Mug

Anyone who has seen the movie 'Office Space' will have noticed Lumbergh walking around and managing with a mug in his hand.



Guess what we were given on the first day, along with books and stationery items? Yeah, a mug, with the insti logo on it. Training to become Lumberghs, eh? We were not given any staplers, let along Red Swingline Staplers. Where do they expect us to find a Milton here?

Pride or Vanity?

I am very reluctant to touch old smelly stuff, but I have to rant somewhere before I receive some more . Over the last five years, coinciding with the increased usage of email in India, some wellmeaning but clueless friends keep on forwarding a couple of emails to me to make feel 'proud' of the achievements of India. If there is anyone reading this, go read those letters first and then come back read my responses.

The first letter gives all those utterly useless crap *ahem* 'trivia'

Can't believe those guys are still falling for that fake email circulating as 'recent study.' It is one thing to be proud of our country but fallacies is not a good sign. This is not to discredit all the things India has achieved.

At the peak of Nalanda University, the world was limited to Japan on the East, and the meditteranean Roman Empire on the west. South was limited to Ceylon and possible Maldives and/or Madagascar. North of India, China was the only region known, not even our closest ally Russia was known at that time. Also remember that 'India' existed only as thousands of small warring kingdoms, so close to 90% of the 10000+ students would have been from within the subcontinent (@ an average of 10 students per country). People would have definitely come from far west and far east to take advantage of the excellent university, just like desi students fly to the western countries and down under.

Sanskrit is indeed the mother of all Modern European languages.

When they say Sanskrit is the most suitable for computers, they talk about the grammar (constructs) and them alone, not the script or vocabulary or stuff like that.

Indians have not invaded a country in 1000 years because they were not a single country then but thousands of kingdoms and a few republics (Yes, the oldest republic is from the sub-continent, that too in lawless Bihar.) It is false to say that 'Indians' never invaded another country. There were thousands of kingdoms were effectively thousands of nations and they were busy, what's the word here?, umm yeah, INVADING EACH OTHER. Ok, if we don't considering 'brothers' fighting as invasion of other countries, it is still false. Cholas were frequently invading and plundering Ceylon, and the Chola Navy invaded some Indonesian islands (Sumatra, I think) and spread Hinduism (and to some extent) Buddhism in S.E. Asia (though Buddhism is more popular there than Hinduism).

Proclaiming "Days are not far off when we Indians, whether in India or otherwise, will be a dominant force to reckon with if not already…. " is just vacant, empty, jingoistic rhetorics, like the rooster shouting from the top of a haystack. Mere feel-good words like these won't help achieve this, only actions.

The second is about India having found the largest diamonds in the world and became the richest country in the world

Jeeesus, what a load of crap! Alot of people had their heartiest laugh in their lifetime because of these guys. Isn't it enough that we have a very bad image outside? Do we need to appear so desperate to show our 'superiority' over the whiteys? The World Bank paying India in instalments? Why hasn't the the USA invaded us yet? The funny part is, I am still receiving this kind of bull. Friends realised this once explained, but some India-based mailing lists still transmit pooh like this.

The third and another funny one is that of a 12th standard student disproving Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

In short, there is no Dr. Massimo Martelli, President of IAP. There is no IQ-meter at the American Embassy in Delhi, There was no Prof. Carl Uppsala, Chairman of the Nobel sub-committee for physics reported in the Times of India. And I am still waiting for that Operating System superior to Microsoft Windows. An Indian scientist disproved Stephen Hawking about that black hole theory he had, but was disgraced first by his Indian colleagues and was kicked into oblivion.

I thought this craze ended by 2002, but it has been almost 2 years here and I am still receiving such 'be-proud-of-yourself' emails. Thankfully, they are making only quarterly appearances nowadays. I think the Indian companies themselves are sending them during their quarterly report time to divert attention from their pathetic performances by making the shareholders 'feel proud.'

