Today's Kavi'Day

Was reading a nice tamil blog. This guy (Sree) writes very well!! As I read through all that, I too felt an irrepressible desire to pen a "poem of love":

Yengu paarthaalum neethan therigiraai...
Kaadhal pirandha bodhum idhu nadakka villai..
Oodal konda indru nigazhndhuLLadhu..
Yaen endru yosittha bodhu pulappattadhu:
Yen manaththiraiyil uLLa nee,
KaNgalin mun neer thiraiyil pradhibalithu,
Vizhiththiraiyil vizhundhuLLaai...

எங்கு பார்த்தாலும் நீதான் தெரிகிறாய்...
காதல் பிறந்த போதும் இது நடக்க வில்லை...
ஊடல் கொண்ட இன்று நிகழ்ந்துள்ளது...
ஏன் என்று யோசித்த போது புலப்பட்டது:
என் மனத்திரையில் உள்ள நீ,
கண்களின் முன் நீர் திரையில் பிரதிபலித்து,
விழித்திரையில் விழுந்துள்ளாய்!

Ok, does not seem to be much. Did not even want to post this, initially. But eventually did so cos my friend Neo opined that this is "definitely post-able".
(Your response will tell me whether he was being sincere, or was trying to make the most out of my dilemma.)

P.S.: Smart alec comments would not be published

MBA interviews : Attempts to peep into the ass' soul

Hi guys.. Have been busy with preps for MBA interviews.. And it's such a sick thing!! Preparing for "all kinds of questions" drives me crazy.. Especially for those questions that seem to probe into the core of our consciousness..

Of course, most MBA aspirants lie through their teeth in their interviews (the others rewrite CAT the next year again).. But preparing for all this is frustrating..

Now, what would happen if B-school interview panels start forcing verita serum down our throats before the interviews?

Possibly this:

Panel: Hello Aspirant. Please take a seat.

Aspirant: Thank you, Sirs.

Panel: So how was your journey?

Aspirant: Cut the cooling-down crap.. I know you are not bothered about it one bit..

Panel: Ok then, why don't you tell us something about yourself?

Aspirant: My name is Aspirant. I did my schooling at Chen...

Panel: No no. All those details are there in this form you submitted over mail. Tell us something that is not on this form.

Aspirant: I love porn.

Panel: Ok you are a software engineer. Can you tell me today's price for an Infosys share in the BSE?

Aspirant: And why am I expected to know that?

Panel: Simple...
You are software.
Infy is software.
You want to get into business.
Shares are business.
See the relation?

Aspirant: Duck you.. Tell me this is a practical joke.. Please..

Panel: Hmmmm.. Can you please tell us why you want to do an MBA?

Aspirant: It's for the money, dude! I heard that MBA guys get paid bucket loads.

Panel: And why do you want to do your MBA at this institution?

Aspirant: I wrote CAT and applied to all institutions in the country. You are one of the few who have called me for an interview.

Panel: So what are your short term and long term goals?

Aspirant:
Short Term: Earn money.
Long Term: Earn more money.

Panel: Which other B-schools have you got interview calls from?

Aspirant: IIM Ahmedabad

Panel: Between us and IIM Ahmedabad, which institute would you choose?

Aspirant: What kind of a question is this? Either you've got no brains, or you've got loads of balls. How can you even ask such a question?

Panel: Which stream would you want to specialize in, if you get in here?

Aspirant: Marketing

Panel: Ok, lets see how good you are at marketing. Sell this pen to us.

Aspirant: I said "I want to specialize in marketing".. That means I suck at it now.. If I was already skilled, why would I want to learn that? Confirmed, you have got no brains..

Panel: Let's say you work for a multinational company. You overhear your manager conveying some sensitive data to some stranger over phone. What would you do?

Aspirant: Record his conversation and blackmail him.

Panel: Tell us one good reason why we should offer you a seat.

Aspirant: I have made you run out of good questions, and now you are trying to throw the onus on me. Is this reason not good enough?

@Other MBA aspirants: Have I missed any sick-to-the-core question? Add on...

Kavidhayae theriyumaa...

"Iraivanidam kaiyaendhungal" endru paadugiraan.

