All time favorite joke 1

In keeping with Schumacher, I came across this joke, which is one of my all time favorite political jokes. In fact, knowing that Paul Krugman quoted this joke in one of his articles feels cool. Just the way the joke progresses is real cute. So here goes -

EUROENGLISH - OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF EUROPE
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of Europe, rather than German, which was the other possibilty. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish":In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with " f ". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.By the 4th yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with"z" and "w" with "y". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaing "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leteres. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no more trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!!!! (Und zen ve vil take over ze vorld!!!!!)

My 7 Whys

There is a consulting funda of problem solving called 5-whys. Apparently by the time you ask the fifth why you are at the root cause of a problem. But I have gone a step further in asking my 7 whys! And I know that if I get an answer to at least one why, I will be a lot less wired!!! Seems to be the case with me all the time! Like I've said before, week of exams and submissions, please expect the random rambling post and here it is. So, I wonder

1. Why I always have a dozen things to do and realize that the time I have would just accommodate two tasks?
2. Why is it that I always chance upon a real good article just when I have course work reading running into volumes?
3. Why am I always swamped with work, such that I feel that I am not doing justice to everything?
4. I am here for this one year, to learn, but why do I feel like something is missing?
5. Why do I have so many things happening at once and why do I always need to apply trade off theory?
6. Why do I feel like reading, writing, studying, walking, playing and goodness knows what else, all at once?
7. Why do I always apportion an hour to a task that ends up taking a whole day?

All this while I have been hunting for answers, but so far I've found none. So my quest continues!!!

Will I ever see a snake?

Well, today is Wednesday and so the post must ideally be 'what I saw on Wednesday'. But today's post is going to be on what I did not see on Wednesday or for that matter haven't seen at all. And that what I haven't seen on campus is a snake. Yes, I am fretting for I haven't yet seen a snake on campus. Almost all my batchmates have seen multiple snakes, even some of the exotic kind! But I have seen not even an earthworm! Exchange students who came here a month ago have seen snakes, while I, who have been walking with my eye glued to the ground, hunting, watching, waiting for the slithery creature haven't seen anything longer than a centipede!

Do I feel deprived? Like hell yes! I don't have a snake memory to take back. I run out each time it rains hoping to catch a glimpse at least of the tail of a snake as it slithers into the bushes. But for some reason, the snakes are playing hide and seek with me. Only that they prefer playing hide and don't seek instead!

The other day I heard a song on FM that went like 'Will I ever fall in love and blah blah blah' I don't remember the rest since I was too busy humming along with the tune singing ' Will I ever see a snake, and if I do will it not be a centipede' and by the time I got out of my reverie, the singer on air was singing 'Na na na aye o'. I guess I got my answer... Sigh!!!

One line thought provokers

I don't certify that these are profound existential questions. But these are some random thoughts that keep crossing my mind, every time I get reflective.

1. Why does the mind pursue unrelentlessly an object it cannot have?
2. Why do some people act with animosity towards others, and on purpose cold-shoulder them, but refuse to give reasons about why they act the way they do?
3. Why does one still wonder about such people who bear a grudge they refuse to explain?
4. Why is it so difficult to sever ties with people who you once cared about, but who don't care about you any more?
5. Why is work : reward never = 1:1?
6. Why does hope spring eternal?
7. Why does every low urge one to think that the high is just around the corner, when in reality there is no light at the end of any tunnel?
8. Why is Sub Saharan Africa, the way it is? Isn't the bottom most point of this region called the Cape of Good Hope?
9. Why do I never learn, in spite of multiple lacerations?
10. Why do I always draw a blank, whenever I am in dire need of something to think about?

Born to be free....

It has been nothing short of crazy these past 15 days. You can imagine - (John Zhang's tone is required here - for the uninitiated, Prof Zhang is by and far the best marketing prof I have come across to date, no wonder Wharton rocks!!!)- ok, so you can imagine how much of a grind these past 15 days have been, given the fact that my last post was exactly on the 16th of May. Not meaning to say that my post date is a definitive measure of the degree of busy-ness on campus - I might as well be an outlier, who could perhaps skew your judgement over to the extreme! Don't beat me up, but I just got done with a regressive stats exam, and it kinda seems to show up in my vocabulary big time! In any case, it has not just been me, but almost all of us on campus have been squeezed to the hilt. What with the rude shocks of the mid terms and the sudden 'I am no good' attacks of self pity, only to realize that there was no time for naansense, since a case prep was due in 5 hours!

