which changes to prose at times. Especially the whole story about Pandu (or Subhash Chandra Bose) in prose is highly recommended. One of the best books ever!!

Bonus Bonus!!!

2008-02-05T01:24:00.000-08:00

Well, yesterday I was wondering if I would be literally blessed with some cash rewards and today I can surely say that
“Yes!!! The Cash registers are RINGING!!!”

Well I think that my 20% bonus (well for a period of 7 months) along with a similar increment in the salary just after 7 months into the job speaks volumes about the importance that my company attaches to me!!!!

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Well just kidding..
But it does speak volumes about the importance that the company attaches to its biggest assets, their employees. Bill Gates once said that the most important assets of any company walk in every morning and walk out every evening. I believe DB India for one, is a company that believes in this both in word and spirit.
Yesterday was pretty tough to be I office. When I generally turn up at around quarter to ten in the morning, the place is more or less empty. But yesterday the place was buzzing with excitement and anticipation of the loot that each one would carry back home!!! The mood was upbeat and it also was an upward moving curve as each one went inside the “den” (KS office) and came back with a multi watt smile. Yesterday we could have easily switched off power in the building and still manage with adequate light!!

We were told by Anahita that every year the MT’s are called in the end. We were anxious, nervous, edgy, jumpy and on the whole a little panicky. People were getting promoted right left and centre. And finally at about 2 sorts, Anahita came and said “KS wants to meet u guys!”
Well Navneet went in first and for the time that he was in the jittery me had already made use of the loo once, drank water twice, checked the mirror thrice, tucked the shirt nearly four times. Even then my throat was completely parched. He walked out poker faced and asked me to go in as I was next.
I was handed over the much awaited sheet that had the figures of my bonus and the increment. In my mind I had the answer ready to the question that I assumed he will ask.

“ Abhishek! Are you satisfied with these numbers?”
“Yes Sir!! Completely, Wholly, Utterly, in every aspect!!!!”

But alas it never came.
But still these were the words that came to my mind when I walked out with a smile that only made the already bright room, a little brighter!!!

Bonus Day!!!!

2008-02-04T01:07:00.000-08:00

Today is the Bonus day in the company. Well as Management Trainees we are ineligible for the same, but still the word ‘hope’ is what keeps everybody going! So there’s me and Navneet sitting on the same table waiting for the slightest sleight of hand by KS that we will happily mistake for an indication to call us in the room and disclose our bonuses for this year!

Well the mood on the whole is one of happiness and jolly! Well that is probably because till now the only people to be reviewed are the top performers.

Well its only 2:15 in the afternoon and so there is still ample time to think & anticipate before we can call it a day!

Updates from my life!!!!

2008-02-01T01:19:00.000-08:00

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since I last wrote.. So this time too it will be a collection of a lot of things;

My 25th Birthday:
I celebrated a quarter of a century this year on the 23rd Jan. Birthdays are always a happy moment when you are kids and when you see that growing up has more pros than cons. But as the number of candles increases in the cake, the area left on the pie reduces!!! So to say, the sweetness from the birthdays decreases. But then I have always told myself
“Growing old is compulsory, growing up is not!”

Such thoughts aside, I believe this was probably my best birthdays ever. Everyone got together at Shefali’s and after the customary ‘bumps’ I was flooded with gifts from Shefali! She had meticulously planned the whole thing out for me. She had ordered a cake from ITC (believe me it was crazily delicious!), had made good use of my absence during the weekend(I had gone for an office outing) to buy me a wonderful/ beautiful guitar, had got me a cuddly stuffed tiger (whom I call Tommy, much to her annoyance), and finally had planted birthday cards in almost all the places I went to. Well it was more of a treasure hunt of the cards!

I was completely flattered by the whole thing and so decided to give a major treat. So we went to this awesome place called the “Gallops” which is inside the race course and had an amazing dinner. This place not only had pretty good food but also had an ambience to die for! The bill did leave a big hole in the pocket, but filled my heart with loads and loads of joy!!

Plans of settling down:
And while I was celebrating the 25 yrs of existence in this world, about 6000 kms away my parents were busy discussing ways of curbing my independence!!!!
Well finally after 2 yrs (/well nearly!!) of courtship and sleepwalking through all serious talk, we (me and shefs!!) decided to fast track the process and have now passed on the baton to our parents to start the rounds of negotiation trying smoothen all rough edges and tune the finer ends!
But all’s well that ends well. The first round of meeting at the neutral venue were highly successful and so I am hoping that the final decision will be taken sooner than later!!!

Rest later!!!
I have loads n loadsa work!!!!!
Will Write later!

Lot of things!!

2008-01-17T23:03:00.001-08:00

I want to write about a lot of things u c!

1. Tax man time of the year:
This year is one of the landmark years of my life. I will be paying tax for the first time in my life this March. So have to fulfill all the requirements and make sure that all the documents are in place. Mainly, the ones relating to my Loan that I had taken for education in Lucknow, my tax saving investment in Ulips and the receipts pertaining to my house rents. Have to have all of these in order by today.

2. Going to campus for placement:
I really want to go back to campus for placement and so regarding that I wrote a mail to the head HR. I wasn’t really expecting anything as a reply, but an instantaneous positive reply was very comforting. Especially the initial line being.

Hi Abhishek

Thanks for writing.. The IIM L PPT is on the 11th Feb 2008. Will shortly confirm the same to you.

You are certainly a part of the same.

I mean “thanks for writing!!”
Well the pleasure is certainly all mine!

3. Trip to Amby valley
This weekend I will be far from the hustle and bustle of Mumbai. TFCMC are taking the entire sales, implementation as well as the ops team to a 2 day jaunt at the Amby valley near Lonavala. Its pretty nice of them to do so. Am I looking forward to it? Probably not, coz I really wanted to see the Stan C marathon even if I wasn’t participating! I am sure I will do so next year

4. European Holiday:
My dates for the Frankfurt leg of the training have come. I will be there from the 1st to the 10th of March. Will start applying for the visa from next week!

5. Moche’s with Sandeep
Its was very nice of Sandeep to take us MT’s (me Paro, Navneet) to Moche’s for lunch yesterday. Believe me, it was one of the best meals in recent time. I would really really recommend their Expresso chicken. It basically is a chargrilled chicken. But it was damn mouth watering and a treat to the taste buds. This followed by their Lorange which primarily is chocolate along with orange. Perrrfect taste!

Brilliant Treat!!!

2008-01-17T22:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Ruchi’s birthday and so twas time for treat. I feel Aman could have made it to the midnight celebration that we Always have during such pleasant days!!!! But anyways everyone was there at the birthday treat!
:)
The venue did not sound too pleasant initially. Well what do u make out of “caravan serai!?? To make matters worse, it was a place suggested by Dipu himself. Now Dipu is one of those men who have taken the onus on themselves to take us to all the shady places that neither serve ambience nor serve our taste buds!
But this time he did well to take at least some of the criticism away. The place was absolutely wonderful and ambience wise I think it is surely one of the best that we have been to in recent times!!!
Kudos to Dipu for his selection!!
Kudos to Ruchi for a brilliant treat!!

Memories: New n Old!!

2008-01-15T00:14:00.001-08:00

Over period of last 2-3 months Aman had been particularly enthusiastic about going to campus for Manfest! I, on the other hand did not think too much of it. While one of the reason was the expensive tickets, but that wasnt really the truth. It was just that I wasnt too eager on going back.. But for last three consecutive nites, all I have dreamt of is my past. It consisted of my winter mornings in DU where the things were serene... well I think "virgin" is the word I would rather use to describe it. They were so pure. Then was my stint in Lucknow. I mean they were undoubtedly the best years of my life. And then my time in Europe. I mean my time in Finland is what i remember instantaneously! Probably because those are my oldest memories of the Foreign land
And so I really think I made a wrong decision by not going to campus. I am very sure that I will do that from next year onwards.
But i really dont know if that would helps me get over my memories!! This is because I went to Switzerland and London this year as well, and I can tell you that I was bored to hell. I mean whenever I think of Europe, the new memorie never come to me.
I know it sounds very weird..
But that the truth!!!

Awesome Monday!!1

2008-01-08T20:29:00.001-08:00

Awesome Monday:

Maniac was what a pop group thought of while describing Mondays. But I have never really had the fear of them. Its more like resuming ones life after a short sabbatical. I mean well weekends are meant to relax but it’s the Mondays that bring a meaning again to life!!!

Well now days Mondays have a higher significance attached to them. Actually on Mondays you get a 50% off on Bowling in Phoenix mills. This is something that has us bound for like months now. Me, Aman and Dipu generally never miss any Monday when we can have a go at the nine pins and enjoy the day.

Yesterday was another Monday and after another day of no work I left office at bout 5. Traffic was bad and so reached home at about 6:30. A quick power nap and I was off to the gym. If 25 minutes of non stop running at 12 kmph was not enough, then 2 sets of total weight regime surely broke my back. The only consolation was that Aman was there with me suffering the ordeal! So an hour and half in the gvm and two sweaty souls were off to the Bowling shop in Phoenix mills. Dipu was there and so we started off on our game. Nothing radical happened though, me and Aman score 130 odd in both the games. The only variation was Dipu, who failed to score even a 50 in the first game and then somehow managed a 72 in the second, thanks to some strikes (yes!1 strikes) in the end!

The day was finally called off with some butter chicken and seekh kebabs in Maaroosh!!
Awesome day!

Year thats gone by !!

2008-01-02T04:53:00.000-08:00

Over years I have seen time fly by silently causing few additions in our life, a few subtractions here and there. It’s a little bizarre how things that mattered to you, people who you were close to some years back are complete nonentities. Well as a matter of fact I don’t know about 99.99% of the total people whom I have known or interacted with. Its only the rest 0.01% with whom I am in touch.

This year has brought about a massive change in my life. This year is undoubtedly defined my life per se. I have finally gotten out of my college years and into the big bad world of work life. When I had joined Lucknow, I had no inkling of what was in for me. I did not know what management was, and even failed to answer the very basic question asked in all B-school interviews, WHY MBA?

But 2 years in IIM L was one thing that relished fully for the first time. During hours of retrospection I always wondered how much more could I have enjoyed, gained and accumulated in my years in school in DPS Mathura Road and subsequently in DCE. I carried a slight guilt of not making the best of the opportunities presented to me. I mean not just academically but also socially I never did enough to grow as a person. But two years of Lucknow were hectic yet very enriching. Interacting with some of the best brains, partying with some of the party crazy people, competing with some of the very best, vacationing in Europe for like 6 months and finally managing to bag one my personal favorite job while rejecting my second favorite is something to relish.

So while I began the year partying in the lawns of H4-5, wherein I still remember wearing my leather jacket and long locks, I ended the year with cropped hair in a nice attire in an overcrowded club with rowdy crowd in Colaba, Mumbai!
Things change with time, and I am not the ones who get nostalgic and try to fight change, but this is one thing that I was/am not ready for.

So I started off 2007 with booze in the Insti party followed by 3 months of back braking efforts in trying to make a CV and finally preparing for interviews. I still remember the CV versions. These version numbers easily ran into hundreds. Also variants for consulting, finance, marketing and some even HR! The days were spent trying to meet deadlines for submissions while the night were for group study consisting of Aman, Shefali and me trying to prepare for consulting interviews (something which we never got!!!) But it was nice going through hundreds of case studies which gave us a new perspective every single time! We worshipped the MCk shortlisters who spent innumerous hours preparing for the D day.

Finally the D days arrived and fortunately nearly all of us got multiple offers and got to choose the offer which we really wanted. Placement euphoria was followed by the trip to the Himalayas and finally back for the convocation. I still remember my last couple of nights wherein I went with friends to all the places on campus that mattered. Climbed up the tower in the football field to have birds view of the campus. Walked though the ops tent, the controls tent and looked at the littered cigarette butts. Last minute downloads from DC++ to last a lifetime. Meeting hundreds of people, some probably for the last time!
It was like life will never be the same. And probably it is not the same!

Then time at home. It was the longest vacation in a long time and was spent with both hopeless laziness and exuberant expectations from the future job. The two months at home became a little too much and finally when the call came from DB Mumbai, I had already packed my bags and was off to Mumbai.

Life, or rather work life in Mumbai for last one year has been eventful. So lets leave that for the next blog!!

Resting for the Weekend!

2007-12-31T02:06:00.000-08:00

Well this weekend was probably one of the most chilled out weekend of recent times. Did nothing and just rested. Ordered food 3 times a day. The only time I got up was for the Gym. I know ironical but true. I slept throughout except for those 3 hours when I used to get up, go to the gym, come back, take a bath and then get back to sleeping and watching TV.

Yesterday, the gym was closed being a Sunday, so I decided to take a run along the sea in Worli. I think Goa this time around has had such an effect on me, that sea and sea breeze is one thing that I have begun to relish more than ever before. So I jogged for about and hour non stop and sweated like a pig. But I can assure you that I sure was one of the best runs. Also during the jog I was interviewed by the Times of India journalist who wanted to know my plan for the new years!!! Well these journalists have a knack of being with a wrong person at a completely wrong time!!!!

That’s nearly all this weekend. Btw I invested nearly all my saving (though miniscule) of my work life into Mutual Funds. I do believe in the Indian Growth story and hence am looking forward to some returns from the same!!!
Wish me luck!!!

Goa Rewind!!!

2007-12-31T02:01:00.000-08:00

Well, its been about 4 days since I came back from Goa, but still cant take it out of my head. I mean the sunsets are something to die for.
If I were to rewrite the dictionary, the mean of chillax would be Goa!!!
Some of the high Points of his trip were

Driving the Jeep:::
The ultimate Goa fantasy is to be in a swanky cut sleeve shirt, a comfy three fourth and sit with your girl friend and ride away into the sunset. Apart from driving into the sunset, I did all of them. The wind on my face had a feeling which cannot be described in words. Although the low point was brake failure leading to a cumulative loss of about 2k was at best ignored!

Shanu’s Guest House:::
Well the name sounds a little dehati but believe me it was one of the best guest houses. The fact that everyone had a room for themselves was even better. The best part of the guest house was Shobhit’s room which had an AC and hence was the den for all our card related activities. The fact that it was less than a stone throw away from the beach made the place even better.

Pete’s Shack:
This was undoubtedly the best thing about Goa.
Actually Shanu (Shanu Guest House) and Peter (Pete’s Shack) are husband and wife and co-own the place. Pete’s shack was bang on the sea and was by far the best decorated shack on the beach. The ambience was soothing with song playing softy in the background and ever smiling waiters. They food was verry tasty and coming from Mumbai, we could appreciate the prices of the food item which were according to us were reasonable!! Also Kandolim beach is a little cut off from Kalangut which is generally overcrowded and dirty. So this place was clean and thus stunning.

Swimming in the Ocean:::
The feeling of waves bouncing on your chest is completely mesmerizing. The sea actually seduces you completely till you fall in love with it. You can swim against the tide or swim with it. Especially during sunset, you can swim far into the sea where the view is uninterrupted and the never ending sea and sun have a therapeutic effect!

Frisbee:::
Well I did not quite like this initially but I spent nearly the whole of the last day playing this with Aman and Shefali. Two kids came out of nowhere and started to play with us, much to the agony of shefali (they did not let her play), annoyance of Aman. As for me, I was completely amused by the whole scenario. Apart from the that, the fun of jumping full on parallel to the sea and into it to catch the Frisbee has fun of its own!!

Toto’s:
I had heard a lot about this place. I think this place is probably as famous as Goa itself. I always wanted to go there and thus convinced everyone to be there as well. It was an average place by Mumbai pub standards but the evening was made special by the drunken revelry that we engaged in that. Five rounds of tequila are good enough on a standalone basis. But these combined with gallons of beer that we drowned had a terrific effect. One night that I just can’t forget. Sometimes you just want to forget everything, put your hands up in the air and enjoy thoroughly. This was that one day.

