Category — First Person Stories

For the first time in twenty two years, I have come around to set a new year’s resolution for myself. Not many would know that I’m a very clumsy reader. My attention span, when it comes to reading, is worse than that of a kid. And resilience more fragile than India’s batting order. The worst part about it all is that I enjoy reading. I could do it on most days without batting an eyelid. But like most others of my generation, I’ve never really been able to incentivize/discipline/get myself to read. And it is time to slice through this big ball of lethargy.

Taking inspiration from Prasad Sawant’s post, I resolve to read 25 books in 2012. If I were a sales guy, I would have set my target as 25000 and then fabricated books, stories and excuses to justify meeting 0.01% of my target. But I do not believe too much in inflated targets or futuristic projections. 25 it will be then! An honest attempt. It’d be really nice if I could somehow overshoot this target. And I’m hoping I will. After all, setting modest targets has always been my forte (much to my dismay, I may add). I’ll maintain the list of books on my sidebar and update it after every read.

25 books in 2012 has to happen! A start this is.

Wish me luck!

Dear XAT,

A big thank you for showing me how naive a MBA aspirant I am. I guess you are a bit grumpy as your sub-standard cousin of the feline nature has been hogging the lime-light over the past decade, and you choose this time of the year to strike back at the empire. But I am starting to like you a bit. You comprehensively defeated me today. Not out-witting me with petty constraints like time, or difficulty level, or ambiguity. But, in some way, you defeated my thought process. It just made me realise, that *perhaps* I am a one-trick pony and the way I approach a MBA-type exam is not fool proof. It lacks innovative thinking, and how! Thank you again, for trying indicate that I am still a big ball of sh1t. I will be richer for this experience. If you can spare some time from gloating in your vanity, please do read on.

About a month ago, I took IIFT in the middle of my engineering examinations. Like a brash kid, I woke up from sleep and blindly entered the examination hall without an ounce of any preparation over the week leading into the exam. I got out feeling really happy, because everything in the paper made a lot of sense. A month later, I was attributed a score of 46.06 (which dare I say would have put me in the top 25-50 applicants in the country). A sense of  ”I belong to MBA” started flowing through my veins. And I was pretty much convinced that I had the aptitude for these kind of examinations. That I could walk into an MBA exam and still be on par with people who have slogged their backsides for it.

Mind you, I am not proud of being under-prepared. Far from. Circumstances under which I am working have been very acute over the last two years. And I do not have much room to flex my muscles. I know you are having a wry smirk on your face and are trying to indicate that the situation will get worse once I graduate. But believe me on this one, my case is an outlier. I believe things will get better once I graduate. Not the point.

Similarly, I went in today with little “specialized” preparation, and was found out. Stamping your authority, you bluntly stated that aptitude could not be a substitute for methodical preparation. At least in my case. The reason I feel especially violated is because my “intuitive approach” fell flat on its face today. More often than not, when I see a question which I don’t know how to go about, I innovate, back-substitute, punt and get to the final answer in a way that might not be the most efficient path to reach to the solution. But it works. To cut a long story short, I have a knack of “reaching to an answer” in questions where I ideally shouldn’t. The exact opposite happened today. Forget punting to get to an answer, I couldn’t get to answers that I should have. I felt that my innovativeness was still a couple of notches short. Next time when we meet, I hope to hone my punting skills to a level that you want or better I might just be so well prepared that I won’t need to fall back to street-smartness.

Let me appreciate you specifically on a few questions.

Q.  On 1st March, Timon arrived in a new city and was looking for a place to stay. He met a landlady who offered to rent her apartment at a reasonable price but wanted him to pay rent on a daily basis. Timon had a silver bar of 31 inches, and an inch of the silver bar was equal to one day’s rent. He agreed to pay an inch of the silver bar towards the daily rent. Timon wanted to make the minimum number of pieces of the bar but did not want to pay any advance rent. How many pieces did he make?

