Biking to Bidar

This post comes a bit late, not due to the delay in getting snaps developed, but because I've been caught in a whirlwhind of Term-2 activity. Well, as the saying goes, better late than never...

We got a term break of five days after our exams last term. I dare say I've made the most of it. First up, I took a train to Vizag to attend Suresh's wedding. Met up with a few people from my previous job.

The day I returned, I packed my bags again as Disco (aka Sumit), Kanika, Tuhin & I headed out for Bidar - by motorcycles. We started off under the cool summer afternoon sun, hit the road to Panjagutta, Begumpet and then reached the highway. Realised after five minutes it was the wrong highway, turned back, hit the road to the correct highway. Finally, we reached the major landmark of Kotpally. Crossed the place, and took our first break for sometime.

A few kilometres later, we came up to an intersection that read "Gachibowli - 5kms left" (Gachibowli is where the ISB campus is located). We'd covered about 35kms of Hyderabad's roads to reach the highway that was right next door :-( Cursing our maps and our map-reader, mostly the map-reader, we trudged along. Stopped for lunch at Sangareddy and hit the road again. The breaks we took were fun, with papayas falling and some people resorting to Tarzan-line antics.

The empty road

in a field we invaded

the falling papayas

Kan-kan playing Tarzan, er.. Jane?

We reached Bidar at around six in the evening. Didn't do much for the rest of the day.. there was dinner at good old Kamat and the opening game of the World Cup.

The next day, we spent about an hour (maybe more) at the Rangeen Mahal of the Bidar Fort. The Rangeen Mahal has lots of intricate designs made by Persian artisans using Mother of Pearl We spent a good deal of time exploring photo-ops in the rest of the fort. There was the solah-khamba masjid with a lawn that's been surprisingly well-maintained.

The roof of a chamber in Rangeen Mahal

In front of the solah-khamba masjid

We headed for Ashtoor afterwards, eight tombs stand tall, but one of them is in a peculiar run-down state. I'm surprised how it still stands.




Our last place of visit was the sacred Nanak Jheera. Legend has it that Guru Nanak came to parched Bidar, moved a few rocks with his feet, and a stream flowed. We wrapped up our trip of Nanak Jheera with lunch at a Punjabi dhaba.

The return to Hyd was pretty uneventful, but with more photo-ops for us. Here are some more snaps from our trip. There are more I've put up on flickr.

The Sun peeps through the clouds..

Tuhin shooting Chiranth shooting Tuhin shooting Chiranth .. ad infinitum


ek, do, teen, chaar

L to R: I, Tuhin, Disco

p.s. The snaps that look brighter and have the date printed on the bottom right corner have been shot off Kanika's camera. The studio made a big fiasco with my snaps when they developed 'em. They scanned the print copies instead of getting the images directly off the negatives :-(

update: I've done what I could using Picasa.. let's hope my snaps look better now.

Time to unwind...

... in a few hours.

Our first term at ISB comes to an end tomorrow. We've got our final two papers - Statistics & Marketing. We had two of them today - Accounting & Economics.

Both the exams we had today were open book. But they were two very different species of open book exams. Accounting was a good one - given a question, one could figure out which part of the prof's handouts one needed to look in to. Economics, on the other hand, was a disaster.. half way into the exam, I closed down all my notes (there weren't many) - their presence added a zero value to my performance.

I hope tomorrow's papers are a little easier on our poor mortal souls.

There's going to be some serious partying by my classmates tomorrow evening. Unluckily for me, I'd be missing all of that as I've a train to catch in the evening. I'd be travelling to Kakinada and from there to Vishakapatnam to attend a wedding. I'd be cut off from the Internet for the next few days. So, if any of you are expecting an e-mail from me, you'd have to wait for a while.

Logging off!

loooong day

I can hear the peacocks screaming somewhere. Having taken over the traditional job of the rooster, they're announcing the arrival of a brand new day. For some people in section C, group 8, it's the end of a day, a long one at that. And for one person within that group, it's two days merging into one.

Yeah, my guess was right. I do sound a bit incoherent after an all-nighter on an assignment. Anyway, the good news is that the Economics assignment is done. After a lot of haggling, I finally set the price of SOMA at $0.77. God knows how I did it, but Ashraf tells me that my procedure was something known as the Monte Carlo method. Really? All I did was run some data through some formulae on a spreadsheet. Never mind, I'll take Ashraf's word for it.

