IIT Bombay

Diary Entry – 42

The only reason why I am giving such a boring title for a blog post is because there is a lot of talk about Search Engine Optimization in the blogging world these days and I am just trying to say IIT Bombay so many times in this post so that when someone searches for IIT Bombay in Google, they will land up in the Diary Of The Narcissist. So if you are that someone who came here because you searched for IIT Bombay then I am sorry to inform you that I do not have free GATE or JEE Test Papers here in this site.  

  

Last three days there was this international conference on Simulation and Modeling in IIT Bombay. My project guide who is one of the leading experts in the field of simulation, was one of the few invited guests. He wanted me to come and promote a simulation technology in this conference. This conference in IIT Bombay had more participants from the industry than participants from the academic field. It meant a lot of clients for my guide who was a consultant. He promised to pay five thousand rupees if I came.

Now I did not want to go to IIT Bombay to attend this conference for two reasons.

1. I have been using this simulation technology for a month for my final project. This meant that I knew little to promote it to any potential customers.

2. I cannot speak a word in Hindi.

But I had to go because I was in debt to my professor for a few reasons. Yes, curse my sense of loyalty towards people. Anyway just so that I wont be massacred in an alien city, I decided to learn a few sentences in Hindi, two hours before my flight to Bombay. I asked my friend to give me the translations for the following sentences.

I want to go to IIT Bombay (Mai IIT Bombay Jana Chata Hu).

I started learning Hindi only Today (Mai aaj Thoda sa Hindi Seekha)

Can you tell me this in English? I speak very little Hindi (Kya aap muje angrezi mey samja denge? Muje Hindi Bahut thode hi aati Hai)

Finally just in case I stopped to ask direction to Raj Thackrey who has been known to bully people who came from other states, I learnt this:

I am going to IIT Bombay to attend a conference for three days. (Mai ek conference meing saamil hone ke liye IIT bambai jar aha hu... teen dino ke liye)

That was by far the toughest sentence to remember.

So the first thing I say when I enter the Taxi was this –

Me: Namaste Driver Ji? Aap Kaise hey? (Hello Driver. How are you?)

Driver: :|

I looked up youtube for learn Hindi Videos the previous day and this Aap Kaise hey line was one thing I learnt. I was determined to use every single thing I learnt in Hindi. So I tell the guy in Hindi I want to go to IIT Bombay and I feel confident that I can manage anybody who talks to me in Hindi. But then I met this hot police chick in IIT Bombay’s entrance.

I know all North Indian women are hot in the eyes of South Indian Men but this super fair police officer was different. I thought such hot female law enforcers existed only in the movies. She was more like the security of IIT Bombay. The lady did not just let me inside instead she said crap in Hindi and the sentence had bag, mobile phone and laptop in it. The last time I heard a similar sentence in Hindi was in the plane and it was the flight attendant asking us to switch off our mobile phone and laptop during takeoff and landing. I told this lady that I had no laptop in my bag. This lady for some reason repeated the same sentence again. I was frustrated and told her this:  

Mai aaj Thoda sa Hindi Seekha (I started learning Hindi only Today).

Kya aap muje angrezi mey samja denge? (Can you tell me this in English?)

Then I realized the mistake I made. She looked at me stone faced. I practised these two lines so much on the way, that I probably sounded like a native Hindi speaker when I spit it out fast. So after I told her that, she probably thought I was a creep who was messing with her because she was pretty. I had to keep talking in English before she would finally let me in.

The actual conference and my time in IIT Bombay went very well. I mean I was totally wrong about North Indians. They were just like the Hindi guys in my college if not more friendlier. For some reason they all liked me even if I did not speak Hindi. After that incident with the police lady, I decided to stop pretending to know Hindi. At first I was a little bit intimidated when people spoke Hindi. Sure I could understand and all but I can only respond in English. But that ended up intimidating people who spoke to me in Hindi. But they still liked me. They gave me their email address so that I could add them on facebook and stuff. One chick I met in the conference was a M.Tech student in Industrial Engineering Department. She asked me how I was finding IIT Bombays’s campus. I told her it is very large and I am scared of getting lost. I also told her I speak very little Hindi, in Hindi. That got her rolling on the floor laughing. When she finally stopped giggling she told me that I sounded like Katrina Kaif when she first came to Bollywood. Turns out that Katrina Kaif had this British accent in her Hindi and I was talking Hindi the same way. For a moment I thought my Hindi was as good as a film star’s.