Engalidam kaiyaendhum electric train picchai kaaran.

Tag: Special pic of 2007

The new year dawned in the best possible way for me - to be tagged by my maanaseega blogging-guru PrabhuFerrari! (Ok, technically, he tagged me at the fag end of 2007. But this sounds a whole lot better :) )

Thanks Thalaiva!!

This is what the tag says:

‘All you have to do is select and upload one photo that you have clicked this year that is special to you. Could be anything…aesthetic, technical or personal. Also, put in a short note why it is special’

I'll exploit this opportunity to put up my favos from among the pics I clicked this year before honouring the tag.

Let me begin with "people". I have taken very few pics of people this year, so it has been fairly easy to choose this:

My sis

This pic is special because this was among the first ever shots I clicked when I started controlling camera settings by myself.

Another pic is that of the kids I clicked at Thirumalpur. I spoke about it earlier here.

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Airshow @ Chennai: Sometime in Mar/Apr 2007

I love this one because it took too much of an effort from my side to click this right. These machines were flying way too fast(!!). It was very difficult to keep them within the frame.

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AappiLL

This was among the first "experimental" pics I took with my (then) new Sony DSC H3.

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Thennai Maram

This pic won me a consolation prize in a photography contest judged by Thotta Tharani.

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One more pic that is very close to my heart is that of some crops that I took during my trip to Thirumalpur. That also was put up in the same page I linked to earlier.

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Now, on to my S.P.E.C.I.A.L pic of the year:

Mis-focused flower
(Click on the pic for a bigger version)

Frankly speaking, this was an error in focussing. I should have rightly focussed on the flower. But the focus ended up on the bark of the tree behind. So this pic should have been deleted at once.
But I retained it because it seemed to say:

Whether you choose to focus on the beautiful or on the not-so-beautiful is a matter of your own choice

With my job done, I pass the tag on to Arvind. Hope he shakes up from his slumber soon!

Some photos from a recent trip

Had been to my grandparents' place at Pollachi this week. The tranquil garden around the house offered numerous Sony moments. Some of them...

In retrospect, am not too happy with this pic. There is quite a lot of noise that could possibly divert one's attention from the subject - the leaf. But the coloring effect takes care of that, I guess. BTW, can you think of some interesting caption for this pic?

This one was a very difficult shot. The problem is that when you point your camera at the moon and try to focus, it will simply refuse to obey your command. The moon would appear as a blurry blob. Just try it once for yourself. For that matter, getting the camera to focus on any source of light is a difficult proposition. I got this one by sheer luck :)

And ya, I can never stop clicking flowers on macro.. These damn things look beautiful any way, making our job easier ;)

CATcalls!

I just read this post through a link on Pagalguy. The author has lambasted the IIMs. I could not restrain myself from posting this reply to him. (This actually began as a comment on his blog :) Had to shift the text here in view of the length)

Heyy Kausar.. A very hot article :) But I dont agree with the largest part of it.. My responses to your complaints:

- CAT is flawed: Yes. I agree. In fact, I was directly impacted by this last year. Luckily, this year I went ready for errors in the Qn paper. And I did spot one. So saved some time and tension.

- Standardizing CAT: This would take the sting away from CAT. I believe CAT is a great exam simply because it tests your strategical reasoning powers as well. Standardizing CAT will simply kill it. And as for candidates getting confused, BOSS!! If one is expecting to get into a B-school overpowering 2 lakh other aspirants, he shdn't expect everything to be offered to him on a platter.

- Changing pattern every year: They do it just to make sure that people do not get in simply because they were TRAINED for it. A person's true value will manifest itself, when he is faced with something never-seen-before. The IIMs want only the best of the lot. I believe this is sure one way to do it.

- Intellectual Property rights: He he :) I donno if anyone else has noticed this. But going by how popular CAT is, am sure the IIMs wont take any chance. They would have taken some permission from the original authors. Maybe they did not print that on the Qn papers TO SAVE INK ;)

- Curbing coaching institutions by standardizing CAT: Even if the test becomes standard, coaching institutes will flourish as they do today. It's not abt the test dude.. It's about the B-schools.. Am sure all of us join coaching centers to hit the IIMs.. Not to crack CAT.. We target the IIMs, and the CAT is the route to them.. So we take the CAT.. If it was some other exam, we would still take that exam with due preps, and one means to that is to get professional guidance..