Well Goa is a place of dreams. Where else can you see Dolphins jumping and performing a complete 360!! Well its one place that I want to go again and again and again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goa Jaunt: Day Zero!

2007-12-26T00:12:00.000-08:00

SO finally the thing that we had been waiting for months has finally ended.
GOA trip has come to an end and no matter how much you say, you cannot help the temptation of staying in Goa for at least a week more.
I think I was probably the most enthu in the group about the trip. If preparations are any parameter of enthu, then prolly I won hands down. Bought myself Goggles, a couple of three fourths, a couple of pendants and some T shirts. Shefali has started telling me that day by day I have started behaving more like her!!!!!

So picked up Shefali (she had packed a huge bag as if relocating to Goa!!), and bought a burger for self and Aman, pulled out my luggage and then off to Sion where we were supposed to catch the bus. The low point was the fact that this crazy city had a huge procession was some Sai baba event and so after much walk and talk managed to reach Sion and catch the bus in time.

It was damn cold inside but still we refused to shell out 50 bucks for the blanket ( a fact that we regretted all nite as we shivered throughout!!). Also it became certain that Murarka’s 97% probability of not coming was converted into 100% !!

So finally me, Shefali, Aman, Ruchi and Suhail embarked on our jaunt to Goa with Shobhit-Shilpa joining us from Bangalore and Dipu coming a day late!!

End of Day 0!

4 P's of B school Passouts!!

2007-12-18T04:22:00.000-08:00

I couldnt resist myslef form posting this on my blog.
This was an article by an alumnus of Narsee Mohanjee where he mentioned that the 4Ps of a B school passout are

p- Placements
p-Profile
p-Package and finally
p-Prospects!!

How true. For people who are reading.. How would you rate your jobs on a scale of 1-5 (5 being best) for these four aspects.

Piracy:: Who's Supporting it!!!

2007-12-18T03:40:00.000-08:00

Cheap Books:
There arent too many people who promote piracy in the open, yet there might not be a single person who has not supported it or contributed to its growth. Tell me yourself as to how many times have you bought a book from a genuine book store and compare it to the number of times you have been seduced by the cheap books on the road side. I mean starting from fake VCD's to books to videogames to branded shoes and t-shirts. well all over the place there is piracy.

We will take some figure:
A microsoft office cost like a 6 thousand bucks in the original shop, while costs only 60 bucks in the thela. The nike shoes start from 3000 bucks but can be bought at a meagre 250 bucks on any of the Tibetan markets. Recently Aman bought the NFS CD for X box for about 2.5k, while in the grey market would have osted not more than a couple of hundred of rupees.

I beleive that although the cost of inventions is very high, yet a steep pricing is not the only way to recover it. Steeper the price, more is the piracy. Who would want to buy a music cd for 500 bucks when the same can be downloaded from the internet for zero cost!!

But as Dylan said " The times they are a changin'. The steps like the one taken by Moser Baer while coming out with CD's and DVD's for Rs 50/- are one of the ways to fight piracy. One of the first things that are taught in the B school marketing course is how take on an opponent and move him out of the market. One of the things is to take the wind out of the lungs of the rival but squeezing the margins so low that the competitor's cost becomes too high to handle and is subsequently moved out of the market. If the costs of things are reduced then automatically people will buy the genuine goods.

One of the saying sthat I read a long time back was " People are willing to pay,only till some price, to be honest!!!!!!!"

This is one of the most ironical statements that have been made.

I mean everyone wants to be honest, till the time the rewards for being dishonest is small and not really big.
As a matter of fact I decided to buy genuine books from the book shops only. I must have spent like 3-4k on about 5-6 books in ast two months or so. And yesday finally I bought 5 books for 250 bucks only!!!
I know thats not right, but then nothing is...!!!

Some things that I missed in last blog

2007-12-18T03:14:00.000-08:00

1) Spoke to Nijhara for a long time and after a long time.

The last time I spoke to him for that long was when I was in London and all of us (Me shefali, navneet and parvathy) walked for hours and hours together trying to find Wimbledon stadium. We spoke for a long time then and after that he was damn damn busy with the DB project that he was working on iin Infosys

2) Cheap Books:

Got myself five new books.. Hope to finish them some time soon!

3) Mela in my colony:

I was pleasantly surprised to find some tents on my building compound. This was the annual mela in the city. I had an awesome time doing some stall hopping. There were a lot of khaane peene ke stall and a lot of games ka stall. I even saw a black jack stall there which was awesome coz so far I had only associated it with Europe ke casinos as that was the only place that i had seen them. Also i couldnt help myself from chucking at the amount of time and energy that people had invested in getting all decked up for the event. The aunties were looking splendid in their resplendent Saris and kids were dressed up in their sundays best.

4) Weights in the gym:

For past 6 days we were doing cardios in the gym but we put our foot down and asked for the wiights and other gym facilities. So yesterday we went through a schedule of lifting weights, doing bench press and other activities. I have a slight body ache but hope that someday I might also get a body of SRK if not Arnold and Sylvester!!!

5) Improvement in Deepu's cricket playing abilities:

Yess!!! I personally think (this view might not be shared by others) that Dipu has shown significant improvements in Xbox. Especially the way he goes on a front foot and drives for a four or six is yet to be matched by anyone!!!

Well thats more or less..
And I think my feat of scoring 159 in Bowling deserves another mention!!!!
Adios (Another thing that Dipu has started off with!!!!)

MY HIGHEST SCORE!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-12-18T01:57:00.000-08:00

Well yesterday I maxed my score in Bowling!!!!

I logged a score of 159 yesterday and it was awesome!! what made it sweeter was that I had just blundered in the first round scoring only a 67. Aman scored his now ususal 130's and Dipu had a terrible day, beaten even by shefali!!!!!

But am damn happy with my 159 and hope to reach 180 and win free Pints!!!

Nice weekend!!

2007-12-18T00:18:00.000-08:00

Well it was a typical nice weekend. But this time by the consious effort (due to the scrict regime of diet prepared by my dietician in the gym) I managed to stay away from pubs this time around. Well I will be in goa for about 5 days starting form this friday, and needless to say I will be drinking gallons and gallons of beer.

Well so the weekend started out on a quiet note with a quiet dinner with Harsh and Rashi. Well I got to know them really really well while I was in Europe for STEX. Well Harsh was there with me in Sweden and he is one of the most genuine guys that I have met in my life. Rashi on the other hand was there in Paris and is undoubtedly one of the sweetest girls that I know. Rashi was here for a trainig with P&G in Mumbai and so when she called up at around 7 we decided to meet up at a restaurant in Bandra. I reached a little late at Shefali's place and she was a little worked up about my scant respect for punctuality. Butr anyways we reached Bandra just in time for dinner and the rest of the dinner was about old times (well ll 4 were a part of the 6 month vacation in Europe) , remembering when Harsh crashed our car into a Bus in Monte Carlo and how we managed to wriggle our way out of the Police, and how he while parking put the 20 euro bill in the opening meant for coins only. We laughed our hearts out and we were pretty nostalgic bout it as well. Then started the JOb cribbing part. Well only Rashi was not a part of it as she is LOving the both her work as well as her Boss :)

Dinner ended at about 11:30 and we were wondering whether we should hop into a hub or stand on the road and talk. We opted for the latter and spoke till about 12:45 about life post IIm and about the couples on campus and their curent status :) :) :) :) :)

Saturday was the most happening day. Me and suhail picked up Shefali from her office and headed strt to Metro Adlabs in Fort to catch up on a movie. We ate at Rajdhani. I have to tell u this. Well most restaurants boast about their food being home like. This place had food exactly like that and beleive me, I hated it. I mean, if I wanted Home like food, then I might s well remain at home and eat!!!

Well post lunch we saw, I am Legend, a movie starring Will Smith. It was nice, especiaaly the graphics part of it. After the movie ended at about 3:30 we called up Deepu to ask about his plan. He was totally vella and we decided to catch up on another movie, The Heartbreak Kid" in Bandra. Since Shefali wanted to skip that movie, we dropped her off at Worli and proceeded to go to Bandra.

I have laways maintained that there was a time when the idea of rush hour was there. But today, its rush houre throughout the day. So we were caught up in the traffic and hence got lte for the movie. But we went off to shopper's stop and after being taken for a ride by Dipu (who as a matter of fact has far lesser knowledge about Bombay roads than us), we managed to see the movie at 6:30. Post movie, everyone else wanted to go pubbing but I evaded that all and sneaked back and slept off pretty early.

Sunday morning are the noisiest when everyone is home. So I woke up to find
Aman (reading the newspaper)
Murarka (Had stayed back after a night out with aman and suhail at the hawaiian shack)
Dipu (he was back for his usual dose of Cricket on XBox)
Suhail and finally
Ruchi (just back from Delhi)

Well while every one played cricket on the Xbox, I got ready and rushed off to Shefali's place to have some delicious Aaloo ke paranthe. Post a sumptuous meal which made us very drousy, we decided to do some road side shopping at the Fashion Street in Fort. That place was my fave when I had come to Bombay for the first time during my summers in L&T from DCE. We tried on a lot of things but somehow didnt like anything too much. I bought a pair of earings and a ring for Shefali, all of Rs. 50!!!! Post that had a quick lime break at the Sterling and then went off to Phoneix Mills for some more shopping. I bought my self an awesome 3/4ths and then headed back home. Shefali promised to pick me up at about 8:30 for dinner at the same place where we had dinner with Harsh.
Since I had more than 3 hours to spare, I cleaned up my entore wardrobe and room much to the pleasure of Aman, my roomie!!!! Dinner was tasty and i gotr back and headed off to bed.

A preety good weekend. Well no pubs this time but still good enough I guess!!!

7 things I LOVE/ HATE about Bombay

2007-12-14T01:49:00.000-08:00

HATE
1) People call each other by making a “puch puch” sound with their lips which bug the hell out of me. I mean even a small “oye” is better than this cranky sound
2) The taxi’s refuse to go for small distances. I mean how else will people travel those distance. I had to go to the hospital to get a tetanus injection and no taxi was willing to go because the hospital was too close for their earnings. To go to PCP from Dadar, I don’t get a single cab in the mornings and beat this, in the evening things are even worse.
3) First thing the localites ask is “u marathee”? Why is this city moving towards attitude arboured by banglorians and madrasis. This city is made by all the people who come here and bring their talents and still contribute to the growth of this city, state and ultimately the country as a whole. But alas!!
4) Rainy Season Stinks : When it rains like crazy in the city and the whole city closes down!! I mean no drainage system for a city that claims to be the financial hub of the country and probably is the same!!
5) Well lack of mall and shopping complexes: Apart from Atria there isn’t even a single place in South Bombay which qualifies as a mall. Reason: no space!!!
6) Lack of reasonable priced houses (even for renting purposes) and lack of playgrounds. Well this is one thing that I really feel from the heart. In my younger years I spent more time in such playgrounds than at school or home. Worse, here even the schools don’t have playgrounds. No wonder the kids here have nothing else to do than become couch potatoes!!
7) No Posh Colonies: Unlike the other cities like Delhi and kolkata where colonies are either posh or not so posh, Mumbai has none or rather has both in the same place. In Delhi you have like GK and Sunder Nagar or the Embassy Road which are the posh and rich and beautiful countries, Mumbai doesn’t have even a single one like that. Bandra might be posh place(so to say) but right there on the beach there are huge jhuggi jhopdi’s. Colaba migh be one of the most expensive places but still have a huge fishermen jhopdi’s right there.

LOVE
1) Night Life: This place has one of the best night life in the country. The pubs are rocking and the crowd in the pubs is a lot lot better than anywhere else. The music played is awesome and the best part is that there are so many of them that you can go and explore as many as you want to.
2) Public Transport: It may be over crowded. But at the end of the day, the local transport system is something that keeps Mumbai alive. The trains though crowded and filthy are still the lifeline of the city. They are the only form of transport that can guarantee that you will reach your meeting in time. Also the taxi system is so nice that you can never really feel the pinch of not owning a car here.
3) Winter Weather is another thing that I love about Bombay. Well Delhites (unlike me though) complain that the weather is too bland and that there is no cold here in Bombay. But I quite hate the cruel freezing winters of Delhi and am quite happy and at ease with warm cozy winters,
4) Safe: Well though a lot of people might not agree, but I still maintain that Mumbai is a safe city. At least a lot lot safer that Delhi and other places. This is one place that I cam go out in the night with my girlfriend and not worry about street hooligans or worse even blood (read money) sucking Policewaalas.
5) Walk down the marine drive: Well the sea is here and the sea breeze is very refreshing. It still is very crowded, but believe me, the feel of a walk down the marine drive in a clouded afternoon is as good as it gets!
6) Friends: Well nearly 80% of my batch from IIM L is placed in Bombay. So meeting them, staying with them, partying with them is something that keeps me going. They are all over the place, when I am in my office, out for coffee, in the gym, out for dinner and even while sleeping. And the best part is that people who are not here, WANT to be here!
7) JOBS! Finally the reason why I am here. This is the financial capital of the country. All big banks, financial institutions, MNC’s are based out of this city and thus give the maximum exposure as well as variety of options in terms of work opportunities. I am sure that I cant get the same profile along with the remuneration that I am getting here. The salary of my heads is all mind boggling and the kind of work that they do is also splendid. So what to do!!

Taking time off!!

2007-12-14T00:34:00.000-08:00

Havent been too active on the blogging front off late. Single main reason for this is my daily ordeal at the gym which has now started to take a toll on me. Well the main reason to start this painful exercising regime was the slight paunch that had been lingering for long. But it was not probably the sole reason for this. Seeing SRK grooving in his six-packs prompted a non-gymer like me to try my hand at it as well.

One of the other reasons is the fact that my Goa holiday is not too far. Actually its only a week away!!
So am trying to be fit!

The Week that Was

2007-12-11T04:45:00.000-08:00

Friday: Evening at Toto's with Kapoor and Sharma with Navneet dropping in
Saturday: Wild wild evening at the Hawaiian Shack with sharma, shef, suhail, aman, av and harsh
Sunday: Quiet evening at the Bombay Blues with shef..

RoCKinG WeekEnD

2007-12-06T22:14:00.000-08:00

Past couple of weeks has been helluva crazy ones. This weekend Shobhit got engaged to his sweetheart. I couldn’t be there at the engagement, but will definitely have a blast at his wedding. I called him up to congratulate him and all I could say was that his bumps are due when we meet in Goa!
This week was good in the sense that finally Dipu took us to some good places. He has the knack of finding some really crappy places which he swears used to be good when he visited them eons back.
This Friday we dined at Chopsticks which happened to be a nice place and then saw “the Kingdom”. I had no clue about what the movie was about and was half expecting a Jungle Book kind of a storyline. But I was pretty amazed by the nice storyline and all in all a good movie.

Saturday, Aman left for Shobhit’s engagement and so me, Shefali and Dipu decided to hang out that evening as well. This time Dipu took us to a pub called Taverns at Colaba. This was the same one Aman wanted to go the previous night (he was kind of pissed when we told him later about that place). This small but upscale restaurant is located right at the waterfront in Bombay’s poshest area. It was nice place near the Gateway of India and we sat and enjoyed for sometime before deciding to go for another movie at sterling. This time we watched “the Messengers”. It was something about the ghost and was the most unimaginative movie that I have ever seen. Ever scene was like picked up from some or the other movie.

