Hitchhiking Life

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen. - DNA
Ramblings of a guy who is taking life as it comes.
Blogger Code - B3 d t k+ s u-- f i o++ x- e+ l-- c

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

The Fortune Must Reads

Booms and Busts
The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith (1955). This concise, insightful history has never been out of print since it was first published. Why? "Every time it has been about to pass from print," Galbraith himself wrote in 1997, "another speculative bubble ... has stirred interest in the history of this, the great modern case of boom and collapse."
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (1841). This chronicle of Holland's tulip mania of 1634 and the South Sea Bubble of 1720, among other irrational crazes, is an engaging, perceptive account of humanity's urge to plunge itself into speculative frenzies.
Funny Money by Mark Singer (1985). For sheer entertainment value, Singer's tale of the fall of the Penn Square Bank in Oklahoma—one of the first of the inside-a-scandal books—has never been topped.
The Go-Go Years: The Drama and Crashing Finale of Wall Street's Bullish '60s by John Brooks (1973). Brooks, the late New Yorker writer, dissects the 1960s mutual fund boom with a panache that business writing hasn't seen before or since.

The Corporation
Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar (1990). This story of an iconic deal, the $25 billion leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco (co-written by a FORTUNE senior writer), has all the stuff of great business journalism—skullduggery, cigars, trophy wives, and enough greed to sink Wall Street. Wretched excess has never read so well.
Built to Last: successful habits of visionary companies by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras (1994). Begin with the simplest of questions: What makes great companies great? Then research the heck out of it. It's a big, hairy, audacious goal—but then, this book coined the phrase.
Chainsaw: The Notorious Career of Al Dunlap in the Era of Profit-at-Any-Price by John Byrne (1999). When Dunlap took his enthusiasm for mass firings from Scott Paper to Sunbeam, he left broken pieces and a stock price in free fall. Byrne takes the reader through the debacle in detail, an account that is spiced with the vinegar of a writer who truly loathes his subject.
Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? by Louis V. Gerstner (2002). Gerstner's account of how he turned around IBM after taking over as CEO in 1993 contains valuable lessons for those who think "corporate culture" is consultant gobbledygook.

Decision Making
Annapurna: A Woman's Place by Arlene Blum (1980). Triumph mixes with disaster in this nail-biting account of the first all-woman attempt on an 8,000-meter peak—an expedition the author led.
The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam (1972). Halberstam's masterful explanation of how the application of raw candlepower—in this case Robert McNamara's whiz kids trying to apply what they learned at Ford Motor Co. to the Vietnam war—isn't always enough.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick (2000). Back when the "oil industry" involved harpoons, a Nantucket whaling ship sinks in the Pacific—rammed by a whale that would inspire Melville's Moby Dick. The harrowing odyssey that follows is a study in bad decision-making.
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1974). A Pulitzer-winning historical novel that places you at the Battle of Gettysburg in the shoes of the soldiers themselves—including Robert E. Lee as he contemplates one last, desperate charge.
Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Robert F. Kennedy (1969). R.F.K.'s spellbinding first-person account reads like a Tom Clancy novel and delivers powerful lessons about delegation and plain old good judgment.

Economics
Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy by Joseph A. Schumpeter (1942). Ignore the title and skip straight to Chapter 7, "The Process of Creative Destruction." Look around, and you'll see it happening everywhere.
Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets by Robert Kuttner (1996). Free markets unleash entrepreneurial drive. They also produce the Asian financial crisis. Kuttner gets you thinking about why the invisible hand works and why it sometimes doesn't.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, Chapter 12 by John Maynard Keynes (1936). For all his fame as a wordsmith, too much of Keynes's work is dense and dated. The amazing Chapter 12 is something else: a timeless, witty, crystalline account of why financial markets confound and bewitch us.
Pop Internationalism by Paul Krugman (1996). Most of what's said about international trade is bunk, the economist argues in a series of contentious and entertaining essays. Targeting the lazy thinking of politicians, journalists, and even fellow economists, Krugman instructs even as he attacks.
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776). Smith is often caricatured as a laissez-faire zealot. He wasn't. The Wealth of Nations is an eloquent argument in favor of liberty, enlightened government, and the intrinsic worth of the individual. No one has ever made a better case for the morality of capitalism.