And then, all the assignments, quizzes, works of modern art (I call case preps works of modern art, since they make sense only to those who write it, or maybe they don't make sense to them either!) gave way to the big E. The end terms. Two days of make or break exams. With 3 days off before the two days of exams, the effort was inversely proportional to the duration of the test! Sunday ended with - 'My intelligence assets not equal to my exam liabilities', since by then we had given up on the notion of the expected value of an MBA versus the effort premium we were putting in, preferring to a great extent the payoff of disutility.

And now, that all of it is over and I perhaps don't need to see a Z statistic or a T stat or an F stat or for that matter any stat, I feel like a huuuuuge burden is off my head. Exams every now and then can be a pain at times, no, sorry, every time. At the same time, though, a small part of me says that one eighth of my time here has drawn to a close. Will time really fly so fast? Must I stop somewhere and enjoy the experience without turning back to see that I have left campus life behind? I don't know. But before I get all too reflective and nostalgic, its time for me to go have dinner with my gang. We're heading out of campus to have some fun, only to head back to the great ISB party circuit. So till the next post (which seems highly probable in the near future since the next set of exams are almost 4 weeks away), adios...
And cheers to being free...........

Random Ramblings

Momentous day indeed. Marked the end of my first test here. And man, I subscribe to the view that people and attitudes change as a function of time and place. When I say that, I mean that people are rather adaptable to situations and move accordingly. Darwin's theory proves itself time and again, by culling out all those who are much too resistant to change. Sounds harsh? Perhaps yes, but more often than not, the culling procedure is pre-empted, since before the axe can act, people change themselves, effectively meandering along the contours of the situation in question.

Sounds too verbose? I guess so. So, let me get to the point. One thing I have seen during my rather tiny time here is the fact that when the situation demands, we can throw in 4-5 days of work with just 5 hours sleep across! And when the situation demands, we can push ourselves to the hilt, without losing control on tempers and moods. Take for instance the ultra tight group assignment. The job needed to be done, and we bloody well did it! 3 days of no sleep, a cappuccino at 3 am, lines and lines of verbose zilch in an exotic dialect, but it got done! And then when it was all over, the 'letting my hair down' was equally if not more intense. We have a day and a half? So be it. Grab a shuttle, head downtown, dine at a new exotic place, go movie hunting, don't find anything worthwhile, head back and hit the parties going on all over the place. Stay till your knees creak and squeal pleading you to please stop. And even then it doesn't end. The heady feeling after stress and tension vaporizes is a feeling that has to be consumed drop by drop. Every minute is a gallon of ambrosia, not to be squandered.

But then, beyond a point, the brain shuts off and you end up writing absolute nonsensical gibberish like what has been written above. Sign - GO TO SLEEP. So off I go to meet with my dreams, before I lose forever the attention of all those really sweet people who take time to come and read my random ramblings......

Microeconomics and my life

George Bernard Shaw once said, " There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it."

Many many years ago, I had a compulsory course in social studies, that entailed a smattering of microeconomics. The course dealt with the usual demand - supply curves, elasticity, price floors, ceilings and the like, that'd generally leave me alternately staring at the floor and the ceiling, dazed, crazed and totally flustered with markets! That was the only time in life, when I actually fell out of love with shopping. I detested the very appearance of shops selling stuff in return for cash - (cash mind you, is only a medium of exchange and hence has no intrinsic value as such - which makes me wonder, why bother about pay scales while hunting for a job!) Anyway, I hated the very term microeconomics and all modalities associated with it. And the funniest thing was that back then, I was quasi communist, without even having heard of Che Guevarra, or Mao thanks purely to the course structure that exalted Marxist principles, with little regard to peoples' economic preferences. Well, if someone was actually paying heed to peoples' economic preferences, I might have chosen against microeconomics back then!

But, back to Mr Shaw. How does he relate to my history with microeconomics?