Finally Sunday was supposed to be a rest day. But all hopes of having a easy day were dashed when Sigra, my junior in DCE called up. Sigra is working in Thailand and had a flight to catch early morning next day and so wanted to meet up in the evening and spend the night at my place. It was nice hearing his voice. He was Ravi’s very good friend and so over a period of time I got to know him quite well as well. He reached home at about 8:30 and almost immediately decided to go out to “Not just Jazz by the Bay” bar. It is a wonderful bar at a splendid location. It is right there at the marine drive and hence is a pretty decent hangout place. We were chatting about old days when Enthu (Amit Jain) entered the pub. He was there to enjoy his mug of beer in quite solitude. But that was not to be and we ended up talking loudly and laughing even more! The place was free till about 10 and so we left as soon as the entry charges were applicable!! Me and Sigra ate at the kamling (another Chinese restaurant) at the Marine drive and then hit back home. His stories were quite entertaining, especially about his friend who works as a reporter in Zee News and how she has access to the minutest of the details in the lives of Bollywood celebs. Some of the news was pretty startling and left me craving for more (I think I enjoy gossips a LOT!)

We came back and he showed me all that happens in Thailand. He had attended loads of Full Moon beach parties and was more than enthusiastic in sharing his experiences there!!!!
A pretty rocking Weekend I think!!!

An Attempt to write a short story: (Its incomplete though

2007-11-29T23:02:00.001-08:00

Times were great! And why not? After all Praveen had just scrapped through his 2 years in the rigors of his MBA. And true to one of the full forms of MBA which said “Mediocre but Average”, he was happy to have got 5 as his CG which albeit put him amongst the lower quartile in his batch, was good enough to but him at the top of the educational hierarchy in his family. But it was the Final placements that had not only taken him by surprise, but was well on its way to becoming a legend and a source of hope amongst all LCGC (or the Low CG Crowd). Praveen had not just managed to bag 6 offers in Day 1, but had cracked 3 of the most coveted high paying jobs on campus. He for those 2 days of placements had remained a “critical asset” (sweet way of calling a ‘pain in the asses’) for the controls team which had a nightmare scheduling his interviews.

So finally, not too long after, he was on a flight to Mumbai following his long cherished dream of becoming a banker. Luck was on his side and he was finally on his way to take on the corporate world. College life had been tough both during his engineering and subsequently in his MBA days. Not amongst the social guys, he had few acquaintances and fewer friends. He was more of a loner than a loony, but generally people took him for the latter. But he did not care much and with the corporate world calling him, he cared even lesser.

First day in Bombay and he was on his way to the Fountain Branch of American Express. He had been the lone candidate from IIM L and so, when he was ushered in a room and introduced to the remaining batch of more than 20 Management Trainees, he was a little taken a back. But surprised he was, flustered he was not. He had been indifferent to the crowds since the time he knew they existed. As the MT’s were assigned a couple of hours to interact and network (a word and work that Praveen hated), he decided to get away and treat himself to a quiet dose of solitude. Without citing a reason or excuse, he drifted out of the room silently (a feat he had mastered in his days in college) and out in the sun.

Since traffic was always one of those few things he could not handle, he decided to walk along the road instead of crossing over. As he walked through the old and crumbling buildings of the Fort, he silently admired their architectural beauty. He had wanted to be in Bombay for his summers but was among the unfortunate ones who had been bundled together and given away to some FMCG company which had made him travel through the lengths and breadth of the country trying to find the consumer perception of their brand.

He smiled remembering the days that he spent in the hotel filling out the forms himself without even caring to venture out of the room. He smirked even more at the look of appreciation in the faces of the company jury while going through his summer’s project before awarding him a PPO. He had always enjoyed life, hadn’t he? He was busy smiling, when all of the sudden the papers in his hands started flying and he hadn’t a clue as to why all the things started going topsy-turvy. It took a while before he realized that he had been knocked over by a thelewaala who was as liberated and careless in his though as Praveen himself. A few apologies here and there and finally both were on their ways again. Minutes later a huge groan emerged out of him when he realized that he had soiled his newly bought shirt. He had in fact tripped over some stagnant muck and now was totally covered with it. Now, he was a little flustered as he thought of the possible impression that he would have on the same EXCO (Executive Committee) that he had hoped to impress. He quickly looked around hoping to find some shirt shop for a quick replacement. He was frantically looking around when their eyes met.

Shweta was literally the apple of eye of the Raman family and since the day of her birth was pampered and indulged over by one and all. She was the fairest in the family and had hence gotten her name. She was cosseted as a baby and constant similar coddling had made her a baby at heart even now. But to her credit, she had never been a spoilt kid and had thus been a darling to one and all. She helped her Dad in his small shop across the Fountain and used to daily run away to her favorite book store next to the Thomas Cook building. The bookstore owner was an old friend of her dad and so used to lend her some for a week for her reading. Today she was completely engrossed in the new Paolo Coelho that she lost track of time and was rushing back towards her shop when she was him fall. She was particularly amused by the entire turn of the events. He was watching the roof when he ran into the thela that was on its way. What had amused her most was that even while on his fall down he was still looking at the roof. She tried her best but could not control the laughter and stood there smiling at him. He stood up a little embarrassed and started looking here and there. And then he looked at her and caught her eyes.

She stopped laughing. She suddenly felt a shiver as his eyes locked on to hers. She felt a little captivated, a little mesmerized. For a moment she was still dreaming when a rude “side dena madam” brought her back to reality. She felt a little uneasy when she saw him walk towards her.

He was still a little out of sorts frantically looking around when their eyes met. He suddenly felt imprisoned by her eyes. He hadn’t seen a more beautiful pair of eyes. They were black, in direct contrast to her fair shade of skin. He was pulled towards her and found himself taking steps towards her.

“Hi!” he finally spoke.
An agreeable nod.

“Do you have a shirt?”
A confused shake of the head.

“Oh, I mean, do you know a shirt shop nearby?”
Another agreeable nod.

Brilliant day!

2007-11-29T22:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a very fruitful day in the sense that a lot of plannning for the New years finally started to happen. Actually everyone is "in" for it but no one wants to take the initiative. So finally I called up a resort in Goa and asked for the tariffs and mailed everyone the iternary that we can have and now, all of a sudden, there has been a pretty decent activity in this account. This is a nice thing coz I now think that finally some plan is on! So I did some groundwork on it in the morning and in the afternoon went for a lunch to Status! Well the only reason I go all the way to status is their wonderful "Cheese pakoras" which I can assure you are totally out of the world.
But it was the evening that took the cake. Shefali came over to Kodak House and from here we went to Sterling. I had a quick soup and then we took a cab to Nariman Point. It was very pleasant and walking all the way to the end of the road was one of the most chillaxing walks in the recent times.
We decided to have dinner at Atria, keeping in mind the "cost cutting" that we want to be for the next few weeks so that we can splurge during the new years vacation.
Atria used to be one of my fave hangout spots in my early days in Mumbai, but somehow it became a far second to most of the eating spots. But yesterday was nice and pretty filling as well!! 2 Nans and a plate full of Kebabs were more than what I had in mind!! That followed by some Cappuchino was a brilliant end to a brilliant evening!!!!!

English August!

2007-11-27T22:00:00.001-08:00

This is one book that I wanted to read since time immemorial!!! Finally I have laid my hand on this one and hope to finish it quick enough to move to a better one!!!

just do IT!!!

2007-11-27T20:31:00.000-08:00

Just Do IT!!

Well i have always been regarded as one of the most IT challanged guys while on campus in a technical college like DCE. Well people regarded IT knowlege as one of the key essentials for success, but I have happy with my more than sufficient knowledge of "ctrl-alt-del". It solved problemsa and that too Always!! Though I did give in to the pressure of the academic life and did join C++ classes, but that did not go beyond a couple of classes and all I was left with was a knowledge of #include iostrem.h or something as weird as that.

When I moved on with my life into the IIM's I was plesanatly surprised to find that this was truly ne place where people with far lower IT Quotient existed than me! There were loads of non-engineers for whom computer was a cheap replacement for TV, CD player, music player all combined into one.Also I came across Aman who happened to be one who was/is cursed by IT! Two years in IIM L, and there werent too many days when his computer was in fully functional mode.He carried his illuck with him after college as well with his IBM thinkpad nearly crashing and then getting a new laptop where the internet console doesnt fit!!

But what I did not know is that I might be also becoming prone to such ordeal myself. I just crashed by new laptop and all the data has been erased and now the IT experts beleive that there is some hardware problem associated with it. The lotus notes take hours to open and i am having one of the worst times with reagrds to IT!!

Where have the days gone when abacus ruled the roost!!!

Well as they say!

Just do IT!!

Joker in the Pack: A Review

2007-11-27T20:16:00.000-08:00

This is a novel I picked up primarily because it is co-written by an alumni. And I am damn confident that I have not been disappointed by them. Well, mainly because when I picked up the book I already knew that I wasnt picking up a classic. It had all that I knew would be in store for me. The regular campus life, regular normal characters and finally the regular setting and the scenario. But I must say that I really connected with the life at the campus, having been through the rigours of one quite recently. Although I couldnt relate too well with the characters but yess, with the life and times of an IIM, I could nearly see myself being there.

One thing that I generally do is to picturise the people of a story and make up a movie in my mind. This novel was like having myself and my friends as characters. the summers scenario was like sitting in PGP room and waiting for shortlista and finally interviews.

This is one of the many books that have followed Chetan Bhagt in trying to recreate the magic of Five point someone. This book though not quite ground breaking as the original, still manages quite well by itself.

So my verdict is:

Strick yes for MBAwalles
Strict no for Non-Mbawaale!!!!

Joker in the Pack

2007-11-27T02:52:00.001-08:00

Hey!!
Well this is the book i am currently reading. pretty decent read!!
Hope to finish it by tomorrow!

3 things that define success or failure

2007-11-21T20:10:00.000-08:00

Three reason that were quoted to be the reason for the fall of communism :

No accountibility
No responsibility
No Incentive!!!

Well pretty much sounds like my job!
:)

Day well Spent::The Bowling Game!!

2007-11-20T19:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a good day!!
Well came to office on time only to find not too much work on me!

Met Shefali, Aman and Murarka over lunch at Shiv Sagar which for a change served mouth watering cuisine which literally left us licking our fingers. Well lunch time was well spent by Murarka and Aman who stared at each and every girl and chose to write 2 minute thesis on each !

Left office early and wet off to DB-PCP in Lower Parel which was my first office on DB! It really felt like coming home. Had a sandwich and a granita at the CCD followed by a coffee with Nachiket at the canteen there. One thing that really ticks me off is the fact that there is no canteen at either Kodak House or DB house! Also saw the new place where Ram, Nachi have shifted in. I did not like that new set up a wee bit. A surprise was meeting Abhijit Mishra, the guy responsible for the my hiring and program designing. Also met Vikas shetty which was also a good meet up. But the toast of the evening was meeting Ashwini. She was sitting on her seat and as usual working very hard on something. Spoke with her for a long time wherein she was telling me about all the projects that she was working in.
That was the end of my small rendezvous at PCP

I had already made a plan with Dipu and Aman about meeting up at the Sports Bar at the Phonix Mills for a game of Bowling. It was a good hour and a half spent there. Its always nice to see yourself do well and so I was pretty impresses by myself especially in the second game

The Bowling score in the two games were

Name 1st Game 2nd Game
Aman 125 97
Shek 91 123
Dipu 90 85

Dipu was a little not-so-happy with his performance while Aman was ecstatic especially after the first game.!!!
I was damn happy with the first game but two strikes in the last throw totally threw me overboard and I was stunned beyond the point where I could react!

But if you thought we were done for the day, there were more surprises to come.
As we were walking back we bumbed into Niharika who was with a girl who I think is one of my seniors from DCE. She was shopping in Atria but had come here for dinner as the food plaza there was shut down in event of a party. She had mailed me in the morning and wanted to have coffee with all of us in the evening. I had conveyed this to others and Dipu was to call her, which he obviously forgot and so here we were again!
But we decided to meet later sometime and say our good nites and tatas

Well the dinner thoough was the lowest point of the day. We ordered from a new place and beleive me the food was totally inedible. Without the Coke to run it down, I doubt if we could have even managed a single bite.

So twas a nice day! I mean I hope i spent more days like these ( except for the dinner fiasco!)!!

Trip to Kashid-Murud #3

2007-11-19T00:45:00.001-08:00

Today we planned to go to Marud and see the famed Fort Janzira and then head back to Mumbi.

We resumed from where we had left and after getting up, quickly changed into our swimming trunks and without delay went and jumped into the ocean. This time we knew was the last time we would go into the sea this trip and so we spent most of the time letting the sea sink onto us. We swam far into the ocean and then came back riding the waves. After a quick swim we went back to the vada pao centre had our fill and took quick baths. We packed and settled the dues and finally caught a bus to Murud.

Murud is an old fisherman town with one very nice beach...with calm water and Janjira is a famous fort in the middle of the sea near Murud. The setting for the fort is perfect for any film shooting.

Murud, though was unlike Kashid and lacked the cozy and laid back feeling of Kashid. We bought some juices and some chocolates and decided to book the tickets for Mumbai before we started exploring. It was in the end one of the most brilliant decisions that we took because by the evening when we got to the bus stand, all the seats were full and there were scores of people wanting to get a seat.

So after booking our return bus at 1800 hrs, we decided to go to the famed Janjira fort. Janjira fort is bang in the middle of the ocean and is perhaps one of the only forts that did not fall to the English forces as well. We took a ferry to the Fort. It was filled to the extreme and was a little unstable as well. But the feeling was very good. It reminded me of the scene in “Swades” in the song” Yeh Jo Desh hai mera”. We reached the Fort in about 20 minutes and took it on ourselves to explore the place. I wanted to take the guide but the rest of the gang was more for exploring the place by ourselves. Well to fight off the blaring sun I bought myself a Sun Cap and was happy to wear it throughout for the rest of the trip. The fort had a wonderful history and some of the salient points were:

1) No army conquered this fort because they could not get to it
2) There was an underground tunnel 40 ft underwater connecting the fort to the mainland
3) There was a main barrel gun (tope) which was made of an alloy which did not get heated up even in the afternoon
4) There were 120 guns in all and were positioned all over the castle
5) Although it was covered with salt water, it had sweet water lakes inside.
6) It was made of natural things only. The main ingredients were
a. Jaggery
b. Salt
c. Sand
d. Lead
e. Chuna

Well I had not really had my full of the fort, but then everybody was tired and so we decided to head back to the mainland. Since the only way back was through the boats, hence there was a huge crowd waiting for the boats. We had to wait for nearly an hour before we got a boat, again full to the brim, and headed back.

This time Dipu decided to use his Rough Guide and then found a restaurant which had got a mention in the book. We took an auto to that restaurant and after waiting for a while got a table and finally had loads of food again! It was still 4 when we finished another eating marathon and since the bus was at 6, we decided to take one last walk along the beach. We went to the beach and saw a lot of people playing a lot of different sports there and wished we had got some as well. Dipu (who wanted to play cards and was anguished when we refused) retired into one of the benches on the shores and read a book, so the rest of us walked the beach and admired the beauty of the sea in the evening sun. The difference you will find in the both beaches are, Murud has got crystal clear greenish water whereas Kashid has crystal clear blue one.
We finally made it to the Bus stand all set with sweets and bottles of mineral water, waited for the bus for over an hour, sat in a very crowded bus and finally made it to Mumbai at about 12:30 at night.

It was a trip that was nice, cool and most importantly cheap. I am sure looking forward to loads of them!!

Trip to Kashid-Murud #2

2007-11-19T00:23:00.001-08:00

Kashid:

The entire konkan stretch of western coastal Maharashtra is full of natural beauty. Its a thick green stretch, with number of untouched clean beaches. Kashid will undoubtedly figure in my top picks for best beaches I have been to. The reasons why I am calling it best is White sand, blue seas, green mountains. Kashid has a 3 km stretch of beach with the cleanest, whitest sand and groves that make just the perfect setting for a beach holiday.