Ethics
Den of Thieves by James Stewart (1991). In this morality tale, good (a crew of dogged government lawyers and detectives) triumphs over evil (Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine). But evil gives it a rollicking run for its money.
The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald (2000). With its deadpan prose, startling plot, and you-are-there dialogue, Eichenwald's book about a twisted informant at Archer Daniels Midland ranks with anything by le Carré for sheer suspense.
Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing by Joseph L. Badaracco (2002). Finally, an ethics book for people who live in the real world. Recommended for people who want to keep their job and "do the right thing."
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind (2003). This riveting account of the Enron debacle (by two FORTUNE senior writers) is unsparing in laying the blame at the feet of all the guilty parties. It explains not just how Enron lost its way, but how all of Wall Street did as well.
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1875). Trollope's classic satire about Victorian London, where speculators and trust-fund fops "had but a confused idea of any difference between commerce and fraud," feels eerily familiar to observers of modern corporate miscreants.

Globalization
Beijing Jeep: The Short, Unhappy Romance of American Business in China by Jim Mann (1989). The story of how AMC's 1979 joint venture to produce Jeeps in Beijing ended in tears is perhaps the closest thing to a classic work on doing business in post-Mao China. It's required reading for anyone venturing to the world's most populous nation.
Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen (1999). Dictators around the world argue that a strong hand is needed for economic development; freedom can come later. Sen, a 1998 Nobel Prize winner, says they are dead wrong. Freedom is a foundation stone for development—democracies, he points out, don't have famines.
The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto (2000). For liberal types who are vaguely uncomfortable with property rights (unless the property is in, say, Aspen), Peruvian economist de Soto explains why they matter.
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright (2000). A dazzling mix of history, theology, economics, game theory, and evolutionary biology that paints the world's increasing entwinement as a positive and possibly inevitable development.
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin (1991). Oil is the most important commodity on earth, the fuel of modern civilization. Yergin's great achievement is to give readers a thorough grounding in why the world—and especially the Middle East—works the way it does, while all along appearing to simply spin an engrossing yarn.
Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age by Sebastio Salgado (1993). A Bangladeshi shipbreaker's raised sledge. A Sicilian fisherman's anxious gaze. A technician glistening in Kuwaiti oil. This stunning set of images—the work of an economist-turned-photographer—brings us deep into the world economy's engine room.

Investing
The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America compiled by Lawrence Cunningham (1997). Buffett never wrote a book. Instead he poured his thinking about investments, managing, and corporate excesses into his annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. Cunningham sifted through the 1979-96 bunch to create this best-of-Buffett anthology.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2001). Taleb, a hedge fund manager, is equally disdainful of Wall Streeters and academics who claim to understand markets: They see patterns that don't really exist. Almost everything, he argues, comes down to Lady Fortuna.
The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel by Benjamin Graham (1949). Warren Buffett has called this classic guide to value investing—recently updated by Money magazine senior writer Jason Zweig—"by far the best book about investing ever written." What more do you need to know?
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (2003). Billy Beane, the Oakland A's general manager profiled here, isn't just a smart baseball guy with new ideas. He's an exemplar of how to succeed by zigging when everyone else is zagging—which of course is also how great investors make money.

Leadership
Never Give In: The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches edited by grandson Winston S. Churchill (2003). "Never give in—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty.... Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
On Leadership by John Gardner (1990). Gardner sees leadership as an ever-evolving learned skill separate from status or power, and he carefully dissects its many elements—without resorting to cute language or strained metaphors.
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 by Taylor Branch (1988). This spellbinding tale of how Martin Luther King Jr. and others built the civil rights movement shows creative, disruptive leadership in action. King and his comrades possessed none of the conventional tools of power but found ways to wield it nonetheless.
Personal History by Katharine Graham (1997). The late Graham grew up shy and insecure and stayed that way till her glamorous husband shot himself. Then she found the strength to take over Washington Post Co., which hit new financial and journalistic highs during her tenure. Her defense of the First Amendment made her a hero; her dinner parties made her a legend.
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. by Ron Chernow (1998). If 75 books were burning and you could save just one, this might be it: a biography as powerful and detail-minded as its subject.