- IIMs should worry about the non-successful ones: Why would they do this? They did not ask 2 lakh people to apply.. They want only those 1500.. Do you think they consciously advertise and call for applicants? Nopes! We are the ones who apply in large numbers.. They simply pick the ones who are best suited for their insti, as per their judgment.. What else can they do?

- CAT should teach something that we can use in our daily life: CAT has taught me so many things: to get on with life without being bogged down by one problem; to pay attention to detail; to analyze and interpret data better; to read actively; to prioritize commitments.

- (234 ^ 234) / 6 :) If you had taken CAT in the right spirit, you would have realized that you don't actually need to tackle these questions.. You do get a whole lot of sitters in CAT too.. Questions at the same level as those in the GMAT (I have taken the GMAT too, so I know).. You can get thru the IIMs by cracking those questions alone.. CAT simply tests if you can identify which one to hit and which one to miss.. With your limited resources (time), how much of your unlimited wants (answering 75 questions) can you satisfy? this is what CAT tests..

- Errata from IIM websites: Sure do project the institutions in poor light.. I am with you in this..

- Minimum criteria for work-ex: As you yourself have stated, this is your personal opinion. But the IIMs know what they are looking for. My logic is this: If the class is full of ppl with experience, then fresh ideas would be missed sorely.. Cos when ppl gather experience, they are actually getting trained in systems.. They fall into a groove.. To think outside of that framework would require herculean efforts.. But that would come naturally to a fresher..

- CAT applicants should serve community for free: The IIMs are B-schools.. They are not NGOs.. Each and every entity has a purpose to focus on.. It would be great if just that purpose is served by that entity.. If we want CAT to impact the society positively, we may as well expect our cars to fly..

If you feel my views are not just, do let me know.. we can discuss further..

Chennaiyil oru mazhaikaalam

I started from office at 7.30 PM yesterday.

And spent the rest of the night going home.

The roads were so flooded, one would think one were in Venice.

And I saw for myself: the Mahindra Scorpio IS truly making waves all over! It succeeded in drenching me knee-downwards at least.

My first voyeur photograph

All Photographers are voyeurs.

We always love to swoop in on unsuspecting insects having a gala time on flowers, and click them in compromising positions without their knowledge, whilst they suck away to glory. Then we release the pictures on the internet and whip up a storm.

But this time around, one of my pics whipped up a storm at home itself.

This was one of those voyeur pics, alright. My first (I've named it Hello_World.jpg). I thought it was a significant milestone in my photographic journey and put it up as my desktop's wallpaper at home. The very idea of a bug sucking the hell/gel out of a flower seemed exotic to my artistic vision.

Ok, maybe it was not a bug.



I still found it exotic.

But alas! When have parents really understood your triggers for excitement?

Mom kept telling me to pull the pic off the desktop, cos she constantly felt the urge to swat the fly off the beautiful flower.

And Dad tried hard to make me realize how revolting he found the pic to be. He kept complaining of nausea until I relented eventually.

This blog-post is an appeal to all parents in the world to understand the importance of the house-fly:

1) It is the ONLY creature in the world to be called "house-fly" (I am sure of this)
2) The name itself is interesting, giving rise to such great pieces of jokes such as this:
"A: I saw a house-fly.
B: Oh.. Maybe the building was strong and the basement, weak"
3) This is a dummy point, without any content. If someone skims through this list without reading consciously, I want him/her to believe that I have written a lot more than I actually have.
4) Last, but farthest from the least: It is the only THING to have stayed put while I clicked a pic. And I have proof.
Just have a look at the pic of a pug doll below.


It was a freaking non-living thing! And still it chose to shake instead of saying cheese. (Maybe it was still under contract with Hutch and was trying to follow my cam lens wherever it went. Who moved his cheese?!)

Proof no. 2:


Would you believe me if I told you this was a LAMP POST? No, right? Ok am not telling you anything about this pic.

NOW, Mom and Dad. Counter this :-|