LOT MANY THINGS HAVE HAPPENED.....

I cant classify this as a hiatus but I am deinitely writing this post after a gap of some days to say in the least............So much has happened in the last week..........After Padmanabhan's caustic remarks last week, I had decided that it would always be only 8 hours for me in the office........Not even a second more............So since then, I have made it a point to dash out of the office incognito on time............I try to remain as inconspicuous as possible.......I try not to attract as unnecessary attention as possible so that I dont have distractions to disturb my mind and I can focus roperly on what is to be stacked and stored in my life for the days to come.........Anyways, I was waiting for last tuesday with bated breath...........Why????? Because CAT results were going to be out that day...........Not that I expected some phenomenal result..........I think non-geniuses like me should not expect phenomenal results with a total of at best 12 hours of efforts put in for an exam where 1600 odd students battle it out for a single hallowed seat in one of the institutes of their dreams...............I am more than happy with my 94.38 percentile this time..........Quants screwed me as expected this time.............I could only manage a gut-wrenching 71 odd percentile............Even VA was not superbly excellent with a 93.94 percentile.......and could score 95.07 percentile in DI/LR...........But all of it simply makes me feel good.............feel confident.........Figure this out............12 hours of labour supposedly amount to 94.38 percentile.............Then imagine what an intensive dedication of 891 hours should do.............including mock tests..................Dont try the unitary method here............it will of course be futile.............people have achieved better though although I dont think anybody from the 2003-07 batch of NIT RKL has managed an IIM call...........Juniors have definitely shown though with 2 BLACKI..........and some more with 2 or even a single call..........Assume that I enter an IIM in the next year, I would be their junior and pass out after them...........A irony probably...........After the week dragged on, I waited again for Friday, spent 3 restless hours in the office, jumped onto the Air Deccan flight DN-765 or 766, I am not quite sure and reached home friday night...........Man, that was pure BLISS...............Gotta sleep now...............too too tired.............

THIS WEEKEND.....

After a painfully slow and boring week at the office, weekend finally arrived........I say it as a painfully slow and boring week because unlike the previous days, nothing has been happening in the project that involves either me or any of the ELTps for that matter.........I was simply waiting for Friday to end so that I could set foot home.........not because I had anything better to do there but because I am sick of this office, the people here, the environment and heck, even my cubicle........Minutes of meticulous planning and devious thoughts regarding how to avoid Padmanabhan's attention did not quite pay off as he caught me just when I was on my out........My fault, I sat down in the pantry to hang on to the latest issue of the TOI..........But thank God, his attention was diverted and I made my way out gleefully.............Friday night, in the house with only a 15-inches TV and a dumb idiot as a companion did not feel all that pathetic thanks to my honey............Saturday morning did not even allow me to complete my sleep and amongst the various duties that included closing the door after Swapneel left for the exam and