Negotiating and Managing
A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr (1995). Harr's story—an attorney fights polluters over carcinogenic toxic waste they left in a town's groundwater—reads like a thriller. It shows how one dogged individual can take on the formidable resources of two corporate giants.
The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker (1966). Before you can manage anyone else, you've got to learn to manage yourself. In this slim volume, Drucker tells you how.
Remember Every Name Every Time by Benjamin Levy (2002). Here's a book that delivers on its promise. Read it, and you'll never stare blankly at an employee or a client again.
Taken for a Ride: How Daimler-Benz Drove Off with Chrysler by Bill Vlasic and Bradley A. Stertz (2000). A tale of how the merger unfolded—and how Daimler's Jürgen Schrempp always managed to stay two moves ahead of Chrysler's Bob Eaton.
Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever (2003). The first book to adequately explain the dramatic differences in how men and women negotiate and why women so often fail to ask for what they want at work (starting with equal pay). Every male manager in America should read it.

Office Politics
Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller (2003). Given the behind-the-scenes sex, drugs, and screaming matches, the most amazing thing about Saturday Night Live is that it ever managed to get on the air, let alone stay there for 30 seasons. Consider this oral history a handbook for managing the highly creative and the borderline deranged.
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill by Ron Suskind (2004). No, George W. Bush ("a blind man in a roomful of deaf people") does not come off well. But whatever your politics, you'll be fascinated by the dishy descriptions of how Bush, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney operate around the office.
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1513). Machiavelli wasn't as Machiavellian as he is made out to be. Today we'd probably call him "pragmatic." But his treatise—penned after losing his political job in Florence—was shockingly frank. Power and idealism, he said, don't really mix.
Something Happened by Joseph Heller (1974). This novel—Heller's follow-up to Catch-22—portrays one man struggling with the American dream and a Kafkaesque office where perseverance is the key to promotion.

Power
Father Son & Co: My Life at IBM and Beyond by Thomas Watson Jr. and Peter Petre (1990). A son's-eye view (co-written by a FORTUNE senior editor at large) of how Watson Senior started and ran IBM and how Junior took it over. Told in an intensely personal voice, by turns shrewd, grudging, exasperated, and kind, it is the operatic story of power passing between generations.
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Keister (1998). The overarching thesis—deceive others lest they deceive you—is appallingly cynical. The wealth of observations ("The longer I keep quiet, the sooner others move their lips") is eminently useful.
Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street by David McClintick (1982). McClintick turns the federal case against Columbia Pictures and David Begelman into a drama of power—East Coast moneymen like Herb Allen vs. West Coast production honchos—and lets you watch, in intimate boardroom detail, as they tear at one another's throats.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini (1993). How do you get people to say yes? To answer that question, psychologist Cialdini mines nuggets as diverse as mother turkeys, pickup situations, Hare Krishnas, and the unlikely power of the word "because"—and identifies six principles that entice people to buy your stuff.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro (1974). Moses, the legendary city builder, defied mayors, governors, and even a President, constructing a political machine that lasted for decades. Caro's classic biography is one of the most exhaustive—and exhausting—studies of American power ever written.