The only low point of the trip was looking for accommodation in Kashid. We got down at the beginning where the beach starts and were more than casual about finding a place to stay. After all why would people come and stay here and not go to the more famous Murud. But we were all caught on the wrong foot. So we found most of the resorts either full or crazily expensive (One room for 10k bucks!!! Crazy). Well one of the reasons for losing out on good accos was that they did not have TV sets in the rooms. This was one of the parameter specified by Dipu which was to be the top most reason for taking a room in a resort. We walked for miles before we finally go hold of a place. It was quite a decent bargain with 1500 bucks for 2 rooms for a night. We unloaded our back packs, changed into shorts and decided to hit the beach at once. Dipu was a hungriest of the lot and so was pressing us onto go to some restaurant before we took a dive into the ocean.

We walked for some time trying to find a restaurant but were amazed to find that this place did not have even a single one. So we decided to walk along the beach and go to the shacks that we had seen in the beginning of Kashid.

Now let me tell you the most unique thing about that place::::

“The Cell phones DO NOT WORK!!!”

So we were literally cut out from the rest of the world. We had no network coverage and had a really tough time initially. Finally it was in late evening that we found out local coin phones which could be used to make STD calls.

So while on our way to the shacks we were seduced to the sea and so spent the next hour or so in the sea swimming away to glory. The water was as clear as it could be and was totally blue. The only flaw was that it was damn salty.

After an hour we decided to call it off for the time being. So we put on our dry clothes and walked to the shacks. It was an ideal walk. The walk was with the sun behind us and the water with sand hitting our toes. The beaches were pretty empty making the place prettier.

One of my fantasies of a good vacation is

“Walking with the sun on my back and sand between my toes!”

And Kashid walk in the afternoon was all about it.

When we finally made it to the shacks all of us were totally famished and each one of us was capable of devouring a mountain each. So we ate till we dropped from a menu comprising of omelets, bhurgi, vada with pakore both onion and poato! We drank the whole thing down with some pepsi’s to go with it.

We took an auto back to our motel and took quick baths and finally went back to the ocean. Since it was evening we rushed back to the beach. Only this time we were there to take a dip as well as witness the famed sunsets that oceans are famous for. The ocean was clean but the water levels were slightly down. We did the same things again and again. We saw against the sea, then with the sea, waited for the waves to hit us, swam against the waves and were pelted back, sprayed water at each other, and best probably worst smeared eachother with sand and dirt!! The beach was excellent; I bet you can never get a beach of this kind with almost no crowd. The water is quite vibrant here as compared to other beaches.

We finally came back to the shore after being dead tired and headed straight to the Vada-Pao shop we had located that was pretty close to our room. We entirely demolished the reserves of VadaPao and headed back to our rooms very satisfied with our day. Since we had found out that there were practically no restaurants in the vicinity, we ordered food from the kitchen of the restaurant itself.

We again took quick baths and then almost immediately began our marathon card playing session of 29. It was me and Aman paired against Suhail and Dipu! We were pretty good and despite the fact that Aman did not entirely know the game, we were playing well. We played on till about 9:30pm when our stomachs started complaining about the lack of food coming their way! So we went out in the open where they laid food. Since fish was the only available option in non vegetarian, we decided to have a complete vegetarian menu. The food was very tasty and by the end of 45min of non stop eating almost all the food has disappeared from the plates. It was probably one of those times when there was literally no left-over.

Post dinner we decided to go for a walk like the times we used to do on campus. The roads were sans any street lights which made walking a little tough. Nevertheless we walked and cracked jokes. We bitched about most of the professors back on campus and joked about Bansal, his “Why don’t YOU tell me phrases, about Ruchi teaching Rachit and Rachit getting more marks than him.

Finally after a good hour walk we came back to our rooms and promptly resume our card game. This time Suhail and Dipu changed places and hope for a change of luck. And did the luck go their way?? Yes it sure went!! Within no time they were far far ahead of us! Though we were leading in the beginning, but lost our way completely in the middle and by the end of it all lost by the worst possible score. But it was enjoying all the more and the way me and Aman played and tried to delay the inevitable for as long as possible was even more thrilling. I think that by the end of it all we were losing and enjoying the most. Dipu was particularly getting a little frustrated and Suhail had a tough time controlling Dipu and urging him to exercise control!! Aman gallantly fought “Sleep” and kept on playing, though Ruchi succumbed to fatigue and dozed off. We finally slept off at 1 am and vowed to get up early and move on with the second leg of the trip.

Trip to Kashid Murud #1

2007-11-19T00:13:00.000-08:00

This was one of the outings that I was very keen on! I really wanted to get out of the hustle bustle of Mumbai and so wanted to get laze around on some beach. Considering that we are on the western coast, the Konkan beaches were easily the obvious choice.

Friday was dinner at the Oberoi in the event of Siddharth having got through AT Kearney. So came back pretty late from it and had completely dozed off by the time Aman and others got back home. He woke me up and reminded me of the fact that we would be catching the 7:15 am ferry and since we would have to get up, do our packing and also buy the tickets to the ferry, hence we would have to be up by 5 am!!
Even though I was sleepy enough to ignore most of it, but the idea of getting up at 5 did give me a little not-so-good feeling.

But true to his word, Aman woke me up that early and after some stuffing of the back-packs we started off in a couple of taxis with me, Suhail-Ruchi in one cab and Aman-Dipu in the other.

The plan of the trip was:
Mumbai to Mandau in a ferry
Mandau to Alibaugh in a bus
Alibaugh to Kashid in a Tempo
Stay at Kashid
Kashid to Murud in a bus
Murud to Mumbai in a bus

Mumbai to Mandau in a ferry

We bought five ticket of the ferry to mandau. It was a pretty pleasant morning and looking back at Mumbai as we left the shore gave us a brilliant view of the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal hotel in the background. We had take the seats on the deck in the open and had the ferrywas pretty jammed up giving us the first hint that this week, the places we intended to visit would be crowded with tourists. But we had our fun in the ferry. All Dipu wanted to do was read through his Bible- “Rough Guide to India”, Aman wanted to click pictures of all the rattled, rusted and totally distresses ships that lay anchored in the ocean and finally the couple in the group wanted to cuddle up in the morning wind! As for me I had engaged myself in a warm cup of tea, book in hand and having a good time observing the members of the group. Near the fag end of the ride we saw a couple of birds which we after some group discussion, reached the conclusion, were seagulls following the boat. Aman who was missing the company of rusted pieces of iron-steel (read ships) was back in the game and clicked the birds with the morning sky in the background.

Mandau to Alibaug

Well Alibaug is the same place that they mention in the movies a lot of time. Just for people who don’t know the local lingo much “ Alibaug se ayeela hai kya” mean “Are you a complete dim-witted, dumb and stupid combined.”
There was a bus service from Mandau to Alibaugh which we availed.

Alibaug to Kashid

We wanted to take bikes from Alibaug were told that the security that you pay is equal to the cost of the bike. So we opted for the cheaper alternative: Tempo/ Vikram which costed us 300 bucks to kashid. Also this was exactly the place where we started off playing cards in the tempo itself. We played Coatpiece all the way to Kashid!!

Investment Biker

2007-11-15T23:29:00.000-08:00

Book That I am currently reading

"Making the Minister Smile"

2007-11-14T20:31:00.001-08:00

Well this author caught my attention (and I guess everyone else's as well) with his awesome style of writing in "The Inscrutable Americans" which was about an Indian guy who goes to the US and his experiences there. That book had me in splits and on the floor laughing mad. So when I saw this book on the shelf of a book storeI couldnt keep myself from buying this!!

Well he has tried to create similar magic buy trying the reverse. He has this time told the story by bringing an American as the main protagonist and his experiences in India. But this time his story is not fun and humour. He has portrayed the crumbling politics and the people who are in it in a sarcastic manner. He doesnt over burden the reader by pulling all the plugs and going no-holds barred after the politicians, but rather involves them into the story of a mill owner and his mill.

It is one of the best portrayal of the corruption and how it shows that today it is not just all about the money, but rather there is a lot more than meets the eye.

He tells us how the three principle of the 3 B's ( Butter them, Bribe them n Bash Them) of business have become redundant in today complex politico-social scenario!!!

I good read and the best part is that its a 225 pager with about 12 font size!! So a 4 hour read!!!

The Long Road Ahead!

2007-11-14T20:22:00.000-08:00

Well this is one of the pictures that I took last year in a small town in the border of switzerlkand and germany!!

This is undoubtedly my fave pic as it means a lot to me and to life in particulat

Home or Lodge???

2007-11-13T03:09:00.000-08:00

Today was my first time interaction with the clients. It was pretty nice because it gives you not only the first hand interaction with the people with whom you make money( ha ha), but also gives you a better understanding and perspective of a lot of things.

Today as I walked into one of the client offices we started discussing upon one of the topics that has been doing the rounds in the banking world.
"The RBI is trying to make all the bank in India 5 day working"

This brought a very important perspective when the client commented

" I dont know if I stay at Home or a Lodge! I leave home at 8 in the morning and get back not before 9:30 in the evening"

I think this really brings forward one of the ills of our worklife! People directly equate the number of hours you put into as a direct representative of your ability and performance. There is not much that organisations can do when the entire mindset is skewed. This mindset goes right through the hierarchy, both vertically as well as horizontally!

Buzzing Q: Career Dilema!!!1

2007-11-13T02:56:00.000-08:00

There is something that as been bugging me for quite some time now. Well through the last 24 years of my life, I have never quite felt anything even close to this. There is this feeling of the fear of stagnation. Well if you read the last line carefully, you will see that what I am not stagnating at present, but the fear of it is what is eating me.

Well through years in school, graduation, and finally MBA, there was always this thing to look forward to. Be it preparing for engineering entrance exams while in school, preparing for CAT and giving hundreds of mocks for practice or finally getting oneself ready for the finance interviews in the final placements. An now all of a sudden after getting through my dream job, I don’t know where I go from here.

I was never quite the ambitious one of the lot in school or college and that is probably the reason that I don’t know what the future holds for me. Till now the future was both incidental and coincidental. But now it is entire what I make of it. It can make or break at my wish and now the fact that I have to make my career out on a clean late is what is driving me nuts!!

One of the most intriguing lines that are embossed on most of the Indian’s is

“Tum karm kiye jao
fal ki iccha mat karo”

Well this was probably true for the school and college times but does not quite serve the purpose now.

I know to you it may sound a little weird but see this as a rationale.

In schools and colleges you could focus on a larger issue or you could focus on diverse topics. Like in school all you had to do was prepare for engineering, the fact was you could get through either IITs, DCE’s, Roorkie’s or regional colleges. The list was long and hence you could miss the bulls eye but still end up as a winner. Ditto for engineering college where you could either get a brilliant job, end up in a top notch MBA school or go abroad and pursue higher studies. Finally in B schools you could target more than a 100 companies and even if you got through the 99th one, you would still be a winner.

But what now?

Where do I go from here? I mean, I can work hard and do well in the department. But which department? Is there any one that I like? What if I don’t like any? There also once I join I am there for life!! Imagine giving up all your liberties and flexibilities and getting molded into a particular shape and size!!

So what do I do? Change or move?

If I change I lose it all!!
If I stay put, I stagnate!!!

Think about it!! Tell me what you feel!!!!

Success behind Indian establishment

2007-11-12T20:33:00.000-08:00

Well reading a book today i came across a wonderful phrase:

To be successful in India you have to follow three tenets :

BBB

Butter them, Bribe them n Bash them!!!!

If God was a Banker: A review!

2007-11-12T01:52:00.000-08:00

This is one of the books that I read over the weekend in Delhi. Well to be precise, I read this book while on my way to Delhi. The flight was delayed by more than 3 hours which along with the two hours flight time were more than sufficient to read through it.

Well this book was nice in the sense that it was a plain vanilla racy fiction which is quite a page turner, but if you are looking for some serious reading, then this isn’t one of your picks. It is about the lives of two young IIM graduates who are high achievers in their own sense and in the same banking organization. This book takes you along the lives of people working in such MNC banks and focuses on their aspiration, career choices, their personal lives, love, lust, power, greed. Everything straight out of a Bollywood movie!!

But then it sure is a page turner and if you don’t have anything worthwhile to do on a warm Sunday afternoon, then you can probably swim through it.

This book by Ravi Subramanium, is again from a bunch of corporate authors who are enjoying an alternate career as authors of fiction. This is a pretty healthy trend as it provides reader with more factual and real representation of the stories as these are generally picked up from real life situations!!

Back in Delhi n I m Lovin It!!!

2007-11-07T09:13:00.000-08:00

It is always a pleasure to be home, more so when you are going for like five days!

So this week from the very beginning was more of a drag than anything else. Drag because the “looking forward to home” mood had taken the mind off from all kind of work!
So finally the D-day came on Tuesday ie. Yesterday and I left office at like 4 and went home. My flight was at 9 pm. I was kinda surprised when I got a message from Spicejet about the delay in the departure. Well the flight finally left at 12:30 and I reached delhi at about 3.

The best thing about the flight was that since it reached Delhi that late, the cab drive from the airport to my place in Gurgaon was plainly and simply awesome!!! It was too good. This is one thing that I miss most about Delhi. Bombay has roads that would barely qualify as gali’s in Delhi. especially the NH8 which has taken the winds out of people’s lungs. You can go at like 130 on those roads without even feeling the heat!!

Today was spent wearing a boxer and a t-shirt and cleaning away the house. Standing on the chair and cleaning the hands of the fan really reminded me of the days when didi and I used to do such stuffs on Sunday and on holidays!
Today was Dhanteras and so went with family to buy some ghar ka samaan like spoons and cups stc. I was prepared to face huge crowds in the mall, but was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t as crowded as I had imagined. This was probably because it was a working day. But I am sure tomorrow is going to be one heck of a day where all the amlls will be jammed up with people.

The other thing that I miss about Delhi is the Mall concept. Bombay barely has malls due to the exorbitant land prices there. But in Gurgaon, there are more malls than houses and they mushroom all over the place. It is really a nice concept coz you can roam around all day in the same place which is air cooled and has a plethora of different shops.

Well tomorrow is going to be a long day. Its Aman’s birthday and I have thousand things to do.
Lets c wats up tomorrow!!!

Sunday ko "Jab We Met"

2007-11-05T23:03:00.001-08:00

Sunday is the only day when you can really think of really going out in the sun and enjoying. This is because the entire Saturday goes down in trying to unwind and take stock of the gone week and so the next day is the time when you can really plan out and “do” something.

So I got pretty early and the cooked myself a couple of omelets and toasts and began with playing a couple of games on the X-box. This concept of virtual large screen video gaming is beginning to catch up with me as well. So after a nice early morning, I decided to catch up on a movie with Shefali. So we went to Inox and bought the tickets for the next show of “Jab We Met”. Well I seriously think that the ticket prices are skyrocketing and no amount of reasoning can provide the rationale for a 250 buck ticket for a second row seat. Well the only rationale that I think is that stupid people like me go and spend and so they price high high higher!!!

Well since the show was a good hour and half later so we decided on pleasing our gastric juices by feasting on some nice paratha’s . So we headed off to “Only Paratha”. This is another place with good or rather awesome food but the prices don’t really justify the taste.

So we had some Chat and parathas and then proceeded for the movie.

Movie per say was nice. It was from the makers of “Socha Na Thaa” and the fact that I really like his first movie was the driving force behind coming for this movie. And true to his caliber he did not let me down. The movie like the previous one was very simple love story told simply without and not needed drama or action. I truly believe that KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is surely the solution to every thing and that’s what he did. I believe that any movie that makes you smile after 3 hours is a good movie. And that’s what happened after this movie.