then home directly from thereon, switching on the pump, switching off the pump, throwing the garbage out( and being on the receiving end of neighbours for throwing the garbage out in the empty plot in the front and inviting the dogs that shout), washing clothes (including jeans...........the only time that someone can actually curse Levi Strauss), I finally got ready to drag myself to Kormangala.......without a bath for some reasons even I am not very sure of.............I had two things in mind........meet Bhaskar so that I could burn CDs with the college and department pics to show them to my love (even she should have a glimpse of the glorious life his husband and brother-in-law have experienced first-hand) and then go off to the IMS center there to know about the Correspondence courses they provide............Standing in the partial-sun-partial-shade of the SBI ATM at Marathalli, I did not know what to shout at...........the indefinitely long queue or the clouds that had just been mocking at me by exposing the sun they had so cautiously hidden behind them............had a south indian lunch...........so predicatable.............The guy at the IMS center did nothing to clear my doubts regarding the correspondence course..........rather he kept on trying to sell their full classroom course that costs around three times more and which I dont think I can manage considering my work load here at IBM and I will end up missing all the classes...........Then, I did the terrible mistake of going into the Forum with money in my wallet..........ended up buying the Lord of the Rings book and gifts for mom and dad............After I came home, I had nothing left with me other than to eat and sleep..................Sunday morning and Nana called up to inquire if I was coming to their place..........Rushed through the morning not wanting to be late and more importantly not wanting to be hungry for long, I gave the washing clothes part a miss.............after a gruelling journey of around 2 hours, waiting for Theku to turn up even after repeated requests to be on time considering the fact that I was really hungry and ready to faint any moment, confusions about where both of us were supposed to meet, quarrels with the errant autowallahs we reached Nana's place finally...........A very very heavy and comely lunch later, I was burning CDs again...........Seeing Nana's peace of life, I really want to settle down to all that but again...........I remind myself that its still not time yet.......A lot of things are still left to be achieved..........a lot of promises are still to be fulfilled........A lot happier life for me, my parents, my love is guarenteed if I toil for four years more with my sincerest devotion possible..........After three bus journeys, I finally reached home, withdrew money again after walikng for another kilometer or so, shared my day with my honey and dozed off..................Although the weekend was tiring that included around eight hours of bus journey, it was still a welcome change from the monotony............And yes, I forgot to mention, I am opening a Demat Acccount the next month and I will be investing in the share market inspired by Bhaskar and the tidy sum he is earning from the Share Market.......He offered to help me invest my money for me if I give him a percentage share but I want to delve into it myself and learn the intricacies myself so that it will equip me better...........isn't it??????? And by the way, CAT had taken a back seat during the weekend but the determination again resurfaced as soon as I set my foot in the office.............It always does and it should..............