Project Management
American Steel: Hot metal men and the resurrection of the rust belt by Richard Preston (1991). If Nucor employees can get molten metal flowing in one unbroken strip, they'll revolutionize the steel industry. If something goes wrong, their new plant can blow up. The author of The Hot Zone makes the tale truly riveting.
The Billion-Dollar Molecule: One Company's Quest for the Perfect Drug by Barry Werth (1994). No writer has ever gotten as deeply inside a company as Werth got inside biotech Vertex. He offers deep insight into the difficulties of drug discovery, the trials and tribulations of startups, and the conflict between great science and good business.
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner (1990). The West was not won by gunslingers and whores with hearts of gold. It was won by people who gave it water. This is the best book ever on how politics, business, ambition, and most of the seven deadly sins can work to literally shape the landscape of America.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (1986). Reaching far beyond Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project, this hefty tome meticulously pieces together one of the most important and terrifying scientific projects in history.

Strategy
The Art of War by Sun Tzu (circa 500 B.C.). What may be the greatest book on war ever written contains such aphorisms as "All warfare is based on deception" and "When the army engages in protracted campaigns, the resources of the state will not suffice." It's time-tested poetry for the strategic mind.
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden (1999). No one—not the Pentagon, not the spooks, and certainly not the soldiers rappelling from helicopters into the middle of Mogadishu—had any idea of the hell they were getting into. Bowden's history of the humiliating U.S. incursion into Somalia is an eloquent treatise on how not to plan an operation.
Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy by Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian (1997). If most writing from the dot-com era reads like 17th-century medicine (give the patient mercury?), here's a book that that holds up. No, the laws of economics haven't changed. Shapiro and Varian show how they apply to the world of information.
Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove (1996). Think of this as a Special Forces handbook for corporate managers. Grove, a co-founder of Intel and its current chairman, shows you squarely how to thrive in the most feared of business environments: one where competition, technology, or the very rules of engagement have suddenly changed.
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (2000). What do bestselling novels, crime waves, and yawning have in common? They're all examples of how ideas and group behaviors can "tip" from fad into epidemic. Gladwell's book is filled with examples of eclectic freethinkers using the phenomenon to their advantage.

Technology and Innovation
The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television by Evan I. Schwartz (2002). This is a cautionary tale of the brilliant visionary (Philo T. Farnsworth) up against Big, Determined Business. You can guess who wins.
New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America by Richard Tedlow (1990). Who invented the shopping cart? What become of Coke-Ola, Co Kola, and Koke? When did consumers first appear on the American continent? An eminent business historian answers questions you wish you'd thought to ask.
They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovation from the Steam Engine to the Search Engine by Harold Evans (2004). Evans takes us from the steam engine to the search engine, profiling 53 of the top innovators in U.S. history. The trait they share isn't greed or the lust for fame, but the drive to democratize—the often shocking desire to bring to the many products previously enjoyed only by the few.
Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton with John Huey (1992). Most great ideas really aren't that complicated, and Wal-Mart is a perfect example. To wit: Put discount stores in towns that the other retailers thought were too small to support them. Walton's words (written with the editorial director of Time Inc., FORTUNE's parent) still resonate with simple wisdom.
The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the 19th Century's On-line Pioneers by Tom Standage (1998). A new technology will connect everyone! It's making investors rich! It's the Internet boom—except Samuel Morse is there!

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

The Best Advice I Ever Got

This article that featured in Fortune, chronicles the best advices that great names in business and industry ever got in their lifetime. I quote some advices that I found to be profound.
Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway (Ben Graham)
You are right not because others agree with you, but because your facts and reasoning is right.

Richard Branson, Virgin Group (Freddie Laker)
Make a fool of yourself, otherwise you wont survive.

Dick Parsons, CEO Time Warner (Steve Ross)
When you negotiate, leave a little something on the table.

Andy Grove, Chairman Intel (A.X Schmidt)
When "everyone knows" something to be true, nobody knows nothing.

Anne Mulcahy, CEO Xerox (Albert C Black Jr.)
When everything gets really complicated, you gotta do three things. First, get the cow out of the ditch. Second, find out how the cow got into the ditch. Third, make sure you do whatever it takes so the cow doesnt get into the ditch again.

Ted Turner, Founder CNN (Father)
Start young.

Peter Drucker, Consultant (Boss on first job)
Get good - or get out.

