Home, People!

After a long time, I made it a point to visit my hometown. Going home is one thing, going to hometown is something else. அது வேறு இது வேறு! You can go and settle down in some city or the other; build a house there, rent, beg, borrow, steal, stay... but hometown is something different! You feel you 'belong' there.

Chennai is big, cool and awesome; but it's not home!

The Royal Game: Fostering friendships, promoting joy!

Welcome back!

It was a surreal Sunday last week (November 9, 2014) at NMIMS for the chess folks. With no games scheduled the previous day, the players got some time off. Scheduling became an issue for Sunday. As is often the case, the ‘cruel’ B-school mails before we close our eyes at night meant that I had to stay awake till 2AM (essentially running into Sunday) to finalize the fixtures for Semi-finals and Finals. With help from ‘sporty’ seniors over Whatsapp, I somehow managed to do so!

‘It’s a B-school; we cannot do everything single-handed!’

The big four teams of the semis were NM Warriors, SP Jain, Sydenhams and KJ Somaiya. The first semi-final of the day was between hosts NM Warriors and SP Jain. The visitors arrived bang on time at 1 PM. This time they reached the correct building without much hassles! After logistical delays, the match started at 1:30 PM at room 507. Fittingly, it was the Council room for the day, and it takes its rightful place in history!

Quite a Sweat in the AC Room!

When someone tells you chess players are punctual, you can believe them. Yes, even in Mumbai!

Almost all the participating men came on time to room 707 in the new building, where the boards were neatly arranged for the royal game to start. Only one team – SP Jain boys, had trouble arriving; they went to 707 in Mithibai building and phoned the author and said “It says School of Business Management and I am in 707! Where are you?” Poor guys, had to explain to them. Their captain, Shyam, spoke in Tamil, I had some old memories :P (Made friends easily with him - yeah, I am a little proud of my mother tongue, so what!) To the action now…

True to the IIM tag, the IIM Indore Mumbai folks were hooked to the books, well, binders – right from around 2 PM. And our stars SP Jain famously arrived to start their head-to-head match at 4:30 PM. The result of this match truly depicts what will happen when one highly enthusiastic bunch of guys meet three people who live with their books – SP Jain blanked IIM-I three games to nil. With that, they were through to the Semi-Finals.

Some things never change!

I am in Mumbai now for MBA. That meant a lot of changes - no Marina beach, no Chennai Tamil, no Tamil, more Hindi (as if SRM wasn't enough!), more celebrations (Dussehra, Ganesh Chaturthi et al.) and some irregular mindless food and sleep habits.

Mumbai is fast guys, I can tell this for sure - it's full of people and there's no idea why they are running so fast with their lives.
'If everyone is running so fast, why there's a lot of traffic jams?
Or is it because they are so fast?' I do not know.

Why we like Chennai Super Kings!

If you are a CSK supporter, you may enjoy this post. If you are neutral, you can read this. If you support some other team, you can try to change after reading this. If you hate CSK or a MI supporter, go away! :)

I can go on and on about why I like CSK. But I will numer them so that I can keep adding! :D

1. No other team has a better cultural colour connect than CSK. Here's the proof! :)

Yellow Fellow!

IT's so gOOd!

p.s. This post is for college freshers only!

Hello Everyone!
Of late, I haven't been so active here! I will give some reasons for it, that's what every one does when he/she (damn you, CAT Grammar!) fails to do something
Getting admission into a premier B-School in India is not so easy. It takes a lot out of you, especially the weekend holidays, Yes, been there. Done that, or not done that, in this case. A weekend in an IT company is a blessing in itself, after all that slogging during the week. But then, I had to go through volumes of English and Math sitting at home or TIME class, all for getting into a top B-school. It's all worth it I guess, after you do get into one!

And that means I will invariably have to leave my current job in this India's most admired company. True. I will miss this. People will say all sorts of things about IT industry, I have not heard them :) I can only share what I have gone through! I don't believe in rumours. You shall not read further if IT field is in no way related to your life, but you may read on just for fun :P

1. I didn't enjoy bench!
It's just a whole waste of time. Reporting every day to the Resource Management Group and not learning anything at all. That too, catching a bus in the hot sun... enough said.
If at all you land up here for more than 60 days, prepare for CAT / GRE / GMAT. The situation is tailor made for this.

Anyway, I was in bench for just 45 days. Then, project!

2. Get into Development!
Let's face it. Developers enjoy the most. Not because it gives lot of onsite opportunities or more challenging; but because you get to work in general shift. You will have life after office! You can travel one hour to home. Sleep well. Just the best life you can get as a fresher in the industry.
Having said that, getting into testing or maintenance or prod support is not the end of the world. Get a house nearby to office and work for 10 hours or night shifts or second shifts.
"Life is all about adjustments - divide and rule!"

Do coding!

3. Life's fantastic in IT
If some one tells you IT is boring, don't believe them. What isn't boring in life anyway?
Performance in the beginning matters. Then you can get things in control. 9 to 6 job in one week, 8 to 5 in the next, 10 or 11 to 8... mix it up. Don't do the same things. It's up to us to make it lively, don't blame the system like you-know-who!
Don't bunk Fridays - they are the best days in office. Some people make the best use of it to make life entertaining for us ;)
Get some nice team-mates.