It was finally time to go home. My cousin kept telling me don't go to that area in Bombay, don't go to this area in Bombay, because I will be robbed or raped. Though being robbed worried me a little, I thought rape was for women. I reached the Mumbai airport and I thought I successfully managed to leave Bombay without being robbed or raped. Well all that changed when I went through the routine security check. It was a Nightmare. The guard asked me to spread my hands and legs so he can check if I was carrying some bomb or ammunition. What happened next made me jump and shout out WTF. That guy grabbed my uh.. Yeah that.

Gay Police Officer: First Time in airport?

“First time being groped in public by a police officer. Where do I give a complain?” I wanted to ask. There is no terrorist in this world who is going to sacrifice his man hood just so that he could place a bomb between his legs. It is going to be really hard for a terrorist to place a bomb in the Bombay Airport because the security leaves no place unchecked. I am going to need therapy for this trauma. 

  

P.S – For the sake of search engine optimization I required to say IIT Bombay one more time in the very last sentence, which is this. :D

Previous Post - I am not Crazy

I am not Crazy

Diary Entry – 41

If you know me personally you can read this. If you don’t anything about me, I don’t know why you will want to read this, please move on to the next post. If you are stalker then you can read this but be warned I am writing this because I am just tired of explaining everything to each person who talks to me.

 

I applied to six universities in the United States and one University in the United Kingdom. I applied for Industrial Engineering, specialising in Operations Research in the US and Business Analytics and Consulting in Warwick Business School UK. Ever since I got that offer letter from Warwick Business School, people who dont know shit have been giving me their advice. Some have concluded that I am stupid. I know I really shouldn’t be listening to you people, but it fills me with a small sense of doubt every time I hear something in the lines of “You are making the biggest mistake of your life”. So let me answer the whys whats and hows.

There is an industry called consulting which most people in India have not heard of. The people who work there are called consultants or they may have other fancy names like Business Analysts etc. It is what companies like Mckinsey do for a living. Good consulting companies are hard to get into. That is because they invest a lot of money in training the new consultants and if the newly hired people leave after a few years saying that consulting is not meant for them, then it will mean loss for the company. So they are very picky when choosing people and they hire people who have demonstrated an interest in consulting or people who have already been in consulting.

 I have always wanted to do MBA. Years ago, I spoke to someone who did his MBA from Boston Business School. He told me the smartest and the top bunch of students in the MBA class will usually prefer consulting. The middle set of students will go into finance and the bottom of the class will go into marketing. He asked me to get a job in consulting before I do my MBA. If the work experience I had was from a consulting company, it will be a lot easier for me to get an admission to the top business schools in the world. My consulting background will give a higher value to my profile. He told me this years ago and I had no idea what consulting was then and you can even say I forgot about consulting up until the time I studied Operations Research in college. I decided that Operations Research is the thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I remembered what my senior told me years ago, when I was researching the job prospects of Operations Research. Consulting was a job where you will use Operations Research ever day, to help solve problems. I had no idea. Naturally, the statement of purpose I sent in was very strong. Also I had done work in the field which made it even more strong. No the course in Warwick is not MBA. It is still called masters.

If you are from India, you will probably here people tell you that if you do an MBA you have to get into finance. That is because consulting companies don’t come to most Indian MBA colleges except maybe the IIMs. That brings us to the next question. Why did you not write CAT? I am not smart enough for that exam. It is easier to get admission into Harvard Business School when compared to getting admission into any of the IIMs. CAT is that hard. So the next thing people ask is why I don’t do my MBA directly. MBA programs abroad require two years of relevant work experience. They wont give you admission otherwise. Even if by some fluke you get admission without work experience, you will struggle to complete the program.

Also the tution fee for the MBA is not cheap. If you study in good universities, it will cost you $80,000.If I worked for a few years in consulting, I will not only have the relevant experience but since consulting is one of the highest paying jobs in the US and in the world, I will also have the money to pay for my MBA.