Monday, March 28, 2005

Prisoner's Dilemma

Was reading up on Game Theory lately. Came across a very interesting problem called the Prisoner's Dilemma. The root cause of this problem is something called Dominant Strategy Equilibrium. Here goes . . . .
Two burglars, Bob and Al, are captured near the scene of a burglary and are given the "third degree" separately by the police. Each has to choose whether or not to confess and implicate the other. If neither man confesses, then both will serve one year on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon. If each confesses and implicates the other, both will go to prison for 10 years. However, if one burglar confesses and implicates the other, and the other burglar does not confess, the one who has collaborated with the police will go free, while the other burglar will go to prison for 20 years on the maximum charge.
The strategies in this case are: confess or don't confess. The payoffs (penalties, actually) are the sentences served. We can express all this compactly in a "payoff table" of a kind that has become pretty standard in game theory.



Al



confess

don't

Bob

confess

10,10

0,20

don't

20,0

1,1


Al might reason as follows: "Two things can happen: Bob can confess or Bob can keep quiet. Suppose Bob confesses. Then I get 20 years if I don't confess, 10 years if I do, so in that case it's best to confess. On the other hand, if Bob doesn't confess, and I don't either, I get a year; but in that case, if I confess I can go free. Either way, it's best if I confess. Therefore, I'll confess."
But Bob can and presumably will reason in the same way -- so that they both confess and go to prison for 10 years each. Yet, if they had acted "irrationally," and kept quiet, they each could have gotten off with one year each. Cool huh????

Festival Of Touch

India truly amazes me. Indians celebrate each one of their senses, be it taste, color or sound. They also celebrate each of nature's elements be it fire, wind, water or earth. There are a few festivals that transcend all barriers of relegion, caste and creed. Holi definitely is one of them. It is a day when India's seething masses unite to celebrate the most cherished of senses, color. The entire nation is awash in splashes of red, blue , green and yellow. Streets are overrun by colorful groups brandishing water cannons and gulal. I feel that in a country tutored to detest all forms of touch, this festival is a stark contrast. Indians are Haphophobics by nature. The polite NAMASTE is an Indian ploy to resist being touched by other people. Most Indian ladies hesitate to shake hands with the opposite sex. This sometimes leads to embarassing situations where an extended hand has to be hastily withdrawn. The situation has become severe with greater infusion of western ideas and culture. Earlier a namaste would have been the ideal form of greeting. But now a namaste may be taken as being old fashioned by some and an offered hand may be taken to be too intrusive by others. Surprisingly physical contact among men is normal in Indian culture. Many a times I have witnessed men walking with arms around each others shoulders and some even go to the extent of holding each other by their waists. Such displays of camraderie are looked upon with raised eyebrows in the west. But in India they are as common as cows on highways. Contradiction yes, surprising no. Holi is a festival when people lower their guards and allow themselves to be touched by others. I have always looked with amazement as traditionally demure ladies, frolic with juvenile excitement and maul each other with an assortment of colors. A male rubbing gulal on a lady's face is not frowned upon. Even a light embrace fails to register with the moral brigade. India, thy name is contradictions. The way I see it Holi is not only the Festival of Colors, it is also the Festival of Touch.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Days of langour

My days at the library seem to stretch into infinity either way. I havent been allocated yet. Suddenly there seems to be a dearth of openings for guys with 3+ years solid C++/Unix/Team Lead experience. I have started developing mixed feeling about the entire episode. There are feelings of professional inadequacy with an artificial sense of relaxation. One good thing though is the quality of books at the TCS Deccanpark Library, which seems to have hit the roof lately. There are enough books to suit the entire spectrum of literary palate. Yesterday I spent an hour reading the aptly named One Minute Manager. Spencer Johnson(Who moved my cheese fame) condenses successful management into three dictums.
One Minute Goals
One Minute Praises
One Minute Reprimands
Truly, the book makes sense, and yes I am speaking in light of my past experiences with a large and varied team.
Another book I started on, and am thoroughly enjoying reading, is a lost and recovered lecture by Richard Feynman on the motion of planets. The book begins with an introduction to the entire debate on the motion of planets, proceeds with a brief biographical sketch of Feynman and goes on to narrate how Feynman explained Newton's fabled theory with his own reasoning and nothing more than geometry. If you are one who enjoyed high school physics, then this book is definitely a must read.
(READERS - More book reviews coming your way. Suggest some good ones, if possible.)

