UGT

Engineering second semester, in the classroom

Time: Around 6 pm

I still clearly remember every moment of that discussion about 7 years back. Fond memories of after college talks with people who were in no rush to reach home; had many such days, this one a little more special.

First semester had just ended. Engineering had bestowed many brutal realities upon us. Clearly, we had to find a path beyond the regular to make it a bit more interesting for us. 9 to 5 was not the time to get the best out of the system. By getting the best, I do not mean transforming our scores from the lower 60's to the 70's. In the long run, that did not have much utility.

So that day, a select few in that room were brainstorming about what can we do to make our journey more enjoyable. I walked up to the blackboard and drew a square with 4 quadrants. I still don’t know why I did that. I did not even know what I was going to write in that. Some of the best marketing ideas have come out of such 4 quadrant analysis. I was not sure that this was going to live up to that, but knew that we had a starting point.

Someone in front of me said, let’s write down the 4 most important things that we want from engineering. Brilliant idea! Let’s do it!

First quadrant, we all agreed that we would want to stay afloat in our courses, and sail through it, if not cruise through, to land up a decent job, admission to a good higher education school. Aiming to be in the top 5 of the class and other such thrills which you typically feel when you begin your engineering had slowly started to fade.

Second quadrant was geared up towards personal development. We wanted to continue honing our skills to do something beyond regular classes. Be it drawing pictures, photography, making a wired/ wireless robot (lots of engineers have craze I this) and calling him 'Shantaram', writing blogs, playing cricket, football. These were the things you would remember out of college; the 26 runs in one over was more important than calculating the gain of a CE amplifier (FYI: I do not know what that is, just remembered that we were troubled by a 20 marks problem in some semester on it).

Third quadrant was being amongst the most active people in class. Being involved in every major activity, having good after college discussions, good group activities, some in the social front. We thought of giving these discussions a fancy name. Let’s call it ‘Beer Barricade’ one of us said. I don’t know why we agreed on that, perhaps we couldn't think of something better that day. Besides, that name could have meant two things, we drink so much beer that we form a barricade from the empty bottles. Or it could mean forming a barricade between the beer and us, that we do all the things, but never drink beer. I frankly don’t know what the founder of this group intended, he may someday tell me. Later a much sophisticated version of this rolled out, called the ‘chai club’. I think it is still a part of SP college, maybe not by the same name, but something different, same intentions, have a healthy discussion about topics important to us. We lived up to our expectation in this quadrant far more than the others.

The fourth quadrant, we gave a lot of thought into what will go into it. It was going to be the missing part of the puzzle. After deep thought, we all agreed that fourth part is going to find a girl and get hooked up at the end of 4 years. Need not be from our college, from our city; it was a step that would complete the journey! We called this 4 point / 4 quadrant theory as Últimate Goal Theory’ or (UGT).

If I look back down the years, maybe it was not the best of theories. But it laid the foundation of many such great theories down the path.

For all those interested, none of the people involved in the conversation that day got hooked up in the four year timeframe. Some came very close to it, some kept knocking the wrong door but nobody completed the last part of the puzzle. We all can claim credit for the other three quadrants though!

The Brazil Problem

So here we have a football loving nation hosting a major sporting event (that too football) after a very long wait. The Confederations cup! Next in line is world cup followed by Olympics couple of years down the line. In this season of joy, what could have possibly went wrong to bring more than a million people on the streets of Brazil protesting. 

Is this football world cup bringing more trouble to Brazil than joy or do we have to look beyond the football world cup what the real reason is? Sao Paulo public transport increases the fare from R$3.00 to R$3.20, many other cities did the same. I wonder if this alone is a strong reason for so many people to start the protests. Surely the common man takes a pinch when the price of public transport rises. But this is happening across the globe. Clearly, price rise is not the only problem. 

Well, then what is it. Maybe the infrastructure improvement doesn't reflect in the increased price. Work on the Sao Paulo metro has still not been completed yet. Maybe the fact that Brazilians on an average pay a 40.5% tax which is one of the highest in the world. The rising inflation isn't doing any good. 

Will football help? Will it bring some prosperity to this struggling nation. Well, the answer to this question will answer part of the problem which brought millions of people on the streets of Brazil. Brazilians have put a lot of hope that this world cup and the revenue which it brings will improve Brazil. 