Well so this was a Sunday that was well utilized and yess I enjoyed to the fullest!

Saturday: Review at CMS & Brilliant Dinner at Hotel Marine Plaza

2007-11-04T22:41:00.000-08:00

I am a firm believer of the fact that weekends are for complete rest and laziness. But this was not to be. I had a review on Saturday for the Capital Markets division in DB house. This department deals with FX and everything related to it. Well so I was a little anxious about the whole thing as I did not want to mess it. That’s the reason why I opted out of the movie on Friday night.

The review was very positive and after a 3 hour long written and a sumptuous lunch with the Director of the division, I was off and ready to rock n roll for the weekend. So I met up with Shefali in the evening and decided to go out for dinner. Since Chandragupta has now become more of a home affair than some kind of an outing, we decided to choose Marine plaza hotel this time around.

Marine Plaza:
To understand the importance of Marine Plaza, I need to give a background to it. Marine plaza is a 5 star hotel right on the Marine drive and has awesome food albeit a little expensive. Well the “little” word before expensive is quite an understatement!! Well I really cant make out the difference in the taste of the food but I sure can make out the difference in the weight of my wallet. So I prefer to avoid it. But then there are people who love it and so force me into accompanying them there. Not that I don’t like the place, but only till the time my wallet remains in status quo pre and post dinner.

But this time was different. Coz this was after a long time that we went there. The best part about the buffet there is that they have a table of Chat which is there and so more than the dinner we were busy savoring the Chat. Also its deserts are next to none and so it sure is a complete paisa vasool.

So the Saturday was one to be proud of! Nice and expensive!

Did someone plan my life?

2007-11-02T05:17:00.001-07:00

I have always wondered how I got to the place where I am right now. And today the most I wonder about is my professional life. Well if you would have told me that I would be a banker at any point of life, I would have probably either ignored you for your ignorance or more so even mocked at you for your non-sightedness.

Although all my younger years were spent thinking how I would get into army like my Dad and probably go to the same places as him. I wanted to be in the Para’s like him. But one thing that I was always sure of was that I would not be a doctor like him. So that meant that I would not join the same regiments as him. But nevertheless it never bothered me much and I thought that joining my dad’s profession would be a natural progression.

What my family thought of it?

Dad: Well I don’t know if he ever imagined me working. All he wanted me to do was do eat well, keep healthy and keeping myself involved in everything from sports to music to studies. I don’t think he ever thought of a profession for me. He called me a “lambi race ka ghoda” and all conversations that even remotely were directed towards my career were put on hold. I am I glad? I am so very very thankful of him for having given me a freehand in everything I wanted to ever do.

Mom: Well all my mom ever wanted was for me to be in the army or the civil services. Like all moms she was probably more worried about the stability of my career than anything else. She once had me consult a “Jyotshi” and inquired if I would join any of these professions. She was flabbergasted to get a negative answer from him. But you know moms and even in their worst times they never quit spill the beans. Well I must say that she never ever voiced her preferences for my career even though he has a huge affection for the above professions.

Sister: She is once who has never hid her feeling and has always voiced her opinion quite vociferously. She was sure from day 1 of her life that I would not be joining the armed forces because this place was for people with no brains and that I was probably destined for my better things. Also she was sure that I would prepare for engineering exams and try to get through IIT. Well I did break her heart by getting through DCE in the second attempt but that never ever shook her confidence on me.

So that’s what I think my family had in mind all the time when they saw me grow, fed me, saw me off to schools and other growing up stuffs.

But what about me? I mean what did I think while growing up? As I said I always wanted to be like my dad (well tell me who doesn’t think that ways!!). But after my tenth and seeing my sister do well, I started thinking more about engineering. But I always quite knew about my abilities and so was more interested in going for some sidey college and having fun.
But as they say, fate never goes by your plans. So I got through DCE, and well, getting through that is another story altogether. I will get back to it some other time.

PARRRRRTTTTYYYYY at POISON!!!

2007-10-29T04:31:00.001-07:00

Well it was Murarka’s birthday and we hadn’t really planned anything in that regard. All we had plans of was meeting up at a nice restaurant or something and then celebrate the birthday with a cake.

But it turned out to be probably the most rocking party that we have had. Well I left the office pretty late and after having dinner I called up Aman asking him about the plans for the night. I wasn’t really surprised when he told me to come to the Red Box in Bandra and we will have some eateries there. But when I reached there I found all (Murarka, Dipu and Ruchi) except Aman. I came to know that he was at a pub called poison which was not very far from Red Box and he was in a party arranged by Kotak. He came to Red Box in about 10 mins all drenched in sweat and visibly very excited. He was all gaga about the place and this really propelled me to join him for the party. Dipu and Ruchi weren’t quite excited and so they calle dit a day and left for home. So it was me, Aman and Murarka. Aman told me that the entry was free and said all I had to do was say confidently
“Hey! Iam here for the Kotak party!”
Well I was as confident as I could be as I approached the Bouncer, only to be ompletely taen aack when he asked me my name and started looking at the list of invitees for the party!! Bugger Aman had me caught in this mess and I was not sure of the answer. I am not really “thinking on your feet” types and so all I could stutter lamely was – Abhishek.
But as you guys are probably aware of is that Abhishek is one of the most common Indian names and so was enough to take me through. There were not one, not two but three Abhishek’s on the list and so my entry into arguably the best pub in Mumbai was a cake walk!

Poison inside was probably in one work –Awesome. The lights, the music, the drinks and most of all, the crowd! The Kotak people had reserved a hall for the party and it was connected to the main hall as well. The sex ratio was very-very favorable. The crowds came in huge number and were mainly female dominated groups. But the best part about the party was that the drinks and the food were on the house courtesy Kotak and also that there were a lot of L ki junta and it was nice interacting with them. Me , Aman and murarka danced as if there is no tomorrow. It was perfect setting! I mean like this was probably the first time I was to a pub post my hospitalization and It surely felt awesome being there totally fit and fine and enjoying to the hilt!

But one person who enjoyed more than me was –Aman. He had a couple of drinks too many and was completely out of his wits by the time the party came to a stop.

But all in all it was pure mastee!!!

Who thought HR was important

2007-10-29T04:07:00.001-07:00

While doing an MBA, the last thing that you have on your minds is majoring in HR! It is probably considered to be the lesser sibling among the other major streams, namely finance, marketing and operations. But having been working for nearly 5 months now, I feel that the it is probably the most important function in an organization.

Well who would have thought that things like chummery(official acco) and HR things like parties and other things would be one of the major criterions for liking/disliking a company. Weren’t we under the impression that the Work exposure in a job is the most significant parameter? But weirdly enough importance of HR in a company is unimaginable in today’s scenario!

Just think about it!!

2007-10-19T04:23:00.000-07:00

I wonder how people somehow can be two different personalities. Well I mean, the first blog that I wrote was on how I am a person who even I don’t know. I mean people can be two different people in front of two different people. And well this for sure can be proratedJ . Bole toh if there are 100 billion ppl then there are 100 billion personalities. Well although I have my self done that, but it really leaves things on a different perspective when you experience it from others. You can afford to trash and hash people you know are your best friends and people who want your good. But in front of people who you can’t count as your well wishers receive the best of the nature and behavior.

Quite obvious isn’t it. I mean you always portray yourself as an “awesome” person in from of the “rest of the world” while with people you know you just want to be yourself.

But what I am concerned about is not what you show to others, but what kind of a person you are in absolute terms. Are you one of the extremes or one in the middle? Well we all know we can’t have bell curves all over and so we might be one with different proportions of things.

Another thing that concerns me is that what we are in the long term. I mean you make friends, you enter into relationships and so over a period of time you get to know them. One weird thing is that in the beginning when you make friends you show your best traits and they show you theirs. But over a period of time you get familiarized and thus know them by the back of your hand. Then how do you behave with them? Take them for granted or still give them your best.

It’s all a little weird but sadly it’s true.
Guys just think about it!!

Pay for no Work!!!!

2007-10-17T06:02:00.000-07:00

It sometimes is a little weird when no work makes you go bonkers. Well all of us in our hay (read student) days would have undoubtedly vouched for a job that pays high and has little or no work.
But then there are times when your wishes come true and so you are in actual granted with all your wishes. Boooom and there your ambitions crash down and you feel cheated.

So what went wrong?

Well you wanted money and you got it!
Well you wanted no work and you got that as well..

So Boss what is the problem.

The problem is that the moment you enter any organization you see a lot of high flying star performers earning both money as well as respect and all you want is to be like them.
So while you come from B schools expecting to have a flavor of all the ice creams you wanted to have from treasury to capital markets, from structuring to credit risk management, you end up getting little or nothing. Well n no time that work becomes from negligible ti negative. You are still under training period or rather a tainee period in which you are supposed to rotate through different divisions and get a flavor of all of them What in actual happens is that you end up rotating upside down knowing nothing, learning little and understanding nothing except “soft skills!!”

Well I can easily guarantee the fact that I worked far more in the two months of my summer training than the six months of actual working.
Well many people who hear my tale or are themselves being subjected to such levels of inactivity and uselessness ask me – “Why do the companies invest so much on us when in actual they you little in trying to enhance our on the job capabilities?”
Well all I say is that I really don’t know and have not the least of the ideas as to why they do that. Is that it is something good on the books? Something like CSR which the companies unwillingly are made to undertake? Well I sincerely don’t know and would really like you to answer this.

I friends relative once told me that these people don’t make you work for the first year because they know that you will be burdened or in other words buried under huge amounts of work when you actually move out of your rotations!!

I am not sure but then is it a frightening scenario or is it a signal that this black cloud too does have a silver lining to itself.

Well I assume like all others, here also “Only time will tell!!”

Friends & Last Day in Delhi!!!!

2007-10-13T12:38:00.001-07:00

Its always good to have friends over. And specially if a very good friend comes over and you can probably have a good heart to heart with him, then things become a lot more better and enjoyable at the same time. Well today would haven been a routine day except for that Nishant came over during lunch and its been quite good having him around. The weird thing about me and Nishant is that I just cant remember the first time I met him. Well he was always a very good friend of Nijhara and Pandu who were my classmates, but I never really had a conversation or even a formal introduction with him. But then this guys invited me to the wedding of his sister. And mind you, he didn’t invite every Tom, Dick and Harry to the wedding. His invitation took me by surprise, undoubtedly a very pleasant one and we( I mean our friendship) have never looked back since then. Well it is a little strange because now I count him as one of my closest friends and still if you dig deep there aren’t many things that tie us together. I attribute this to the sheer fact that both of us are more or less morons. Ha ha ha ha. But on a serious note, I think the entire credit goes to him and his uniquely trustworthy and friendly nature. Well there are people who are friendly but ones combining that with trust are rare to find.
Some things remain strange and are good to laugh at. Well at Nishants sisters wedding I had a lot of soup. But the high point was that in the stage that they had prepared for people to dance with all disco lights attached there weren’t too many people who were dancing. And all of a sudden a pretty healthy boy(read fat) aged about 13-14 came in the centre and started doing break dance. We were among the crowd that was watching the boy in awe. All of a sudden it struck somebody in the family that that boy did not belong there nor was he invited to the wedding. So its was kinda hilarious to see a gatecrasher hogging all the limelight.

Apart from that, I think today is prolly my last day of rest as I will be moving to Bombay tomorrow night. I seriously have little intention of going back. But as they say, Work is work. And I gotta be back.
So its Bombay tomorrow!!!

Congratulations Mr. Pachauri! But sorry u share Nobel with a loser

2007-10-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

Well its comes as a surprise to me at the simple fact as to how pompous can the Americans get.

I still remember the time when the I was in Deutsche Bahn and was enroute to Munich when an American couple entered my cozy sleepy little sitting compartment. Their entry was the end of all sleep as well as all coziness. They started their what is called in hindi “bakar” and continued till the very end. They had an opinion about everything. But that was not all. They expected to you to do the same. The entire sleep deprived night was spent discussing everything from nuclear warfare to global warming. That was probably my very first rendezvous with the Americans.

While in London also they formed a major part in the discussions on various topics even if they were outside their own control.
But today as I write this, I have a sense of déjà vu attached.

Go to any of the American websites and they claim and proclaim Mr. Al Gore as an angel who has won the Oscars fo peace or in other words the Nobel peace prize for this year. For people not quote aware of this personality. Al Gore was one of the most sidelined Vice Presidents in the history of US under Mr. Clinton. That’s not all. He is considered to be one of the biggest joke in the history in the manner he lost his election as the POTAS(President of the United States).

My quite evident anguish is due to the fact that an Indian who chairs one of the most important bodies on Global warming has co-received this award. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri who heads the UN IPCC is a renowned personality and heads TERI in India as well. His untiring work has made him the 7th Indian ever to receive this award. But if you look at any of the American press you will find his name missing.

This probably the reason why the biggest economy in the world is the most loathed one as well!!!

Working in India Vis-à-vis Abroad

2007-10-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

Well first and foremost I will put a disclaimer.
“ I am not one of those guys who have worked abroad (well as in worked in real sense), but having spent a considerable time there I feel I have the license to write about it.

Having parents who think that the best thing in the world is to work in the US (or abroad as it is for them), I am constantly coaxed into trying my luck abroad. Having a sister who is living there and doing extremely well doest help my cause either.

Well some thoughts:

1) Opportunities:
Well one of the things that people generally talk about is the long overused buzz word called “opportunities!!”

Well if that is a synonym for money then it’s a totally different matter all together. This is because no one will come to you and give you everything on the platter. You still have you work hard or prolly work a lot harder to make it big there.
Well but I do agree that the competition there is slightly less than that here. This is because the number of pople involved in the rat race there are less. But if it is less, then it is a lot more complex. There the people pull you down not just on the basis of your wrk but also on the basis of your colour and nationality.

2) Money:
As we spoke before that many many people equate money with opportunities. We always tend to convert currencies and because of the fact that we have a weaker currency we tend to feel a lot deprived. I mean we see in the newspapers about the hugely high salaries of our counterparts and thus feel a lot cheated. Well the term cheap labor used by a lot of foreign companies for their pet work of outsourcing sure causes a lot of heated emotions. But having been an admirer of economics I like to put everything in perspective of PPP or the purchasing power parity. This for non knower is the purchasing power of people at a particular place. Like 1 kg of apples cost about Rs75 in India but would cost about 4 pounds in UK. I think that will put us amongst the highest pay getters in the world.

3) Stature:
Well this is one area where everything goes a little weird and a little out of hand. Being an IIM graduate and not getting a foreign offer is like coming last in a marathon when the organizers have even packed up. The stature of peoples having foreign offers is that of angels and thus highly regarded in the eyes of not just elders but of peers and juniors as well. I still think and laugh about the fact that in my campus KPMG offering Middle East as posting got the Slot zero! It is ridiculous when we think about our colonial mentality of the west’s superiority.
When I was in UK recently for a month’s training I was hounded with questions from friend and people I knew about the length of my program. They were half expecting me to say that I will there for a year or more and were truly disappointed at the fact that I was there ONLY for a month!!!

LOndon Update#6

2007-09-23T13:36:00.001-07:00

This was a pretty hectic weekend coz this is my last one here. And I must say that finally I have begun liking London a lot. Although this place has a very unfavorable exchange rate (but then which country gives us a poistive one!!). Well and the people here are good. I mean though people say that London is one of the more rascist cities,yet I am yet to experience any.

So this weekend started with Friday eveing wherein I went to meet a friend of mine (chuchu) and help him shift to his new apartment After that we went to an Indian Restaurant and had a huge sumptuous dinner.