Now the not-so-good news. Today's the last day of term 1 - excluding the exams, that is. We've already bid farewell to Prof Finn yesterday. And today we bid farewell to Prof Vohra & Prof Waterman. Seems like yesterday these profs came in for their first class. Don't know anyone who's come to grips with how soon this term's flown by. If I multiply this by eight, I'd complete my course here in eight flashes. Or eight winks.

I sometimes go through great trouble trying to stay awake in class. Having been awake through the night, I think my troubles just rose exponentially. Let's see how it turns out. Oh and to think of the impending deadline for the Accounting assignment...

50 more minutes, and it'll be time for breakfast :-)

Hsss....

A few weeks back, a brown snake came visiting our Student Village. It'd probably lost its path on the way or something, and it found itself sitting near the stairs of Arjun's quad.

It soon met its death at the hands of the security chaps, turning soon into a mangle of flesh.

Snake in coiled posture

Snake's demise

ISB's pretty rich in wildlife. In fact, if one gets lucky, one might see the whole food pyramid in operation. First, you've got the insects. Then, you have the frogs - and mighty huge ones, too. Some of the frogs here measure up to five inches wide. Then follow the snakes. Finally, you have the peacocks. I'd love to capture a peacock devouring a snake here.. it'd be a darned good shot to take.

sleep - where art thou?

• Rohm & Haas for Marketing
• The weekly quiz for Accounting
• An assignment on Economics
• Reading material on stats

I'm suffering from a serious lack of sleep...

Pink Papers

At about 8:15 in the morning, I opened the door to head to the dining hall for a breakfast. I was speaking to one of my quaddies at the time, and wasn't looking outside the front door. I'd just held the door open and my hand touched something on the outside of the door. For a moment, I thought it was a lizard - there are quite a few of them here on campus, some of them quite colourful. I looked back, a bit startled.. and there it was. A pink paper stuck to the door handle.

A week into ISB, someone (I don't remember who) asked me at lunch (or maybe it was breakfast), "Have you started reading the pink papers yet?" My facial expression quickly transformed to one betraying all of my ignorance. "What's a pink paper?", I asked. "The Economic Times, The Financial Times!", came the reply. I could never make sense of ET & FT all these years, and I don't expect it to start making sense now, just because I'm in a b-school. But maybe some day it will. And I hope that "some day" is within the next 10-11 months.

Anyway, people around me are trying to read stuff. And I've not even figured out where to start my reading - academic or otherwise. I hope some inpiration to read rubs off on me soon.

Go, fetch!!

A few days back, some of us decided to form a new club at ISB - the water polo club. Unfortunately, we never swam in that direction. Until today.

Finding ourselves in the pool at six in the evening, we decided to play water polo. As enlightened about the rules of water polo as we are about accountancy, it turned out to be a game of catch-the-ball-if-you-can. Thanks to some real long throws by Sushim & Tuhin, it felt more like a game of Water Dog, with the thrower screaming "Go, fetch!!" Yeah, Stuti's short throws altered the scream to a "Come, fetch" :-)

Anyway, it was fun.. hope to play again sometime over the weekend.

Five MFH Words

Five MFH words at ISB (in no particular order)

1. McKinsey
2. Placements
3. Consultancy
4. Career
   
5. Perspective

p.s. MFH = Most Frequently Heard

First post from ISB

Eight days, four parties (one of them starting at one in the night), innumerable gyaan sessions from our seniors, one lecture from a prof.. it's been a very sleepless start here at ISB. Can't wait to see how the year unfolds.

My pre-term course starts on Wendesday, so I have some time to breathe today, tomorrow and day after. Let's see how it turns out.

Saturday != Saturday

This saturday was quite different from my usual saturdays. For one, it didn't feel like a weekend at all. Typically, Saturdays mornings involve the following conversation with my Mum.

Mum: Chiru! eddelu, hanneradu ghante aayitu! (Chiru! wake up, it's 12 o'clock!)
Me : zzzzz
Mum: Chiru! Chiru!
Me : umm? hmm.. zzzzz

Well, you get the general state of affairs.

Today was a much different story. Having been off-work for a week, I didn't even realise it was a Saturday. And I woke up at 10:20, really, really early for a Saturday. Considering that I slept at 4:00 last night, it felt quite strange to be up that early. Well, before you start applauding at my Saturday feat, I must warn you that it was a phone call that woke me up. Vinod wanted to ask me how much time was left for him to fill up ISB's ELP survey. I must've mumbled an incoherent reply, for he was soon saying "OK, go back to your sleep". But the reverse happened - I woke up.