4. Appraisal season - become a theist
You can dig the rivers and drain the ponds, but you cannot get a good appraisal rating or band or bucket or whatever metric your company follows. Employees hate it; employers hate it. But it exists. Don't facebook it, face fact. Just pray.

If satisfaction = true
     stay
Else
     leave
End If

Yes, I worked in Visual Basic .NET!

5. Training period - College life upgraded!
Of course you learn a lot. But this is the best period you can get. At least in a few CMM Level 5 companies. After training, you get a lot of responsibilities, but here you are treated just like a student so it's just fAWESOME!
You get to meet schoolmates and collegemates all in one place. Well, IT companies are well populated and India is over populated. Surely you will bump into people.

6. KT
Abbreviates to Knowledge Transfer. It blesseth him that gives and her that takes!
Be all ears. "Thozil kathukonga!"

Okay, tell me more!

7. Get allocation
If you are not allocated, fight for allocation. If nothing happening, leave the project. Don't sit and work for free.

8. Follow your company timings
Work for 9 hours only (or whatever hours your company pays you for). Not a little more, not a little less.
"Companies are good, rules are good,
it's the people that make them good or bad"
 We were fortunate to get a wonderful trainer in our training period. He said these words which I will remember for a long long time "Who gave you permission to sit after work hours?"
Indeed! Coming on time to work is important, leaving on time is even more important. Don't bend your work hours like Beckham, and tweet about your organization.

Have fun!

9. Use company transport if applicable to you
This is where you meet people who can, well, you know... Just go for it. Could be life-changing!

10. Live SEVEN days a week!
I say it again. One week has seven days, not two.

Sorry about the huge dose of textbook stuff. Yeah, I heard a lot of noise, so this was my time to make some! You say something about IT once more, I am here for you!

Until next time,
Happy Summer!

ak

Vada Pav!

Vada Pav – Poyayov! First hand report...

So much for the VadaPav! Okay, I agree, Mumbai is cool. The beaches are nice, B-schools better, people (you know what I mean) best! :) For some reason, for locals, VadaPav tops everything else! At least, that's how I feel.

I wanted to taste one of those. But I didn’t. End of story, at least for now.

I went in Mumbai by train. Like every Indian, after 10 hours in train, I started talking to the nearest passengers, can’t help it. It just happens. Two jains – who came to Chennai on a business visit; one malayali – settled now in Chennai, going for work purpose to Mumbai; two more guys – one surely Bengali and the other one is surely Mumbai. And yeah, all male. (Damn you, IRCTC) Why am I mentioning all this? Because corporate world’s favorite word is ‘takeaway’, even though the so-called takeaways are forgotten in no time! Here are my takeaways – it’s not a big deal if I continue to not know Hindi in Mumbai, they don’t talk in Hindi much anyway (that’s a great thing to hear); there’s no problem for Vegetarian food (most of them are Jains, and they don’t even eat potatoes you see! That means, I won’t have a big problem. They also said Jains make Mumbai – doesn’t matter, there’s a fair amount of Vegetarian population!); I got the Mumbai guy’s phone number (networking); my would-be university was by far the most popular among the Mumbai-common-man (that was quite heartening); that’s enough.

Next night, I was waiting to board my return bus to Chennai. This is when the ‘real’ Mumbai slaps you on the face!
Boarding point – Sion Circle.
Bus time – around 8.30 PM
Apparently, this is one of the busiest places for long distance buses. ‘So?’, I thought… every place that has a long distance bus boarding point is busy. But no, this is Mumbai.
“Mumbai has lot of multi-storey buildings; why Chennai doesn’t have?” “Because there is SPACE in Chennai” – this was my reply during the train journey. The depth of the answer was right in front of my eyes now. The buses were not moving. I was hungry. My bus did not reach. I texted my friend who boarded in Bisleri. “7.40 it started”, I got the reply.

I waited, texted him and waited.
I waited, texted him and waited.(switched on GPS)
I waited, texted him and waited. (Got hungry)
In between, I saw many vada-pavs on my side, a man with a guitar, a band playing loud music (this does NOT happen in Chennai, I wish it happens! :D), a foreign couple (okay, not sure, man and woman) waiting for a similar bus, one passenger spitting from a bus window (little far from me!) and more traffic. You need a lot of patience, tolerance and more patience to wait in such an atmosphere. The noise and traffic are just maddening. You cannot see a vacant spot in your eye range. Frightening. The Kathiparas, Vadapalanis and OMRs are NO match for this. This is by far the best (READ: worst) traffic, at least I have seen. That too, when I am ‘not’ travelling.

Finally the bus arrived. And my friend had VadaPav. Apparently, no recession or inflation has affected the prices of VadaPav. Forget the Big Mac Index, you really need a VadaPav index!
And I have not yet experienced much, the Mumbai local trains. What about the buses? Anything rectangle in shape with wheels is a bus here, I think – the one striking difference compared to the ‘classy’ buses in Chennai and Bangalore, and whenever I saw them, I found them crowded. I am a theist, God save me! :)

How will I manage two (or more) years here? Surely, there will be other things to compensate (with counterplay!) for these! Education, Fun, G_, H_, I___ and what not! Amchi Mumbai! :)