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

The Prophet

I found a harbound 1962 edition of Kahlil Gibran's, The Prophet in my father's collection in Kolkata. I found it to be profound and offering tremendous insights into life and its processes. I and Priya both liked what he had to say on marriage. So simple and so true.

Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?" And he answered saying: You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Here is a online resource that has it all.

http://www.columbia.edu/~gm84/gibran3.html

Mugged

I did it. I did it big time. I managed to get my two month new digicam stolen. The said gadget was lodged inside my unlocked suitcase, which in turn was tucked out of harm's way under a lower berth seat of the two-tier AC coach of Falaknuma Express. The camera along with the charger and four AA NiMH cells were neatly removed from the suitcase so as not to arouse any suspicion. Monetary trauma aside, the emotional trauma associated with losing something so new was immense. A lot of planning had gone into the purchase of the cam and monetary paucity wont allow me to purchase another one for at least a year. It looked like one of the passangers had filched it. It was a targeted job, because nothing else in the suitcase was touched(jewelry included). Taught me a lesson the painful way. India is not a safe place to travel, even using the best of means.

Monday, March 21, 2005

Back in Hyd

After nearly a week in the City of Joy, I am back in Hyderabad. The stay is Kolkata was enjoyable. As expected my mother went into a culinary overdrive and I am sure that Priya and I must have gained a kilo each. Kolkata is a far cry from Hyderabad's glitz. The entire city is covered in layers of soot. The transportation is rickety at the best, with creaky buses and yellow taxicabs. The taxicabs in Kolkata are Ambassadors manufactured by Hindustan Motors. The design of the car is antiquated, and is copied from the Cambridge Austin. Life here is a bit laid back. The architecture is colonial. It is a city of extremes, with affluence pocked with abject poverty. The part I like about it is the food. I am a sucker for Rolls and the omnipresent Phuchka. Add to it the Mishti Doi and Sandesh, and what you end up with is pure temptation.

Friday, March 11, 2005

Kolkata Ahoy!

Havent been blogging too much. Yesterday, I decided to finally make that long deferred trip to Kolkata. Somehow managed to get two tickets. Man, travelling in India without intricate planning is pain. Maybe that is what this country teaches you. Nothing here is easy gotten. Every day is a struggle, with teeming millions competing for limited resources. It starts right in the morning with me competing for a little space on the road for my bike. Nobody stops to let you pass and you arent expected to stop either. Sometimes I wonder if we ever stop and let another person go ahead. I guess the answer would be NO. It starts with small things and develops into a habit in a while. Life here teaches you that YOU and ONLY YOU matter. Others are but merely impediments in your path. I used to hate these ideals, but over time I have come to realize that if you are swimming with sharks, you better learn to eat fish. Ideas and information are not to be shared. Plans not to be divulged. You are as good as what you know that the others dont. Well, I am digressing. Yes, I will be in the City of Joy for a week. Am waiting to get my hands on the sugary delights and the delicious Calcutta rolls. My mother and Priya are both excited about the trip, but for entirely different reasons. My mother is excited because this is our first trip to the city after almost a year of marriage. Priya on the other hand is excited about the sweets and the omnipresent trinket hawkers. As for me, I am looking forward to a change in my mundane schedule and a chance to start afresh after a long year of disappointments.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

CSI ISB

Case : Murder of my ISB aspirations.
Crime Scene: Hyderabad.
Time : 5:00 pm, 28/02/2005
Profile of Victim
Name: Sankha Subhra Som
Age : 25
Profession: IT/Consultancy/Bioinformatics
Company: TCS Limited
Experience: 36 Months
Role: Module Lead of a team of 10.
Qualification: B.E. Computer Science & Engineering.
Undergraduate Institution: REC Silchar
GMAT: 680 + 5.5 AWA
CAT: 95.3%
Recommendations: Excellent
Academics(Undergraduate): 78%, Distinction.
Academics(Higher Secondary): CBSE 87.4%, 10th rank in State.
Academics(High School): CBSE 85.0%
Factors that probably played a key role
In each level, the factors are listed in order of importance.