5     8     16       20     31

-> I wasted three minutes on this. And gave up. While coming back, within fifteen seconds it all fell into place. Total number of combinations for a n bit binary number = 2^n -1. So 3 bits can represent 0-7. 4 bits 0-15. And hence 5 bits can represent 0-31. So you would just need five pieces of lengths 2^0=1, 2^1=2,2^2=4,2^3=8,2^4=16 and you are done. To make it worse, I am a Computer engineering student and have been doing binary arithmetic for four years now. I know I wasn’t sharp today but again, I love you interpretations of basic systems.

Q. The micromanometer in a certain factory can measure the pressure inside the gas chamber from 1 to 999999 units. Lately, the instrument has not been working properly. The problem is that it always skips the digit 5 and moves directly from 4 to 6. What is the actual pressure inside the gas chamber if the micromanometer shows 3016?

->To be honest, I did not even read this question in the stipulated two hours. After the paper, as I flipped through the pages, it took be fifteen seconds without a pencil in hand:(

Isn’t this a classic case of –

Initially – 0 to 9 all available – base 10 (decimal) system.

Modified case – 0 1 2 3 4 6 7  8 9 – base 9

So you are just asking me- (3016)9  = (?)10. Well it is 3*729+1*9+6=2187+9+6=2202.

Again, good question. Too bad I missed it

Recently, I heard reports that Kapil Sibal is getting anxious at your competency and you might be barred from seducing minds from the next academic year. I pray to God that it does not happen. CAT is of the more docile kind, like the female you would perhaps settle down with. You are the firebrand achiever – one part an intellectual and one part a sultry seductress. Making a choice between the two often proves to be the defining moment of most people’s life. I’m at that crossroads too. But I do hope to meet you again, next year. Otherwise, I’ll be ruing the fact that I botched up the only chance I got at scoring with the most alluring lady in the pack. You can have your bunch of playmates for this year. I’ll be back next year, better prepared for one, sharper too. And I will make an offer that you just won’t be able to resist. Ok. Sorry, I know you hate cliches.

Also, to let you know honey, I always err on the side of caution. And estimate on the dearer side. But to be very frank, I think I’ll miss your criteria by not more than 7-10 marks. And that too when I had a real stinker of a paper. Just imagine what will happen when I am sharp and playing to 80% of my potential. The possibilities are endless

Love,

CGK.

A few summers ago, I remember lazing around on weekends, watching Formula One races with more than just a passing interest. Those were the days when the elder Schumacher was the top dog, Hakinnen and Raikonnen in their McLarens were his key competitors and Minardi used to bring up the rear in almost all races.

Even back then, I had merely a statistical interest in the sport. I never really understood the technicalities involved in setting up a F1 car. Chassis, Traction Control, Automatic Gearbox Transmission, Low Centre of Gravity were just terms that I thought were cool to hear. I was more busy plotting scenarios where “if Kimi won this one, and MSC finished outside the fourth sport, Kimi would have surely sealed the title. Go Mclaren” (I was more of a Mclaren fan, always rooting for the underdog in the title challenge). Steve Slater and Chris Goodwin’s commentary was another highlight of my Formula One watching days.

In one of the races with little or no room for overtaking (perhaps it was Monaco), MSC’s Ferrari was bottled behind a Minardi. And I vividly remember Steve Slater going, “This is one of the most frustrating feelings ever for MSC. A Ferrari being held back by a Minardi.” It was funny, because when I heard it, I thought, with all the horsepower of the Ferrari engine, it must not be too difficult for MSC to overhaul the meandering Minardi.

Schumacher was bottled down behind the slower car for a good 8-10 laps and kept on waiting. He did not do anything outrageously stupid; did not try to cut any corners or have a look at a possible attempt to pass through on the inside at any curve. During the next round of pit stops, he ensured that he put in a couple of really quick laps while the Minardi went into the pit-lane and he emerged ahead of the inferior car after his own pit-stop. I do not remember what happened of MSC at the end of the race, but this duel with an inferior car captured my imagination.