A PASSION….AN OBSESSION…..

The time: November 2006…… The place: National Institute of Technology, Rourkela……People of our batch in the final year of the engineering days……….and so was I………..During the time of my counseling, I had got into Ceramic Engineering at the institute not into Metallurgy and Material Sciences Engineering since I felt that the prospects for an MS degree in Ceramic Engineering were definitely better since the competition was but of course less………..Then I changed my branch to Chemical Engineering………..But getting back to November 2006 again……….Since we were in the final year of our degrees, hordes of people out there were pulling the place down saying they were preparing for CAT……….I had already gone through the dilemma of whether a CAT, GATE or a GRE………….GRE dreams had died down since long because of the practical problems associated with it…………Lots of useless financial strain for simply enabling myself to get an MS…………and talking about GATE, I wasn’t simply able to motivate myself for it…………May be because in the deepest corner of my heart, I felt I was personally not cut-out to make myself stable in the revered field of Chemical Engineering……….So that left the CAT with me……….I remember dad urging me to sit for the CAT…………He said, I will pay you the fees for the exam……….Just sit for it dude……….Don’t let the year slip out of your hands…….Just sit for it as a practice attempt…………..Now I feel that may be I should have listened to him…………I have always repented whenever I don’t listen to him but I still don’t stop doing that……………..anyways…………my justification was, I don’t want to sit for some exam for which I hadn’t prepared in the slightest bit………..I seriously felt I could not have done justice to the exam…………I enjoyed the final year in the college……….and the only thing that was on my mind then was to get into a job, take a break from studies for a year, come back fresh armed with enough preparation to be able to do justice to the exam…………This was all going well, albeit I must add shamelessly that the preparation was almost again tending to be a big zilch…………Fun and frolic with friends, booze parties, time with my girl friend, the joy of getting paid while on bench was really taking a heavy toll on my focused preparation…………Then came the time of the relocation…….sometimes I really feel thankful for that………….Almost immediately setting foot in Bangalore, there was CAT 2007………..This time I had decided to sit for the exam just to prepare myself for CAT 2008……….. I just wanted to know my strengths, weaknesses, and most importantly, I wanted to gauge the correlation between the efforts I had put in totally that year with the percentile I was able to achieve………although I again must admit shamelessly that the total hours I had put in counted to a meagerly 12 hours…………which was like laughable……….Anyways, it was during that time that I joined PaGaLgUy……….and have been following it religiously………..my pagal quotient although came out to be a decent 74%...........This is the year I feel the maximum motivation for CAT……….Yesterday, I was going through a thread in PG that described how people have made it into their dream destinations for an MBA…………After a lot of posts, I was like “WOW”……..Since yesterday, I have been harboring a silent aim to write in that thread someday……….What always matters in a race is the focus…….focus on the end of the race……..focus on emerging out the winner and nothing less than that……..and you know what……that particular thread has motivated me like nothing ever has…………The struggles, tribulations, the determination, the words, the blogs all show that CAT is not just an exam………it is definitely a way of life just like AOE or even CS for that matter……….In college, a friend had said me that don’t do an MBA for the money…………Do it if you really want it………I hadn’t quite taken his words seriously………..For me, it had been just the money then………….But now I realize, that guy had been feeling what I am feeling now some months earlier………..This is really the first time in my life that the want to achieve something has got so ingrained into my psyche that I am ready to burn myself just for that one chance…………It no longer is the money or the education or the competition or the fact that I want to prove my colleagues that I am a lot better than them that is the motivating factor…………In fact I don’t know what is……..But there is something that I want to prove to myself………..During the time of some of the previous posts, I had said that my MBA will be for the people I hate as well as for the people I love but you know what………..It no longer is that anymore not for my Dad, or my Mom or my Love or Deba Bhai for that matter…………Its seriously something I want to do just for myself…………For proving to myself that I am a star………….not necessarily a genius or anything but definitely capable of setting a goal and achieving it…………I never had done that earlier in my life………..I kept on switching my focus…………desultorily and aimlessly moving on………..almost like wasting my life, getting satisfied with whatever life gave me…….I had never set goals, never made my own way, never had I forced life to give me what I wanted……it was almost like a hollow existence ( Papa I do realize the significance of your words now and I am sorry for almost never having listened to you……You are so right always)………….but now I have a goal…………and you know something else……… I have already seen an almost magnificent engineering life and now I want to see another sort of a magnificent life again………..Its something that I owe myself…………Its something that really has got into my psyche this time………..There really is something about this thing that makes falling in love with it indispensable…………During my +2 days, I remember studying was a sort of compulsion……..My dreams and aims had to be forced onto me by my parents……….God I was such an imbecile then………..Wish I could have shown even a bit more of a conviction and strength then……….You know what, CAT is already making me feel a lot grown-up than I ever was……There is definitely some magic in this thing…….It has really shown me facets of myself I was totally ignorant about or may be I was too lazy to see them……I don’t know how, when and why I fell in love with it but I am definitely starting to enjoy the preparation now………..In fact this is almost the first time in my life that I am, in fact, looking forward to a certain exam, preparing for some exam because I seriously want to, setting up a goal without someone else defining the guidelines for me………….Like they say, there has always got to be a first time in everyone’s life…………….. And yes……mark my words…….someday I will be writing about my journey on that PaGaLgUy thread definitely………….someday I will for sure……………

A NEW DAWN RISES……..