Level 1
This level deals with all the factors that are weighed for sending out interview invites to potential candidates. I have a strong feeling that the initial processing of applications is done by a set of people different from the set of people who would actually interview the candidate. My best guess is that the initial selection is done by students who are members of the admissions commitee.
GMAT

One cannot underemphasise the importance of a good score for applying to top B-Schools. A desirable score would be a figure that is in the top 40 percentile of the previous class. Most B-Schools provide an estimate of median, average and span(40%-80%). For ISB, with a mean and median of 690, a desirable score would be 710+. I have a feeling that AWA scores are not taken into account at any level of the selection process. If one has a 740+ score, the game is half won. The later the application deadline you intend to apply to, the greater should be your GMAT scores. As someone had aptly put it, "In Round2 you are swimming with sharks". Round 2 applicants are people, who have other options open for them. They are either IIM material, or are folks who have applied to foreign B-Schools. I know it sounds absurd, but then why would anyone apply for the second deadline, when he could have applied for the first one, unless they had other fish to fry in the first deadline. I for one was a CAT aspirant, who took the GMAT with only a fortnight's prep. I managed 680, but could have managed a lot more with a 2 month prep. I did well in Quants(49) and AWA(5.5), but managed to gut the Verbal section(33). 680 is quite comfortable for getting an ISB admit, but NOT in Round2.

Years of full time work experience

This is another factor that weighs heavy in the admission decision. People with greater number of years in full time positions, are better employable than people with lesser number of years. In spite of what ISB claims, its safer to have at least 60 months of experience behind you. There are two advantages to it. One, you are better employable and two, you are more financially sound. MBA is a big expense, more so at ISB. One has to plan one's finances, before applying. After all management entails a lot of planning with elegant execution. A Round2 applicant with a lower GMAT score(<700) should at least have 6 years of full time work experience.

(To be continued . . .)

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Days of langour

How does it feel to be an unallocated resource? Hmmm. not bad, maybe for a while or so.Holed up in the "Recycle Bin" of TCS-DP(thats the library for the uninitiated), with lots of time to kill and lots of books for company. No timesheets to fill, no supervisors to report to and no screen to stare at. Started my day with yeterday's newspaper(the budget special). Tried to figure out how I can make the most of this budget. Got tangled up in numbers and felt clueless in a while. Yesterday was better. Surveyed the library for literary delicacies, if any. Found some interesting reads. Started on a book on Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Taught myself to write some numbers. Then went through an article on how China's water crisis was poised to be a threat to the stability of the South-East Asian region. Am still waiting for the Project Lead of the Ericcsson project to get back to me with an onsite offer. The way my luck is running, that may also end up in the God disposes folder. Well, as they say, "If you are getting f*!#$d, lie back and enjoy it.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

The Finale

My MBA 2005 dream ended yesterday with ISB invites being sent out. In line with expectations, I didnt make it. A quick look at the profiles of admitted candidates turns up interesting facts. Most of the admitted candidates have a GMAT score of more than 700. I saw at least four 760's. Another interesting fact is that most of them have aeons of work experience behind them. I figure, that the average work experience this year will be above 6(at least for R2). I have decided to take this up as a challenge. I feel that I need to add more QUALITY experience to my resume. Also I need a better GMAT score. I managed 680 + 5.5 with a 15 days working prep. I can manage more, with an extended dedicated prep. The next time I will prepare other apps as well. I need to improve my quant skills as well. Now that I know what the enemy is, I feel I am more prepared to take it on again. I know I deserve to be in a top B-School. I refuse to give up. Signing off