What could have been the possible reasons for the World Champion to have endured those laps of frustration? For one, the race mattered more to him that it did to Minardi, at least as far as the Championship points were concerned. An error in judgment on his part would have had more far-reaching consequences. An attempt to pass on the inside on a curve which was not suited for an overtaking attempt could have sent him crashing into the barriers, thereby ending his race prematurely. Somewhere deep down, the Ferrari management and the driver himself realized that they had bigger battles to fight, and in this case, they had to just toe the line, be a bit disciplined and not do anything stupid.

I say this because I find myself in Ferrari’s shoes for over an year now battling those proverbial Minardis who are blocking my path to the greater good. Sorry to sound a bit haughty, but it’s been that way. Unlike MSC, I have been trying hard to get past the slower car in front of me; trying to cut corners; trying to manufacture something even when there is nothing in store. But slowly realization has dawned, that there are bigger challenges to follow ahead. And for now, it just boils down to “grinning and bearing it” and not doing anything impulsive about it. It is hugely frustrating to say the least, but I have to bide my time, till the next round of pit-stops which is seven months away, which is when I will finally stop attending college. Sigh.

Happiness happened today. Insanity happened today. It’s not very often that I am so content and at peace with myself at twelve in the night. Usually, at this deathly hour, I’d be wallowing in self pity or bothering myself over petty assignments or fallacies of people around me, but today I am super happy. I’d just recap the whole day one moment per line. That’s that!

Morning Chai

Upma

Bath

Second Chai

Half completed acerbic blog post

Photocopy shop

Temple

iDiva

Balaji Wafers, Bingo Mad Angles, Parle Smart Chips

Mint

Vicks Action 500

Priya Ramani – LSD editorial

Gautam Chaturvedi stories

Pratap Kaul stories

Chinmay Kamat stories

IRock

Taj President

Rishkul Kulkarni

Girish Das & Kshemu Desai

Sugar cubes

Quizzing startups

Giri Pickbrain Balsubramanium

Mahatma Gandhi-Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link

Tea

Strawberry Muffins

Cookies

||||| ||||| ||| / 20

Wild Card Round 1

Singapore Airlines

Hyundai

Buzzer Tests

Mike Tests

+12 Characters created for Commonwealth Games 2010

Project Guttenberg. Decent guess. Didn’t work out.

Ricardo Semler. Bad miss.

Pierre Omidyar. Ebay. Shit. Shit. Shit.

iCon Wiley Publications. Bad miss.

-3 Strawberries

+6 Ginger

-3 Tata Elxsi

+6 Ashok Leyland

20th Century Fox. Bad miss.

BMW. Bad miss.

Last question. Nothing to lose.

+12 ITC

35000/-

Tata Crucible bag

FastTrack eyewear

MoserBaer DVD player

Slight Pangs of disappointment – should have won this. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Theobroma

Choco chip brownie *2

Bade Miyan

Baida Roti, Chicken Reshmi Kabab, Chicken Tandoori Kabab

Bagdadi

Butter Chicken * 2, Naan *2, Chicken Biryani, Caramel Custard

Gateway of India

How Roman numerals work ? A quick tutorial by Abhijeet Badrike.

Ice Cream

Haji Ali – Grape Juice

A few moments of disappointment

Sleep in the car

Final goodbyes

Bath

Phonecalls

Mirth

Blogpost

More mirth

And hopefully some sound sleep!

Edit:
Time for some indulgence. I clicked a couple of snaps, thankfully with no animate objects with their tongues sticking out. Below is the heist (Ed: will put it up in a day). Clicked in all its glory. The ‘dream’ was to make the stage at Crucible. Doing well is just the icing on the cake! Yes, National Final would have been nice. But it’s totally cool. You can’t have your cake, get it home delivered and then eat it too, all the time. I would not mind retiring now. Spending the rest of my time telling stories to my grandchildren