I am writing this blog on the first day of 2008……..Although the start of this year has been nothing worth reporting, I mean nothing has happened till now that can be ideally classified as a “celebration”, except the fact that I am back from the office within two hours from my stepping into it and now I am watching “Hadh Kar Di Aapne” for the 124563rd time……….but then this year has definitely started for me with a lot of enthusiasm and determination definitely………..I feel there always comes a phase in a man’s life when he needs to step up to the many challenges life plans to throw up at him and face it like a man…………when he realizes that he is sick of the mundane life dragging around him and he decides that it his high time that he should buckle up and do at least something to set things right…………set things the way he wants things to be……….step up on the gas, push himself to the extreme, do whatever it may take to not only fulfill his aspirations but also earn the respect of the people around him………….I believe that I am passing through a similar phase just as I am setting my foot into the new year……………It is arguably the first time that I am so geared up to do something with my life that I am really revving myself up to the challenge…….…….During the last few days, I have shown my parents and my honey a lot of dreams, a lot of hopes and now stepping back for me can just be classified as cowardice…………and being tagged a “coward” for the rest of my life is the last thing I want to live with………People around me have a lot of trust in me and I simply can not afford to break that trust………….and u know what, they definitely just want the best for me…………and if I have to work just a bit harder for this win-win situation for both myself and the people around me, I am really ready to slog my ass off………There were a very few people at the office today………….but something I saw at the office today just set me thinking………..Hardly 5-10% of the total junta had turned up………but still there was one guy, Jawahar by name, slogging out on his machine……….Here was a guy who always reaches office before time, gets out of his cubicle only to have his food, always works a lot, stays late nights, comes to the office in the early mornings and here he was on the new year’s day earlier than almost all the others and while the rest of the public were chilling out, he was fervently checking the ROL application………..I seriously believe that these kind of people have no lives……….I guarantee that his wife must have run off with some other charming guy who knows how to live life…….may not be king size but at least LIVE………I guarantee that this nerd does not have a life…………..I mean, seriously are such type of people from this planet itself??????? But in fact, his life style is not my problem…………I don’t know why but I had a disturbing thought that some day I may also end up like that if I really stick to whatever it is that I am doing now………nothing but mindless coding………….Last Thursday, almost half of the VISA team was at the training room as usual surfing crap on the internet and we were also there………….By we I mean, me, Deba bhai, Dandu bhai and all………..We were getting ready to leave work early since the BIG exam was the next day……….Arvind and Anil were sitting nearby when we informed Anil about our intentions and I as usual got tensed about the exam and said that all I wanted that I should still be with IBM in 2008…………It was then that both of them remarked that what a big complaining jerk I was………..a big pessimist and stuff like that………..Anil said that at least the others were more open to challenges than me and I was pessimist eternally afraid of life……….. I just wanted to tell them my side of the story but then I kept quiet………..I thought may be my actions will speak for themselves………..Since how many days do those bastards know me as such…………3 months…………That’s not long enough a time to pass judgments on someone…………May be now I realize why Anil had given me a rating of 3 for my “flexibility”…………..I will show them what I am made of…………what I am capable of………..Arvind said that a person can’t be so afraid of things and challenges if he wants to survive in the I.T. world…………My first thoughts were “Who the f*** in fact wants to survive in the I.T. world anyways……….I don’t give a rat’s ass to this place……..And I am man enough to face the challenges and work extra hard without complaining for the dreams I want to follow………….I don’t want to end up as a bunch of losers as you guys………….” Almost all the people I see at work daily are so complacent with their lives, so smug, so self-satisfied and in fact so proud of an IBM tag that I really feel sorry for their lack of outlook………….Padmanabhan and me got talking the other day and I was just telling him about my dreams of a satisfactory job, a hefty paycheck and stuff like that……….I said him that nothing in this world is ever possible with a mere 20K per month paycheck………..He said “Common man u guys are getting way much more than I was getting back at your age……almost 5 years ago………”…Again my first thought was………”Dude, that’s none of my problem…….Its not my fault that you think that you were underpaid back then…….”…..I said him….” Do you know my friends are at Microsoft earning around thrice that I am managing these days………The people who were with me in my tuition are getting paid in dollars, they are in a lot better positions than I am in now…..” His eyes were simply round with shock and disbelief………Almost all of them here are just plain frogs in a well so happy, so satisfied with their pathetic positions in their life that I simply pity them……They think that they are very well-off when in reality, I don’t think they don’t even know what being well-off actually means……Honey once mentioned to me that I am a very intelligent guy………..I had explained to her then that she had actually not seen real intelligent guys………….Guys who just read for a night and topped in their branches, guys who played so much computer games that they had mouse marks on their finger tips after they finished gaming but still got into an IIT and are now at De Shaw earning 9.5 lakhs per annum, guys who just sat quietly in the corner at K. K. Swain’s and could still manage a AIR of 75 in the IIT-JEE exams……Those were geniuses……..There is a very popular saying……..”I may not be the best but I am definitely better than the rest……..that’s what I am………………