 I applied for Industrial Engineering specialising in OR because it is more or less the same thing. Operations Research is what you will use for consulting. If I did Industrial Engineering specialising in OR, I can still get into consulting. However you can do a lot of other things with OR. The program in Warwick Business School is tailor made for consulting which makes it better for my interests when compared to the courses in US. It like a mechanical engineer can work in aerodynamics apart from other things like manufacturing and automobile, but if you are bent on doing aerodynamics to begin with, is it not a lot better if you did a course on aerodynamics instead of something generic like mechanical engineering. You will save yourself the trouble of not learning a lot of things you will never use in your life.

Also when compared to the masters program in the US, I will finish the course in Warwick in half the time and I will have to spend 30% less if I studied in Warwick. I have not received any admit letter from the universities in the US till now anyway. No, it does not mean they rejected me. If they rejected me, they will send an email saying I am not competent enough. I have got no email so far and I am not going to wait for it.

After explaining all this to the people who test my sanity, they usually say “But dude, I have never heard of Warwick Business School”. What can I say man. Just because you haven’t heard it doesn’t mean it is bad. If you don’t believe me, you have to at least believe the Financial Times. They made a ranking of top business schools in the world for 2012 and Warwick is ranked 27^th. Financial Times. How I got admission, on the next blog post...

I know UK has a reputation of kicking students out of their country as soon as they finish their course, but I still think this is the best option I have right now.

My blogging friend BluBluBling, who is doing her CA told me that I should not go when I have TCS :D :D. There is nothing more awesome then working for the Tatas rite? Well she probably told me that because she is doing CA and has no idea what TCS is. Also she did not want brilliant minds like mine to leave the country. But if you are an engineer and if you ask me to join TCS, then you must really hate me.  

Previous Post - The Bloggers Guilt

The Bloggers Guilt

By a blogger for a blogger

Diary Entry – 40

Life has been hard the last few months. I have several things to juggle - application for masters, Project work and other things which keeps my hands full. But what I do instead is login to bloggers and type away some crazy shit like this. When I am blogging a voice inside my head says the following:

“Yeah go ahead. BLOG. They should write a management book, about prioritizing, based on your life” *sarcasm*

So what happens is I feel terribly guilty about blogging and close my browser half way, with the hope of doing something useful and productive but end up watching an episode of some soap opera. Previously the voice in my head had only good things to say whenever I blog, but all that changed when I attended this job interview.

Interviewer: What are your hobbies?

Me: I write sir. (Nothing else actually counts. Watching television, texting your text buddies no no)

Interviewer: Oh what do you write?

Me: Sir I have written for my college magazine, I have been an editor blah blah

Interviewer: That is not really an example if you say writing is your hobby. Hobby is when you do something in your spare time.

Me: I also have a blog. (What else was I supposed to say?)

Interviewer: Oh you have a blog? How much time do you spend on this Facebook?

Since when did Facebook become a blog? And how will you answer that question? Sir I visit facebook once a month? He asked me a question that had no right answer. So I said:

Me: Sir. I don’t have a Facebook account.

When the results of the interview came out, I knew that was not the right answer. I have been thinking how blogging is productive and how it is different from facebook, ever since. That is how the guilt started.

But you shouldn’t take the word of an old man on technology. It is the problem with people who are in their sixties. They confuse shit. You will often find someone that age, tell you that blogging is a waste of time. They will have no idea what it is to begin with. The other day an uncle who lives in my colony told my mom that he wanted me to come to his house. He had something to teach me. My mother thought he was going to give me lessons on spirituality. She kept bugging me to go. This is what happened when I went there,

Me: Hello Uncle. How are you.

Uncle: Oh hey. I wanted to show you something I learnt in the computer. The computer is on, come on.

He is going to show me something on the computer that I don’t know already? May be he is a SEO or a web designing guru. Wow I never knew.

I went and sat near his computer.

Uncle: You know how much I love videos and music?

Me: Yeah?

Uncle: I found this awesome site which has so many videos and songs. It is fantastic.

Me: uh?

Uncle: It is called Youtube.

Me: :| (WOW)

Uncle: I will show you how it works.

Me: Uncle I know how it works.

That is when I realized uncle was deaf.  He could not hear a thing I said.

Uncle: These videos will cost me some 60 – 70Rs if I got them as CDs outside. Here I can get it for free.

Me: I see. :| (Shaking my head)

Uncle: You know you can download these videos also.

Me: Yeah I know.

Uncle: I will show you. Here is a thing which is called IDM.