Saturday morning, I got up early and along with the fellow "Backpacker Bankers!" went to Wimbledon. We did not quite know the way and so we got off quite early and thus had to walk for like 3 hrs to finally get to the "All England Club" aka Wimbledon. But to our utter dismay it was closed for visitors as a Davis Cup match ws goign on. But we somehow :) managed to get in a get a glimpse of the centre court (from outside) and also went to the Wimbledon shop(which like all other were prohibitive expensive and with pathetic and shady clothes and accessories!!)

From there we started our journey towards none other than the Southall and beleive me, it was the most awesome journey here in London. I mean the moment we landed in Southall (which was very very far away), we were greeted with words in Punjabi with hoarding in punjabi and with all the sardars there and their wifes i bright churidars and the cars playing Bhangra music!! It was very very surreal!! There were sweet shops and bazzar and all Indian restaurant. The supermarket inside was even more amusing. All the announcements were in HIndi and they were playing Shahrukh Khans songs!! We had chaat (AAloo papri) as well as aalloo ke paranthe in a restaurant called the Chandni chowk!!!
Also it was India Australia semi final in cricket and so there were penty of crowds outside shops with Tv and they were shoting "six six six" all over the place!!

Today (Sunday) was the most hectic of them all. Went to Windsor Castle and it was quite beautiful. It is the place where the queen stays for most parts of the year and we saw the state rooms where all guest stay. It was very very elegant.
Next went to Oxford and went on a walking tour throgh the university city. it sure had a very very youthful feeling to itself and so it was nice as well
And finally rounded up but visiting one of the oldest architecture on the face of earth. The Stonehenge. I think it was made famous by the Mincrosoft office wall paper!!! It was one of the shoddiest and ovberhyped things I have ever seen in my life. Well yeah i mean it sure has history attached to it but it was plain and simple "chuchu" architecture!!

Crazy day !!!

2007-09-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

Hey guys!!!
Today as I lie in my bed, sans all energy or as a friend of mine likes to put it a complete “zero energy kid”, I want to say just one line

“Yesterday was the best day of my life”

I mean, yeah I have had a lot of brilliant days, which probably is because they have a huge emotional quotient attached to them, but yesterday was the most amazing day of my life in absolute terms in a long-long time!!
Yesterday was the last day of my training in the basics of finance course which is common for all verticals of analysts in Deutsche Bank. There was a test scheduled which we duly completed and were free by about 4:30pm in the evening. We were told that there would be a get-together at a place near waterloo and that we would have loads of fun there. I along with the other co-thinkers were of the view that it would be a total vella party wherein we will probably have our bosses coming over and it would turn out to be a formal party which will ultimately turn into a boozers den and so we would be totally and completely out of place there.
But we anyways went home, left our bags behind and finally reached the training value just in time to catch the last bus to the party place.

It took us bang to the centre of the city near the Big Ben and the Thames from were I could see the London eye. London eye for your information is the according to me the most atrocious eye sore in the heart of a beautiful city like London. And suddenly the bus started moving towards the eye sore. Well I was hoping for the opposite, but like most of my hopes, this went bust too and the bus stopped in front of the London eye. I was dead sure that they would take us for a ride there and then leave us like that!! So totally shattered I stated to move with group and when we were in front of the London eye, the group turned left!!!

“Drink rummy!!” were the PG Wodehouse’s words of ecstasy that flashed in my mind!! Well we took a left from there and then entered a building. And then I saw it!! They were taking us to a huge bar cum disc cum videogame parlor which was completely reserved for the Deutsche Bank employees!! It is the best videogame parlor in the whole of London right in the middle of the city and it was completely reserved for us!! Well they gave us 5 drinks coupon each along with 3 tokens each. We were damn happy with the drinks coupon but were wondering of the tokens would be enough. So I put my bankers mind into place and traded two of my drinks coupon for one token!!

That’s the thing about the place and everything!!!

Well we realized that the whole parlor was free and that WE DID NOT NEED THE TOKENS!!!

Well to top it all Deutsche Bank had arranged for food and believe me for the first time the starters were amazing!! After we had gorged most of the edibles there, we rushed to the bowling alley!! Well were Bowled like there was no tomorrow. One of the things that worked to out favor was that we people were more interested in drinking initially and so we had a field day with respect to playing. I mean we had the whole alley to each one of us!! Well the other reason for my happiness being the fact that though I am a certified bad player yet I have an awesome day scoring loads of “strikes” yesterday!!! I mean well the fact that the alley was a little shorter than usual quite contributed to my new found success!! But as they say “nothing succeeds like success!!”

After our backs were beginning to hurt by bowling so much, we moved to the next game “Foosball”. Although I had played loads of it in Sweden last year in the university there, most of my friends (Shefali in particular!!) had seen it for the first time!! So it was fun beating them hands down but it was bad when Germans played and beat us as if they were playing the biggest minnows around!! But was it fun? YEAH IT SURE WAS!!! IT was big FUN!!

Next we moved to the horse waalla videogame. In this we were jockey and had to compete with the rest in a race. Well we had to sit in a real horse kind of a structure and the harder we pulled and hit the horse with the jockey stick, the faster the horse went. We well literally had to gallop and it was damn tough and most energy sapping.
And then we had the regular big screen car racings, life-like skiing and air rifles for shooting stags and birds!! Wow it was real fun.

The good part was that the bar and the dance floor were right in the middle and so we would bump in people and see the dance and then order drinks for ourselves.

We were a little tired by then and so we resigned ourselves to the huge hefty sofas with like 300 inch flat screen and saw the butchering of England by South Africa yesterday in the rugby 2007 world cup.

We then played pool for a long-long time. Parvathy was playing for the first time and it was fun teaching her, while Shefali was trying to show off her little skills at pool (acquired while playing a couple of times in Lucknow!!).

And then we found the most amazing thing that in real terms “made the night for us!!” I mean the last time I went to Appu Ghar in Delhi was probably the last time when I sat in those electric cars where your sole motivation is to bang the other cars. Well it was sooo much fun! I mean these cars were so much better and even had seat belts and all! they had high acceleration as well as very high steering wheel sensitivity. So we could turn the cars better and could also make huge accelerations and hit the other cars with great momentum. It was fun to keep bumping into a guy car whole I just couldn’t stand!!! Well I know this sounds a little dark but yeah “but I hit the crap outta him!!” we wanted to do it all night except for the fact that there were loads of people who wanted to do it.
Well I never had sooo much fun!

As it grew late we played more and more and its nice you do that with lots of pepsi and probably beer once in a while and lemonades and with a whole lot of people. People were getting crazy right left and centre and we were having loads of fun. I mean I have always had the feeling that you enjoy the maximum in a party where everyone is drunk except for you. You see their silliness and then have a huge laugh about every thing and anything.

I personally feel that the best thing that has happened to me in a long time is getting through Deutsche Bank. I mean their HR's are so good and their policies are amazing. The people they hire are awesome and no wonder they are one of the best banks in the business. Well yesterday each one of us felt like we are a part of it and not that its just an organization which we have joined!!

Believe me it sure was probably the best day yesterday!!
I played I partied and I had a ball of a time!!
Thank you Deutsche Bank!!!!!

London:: Update#5

2007-09-13T15:07:00.000-07:00

well yaaron!!!
Just like every beautiful morning is followed with a gloomy night and how every silver lining cloud is dark, so is my stay here!!!!
I have examss tomorrow!!
i mean egg-jam nahin!! examsss!!!!
and boss!! max course cover kiya hai!!
so all in all tough night ahead..
So will signout!

London!!!!!!!!!!!!! Update # 4

2007-09-12T15:08:00.001-07:00

I don’t know why it is so tough to get up on a working day and go to office (or in my case the training centre). One of my dad ki favourite saying is

“Work expands to fill the time given!!”

Read this and think about this. All I can say is that nothing is truer than this!!! Well I will elucidate:

The first time I went to my office here in London, I got up at 6:45, got ready by 7:15 and reached there at about 8:20. The reporting time was 9:00, so I was not very early, rather bang on time for the breakfast and everything. today I got up at 8:00, got ready by 8:40 and reached my venue at about 8:55 and still had time to pack in a sandwich and a croissant on the way into my class!! Phew!!!

So well you can either call that my efficiency or the doomsayers can call this my laziness. No points for guessing that I prefer the former!!

Well today was normal as always. I mean the same classes. I wont call them dumb. I mean I know most of the stuffs but the way these guys here explain is wonderful and makes me wonder as to why we did not have them in our campuses back home. I mean I have already played two stock market simulation games : one for equity (shares) and the other one for fixed income securities(bonds) and believe me , for the first time I used concepts like yields and durations and interest rates and inflation, all in five minutes and decided upon which bonds to buy and which to sell. It was completely crazy!!
I mean in the share market, we had a tough time matching our books with the bank and even a tougher time interacting with the market maker.
Well I guess you can see the energy and enthusiasm from the way I am mentioning this and believe me it was so much fun. Well another reason for my being so happy is that my team of five made the maximum profit and we were probably the only team that had positive returns in all the scenarios!!!

So enough of this ghissu maggu stuffs. Well other than the normal things, I see a lot of couples already being made in my classrooms. Well I mean guys, its only been a week or so and these guys and girls are on the peak of their ‘impressing the others’ behavior. Well a very good friend of mine got asked out for a musical by an American (much to my anguish and anger!!!). And believe me London is a damn romantic place!!! So well so well!!

Another thing, today I managed to complete another of the famous sight seeings in London. Well, that Harrods ladies and gentlemen. Well it was huge and by huge I mean of a mammoth scale. It had all the brands of the world under one roof and looks like a proper palace!! But then probably what I did not like about that place was its size! I mean it was so huge that we did not know which way to go and which right to take. Well huge is an understatement. And this place is sure for the rich and famous. Well a slight correction. It is for the rich and famous only!!!
Where else would you get Mammoth (the extinct elephants) for like a crore or even fossils as things to keep in your drawing rooms!! Well for people who don’t know, you can order a Fighter plane in harrods and they will get it for you!!!

That’s the end of the day for me!!
I have exams in a couple of days!! But for now
Gnite and sweet dreams!!!

London!!!!!: Update #3

2007-09-11T16:18:00.001-07:00

So well having been in London for like 12 days now, I feel like I have already seen the place and that I want to come back to India. Well I know that sounds too lame and prolly u might portray me as a sissy homesick guy, but yeah guys thats the truth.

Before I start off with my complaints and sorrow, lemme tell u what I have been upto in last fortnight here. Since one of my very best friends Nijhara was leaving, since his his tenure at the DB Infy office did not get extended, so we convinced him to extend his ticket till Sunday night and decided to make the most out of the 2 days we had!!

So we started on our hectic two day extravaganza!!
This extravaganza prolly started a little early when we celebrated his birthday on the 6th night of September. Well it was nice with a makeshift cake consisting of Muffins and some sweet bread poured with some chocolate sauce. Well our efforts were well paid for by Nijhara who treated us in an Indian restaurant. Believe me Roasted Chicken and kadai chicken taste at least a hundred times better in London!!!!

Yeah ! So we started off next day with Buckingham palace. Well we were supposed to reach there at 10:45 and were to witness the famed “change of guards”. But then that what we were “supposed” to do!! In real life just like in alien life, things don’t quite happen the way they are supposed to. So we finally managed to reach Buckingham palace by 12:45 and all we say were the Black commandoes donning the gates. So we chucked it (sounds better) and decided to take a 15 pound tour of the palace. Well it was probably the most well spent 15 pounds that weekend!!! :-)
Well but I have to mention this. When we went to the counter, there was atleast a 1 hour waiting, but we managed to beat that by taking the ticket from a guy selling them outside!! Well that happens at all the places in London. You can either buy them at the main gate or but them from these tourist companies. In these tours companies there is no line and the tickets are cheaper. I always wonder why common sense is so uncommon!! Imagine standing for an hour when you don’t even havta stand for a minute!!!

So we went inside the Buckingham Palace and believe me it was very dazzling. Well our worst fears were realized when we saw the signs of “No photographs”. So well all that I have of the Buckingham palace are the memories. Well the palace just makes you wonder at the richness of the royalty here. So we completed the tour in about and hour and half in which we thoroughly enjoyed the audio commentary and after a 15 minute look at the souvenir shop (from which we obviously bought nothing), we proceeded to our next conquest: the London eye!!

Our journey to the London eye was quite interesting though. We had been to it before, but Nijhara suggested a different route. Being the veteran here, we decided to take his route, which happened to be prolly the longer one. So we were trying to pull his leg and bantering around that”he did not wuite know the ways n all” and then it happened. What happened? Well for the first time in the last 7 years I know him, I saw Nijhara lose his temper. He he he he!!! But then yaar who Nijhara hai and it wasn’t long before he was back in his elements!!!

So we carried on to the lOndon eye!! And there we saw the actual Saturday crowd!! Its wasn’t any better than a chandni chowk or something!!!so we decided to chuck it and go to he oxford circus and the Piccadilly circus which are the main shopping street in London! Well and they were such eye openers. London (for non knower) is an expensive city, but like any other in the world, it is really cheap if you know the places. So we went to a big mall which was very posh but could give Big bazaar a run for its money when it came to pricing issues. So we happily shopped for a couple of hours. Well when I say shopped I mean future shopped TM (wherein Future Shopped mean selecting stuffs that you will shop in the future!!!! :--)

One thing that I forgot to mention was that we wanted to go to London eye at about 7:30ish. This is because the entire rotation at the London eye takes about 30-45 minutes and we wanted to get a view of the entire London durig day, at sunset and finally at night with all the city lighted. And that exactly what we did. By the time we got to the London eye from Piccadilly, the queue had decreased tremendously and there was nearly a zero time wait!!
Well the experience at the London eye can at best be mentioned as Average. This is because there were no clear marks as to what is where in terms of direction. Also I think the height of London eye is pretty average. The 18 pound ticket made it even harder to digest the ride. Well if I were the credit rating company I would probably rate this as a junk ride!!!!
Also if I compare it with the Eiffel tower, it pales like crazy. I mean I would rate the Eiffel as one of the best moments of my life and the London eye as prolly the most ridiculously chuchu moment of my life!!!

So we reached back home pretty late and decided to doze off early as we had to pack nijhara’s last minute packing and whatever else that was there. So the next day we took off to the oxford circus first, as we had to but a bag and from there we went to the days big attraction “MADAMME Tussads”. Since we did not have a lot of time, we decided to hurry off to the museum. And this place is again which quite justified its 18 pound ticket!! Well I mean this was probably the closest I could get to celebrities like Beckham, Leo, JLo and spiderman. The wax figures look so real that its nearly unnerving at times. My favorite here was Captain Jack Sparrow. Well they had designed a fully pirate ship and it was like standing next to the Captain himself!! Well but with good things come the bad ones and the wax figure of Shahrukh khan and Mr. Bacchan were huge disappointments. Well they looked so very fake !!!!

So that’s all I did over the weekend!!!
Will follow up with more updates!!
Till then
Cheers!!!!

London Update#2

2007-09-06T10:46:00.001-07:00

Well three days of training in London and I am already beginning to feel the pressure (well both mental but mainly physical!!!). I am beginning to feel if I can last the entire month or not. Its been a strenuous three days. I never knew I was such a no networking guy. I mean I always thought that for me talking to new people is like a piece of cake. But I am sorry to say that even my own analysis of myself is so flawed!!!! So while a lot of people from dozens of country were networking away to glory, I was with my group of like minded people( also known as Indian from Mumbai office!!!)

