Work, Wilde and Demand Supply mismatches

~ Last fortnight, I went with my friends to the Janjira fort and then on to Diveagar beach. We settled for beaches because the hill stations in and around Mumbai, like Mahabaleshwar and Khandala, are highly over rated. I mean they remind me of the girls in engineering. Mediocre at best, but immensely popular due to the unbalanced demand supply equation.

~ I started working from Monday. The first thing I did when I got access to the intra net was to look up the organisational tree. 9 levels till I become CEO!

~ It happened during my internship and now it happened again. New joinees will always get a cubicle where your screen can be viewed by at least 60% of the people working in the office. The only way to get a better place is to wait a year for the next batch of newbies to join. Pretty much reminds me of the debutant who invariably fields at sily mid off!

~ In case you are wondering what I am working as, then I am a credit analyst. Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis' hilarious rendition of the sub prime crisis mentions credit analysts only twice, if I am not mistaken.

"In the investment banking world, credit analysts are the lowest of the low. But the world views them as the lowest of the high."

"The most foolish thing a credit analyst can do is to be the best credit analyst, because frankly no one really cares!"

Don't know how true that is, but with weekends off and a subsidized canteen, I'm taking the job dude! Besides, it doesn't pay too bad either!


~ I had heard of Oscar Wilde before but became a fan in 2008, when I saw the guys tomb in Paris. I mean screw the Eiffel tower and Mona Lisa, Wilde's tomb is easily the best attraction in Paris. It is covered with lipstick and graffiti and the people just love the guy. So I have started reading a lot of Wilde's quotes off late. Here are a couple of not so famous, but really good ones that I just came across.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

~ I went to watch a play yesterday. The Great Raja Master Dance Company. Was a really nice play. Part of the Kala Ghoda Festival. I needed to have something cool to say na when colleagues ask tomorrow ki weekend pe kya kiya? Updating my blog which I force my three closest friends to read, doesn't quite make an impression, does it?

Post Script : New Joinee Tip #1 - You are expected to know the name of your company CEO.

A Conversation

He:

Every time we meet, the picture is complete.
Every time you smile, the feeling is divine.

She:

A glance from you makes the sun shine on me,
Your thought makes me laugh even in a melee.

He:

You are all I ever need to fall in love again.
I knew it from the very start, you are the queen of my heart.

She:

But alas the bus has been missed, it was ten years ago that he and I first kissed. You came along a tad too late, by that time I'd already found my soul mate.

He:

And so I realise that I should move on in life and not whine;
and hope that one day I reach a stage when your happiness becomes mine.

(Not written entirely by me)

Snap Judgement

The Golden Dragon,
Mumbai.

I was just about to dig into my lobster, when I spotted them. Sitting in the corner, overlooking the Arabian sea, they had the best table in the restaurant.

I would have put them as one of the many young couples that form a major chunk of the clintele of the place, but her chooda gave it away.

He played the role of the doting husband to a tee. From folding the napkin and setting it on her lap to reading out the menu to her, he did it all.

For someone like me who is not given into maudlin display of emotions, I found it quite nauseating. I set my gaze to the vast body of water beyond them.

Half way into my dessert, I noticed them get up. Her awkward, fumbling walk told me he wasn't just a caring husband. He was her eyes too.

*Chooda is a kind of bangle that is worn by Punjabi women in the recent weeks after her wedding.

Gini and Goldie

There is this website, which tells you where you sit in the list of the richest people in the world. I entered the annual income of the Francis family and was happy to find that we lie in the top 7% in the world. My joy was short lived when Goldie told me that she was in the top 0.7% of the world! Now Goldie is younger than the youngest Francis (that would be me!) and still earns more than all of us put together! It didn't feel very good. I mean someone whom I have beaten in every semester of engineering, doesn't deserve to earn that much more than us!!

That is when I read about the Gini coefficient. Some background on that. A Gini coefficient of 0, means everyone in a country earns the exact same amount. On the other hand, a Gini coefficient of 100 means that all the wealth of the nation is earned by a single individual. (which made me wonder as to what would be the Gini coefficient of a one individual nation!)