An hour later, I was at our bank (this is the third day this week I've found myself at the bank), trying to get hold of a statement of something. A few hours later, I was catching up on some much needed sleep. Sleep done, I pulled my suitcases and bags out. Didn't start packing - it's too early, but I just got the stuff out. It's still not hit me that I'd be in a different city a week from now. And considering the number of things I need to do before I leave Blr, I'm surely taking things very lightly.

Well, evening was more of the lemonade game.. looks like I'm getting very addicted to it. Latest news on the lemonade scene is that Sharad has managed a profit of $125. Put up a screenshot, mate!

I'm about to end the day with more lemonade with a dash of Freakonomics. Good night.

The Lemonade Stand

The details of the Lemonade Stand simulator game are on Manu's blog, and here's how I fared at it.


If you'd like to comment, please do it here

Update (10 April 2006): I've deleted my previous updates and have now posted only my best score - a profit of $114.07

My LDAW syndrome

I've been down today. Down, not with the stuff I was down with two weeks back, but down with the Last Day at Work syndrome. Symptoms: hand possesses a page of paper with loads of signatures, face holds a bit of a smile, but the feeling inside is not good.

When I woke up in the morning, I realised it was going to be a long day. I tried to stay in bed as long as I could, but then couldn't sleep beyond half-past-seven. Got ready, had a light breakfast, for my appetite had taken a holiday.

I reached office at around 9:30, very early by my standards. There were a few final tasks that I needed to do before I got start the exit process.. some configuration work. I got that going, and soon walked into the HR area. Was handed a sheet of paper on which I had to get signatures of people from the various departments. Parked the paper aside to take care of after lunch.

Lunch was a quick affair, I don't even recall what I'd eaten.. my appetite still hadn't returned from wherever it'd gone to.

Started the signature thing after lunch.. While that proceeded on a casual course, I ran into a lot of people, some very old faces, some not-so-old, and some brand new. I still can't believe how fast the people in a company can change. You scan your floor one day, and you realise that you don't know half the people who're working there. Then the exit interview.. there wasn't much to that, a few points of honest feedback, and I got my relieving letter.

It has hit me hard that things would be different from now on. That I won't be around the people that I'd grown to be comfortable with.

I guess the LDAW syndrome is now gone - I no longer work in Adea.

Engineer playing accountant

ISB has put up a test where we get rated on our accounting skills. Based on this test, we are told whether or not we need to attend the pre-term course. After my test, the ISB website politely told me, "Your knowledge of Accounting Concepts is not up to the level required for the core courses. It's highly recommended that you enrol for the pre-term module."

Sure, thanks. I knew I'd have to join the accounting pre-term anyway.

Apparently, one of my other classmates recieved a more comic message saying something like "Dude! your skills are hopeless; forget accounting, you can't even count!" The Rhapsodist describes that message in detail along with his experience of the test, which is similar to mine, if I may add.

Loan trouble; nay, speed-post trouble

At around 12 noon, I called up Andhra Bank asking what's happening to my loan application; and it looks like my loan app has not reached them at all. Well, it's been over a week since I sent the thing by Speed Post, but the bank says they haven't seen my application at all.

The Speed Post tracker (yes, it does exist) says that my package's been delivered to the Cyberabad Post Office (where Hi-Tec Towers are located) on 17 March. Well, the Andhra Bank branch is lying somewhere in Hi-Tec towers, the package should have reached them, shouldn't it? Well, there's been a screw-up somewhere.

Thankfully, I decided to call up AB today and not tomorrow, 'cos it's given me enough time to write up another app and send it to AB (the deadline for the apps is the 25th). My app's all done and packaged waiting to go out. And I'm using Blue Dart this time.

Update (01/04/06): The speed-post that I'd sent to Andhra Bank came back on Wednesday. Reason: There is no such person as Mr NR in Andhra Bank, Madhapur branch. Hmm, interesting. I ought to sue Blue Dart then, for delivering my package to a non-existent person.

BTW, my loan-app that I sent through Blue Dart has reached AB, and has been duly processed and approved.

Greasemonkey scripts for Orkut users

I found some orkut-specific Greasemonkey scripts today. I've only tried two scripts so far - the Scrapbook & Album viewer and the My Scrabook Link

gyaan: greasemonkey is an extension for the firefox browser that allows one to modify the behaviour of websites. For instance, by using this script, here's how my visit to dilbert.com looks:

that's right - no pesky ads!


You can find more nifty scripts at www.userscripts.org