So the first day of induction went off pretty fine with all the top shots making a speech and telling us how important we are into their scheme of things(which also included the fact that their stocks of DB which they get as the salary depended on how we moved the compny!!). so there were nice and long speeches by one and all. After surviving the 8 hours of grueling one way interactions aka speeches, we weren’t sure by the end of the day if we were living being or totally exhausted automatons!! But one thing that we ere sure of was that—“we will explore London!!!”. and so we went to the all famous 10 downing street, the big Ben and the London eye!! London as a place has history attached to every nook and corner of the city and so it is actually very tough to say which place is more beautiful han the other. But I must tell you. The London eye is a bi eye sore. It is probably uglier that the glass pyramid outside Louvre in paris. Believe me. When I was in paris I wanted to stone the goddamn thing down. And while here all I wanted was to pull it down and cut the god forsaken thing into pieces!!! Well enough said and done. But I will probably shell out the 35 pounds and go on top of it!! Also in the plan is to visit the madame tussads mockery of all celebs!!! :D

Well that was about the first day!! Last two days were CSR community work of building the fences and playground for a primary school in a damn shady area of London!! well its pretty weird. But when I say shady areas of London, I mean the ones inhabitated by Indians, Asians or blacks!! So does that make me rascist!! Well I don’t know if I am but all I can say is that its ironical enough!!!
Getting back to the topic. I can personally guarantee you that I have never worked harder than the past two day. and by work I mean hard physical torture!! I mean lying now in bed I really cant move a limb and am worried if my back will survive or give away to the weak force of gravity!! But I am damn satisfied. Well the kids were damn happy and so were the school staff and that made me feel like I have done something worthwhile. But I think more than that the fact that I worked with saws, chisels, all kinds of electric driller and gadgets really feel like I have done and learnt something worthwhile!! Well I can say that though I am an engineer by degree I am certain I wouldn’t have used all those things ever even once. It was fun wearing paint shoes and latex gloves and painting the fence after erecting. And how we dried the wood and worked as a team with a lot of people I did not know!!!
It was damn fun. Well I want to write much much more but my laptos battery had given away and my limbs dont quite allow me to put the charger.
So I am probably gonna call it a day!!!
Bye..!!!

London!!!! Update #1

2007-09-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

So what happens when you land up in the city that is the most talked about city in the world. Arguably the most beautiful city in the word and is definitely unchallenged leader when you talk about history attached to it. Being an Indian, and probably more coz am from a place just south of Punjab, I cant escape the aura that surrounds LONDON.
Well my favoutite self made joke is that the national anthem of UK is changing. Its gonna be “Mundiya tu bach ke rahee”. Well but yeah I am not joking.

So while it never a happy feeling to leave Zurich airport, but well this time there was some anticipations and a feeling of something to look forward to. So I really did not mind the Air Dhakkan flight aka Swiss Air flight from Zurich to London. I did not mind the upright position that I sat through (since there was no leg space), and I did not mind the really freaky sandwich that these guys gave to me. But well I really cant complain coz even while doing that the swiss were extending a happy smile.
So we finally landed Heathrow at about 8:30 in the evening which was about an hour later than scheduled. Well but if you guys thought that it was any issue, well you guys can wait for more. We went for immigration and when we saw the huge line for the non-Euro residents, we estimated the waiting time in the line to be about 45 mins to 1 hour. But if you thought that my MBA engineering background would probably enhance my estimation skills then you are as wrong as the person who thinks that every night the sun sinks in the sea!!!
Well so began our endless ordeal in the line for emigration. Well this wait not just tires the hell outta us but also tickled the wry humor vein in us. We came with cetain questions like:
1) the euro line was pretty small. And there was a non euro line(which was understandably huge). So where do the Americans go from?
2) Does sharukh kahan and karan johar stand in the same queue as us?
3) Can we dress up old ladies so that we can break the queue?
4) How do people come for their holidays here if you have to stand that long for iimgration
5) Finally if they do our body checking can we protest for sexual harassment( he he ehehe he he ..that is supposed to be funny)

So after 3 hours!!! 3 hours in a hot and small room with luggage and in lines in zigzag manner we finally managed to get our rendezvous with the immigration officer. Well, and when we were about to probably vent out our anger/ true emotions, the officer gauged our emotions and offered his heartfelt apologies and a wonderful smile. And this really took a lot of things out from our head. So we rushed out only to find our baggage’s dumped from the conveyor belt and into the ground. So far so good.
We had a lot of luggage so we decided to take a cab and having managed to target a cab we dumped 4 people’s luggage inside and sat inside all crouched up and totally sans breathing space.
And then I was in delhi!!!!
Believe me.. London is just like delhi. The roads are like delhi. The light on the roads are like those in delhi. The sign posts on the roads are like those in delhi and most importantly the people are all Indians.so the feeling is of being in India again!!!
So finally I managed to reach my place that DB that assigned to me. Paid the cab waala about 90 pounds which included a 5 pound tip. And then I entered my house. It is a 5 star apartment with everything that I ever wanted in it. Well for starters a 30 inch plasma screen ith a dvd, dis washer, washing machine and a dryer and everything else. Most of it I loved my attached bathroom and the wi fi!!!!
Well I finally slept off in the huge double bed with a sense of pride at having joined a place of work that I think I really respect for the opportunities that they are/have provided.!!!!
before i sign out i want to tell you one thing
I think out of all the places and countries I have seen, i think i find London the most livable, lively and enthusiatic country. this is the only country that i probably feel safe in. And this is the only country that I travel around without a passport in my front pocket. its beautiful, both the people and the city, both the sense as well as the atmosphere. this place might rank high in rascism and discrimination against asians but still has a very nice feel attached to it.
Thats why I think so many people have adopted this place as their motherhood and now i know i can appreciate and respect their feelings!!!
End of day 1 in London!!

Trip to switzerland: Update#2

2007-08-31T02:20:00.000-07:00

Switzerland is one country that looks like an energetic kid when it sunny, like an old man when its snowy/ wintery, but is at its worse when it rains!! Having seen the snowy side last year, I was totally exhilarated at seeing the sunny part this time. So on the great sunny Sunday, we got up early and decided to go to Interlaken. But as we were about to leave, I messaged Sharmazee asking him his plan.and to our utter dismay, while we were planning to go all the way to Interlaken, these guys were on the train to St Gallen. So we decided to stick here only and wait for them. Since we had aout a couple of hours to go, I came up wth the brilliant idea of going to my favourite place in Switzerland, Appenzell.
Appenzell, made famous by the eer that goes by its name is one of the places that are not quite on the touris office map but is sure one of the most brilliant places. So we caught he appenzell train and went there. The journey all the way up is very serene full with sylvan beauty. Since it was a Sunday, the people there were all dressed up in the traditional dresses which were quite corful and there were huge preparations for a community breakfast. It really amazes me as to how these people still manage to find the time, money as well as the effot to carry out such traditions and customs. But sure was darn nice. Since it was 1 hr each way so we rushed back to st gallen. When these guys did not turn up in the train that was coming from bern, we called them again. To my utter dismay (yet not to the level of astonishment), these guys had tken a direct train to Schauffsen. So we duly decided to go to that place. The train trip to schauffsen was long,but it was very beautiful. This entire train journey was next to the Lake Bodensee and hence we could see all the people dresses up in their Sunday casuals taking a dip in the lake, sun bathing, playing soccer etc. but my personal favs are watching them Yathing and cycling/skaing. These guys even have cycles with prams attched to them. Its amazing as to how much these guys enjoy themselves. So we finally met up Nijhara and company in schauffsen as we were descending towards the Rhine falls. It was nice to see everybody, except for the fact that everybody was sooo tired and completely sans any energy. Apparently sharmanzee had them get off a couple of stations early and so they had walked a fair amount before doing the various touch points in rhine. So we decided to take the train and go to some place called the Stine Am Rhein.
Although I wasn’t quite enthu about this place which got a mention in the Backpackers group as one of the beautiful places in swissland with the best marketplatz or the city square. I was like-” What the heck!! All cities are beautiful and their city squares are chuu.” But its was a very beautiful small town with a typical Sunday crowd and lots of fun. It was sunny and we clicked ourselves to glory. My only regret was not carrying a boxer or a swim suit. I was so jealous of the kids who climbed up the city bridge and were taking jumps into the river flowing underneath!!!! So we finally winded up from there after a couple of amazing hours and took the train back to st gallen. Here we went to the famed red lounge and the church. And finally called it a day.
I always wonder when will things be in India the way they are in Europe. Believe me I have always believed that probably our traditions and culture is far stronger than the ones here. But the level of personal interest and enthusiasm towards life that these guys take is tremendous. They play hard, work hard and party hard. And not just in words but in spirit as well!! Long live this spirit!!
J
end of day 2

Holidaying in swissland!!! Update # 1

2007-08-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

Well so am in switzerland .. well in switzerland again .

And am I enjoying it? Well yeah sure !! its awesome.. its mind blowing and I dunno y but it feels like am home again..
Having stayed here for like 3 months and having traveled and seen every gaon, gali and nukkad and the returning back is a feeling that I don’t think a lot of people can relate to. I mean I have the memories and joys and the brilliant moments that I spent here last time. And now suddenly its all nostralgia. The memories keep coming back.
Well yeah! That’s wat it is to be back!!

So to begin with we had a perfect flight all the way to zuric. The swiss people known for their wonderful and caring nature were very receptive in the flight, catering to all our needs and more than made up for the very less leg space in the flight. In one line, they kept us “full” literally but stuffin food onto us. There were like 4 times when the snacks bar was taken around and same was the case with the drinks trolley. Wll I know why I am so happy. That because I had my fave beer “Heineken” and it sure tasted like crazy!!

So once we had landed, the immigration was plain and simple and so was the currency conversion and other formalities. And so began our wait for our two guides:: Nijhara and sharmanzeee!!!! And they for once did not disappoint us and turned up duly in time. Sharma for once hasn’t changed a bit but nijhara with his cropped hair was looking like a pucca “Southhall Punjabi munda”. I cant believe myself that I used that term!! Well I mean I haven’t touced base in London yet and all I am doin is using their terminology!!

So while the group decided to park their luggage in Sharmazee’s place, I decided to tag along and have ameet up with nijhara. Its always nice to meet friends, good to meet best friends and great to meet best friends in Switzerland!!!! So that really sums up my emotions in meeting nijhara there!!!

So after dumping our dumping at sharmazees place, we went to our ex home,St Gallen’s. St Gallen’s is a city which can be best defined by something that Parvathy said about it. And it is that “St Gallen’s is one place in Switzerland that has both the old traditional look (well the Church) about it and at the same time has a very contemporary urban and city look (the Red Lounge) to it.

So we went back to Zurich haptbahnof and w/o even looking at the timings (which we obviously knew by heart) took the first train back to home J.
And then it was like the old times all the way! Well Zurich flugafen, winterthur, wil, utzwil, flawil, gossau and finally St gallen. So we got down at the station, took a long breathe and finally marched upto the hotel Metropolis across the road and got the keys to our apartment.

It had been a long and tiring morning and with such huge amounts of luggage (thanks to the n number of ready to eats and masala’s) that we decided to take a cab to the apartment. One thing about taking cans here is that you get to sit in the cars which you only talk about in India. So I made myself comfy in a sweet Volvo (well “sweet” is the only word that can probably describe the car!!!!!) and then paid a huge sum for a ride of barely 4 mins!! But it was more than its worth in the currency!!
J
so we dragged our luggage upto the first floor ( believe me it was quite an ordeal) and made ourselves at home in the tiny but surely cozy place. Refreshed soon enough and then finally filled us up with some tasty magi and made our journey back to Zurich HB.

Zurich is one of the places in Switzerland that actually doesn’t have too many places to boast of. But it sure has one of the best high streets in the world. Its not only got the best brands but more importantly its got the best crowd. The people are soo stylish and wonderfully dressed that it make sthat place even better and makes you realize how inadequately dresses you are!!! But yeah who cares!!! J
Another peculiar thing about the high street is that the McD there is quite a hub of all Indian or rather SE Asians. You are bound to bump into either a saree clad and bindi wearing aunty or a pant waale uncle!!
So have filled the remaining empty spaces of out stomach with some Mc Chicken we made our way to the famed Zurich Zoo.
Zurich zoo happened to be the first zoo that I have ever been to. Its tagline is what interests me the most.
“Its not a zoo, it’s a Zooh!!!”

the experience inside the zoo was quite awesome. I mean apart from the real attractions like the rhino and hippo, tiger, lion, elephant and others they had awesome facilities for children. But my fave area was the penguins. These are such surreal yet not so surreal animals and can stay w/o moving at one place for so long that its quite unnerving!!!!
So in all it was quite a wonderful experience and we finally managed to make our way out of the maze of the zoo/wildlife park and then took the first tram to the main station. The best thing about the Swiss youth pass (one that I have) is that it is not only valid on the trains but on the intra city transport as well. And so it sure solves all head aches associated with buying expensive tickets and other stuffs!! But the best part is still to come. Over the period of my travel and through something that my friends from the Sweden trip called the “Learning Curve” is that – you can best see the entire city but taking a day pass and then sitting through the buses of that city. These buses take you from one end of the city to another and so not only do u see the entire city but also you do that w/o straining a single muscle. So that’s precisely what we did in Zurich and saw the entire city. By then we were totally exhausted. So we took the first train to St gallen, managed to cook some rice (thanks to the wonderfully brainy friend of mine who remembered to carry the utmost important “pressure cooker”) and then I hit the sack!! It sure was a darn tiring day but making the most outta it was the most satisfying task!!!
End of day 1!!!!!

A time well spent!!

2007-08-24T00:31:00.000-07:00

Well today is my last day in TSS and though the last time I was moving from one dept to another, I was rather happy, this time I feel a little not so good. Well I think each department is good or bad based on the people working there and not just about the profile or the work that is given to you. This was one of the biggest misconceptions that I initially had. If I were to put TSS team in one word, it would have to be “Awesome”. I think they gel really well, watch each others back and more than that they work and enjoy at the same time.
I personally feel that the main reason behind this is the clear hierarchy that exists in the team. Well hierarchy is probably one word which has both positive and negative connotations, but I would put this here in a positive light. This hierarchy I guess removes all hidden agendas and everything that can probably hinder the growth of the team.
Now something about my work.
Well I did not do or rather get to do anything ground breaking, but yeah I had a fair amount of work which gave me an insight into the business. Though I do feel that I could have done a lot more, but whatever I did was decent enough and I guess served the purpose of having to get me an insight into the working.
So that’s it!
And to top it all, I told my HOD that I was going today and he took out some time and spoke to me and expressed his satisfaction with my working here. And to further make my day he is taking me and the entire TSS team for lunch.
Awesome. Well atleast better than the quiet, nobody, anonymous exit from the last one!

Awesome office: Bloomberg!!!

2007-08-23T02:19:00.000-07:00

Its not that you daily get to be in an office which blows you off and you just have the feeling, if and only if your own office was like this.
Today I had my Bloomberg training and believe me that their office in Maker Chambers is probably the best I have seen. The interiors were impeccable and very beautiful.

Me and Navneet reached office at about 11:15 and the traing was to start at 11:30. The guard at the gate greeted us then duly called us at the reception where there was a list with our names on it. He got us to sign on that sheet and took our photographs and almost immediately provided us with our Bloomberg training passes with our pictures on it. It really was the height of efficiency. We were then guided into a training room with lots of Bloomberg terminals.

We waited till about 11:45 for the program to start. Well if you ask me, it really was one of the most worthless/useless trainings that I have ever attended. Probably worse than the most useless HR classes that I had on campus. Having said that, I feel and know that the Bloomberg terminal is a work of art and is one of the things which is indispensable for the working of any finance guy. But yeah! The training was something I could have done without. The only respite was that Navneet sitting next to me was plotting all his shares ke prices and showing me his annual returns!!