Getting back, countries like Sweden and Denmark have Gini coefficients of 30, the lowest in the spectrum. India on the other hand, like most developing countries has a Gini coefficient of 45. But the catch is that, if you look at the world as a whole, it has a Gini coefficient of 70!

Which goes to tell you that how much you earn doesn't depend on the skills and intellect you possess, but rather on the geography where you work!

There you go Goldie :P

Goldie, is a very eligible Kokanastha Brahmin, currently living the American dream. And she has the memory span of a goldfish!

Hither Thither

~ So I have this 14 day Diwali vacation. And a lot of my friends from college keep asking me as to how I am spending my time. For a person who can sleep 15 hours a day, you really don't need to have a plan on how to spend your 14 day vacation!

~ When I came back home after my third semester, I weighed 78 kilos. That is the leanest I have been in a decade. My mom took it as a personal challenge to get me back to my normal self. 10 days and 8 kilos later, I think she has comfortably won.

~ Diwali has just got over and as has been the trend since the last few years, there was less of noise and more of light this year too. I read somewhere that Diwali is called the festival of light, because that is precisely how your wallet feels after you purchase firecrackers!

~ I went to the opthalmologist to get my eyes tested. Keeping in trend with our inflationary environment, my eye number has also jumped up by 50%. It is at a scary negative 4.50 now! Scary because it reminds me of an incident where a friend of mine turned down a guy she really liked just because he had a negative 6. Can you believe that? Her argument was that since she was a negative 7, their kids would be born blind! Dear reader, such a crazy woman exists and she blogs here

~ I have this free messaging scheme, but on festivals I am charged a buck per message. So in order to circumvent this and still wish people, I send them messages a day early, which reads something like

"I though I'd wish the very special people first, so here goes - Happy Diwali :)"

Capstone Business Simulation Tips

Since it has become fashionable for most B schools to have the Capstone simulation, here are some tips and tricks that might help you to crack the game.

1. Introduce all your new products in year 1 itself.

2. Compete in 3-4 segments only. Don't compete in all 5!

3. Exit the performance segment. The margins are low.

4. Have 3 products in the low segment and time their introduction in such a way that you have a new version in the market, every 4 months.

5. Automate as soon as possible. The ideal automation levels are (10-low, 8-traditional, 7-rest)

6. Use conservative forecasts in the marketing tab and optimistic ones in the production tab. This will help you to not be at the mercy of Big Al.

7. $1400 is all you need to maintain your promotion levels at 100%

8. Spend $5000 per employee on recruitment costs and 80 hours of training, right from the first week itself.

9. In TQM, spend $1500 on each activity for the first three weeks.

10. In labor negotiation, be at the upper end on all aspects. This way you will hurt your competitors the most.

Post Script - If you found these helpful (or otherwise), please click on the ads. It will go a long way in helping me recover my tuition fees! ;)

Post Post Script - My site content is found to be inappropriate by the Google Ads guys. Ya whatever!

The Queen Bee v/s Me

I think it was exactly eleven days back. As per routine, I got up at five thirty in the morning. Around twenty minutes after both my roomies had just gone to sleep. I walked out of my room and to my surprise, or horror rather, there was this huge bee hive that sprung out of nowhere. I'm pretty sure it wasn't there the night before.

This is what I saw



A closer look



It disgusted me. I was once stung by a bee when I was four and the sting lasted for around a week. I immediately ran down to the warden and complained about the bee hive. He gave me the most obscure but irrefutable reason. He told me in chaste Hindi that if he calls the pest control guys, all the bees will die. And that since I don't have the right to give life, I shouldn't have the right to take life as well. He also gave me a lecture on karma and how paap lagega if I kill the bees.

Little did he know that he was speaking to a guy who has had 21 non vegetarian meals a week for most of his life. And so I finally decided to take matters in my own hands. These were my weapons



So for the next few days, with the help of my rolled up newspaper and Chinese fly electricutor, I was smashing and frying bees all day. I used to average around 20 bees a day. My life had got a new purpose. I felt good. It was the queen bee against me and this was one battle I was determined to win.

Until one day when I read that the queen bee lays 3,000 eggs a day.