Rites of Passage

Surprisingly, the weekend turned out to be quite hectic. Saw Star Wars - The revenge of the Sith at PVR. Finally the saga ended. The movie was true to the star wars tradition, with brilliant visuals and unbelievable special effects. This was the link that connects the prequels to the sequels. In some ways its a bridge that connects two entirely different generations. People who watched the first episode of the sequel as teenagers back in 1977 are middle aged now. How bizzare!, the people who watched the sequels are older than the people who are watching the prequels. Kinds of distorts the temporality of things. Will miss Yoda, Chewie, R2 and C3PO the most.
Sunday was a very unfortunate day. My dear friend Ritu lost her father here in Bangalore. I, her brother and a few of his friends ran around making arrangements for the body to be flown to Port Blair. We had to transfer the body in an ambulance from Apollo to St. Johns Medical College. Was a jittery experience travelling with the body of a person I knew so well. We had to get the body embalmed at the St. Johns Medical College and Hospital and then arrange a hermetically sealed casket for transportation by air. I realised how expensive it is to die nowadays. As if the pain of losing a loved one is not enough, people have to contend with paying astronomical sums to get the proper paperwork done. At every stage of the process people were taking cuts and commissions.
I read a really nice poem on organ donation displayed on the notice board of St. Johns. It is by an American poet named Robert Test.

Give my sight to the man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby's face, or love in the eyes of a woman.
Give my heart to a person whose own heart has
caused nothing but endless days of pain.
Give my blood to the teenager who
was pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his
grandchildren play.
Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist
from week to week.
Take my bones, every muscle, every fiber and nerve in my
body and find a way to make a crippled child walk.
If you must bury
something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses, and all prejudice against my
fellow man.
Give my sins to the devil.
Give my soul to God.
If, by chance, you wish to remember me,
do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you.
If you do all I have asked, I will live forever.

Naina

Watched Naina over the weekend. The special effects (almost all of them) looked like they were straight out of a Hollywood movie. Despite the spine tingling trailers the shockfactor of the movie would be 3 on a scale of 5. The story was well scripted, except for some small creases which the director ought to have ironed out. Urmila plays a blind girl who has a retinal transplant and ends up getting the eyes of a dead girl who had the eerie ability of seeing death and dead people. The plot was a cross between The Sixth Sense, Minority Report and What Lies Beneath. As in Sixth Sense the girl has an ability to see dead people, whereas her ability to foretell death seemed to be derived from the plot of Minority Report. Also the dead girl guiding Naina(eponymously) to the circumstances behind her tragic end seems to have been inspired from What Lies Beneath. One should see Naina for the technical novelty factor if not for original storyline and stellar performances.

PG Acco at Bangalore

PG, originally uploaded by thoughtcurry.

Someone asked me to describe my acco at Bangalore. Well here is how it looks. And would that someone please identify (him/her)self?

Study Woes

Bangalore is leaving me completely out of steam. The long hours spent commuting, the pathetic PG acco, eating out on a daily basis and a complete lack of association is taking its toll. I had planned to start studying for my second go at GMAT a week back, but all I managed was a measly 10/12 pages. I hope I get serious soon and take up my studies earnestly. Its weekend and I have got nothing much to look forward to. Plan to catch Matrix Reloaded on HBO over a cup of chicken noodles. My roomie at the PG (who coincidentally happens to be a fellow bong), will be out late tonight. Would have gone out with him for dinner otherwise. Hope I can catch the Revenge of the Sith over the weekend.

Smoking Janes

I have probably never seen so many ladies smoking to glory at one place as I have in ITPL Bangalore. Female smokers are about as common here as cows on Indian roads. One cannot help noticing them. Standing in groups and smoking to glory. The trend seems to be more pronounced in the BPO junta. I am a relatively open-minded dude. But so many femme-fatales at once gave me the heebie-jeebies. Interesting to note that something that was unheard of about a decade ago, except for in the upper echelons of society, has become so prevalent a practise in the younger generation. Whether it's good or bad, is merely a problem of statistics. But to me it came across as a surprise.

Bangalore Blues

Bangalore has become a pain. Everyday I spend a mind boggling 2.5 hours on commuting to work. Traffic snarls, pollution and noise have invaded this once sleepy city. And all this thanks to the glorified software industry. The city seems to survive on the octamer. Be it housing, utilities, transportation or entertainment, everything seems to be tailored to meet the needs and fancies of the omnipresent software professional. I have a strong feeling that a few decades down the city would feel like an abandoned gold mine, with just memories of the good times of yore. Joined office on Monday. I will be operating out of ITPL for a couple of months, till the time my visa gets processed. My mates in the project are friendly and overtly helpfull. The project is a new one with a lot of equipment just coming in. I am one of the oldies in the offshore team, second in experience only to the offshore PL.

Last post from Hyderabad

Its time to bid Hyderabad goodbye and in doing so moving on to the next phase of my life. The city has been really good to me. Got my first job here, made really good friends, got married and now its time to move on. I am having mixed feelings at the moment. Part of me wants to stay here with my wife and friends while another part beckons me to go on and experience other things in life. I am leaving Hyderabad for Bangalore this Sunday, where after a brief stay of three months, I will be flying out to North Carolina for a year. But wait, this doesnt mean that the Hyderabad chapter is forever closed. There is always a chance I will come back here. Until then its Adieu.

Gmail Lite

Herez an intersting link. Gmail is now a click away . . . . Gmail

My MBA Blog

I have decided to decouple my personal stuff from the MBA related stuff. Henceforth all MBA related stuff will be posted on my MBA blog.

Larry Page at UMich

Herez an excerpt from Larry Page's address at UMich. Would like to thank Suhit for the content.
Your son wants to leave his PhD program in Stanford and hasn't graduated yet, would you let him go off and start a crazy company? Your supposed to nod. So maybe not, I guess its really important for people to take risks.One is that, doing bigger things is easier than doing smaller things. I know that sounds really strange but it turns out, if you do something really big, you can get other people to help you, and you can get more people to help you. You get more of the kind of resources that you need. So its worth thinking about those big things to get done in the world.One of the biggest things that surprises me is, there is a lot of money out there and resources for things, and there is very few people out there trying to do them. One of the things that amazes me is that very few people approached me that have good ideas, that have a team of people, even a small one, that have a little bit of traction and a good idea. If you want to change the world, a good way of doing it is to be in a position of authority, positions of leadership.I know some of [you] will [be] going to business school. I know what its like in business school and I wanted to give you a plug. I think you don't really need to go to business school. You have a pretty rigorous education, much of this covers rocket science, but it does help us to have interests in business. You basically just need the interest and read a lot of books. I read a whole bookshelf full of business books, and that's basically what I needed.My advice to you, have confidence, fail often, have a healthy disregard for the impossible. You have a huge opportunity to use engineering, technology and businesses skill to improve the world. You should do things that matter, and you should have fun, because otherwise you wont succeed, and you should travel, and I suggest China, Africa and India there's lots of amazing things there.

Warren Buffet's Advice

Picked this up from Wilson's Blog today. Fabulous advice and fabulous summarisation. Warren Buffet is really astounding. His clarity of thoughts is something that has to be experienced to be taken as true. Herez the link..... A day with Buffet