So when the training finally ended at about 12:45, it was more of a relief than anything else.
And it was then that I got to see the whole office. I was superb; I really don’t have any words to express that. The interiors were very beautiful, lighting was yellow and nice. But the best part was that there were flat screens that were plastered all over the walls, ceiling and also on the floor!! To add to that there were people working on the Bloomberg terminals(all blues) all over the place accentuating the beauty!!

And now for people like Shefali who think that to work good, you should eat like a hog!!! :) :) :) :) .
This place was like paradise. Right in the middle was a buffet for employees, with a person serving everybody. Also they had a huge rack with loads n loads of goodies packed in ranging from magi, 5 stars, mentos all kinds of biscuits, and lots of beverages!!

So while walking out, we managed to flick a couple of 5stars and a packet of coconut biscuits which we duly finished while only in lift!!!

So I think it was really fulfilling training, if not in terms of knowledge, but surely in terms of appetite!!!!!

Thank you Bloomberg!!
:) :) :) :)

This is Jonkoping!!!!

2007-08-22T21:00:00.001-07:00

some areas that my colleagues mite remember!!!

1) Raslatt: The name of the Society we used to live in!!
a. Socertopen: The community centre or the hangout place of Raslatt full with a fusball able, pool table and a steam bath!!! And who the hell can forget the “whore and pimp” party for Halloween!!
b. Willy’s: The supermarket. “Chuchu” aka manish might remember the days spent in buying “peas”, “tortilla” and most importantly “ice tea”!!!!
c. The Indian Gujju store!! He was our connection with the world!! Coz he was the one who sold us the recharge coupons!!

2) A6: The only mall in the city!!
a. Ikea store: The biggest store around. It was a furniture store but was huge and awesome
i. And wow!! Do u remember the “HOTDOG waala!!! And the pepsi and other drinks that came free with it!! Completely and totally awesome!!
b. The electronic shop: was awesome
c. Finally remember that pizza place that had 1 hour as much as u can eat pizza for 48 Kroners!! That was probably the only day when Kansal looked totally happy and satisfied!!!

3) Huskwarna: Our first home in Jonoping!!!

4) Lazarathsparken: the bus stop we used to get down at for the university. Chuchu thought that the name was particularly aexy!

5) Apsara or some thing: The Sri Lankan Restaurant:
a. That was the place were Harsh , the hussie boy gave his budday treat!! All of us ate like crazy coz it was a buffet and we finished tea like there was no tomorrow!! Eventually the owners had to come out and request us to LEAVE THE FOOD ALONE and tell them in advance if we were coming so that they could shut down!! Btw that was the day when we realized that dude aka suneil wasn’t a real Tam (he cudnt speak with the Tamil owner!!!)

6) Centrum: well the railways station and the main bus stand

7) Academia: well this was the student’s pub where all went except me!!! L But yeah it sure gave me one of my fave songs “Everytime we touch!!!!”

My Memoirs: Eurotrip!!!!

2007-08-22T01:55:00.000-07:00

My very first memory of my euro trip is when me, kansal and harsh were standing outside the Sweden consulate and we were trying to get a visa. We had to catch the flight at night and we still hadn’t got our visa!! Well I wonder how many people have done that. But I was different, well to correct that, we were different. We were lalloooos!!!
But did we do it? Yes we did it and that was because the Swedish consulate bent some rules and upped their efficiencies to give us a visa the very same day!
And lo behold! We were on our way to the most amazing 4 months of my life. We took a cab and finally ended up buying ourselves some bare minimum clothes and our best buy till date: Eurail Pass. Well one and all will agree that the ROI on Eurail pass was crazy and that if those people could actually track our total journey, they would have killed themselves or filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

So having filled up my suitcase to the maximum level ( the bulge would have put Obleix to shame) with hundreds of Ready to eats and maggi’s, I finally drove to the airport. I was lucky coz I had my home in Delhi. Harsh and Kapil had relatives and parents coming late at night.
So we finally boarded the Turkish Airlines and were off for the much awaited “trip”.
The first happiness of being on a “foreign shore” was when we landed in Istanbul for the stopover in Turkey. We rode through the escalators and the whole of the airport like kings. We were amazed and totally jazzed out with the shops and showrooms of the brands we had just seen on the channels or read in the magazines. It was totally electric.

So finally we did have our body search. This was on the flight from Istanbul to Stockholm. Well if we were expecting any harsh treatment for being Asians, we were in for a surprise. Everybody had to take off their shoes!!! Well if its everybody then we are game for guys!!
Finally a European flight. We had loads of drinks and all and we had a party. But yeah guys!! We did not drink like buffoons. You know of the air travel scares. So we kept o ourselves. I was feeling a little sleepy so I went and slept but lifting the armrests of three chairs. And know what? When I got up I had a quilt on me and a smiling airhostess looking!! Well it was good. It sure was!!

So we finally landed in Stockholm. We were so very happy to be finally there. From Arlanda to Bus stop and finally from there to my favorite place on earth: Jonkoping.

India @ 60 vis-à-vis “Adam Smith-Problem”

2007-08-15T23:26:00.000-07:00

As the youthful, ebullient and exciting India turns 60, there is a cheerful optimism everywhere. Be it on stock market (we can discount the recent bloodbath), in the movies (rhetoric Chak de India), on the streets, on the playground (a series win in England after 21 years). It is everywhere.
But yes we may be on the way to becoming an economic superpower (thanks to the best seller called the BRIC report) but are we anywhere near to being a social superpower. A friend with whom I was discussing this said that he was happy that we are better than China in this at least. But can we really derive any succor in that?
One of the lines that has always haunted me in the past is
“In India we don’t cast our votes, we vote our caste”
Reservation is all over the place. Riots are not a thing of the past. But not just that, I think all of this is a result of the huge and ever widening economic divide between the people.

Two questions plastered by DNA newspaper all over the Mumbai city are

1) Stock market crosses 15,000. Will 40 million Indian cross the poverty line?
2) What has India done for you? What have you done for India?

Well enough of the crying hoarse stuff from me. I know you can counter me by saying that I am probably a leftist and am against the success of our financial bodies and that these problems might be a price we are paying for development. But all I can say is that I am a humanist. Warren Buffet said-“if you belong to the top 1% of the lucky people in the world, you owe it to humanity to think after the rest 99% of the world”.

Ohhhk…
Well now about “India and Adams Smith- Problem”

As I was thinking about India, Indians and our push from developing to developed country’s league, I couldn’t stop thinking about the “Adam Smith problem” and how that fact that it is probably more relevant for India than ever before.

In his book, “An enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” which he wrote on account of the Industrial revolution he said that there were three main concepts which formed the foundation of the laissez faire (or the theory of free trade) and thus were essential for forming the wealth of a nation. These were:

1) Division of labor
2) Pursuit of Self interest
3) Freedom of trade

Of these three, pursuit of Self interest had always remained a bone of contention. Smith maintained that self interest alone can lead to socially beneficial results. But in his other equally famous books he argues sympathy is required to achieve socially beneficial results. More specifically, Smith in his book “The theory of Moral sentiments”, divided moral systems into:
Categories of the nature of morality. These included Propriety, Prudence, and Benevolence.
Categories of the motive of morality. These included Self-love, Reason, and Sentiment.

On the very face of this, it looks and sounds contadictary
On one side you have self interest and on the other you cite reciprocal altrusim.

So that’s the case with our youthful India as well. In our aim to be a econimic superpower, should our growth be inclusive or exclusive. Can we be selfish and make a complete mockery of our poor brethren and adopt a simple behavior of denial and go on with our daily routine of contributing to the GDP or should be take a proactive role and try to make the growth more “real”.
I personally believe that Mr. Adam Smith was not as big a fool as we may think him to be. I believe that he probably interpreted Self interest as a community behavior. Also I think there are more differences between “Self interest” and “Selfishness” than just the difference in their spellings. J

So although you and I might differ on the ways to get there, but I think the best part is that our destinaton is one and the same thing!!!
And though I don’t want to sound like a complete whaco, but being the complete movie freak that I am, I can only say

“Waqt hamara hai!!”

Ps: this was a crazy movie starring Akshay Kumar and Suniel Shetty!!!!!

Global Subprime Meltdown!!:: Explained for Dummies!!!!

2007-08-10T01:42:00.000-07:00

SUBPRIME MELTDOWN

Considering that this is prolly the hottest topic so far, I decided to make this very easy for people.

What is Subprime Lending?

All financial institutions while lending have a credit worthiness check on all borrowers. Eg in India, all banks refers to CIBIL as well as conduct other credit history checks like Pay slip cheque, tax returns etc, so as to find out the “riskiness quotient” of the borrower.

Similarly in US all banks have a FICO credit score (scale from 300 to 850) to define every individual. Subprime borrowers are typically individuals who have FICO score of less than 620. This is nothing more than an index to display the reduced repayment capacity of the borrowers.

Thus for
Borrowers: Its high interest rates for home loans
Lenders: High Risk , but then high gain!!

So big deal.. This happens all the time.. So what is the problem and what is it that is causing just global impacts on the equity market.
Well this is through a special instrument which is called the “CDO or the Collaterized Debt Obligation” which is nothing but a type of asset backed security and a structured credit product. In simple words Asset here is the Loan that the bank has given and thus a lot of them are grouped together and issued as security to the common people. Thus the banks reduse their total risk through using CDO as a funding vehicle for pertfolio investments in the credit risky fixed income assets!!
So this is how this comes on to the capital market. From 2003 to 2006, new issues of CDOs backed by asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities had increasing exposure to subprime mortgage bonds. In 2006, $200 billion in mezzanine ABS CDOs (mezzanine ABS CDOs are mainly backed by the BBB or lower-rated tranches of mortgage bonds) were issued with an average exposure to subprime bonds of 70%.So we have people like Bear Sterns
So we know the theory about it.. Lets see how all of this started!!!

Well it starts from the very basic individual who is at the crux of it all.
He is the one who was given the loan , and that loan wa particularly the asset on which all the secirities were backed. So when theidicvidual defaults on the payments of his Home loan or mortage, then the loan goes bad, and when the loan goes bad, the aseets become non performing and finally you have no money to pay to the holders o the security.

One thing that I see here is that, the number of securities that people like Bear Stern isued on these assets were very very huge w/o taking into consideration the default risk.

So in 2006-07 when Fed started to increase rates, the interest rates started rising, people who had got easy home loans due to the real estate boom in US, were now under pressure to pay higher and huger interest. Thus people started defaulting on their mortgages.

Thus in early 2007, many subprime mortgage lenders filed for voluntary bankruptcy protection, ceased originating mortgage loans and/or ceased conducting business altogether.

So companies like Bear Stern were hit because their assets went bad and so their shares went down. Other big player also started going red and finally all the investors started going red. In India also ICICI is grappling to reduce the effect of the global meltdown as much as possible.

So that’s it guys!!!

To me She is........

2007-08-08T22:07:00.000-07:00

To me, she's a winter morning sunshine,
As tantalising as a bottle of French Chateau Wine.

She smells and feels like a morning Dew,
As exciting and bubbly as an Ocean so blue

She make me happy with just one big smile
And know when to say at the right times "Lets walk for a while"

When she hugs me tight, it feels like hmm like a sunny Sunday
It feels like heaven and that now all problems have been kept abay

She is by far the most beautiful girl I have seen
These moments with her are the best the have ever been.

Our good pleasnt times are like Beautiful Monte carlo sea shore
But beleive me all I want is this, and my Dil maange more!!!

Sanjay Dutt: "Crime"d for Life!!

2007-08-08T04:48:00.000-07:00

sunju baba..
Its all over the news channels, splashed across the newspaper and now also on the billboards (thanks to Amul ad which goes like " we support you Baba").. Amidst the the whole mess of the judiciary, press, family (including the overnight gossiper's superstar "Maanyata")and the angry fans is a 48-year old human being whose life has just been trashed and all his hopes of being a free man crashed. He has been able to scrape out of being branded a "terrorist", but who can remove the unwashable stain of being a "criminal".
So what is the whole thing about him.
A son of a superstar couple, a spoilt rich brat

a popular student of Lawrence school , Sanawar.////OR//// a spoilt kid who was caught smoking in school,

a superstar with his first movie "Rocky" .////OR////junkie at a very young age

a helpful human being .////OR////a druggie who needed rehabilitation helpinUS

a doting father a two time divorsee a loving Robin Hood types goon on screen .////OR////a terrible citizen dabbling with handguns, grenades and even AK-56

a friend of friends (AB, Salman Etc etc) .////OR//// one who attended parties in dubai with Dawood, Chotta rajan Chotta shakeel

a helpful friend in film industry.////OR//// a man who made his friends criminals who are now spending the sentence with him in jail all for no real faults of theirs

a son of a great nationalist parliamentarian .////OR////a son of India with Scant respect for the Law

As a great fan of his I have all my loyalties in the wrong side of the law, but am quite aware of the famous saying

Do the crime, Do the time

Sanju Baba, you will have to serve the time for your crime.. Yes you have to!!!

She Rocks!!

2007-07-23T06:48:00.001-07:00

She makes me giggle, she makes me smile and she can even break me into bursts of laughter. But know what that’s not all, she makes me sad sometimes, makes me cry and even makes me howl and pull my hair.
But she is beautiful, she is awesome, she rocks and is funny in a funny way. I am so happy now and hope that what I can make her all the time.
All she needs is a image changeover and believe me she can ROCK ANY PARTY!!!!!

Who am I?

2007-07-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

Who am I??

Well this is the question that is asked in all schools, university admits, job interviews and even on orkut !! Its significance can be realized from the very fact that even a movie called “Whom am I?” was made!!

I am whatever you want to be. I am whatever you label me to be. I can be a friend, foe, and leader, supporter, jovial, serious, happy, and sad. Well you name it and I will become one. So who am I. Am I the same guy who probably in nursery did not know what life was and wanted to get married to the only friend he had? Or in Middle school was one of the brashest guys with loads of attitude, in school football team, a Golfer and even a member of School Parliament. Or that shy guy in high school, who was new in a school in Shimla where he consciously tried to keep a low studious profile. Or one who went to hostel for his higher secondary in a school where he met awesome group of friends and did the weirdest of the things possible, never spoke with girls, swore by hi guy gang, was an Appointment and finally in all this stuff, forgot studies and finally managed to just scrape through the boards. Or am I the guy who realized that the importance of hardwork and worked hard at home, hardly speaking, serious and trying to crack it through the maze of engineering entrance exams .Or am I the guy who breezed through his engineering years at the top of his class and at the same time made wonderful friends who thought he was fun loving and never quite serious. Or am I the average IIM guy who worked and played through the MBA rigors and at the same time made another set of wonderfully talented people as his friends.
Or am I the regular boring banker who comes to office at 9 and leaves at 9, parties till 11 and watches Scrubs till 2 and finally goes off in a deep slumber.
Who am I is the question.
Who am I is what I make myself to be. What others make me to be.
I can be the person who parties all night but still be the person who wants to be in bed by 7:30!!
I can be the person who goes around the entire Europe at a break neck speed, sees all countries yet be a person who wants to just laze around all day..
So who am I. Is this what people call schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. Or is this what people say Mood.
Why cant I be just one person.
So well I really don’t know who I am????

Who am I !!

2007-07-20T03:52:00.000-07:00

Who am I ??
I am Spiderman!!

Well start with removing S from spiderman!!
Piderman!! oh Gawd!1 think if that was to be the name of a superhero...!!!

and best part would be his villain would be called "derman" (just remove Pi from hero's name)...it would mean man who is feared!!!

ha ha ha h ah aha
..
know wat?? i already am in splits thinking that you are reading this!!!!