Simple. Over the past two weeks, I have had the opportunity to learn microeconomics of a different sort. Honest! The minute I heard that Managerial Economics was microeconomics, nightmares of my past rendezvous with the subject came back to haunt me. And I wondered why I could not just stick to macroeconomics, reading about inflation and money supply without having to worry about floors and ceilings. And then I got into class. And that is where I found that microeconomics, when dealt with nicely, actually was my heart's desire! I loved the thought-provoking method in which it was taught. I was stumped to see that we can have a microeconomic explanation to why we were hit by a recession. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I was actually liking what I was learning, and was awestruck by the fact that I was actually applying thought to what I was learning. And full credit to the teacher, who decided to adopt an offbeat approach to the subject. And that is when I realized that over the past so many years, subjects I have loved, have always had awesome teachers - take English or math in school, or eighth grade history - Mrs Sequeira introduced the French Revolution with Marie Antoinette's quote! And now, microeconomics was introduced in an all new dimension by Prof Kapoor.

But today was his last class. And I wonder whether I will continue to love the subject as much, or whether I would encounter the second tragedy - losing the affection for my heart's newly found desire - Microeconomics!

Apart from my story, there was once an episode in one of my favorite shows - One Tree Hill, that actually viewed the interpretation of this quote by each of the show's main characters. I personally loved it in the context of the show, since each character gave his/ her interpretation based on their track on the show. I found the video grab of that section on YouTube. It's right here.

So, till next time - Happy theory of price to you.....

Where has the time gone?

The weather was lovely today. It rained for a bit, bringing down the hideously high temperatures here. And the all too familiar, always-reminiscent though oft-missed, scent of wet mud caught up with me today. At once, the age old thoughts came back, of running to the terrace to get the first drops of rain on my head, running to the window at the first sounds of rain on the ground, trudging home on wet rainy days, and the amaaaaazing feeling of the cup of piping hot filter coffee in my hands, as the rest of me would still be damp and cold, at least psychologically!!!

And that's when I heard a voice call out - 'Assignment, case prep, let's finish dinner soon, so we can get to reading it. Its 30 pages, mind you' Someone screamed from another side - 'Did you see the stuff on the hypothesis testing and confidence intervals?' My confidence took a beating for sure! Here I was, smelling the wet mud, and there were people ona different plane altogether. And I thought, where on earth is my time going? Where am I losing it? Literally? Why was I always pressed for time, day in and day out, in spite of the fact that the grind has not really started as yet. Why is it that I have not had the time to speak to some of my friends? Why is it that I have had to very rudely cut people off mid-conversation, just to go and get some stuff done? Why am I running like crazy, yet realizing ruefully that the pile of pending tasks just keeps growing by the day? Am I the only one, or is someone else around who identifies with my frustrating sense of well... I don't know what!

And tonight, at 11, while walking across to the usual hangout, to discuss the case with my gang as I'd like to call them, I noticed the weather again. I noticed the sound of the dry leaves scraping against the concrete roads. I noticed the wind in my hair, the gentle cool feeling on my feet as I walked by the grass. And then, as if on cue, Davies screamed in my ears -
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Remorseful, guilt-ridden at a wasteful expenditure

So what did I do today? Frankly my dear, I don't know! And that's what really psychs me out. I was up till 4.30 am last night, soliciting a comment that goes like, "Subah saadhey chaar ko koi post likhta hai kya paagalon ki tarah?" So, by a natural progression, my eyes refused to open till around 9.30. Even then, the eyes wouldn't open, but the stomach growled, saying, "Womannnnn you were awake till 4.30 am, and gave me not even a coffee, let alone some luscious brown chocolate cream biscuits that you have in a highly invidious manner stashed away somewhere. GET UP NOW AND FEED ME!" So, out I tumbled, and headed for some breakfast, got back, saw the reminder of my rather lackluster movie (I learnt never to judge a book by its cover / movie by its starcast). And that is where I draw a blank. What of consequence did I do thereafter????? I feel ashamed to say, nothing at all. Random stuff. Picking up some random bits off youtube, some freak pieces of news, chatting with a dozen friends all over the place - I have to aver, INTERNET IS ADDICTIVE. Life was better ages ago, when one had to sit in front of a desktop to connect to the internet, and that meant that you would be away from people making interesting conversation or perhaps the TV even, and mind you, in those days, these factors were deterrents against internet addiction! And, now, anywhere internet, has me ducking in there all the time, lost in the plethora of nonsense! But believe you me, it is awfully addictive.