For the next half an hour he explained how to search videos in YouTube, how to play them and then download them. We spent the next half an hour watching videos of old Hindi songs in HD. I should be given a medal for patience.

It will be fun to be an old man who tortures his grandchildren with long lectures about Youtube. But just hope you are deaf so that you cannot hear your own grandchildren cursing you.  

If we become old and tell our grandchildren that we had a great blog when were young, we can expect a reaction similar to the one I gave my colony uncle when he told me about Youtube. It really is no big deal to have a blog. What is so productive about it? Maybe it is unproductive to a lesser degree when compared to watching soap operas and facebooking. But it is still a waste of time none the less.

I still chose to write shit like this over doing something else, because it is fun. But the guilt that comes with blogging when you have other important things to do is equivalent to the guilt a married man gets when he is cheating on his wife – you are not supposed to be doing this because someone (or in this case something) is more important than this. So an hour ago I took this questionnaire about blogging, that a fellow blogger made me take. There was this question on how important the number of readers were for me. It used to be very important for me before when I started blogging. But with the kind of comments that some of you give to my blog post, I think why in the world you people exist. I write a blog post about something and one blogger will give me a comment saying “Nice”, as if my blog is a girl’s ass or a costly sports car. People like that usually don’t read anything  other than the title. They expect you to read their blogs in return for the great comment they left. If you have a blog with readers like that, you should feel even more guilty that you are writing stuff for such losers to comment on. 

But I guess life is all about doing what you love and what makes you happy and if blogging makes you happy like it does in my case then that is reason enough to feel good about blogging.

Previous Post -How to get rich quick

How to get rich quick

Diary Entry – 39

Ever since I grew my teeth and started to eat solid food, my parents have tried everything to try to teach me the value of not wasting food. At first they tried to be strict. They wanted to see their face in my plate after I finished eating. I sat there from afternoon till evening. My mother finally asked me to move because she was worried I will start attracting flies.

They brought god in next to help make me eat. I was told people who did not waste their food became intelligent because god himself is inside ever grain of rice. That failed to convince me because the fattest guy in my class always got the last rank. Persuasion, intimidation and even hope for divine intervention had failed. Guilt was the next thing they tried on me. I was told sad stories about children in Sudan and how they struggled to get even a small grain of rice. Though it did nothing to make me eat, I started to feel bad for people who beg and live without food.

So when I see people begging, I tend to drop a coin. I have to travel by an express train everyday to go to my project place. Begging is so common there and you will find a lot of people with sticks and black cooling glasses singing sad songs. When I saw one of these beggars in the train, I dropped a ten rupee note in his bowl. My friend came close to my ear and whispered, “ARE YOU CRAZY”. I explained to him why I hold on to my coins because the bus conductors threaten to throw me out of the bus when I don’t have proper change for the ticket. My friend asked me if my parents did not tell me to not entertain beggars as they are all a bunch of frauds and crooks. I told him how my parents made me listen to depressing sad stories of children from Sudan during every meal. He told me stone faced that India was not Sudan. I realized what he meant during dinner.

That day was the last time I gave money to a beggar. During dinner, my mom asked me if I knew the price of rice. Another vain effort of hers to try to make me eat properly, I thought. She told me that the price of ration rice in Chennai was 2 Rupees per Kg. She told me that with the amount we eat, we could last for months with just four or five rupees if we got ration rice. Did I just give that beggar enough money to feed himself for a year then? I did a calculation of the amount of money they make per hour and was blown away. The people who I thought were starving in the streets, make more than an engineering graduate.  

Just in case you are considering begging as a possible career option, let me point out to you that you can make even more money as an entertainer. Along with the beggars come people who sing songs or play flutes. They don’t pretend to be blind nor do they wear tattered clothes. They just play their song and go their way. They get twice the number of coins the beggars do. But how much you get depends on what song you sing. Last week, one guy sang the Tamil or should I say English song which the whole world is crazy about. I swore not to mention the name of that song in my blog. You probably know what I am talking about, unless you were in a coma for the last couple of months. Anyway that guy was singing this song and everybody was tipping him. These are songs that anybody can sing like a pro. But make several thousand rupees with it in a few hours? You will richer than Yesudas without even singing half as well. A get rich quick scheme for those who have the balls to sing aloud in public. You don’t even have to pay taxes. 

 

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