Dreams

I have the freakiest of stuff happening in the last few days. Today I was sleeping in the class, heavily, when I felt myself being awake, but could not move any of my limbs. I see the prof walking to and fro in front of me and I hear the stuff he was saying. I try asking my neighbour to wake me up, but only a whisper comes out which is not heared by anyone else. I hear him whisper something to me, but don't know what. I feel my eyelids are half-shut and I open my eyes wide, as wide as possible so that I atleast sleep with my eyes open and the prof could think I am awake. Suddenly, I woke up properly and weird, what the prof said in my sleep and what he is saying now are continuous and his walk is along the same path - from the computer in front of me to the OHP on my right. My eyes hurt very bad as soon as I woke up.

This happened a few weeks earlier also. That time, I was awake (dreamt?) and felt my neck unable to support my head and the heavy head is just flopping about. People do say that my head jerks about a lot when I sleep in the class. I woke up with a very painful neck. Atlast, my dreams are getting as weird as me.
Also, I missed the party here yesterday because I was sleeping very early, after a 38 hours of staying awake. The report about the health care centre project is due in a couple of days. Some heavy firefighting to commence from tomorrow.

38 hours plus

I woke up yesterday moring around 7 o'clock and am still awake now, at 9.30 pm. I have got accustomed to it now. I did not sleep even in the class today; morning 3 hours and evening 3 hours, till 8.15 pm. I felt nauseauted slightly sitting in the class today, watching two other guys make the presentation (nauseated due to lack of sleep, not watching them.) First, I realised that the changes of 15% was in one presentation only, the other had been changed more than 70%. They had to do it as I had just vomited down the case facts in a presentation and asked them to fit one of the three models; they did for all three models. Today morning, I thought I would be presenting a significant part of the presentations when one guy took it completely and the other guy did not want me to present the second one too; reluctantly he let me do a couple of slides. When I completed my part, I could've taken advantage and rambled on further, but stupidly, I let him do it. Anyway, what is done is done and whatever bubbles bubbles up.(I just had to say that *grin*)

Entrepreneurship

Yesterday the classes on entrepreneurship started. The prof is a well known for strategy/entrepreneurship. While every prof has ditched Enron and other kind for their unethical practices, this guy actually supports them. He says they were just taking advantage of the regulatory institutions that were not market-based, that is growing as fast as the industry. While it was all built upon a hype and lies, they attracted talented engineers for the pay and for the illusion of 'value addition' and other management buzzwords. So, he says, they were the best entrepreneurial companies at that time.

He also said something about GE, how the company was growing only at 3-4% and were not adding any value to the stockholder and hence, Jack Welch was correct in laying off some tens of thousands of people. For the sake of the stockholders and the economy, it was a 'sacrifice' to be made and not all were affected, many got jobs in other companies while some perished, as is natural in a capitalistic structure and is a side-effect the country had chosen. Did they get jobs at the same level as before? I think most of them were underemployed. Isn't it waste?, a drag on the economy?. Call me a commie but to raise the returns a few stockholders, was it really necessary to axe all of them at one go? (well, many chops were required). As he truly pointed out, some deadwood will be eliminated in capitalism, but we are talking about people here, not just the employees but families dependent on that employee, children waiting to get into college, sick family members, etc etc. I read a lot of articles about how the top managers got a golden-parachute but the low-end workers and many engineers were kicked out with a soiled boot!

That things aside, we have a case to present today. I had one bad experience previously and did not want to get affected a second time. Another case of 'Murphy's Law', not going to talk about it. I just offered to summarise the readings and the case in two presentations and it turned out it was the whole exercise itself. The other two guys relieved me and started to refine and clean up the presentation. No offense to the people who worked, but they must have changed about 15% of what I had done. Whatever they may say, even if one word is changed in a presentation you did, it hurts! Is it possessiveness or ego? This is not the complete stuff, someone has to present it tomorrow. The last few presentations I made, it was not so bad, this too must go the same way. I can't keep on depending on the team mates to present everytime and me just standing idle. Couldn't sleep tonight after having stayed up till 2 pm and having 2 cups of tea. I just hope I don't sleep in the class tomorrow.