So, at the end of the day, as I sit back, I don't feel fulfilled, satisfied, since I did nothing of consequence. No reading, no classwork, no movies, no runs, NOTHING! Somewhere I am looking for some approval saying, 'its fine - you are allowed to let one day go completely wasted'. I just feel an awful sense of remorse and guilt, that I let a perfectly normal day go totally unutilized - when there was soooooo much I had been wanting to do. Sigh! I thought I might as well clock some written stuff in here, as my sole point of 'accomplishment' in a day that had better be known as a day that never existed at all.

An introspection - and a profound learning

I have just realized that all these days (till around 4 posts ago) the main spark of my incessant blogging used to be triggers from what I'd see around me - pieces of news, terrorists (of course, they used to hog headlines all the time!),Mumbai (ooooooh I miss it so much), Mumbai traffic (I used to rant about it, but still never missed a chance of driving off in potholed Mumbai). And if nothing else remains, we always had $30,000 worth commodes (John Thain, people - Merill Lynch).

And then I got to thinking - why is it that these days I have absolutely nothing to speak about, except discussing people!!!! Yeah I know - great minds discuss issues and petty minds discuss people. Ok Ok. Don't rub that in! But hopelessly, that adage hit me hard on the face just today!!!! Wish I had realized this a couple of days ago, and perhaps a certain degree of unnecessary, unpleasantness could have been avoided! But the fact remains that beginning from my take on the Southies - where someone almost issued a fatwa on me... (Surprised I am still alive, given that person's clout!!!), I kinda realized a little late, that the reason why I was experimenting with freedom of speech on my rather modest teeny tiny no-one-reads-it-except-me blog, was because of a gross lack of outward leaning perspective! Also within the span of 2 days, I have had two totally disjointed people coming up to me and saying that I generally speak too much (event A), and that the quiet types (event A') are generally very sensible (event B). And over the past one week, I have done a little bit of probability to understand the funda of event A and event A' and the relation to event B and B'. I won't give the conclusion of my hypothesis (called Sindhu's complement hypothesis)that tied the statements directed towards me with the funda of A and A', because I don't really want to.... well, maarofy my own leg with a Kurhaadi! (sheesh, I need to start writing better).

Sounds real profound right? Perhaps not. But how does it matter? It sounds real exotic, and I am sure someday someone will dedicate a wiki page to 'Sindhu's Perspective theory and Complement Hypothesis'. Did I mention that I can write on wikipedia as well? Never mind! That said, I did a lot of introspection (internal research, with myself as my target segment). I found out, as part of my grand study, that I haven't read a newspaper in one week. I haven't seen television over the past week. I don't know the latest gyaan on what Obama is doing or for that matter what anyone is doing. I don't even know the newest movie releasing this week! Man! that is a loss of perspective or what??????

I was just discussing 'Sindhu's Perspective theory and Complement Hypothesis' with a friend this evening, and he said, "Sindhu, get a life. Stop your incessant nonsensical thinking and divert that crooked mind elsewhere. Or else please go sleep. You will be doing humanity a huge favor." So, I decided to make a note to myself. Loads of class reading do not translate into a tight schedule that does not allow you to do stuff you usually did. Everyone around me, manages to find time, to quiz, sing, play the guitar, read, talk, fall in love, fall out of love, blah blah blah. If I cannot find time to do what I like, then who will? And that's when I decided - people centric blog posts shall end starting today. The only person I shall talk about is, well nobody! It's back to thoughts about the greater good of humanity...

At least now, after my declaration, I hope someone other than myself would come over and read my blog!

Of inane displays of ishmartness

The word is arbit. Short for arbitrary. Unfortunately, the term is the shortest part of the phenomenon. Beginning from multi-dimensional displays of a holistic model to basic bassssssssssssic fundamental doubts, the arbit is a show stealer. Its as if old man Kotler got his funde wrong, when he chose to omit a number of pearls of gyaan from his texts and our very own Kotlas and Kotlis were here to dispel the myth that surrounds the surreal world of MAAR KE TING! Honestly, that's what happened to me each time I heard a piece of arbit CP maaroed at the class. A slap on the head that woke me from my reverie, leaving me with a weird tinnnnnnng sound in my head, that sounded more like - whaaa???? where did that come from.

Arbit CP is a given, and we honestly need to thank our fundebaaz arbit CP kings and queens for keeping the 'Spark' alive in class. SMSes zip by - 'Yaar usko mooh bandh karne bol na'. Or 'Consensus - we dunk her into the pool tonight Yes or No'. Plus, we could stay awake, in an afternoon class (hell I haven't had an afternoon class in 5 years!) not in anticipation of the supremely fundoo idea / strategy that was coming our way, but expecting a new funda that we could quote to our great grand children when quizzed what we learnt in business school in our 'zamaana'. Well, I learnt that a 3 D model implies the use of 3 variables and that it is impossible to show more than 3 dimensions on a plane sheet of paper!!!! Wow! key learning indeed! Additionally, post the sessions discussing segmentation, targeting, price points blah blah blah, we have unending discussions discussing faaltooest ACP of the day! In the midst of an incessant deluge of mails that talk of stuff from fighting to running to marketing to consulting (although, given our economy, marketing and consulting would be forced to use skills learnt under fighting and running anyway), the bit on crowning the ACP stud of the day seems truly welcome! Great show Vijeth. Even better are the arguments that follow nominations, clarifying why a nomination is not a nomination of an arbit CP, but rather an expression of uh huh hold your breath - DIVERSITY!!!!!!!

That said, I really want to go hit the sack now. I can't wait for tomorrow, to see what kinds of Random Gyaan can come up when we discuss random variables, probabilities, normal distribution, regression and so on. Given that one of our batchmates has already dropped an atom bomb of wisdom -
Prof: What was regression first used for when it was formulated in the year 18XX?
Student 1: To study relationship between cause and effect… (this was after prof asked the student to be “more specific”)
Student 2: Was it to do something with the East India Company !!! ;)

I think tomorrow is SHOWTIME FOLKS!!!!! Watch this space for more arbit gyaan!!! Uh well, no points for appearing here anyway!

VITALSTATISTIX

The sleepless nights continue, as though forewarning me about the onerous months ahead. Try as I might, by telling myself that I am running on 16 hrs of sleep over the past 5 days, the eyes don't get droopy, save for the times when I am out in the sweltering heat, with no sign of a breeze, or when I am trying my best to learn random stuff like random variables and their probability distributions! Yeah, look at the randomness (if I may coin such a random usage) of the whole thing. A random variable, and we need to try to find out how probable it would be to try and find this random entity. Like, why didn't statisticians do anything better with their lives?????? I remember a friend of mine who went to major in math and stats a few years ago, remarked to me, that Alfred Nobel's (Nobel Prize wala guy ) daughter ran away with a mathematician and so, there is no Nobel Prize for math, only a Fields' medal (Perhaps Miss Nobel ran away with Mr. Fields) - No offence intended anywhere.

But the fact remains that we as the current generation, and I take the liberty of talking for all of us, that we dislike certain historical entities for highly legitimate reasons. A few years ago, as we struggled with double and triple integrals, not to mention the whole course of engineering as it is, the target of our dislike (that bordered on murderous detestation) was Ol' Man Newton! Yeah, so the apple fell on his head. He and perhaps the whole world might have been happy had he just picked it up and eaten it, without wondering anything! On hindsight, perhaps the world (world of aghast, forlorn, frustrated, depressed, disappointed engineers) would have been so very very happy had he sat under a coconut tree!!!! At present, the target of our negative emotions (at least mine), happens to be the fraternity of statisticians. They do highly credible work, no doubt. They are the smartest bunch in the world, granted. But spare me the onslaught of random gyaan! Like probability of random variables or perhaps a density function of the normal distribution of probabilities of random variables. Look at the English. Does it make any sense at all??????? No, to me, it doesn't. And I doubt whether it ever will.

That said, it just struck me that while I try fighting insomnia that hits me for whatever reason, perhaps the probability of me falling asleep as I sit down with a random textbook that deals with the normal distribution of abnormal persons like me in this highly standardized world, where the standard deviation of the characteristics of the members of the world population (or should that have been census) from those of the mean human being does not exceed 0.2, ranges between 0.9786 and 0.9899. Good night guys!