Here's where the Brazilians were duped. They were told that 90% of the investment needed to build the infrastructure for the world cup (Stadiums et al) will be built using private sector funding. But exactly the opposite has happened. There has been 90% public investment in building up this infrastructure. The Taxpayer's money! The revenue generated from the World cup, much of it will go to the private sector. The Mariotts and the Hyatts of Brazil will be minting money during the cup due to the increased demand. Plus, lets say that the Brazil government does make profit out of the world cup by sales of tickets and stuff and recover the amount they invested, the rampant corruption will not help this money help benefit the people who really need it. Plus, for the match tickets themselves, Brazilians have to hope they are not overpriced to drill a hole in their pocket. 

Looking at alternative solutions to the problem, backing out from the world cup is not a solution given that already so much money has been spent on it. The deeper problem of corruption must be addressed, private sector should help build the remaining work left on the stadiums. Look at India for instance. A cricket crazy nation, we got the chance to host the all famous world cup. But how much did an average middle class Indian get out of it? Apart from the pleasure of watching the game. How much improvement did the commonwealth games bring to the life of an Indian, not the pocket of Suresh Kalmadi. 

Well, the football fans going to Brazil can do help in to some extend. Buy stuff from local streets of Brazil, help the common people by staying in homestays. Help grow the local tourism. If you have brought a ticket and cannot make it for the last moment, do not auction it on ebay, give it to someone who can give that ticket to some poor football fan in Brazil.

  Enjoy the game. Good luck Brazil!!!

Skool of Theory

This is my attempt to give direction to an abstract chain of thought. Very different from the ones I usually write. I do not think many people would like it, but the topic is very close to my heart.

Sometimes we tend to ridicule some of the things that we see around. Eg. One of my friend resigned from a job at a big IT firm and within a month of that, she cancelled her resignation and joined the same firm. This whole saga looked to be a ridiculous decision to me. Sometimes, your mind is just not set to accept certain things. Another example would be a person who drinks only bottled mineral water wherever he goes. Although it might be a perfectly normal thing for him, for some reason the whole idea is very hard to digest. 

Now that I have set up the base for discussion, lets drill in a bit deeper. We have theories about everything. Thousands and thousands of them, most of which we aren't ourselves aware of. Theories about things we know, theories about things we do not know. Theories about what's good, what's bad and what's ugly. Theories about how the air-conditioner works, about how to make the world a better place to live. Theories about abstract things. 

Having theories is good. Even if we have to make assumptions about certain things in the process. If at some point, you think your theories are wrong, you can always correct them. That's what eventually happened to the theory of sun revolving around the earth''. It eventually got universally replaced with a complete 360 degree twist. 

But as our theories get more and more concrete over a period of time, these raw theories turn into beliefs. Beliefs are more concrete and rigid versions of our theories. They are hard to shake. More often, it is easier to question our theories than to question our beliefs. For example, if you believe that god exists, it is really difficult to change that belief. Yes, it's not impossible, but its difficult. More difficult than changing your theories about how your bike works. 

Back to the beginnings. When certain actions of people around you start falling in the bucket of absolute ridiculousness according to your beliefs, you start judging. He must be absolutely a nutcase to reject a Microsoft job offer to work in a small company with half the pay is what you end up thinking. 

How does this problem solve? Does this even have a solution you wonder. Yes it does! 

Every now and then you should look at your beliefs and examine them as raw theories. It encourages you to think. It sometimes ends up changing your beliefs that were build in the first place with a bag of theories made with the help of wrong assumptions. Or maybe end up adding your theory to another person's theory to make a whole new set of beliefs. That way, you would be more open to accepting the actions of people around you which you would not normally accept. 

After writing this whole blog, i still somehow cannot in my mind approve of the mineral water drinking dude. But still, I know i tried!

Coffee and Conversations

"Up for a cup of coffee?" 

A colleague of mine asks at around 4 in the afternoon. I almost always never decline such invitations unless I am deeply dug in work. In these 10 minutes, my colleagues drop off their engineering hat and are completely different than what they are otherwise.

I’ve always been a great admirer of good discussions. For me, having good discussion with friends is as important as having good friends. In the last few months, I’ve travelled to a lot of places with different groups for every trip. Most of the places that I visited in these trips were the ones which I had already seen. But again, it’s like Goa. You don’t go there to ‘see the place’, you go there to have memories with friends.

I can go on and on about having a good conversation. I had watched Before Sunset with a friend of mine. That movie is just about two people talking to each other, about nothing in particular, the conversation did not have any flow, any direction, was a bit slow to be honest. But, I ended up liking it, it reminded me that I needed someone in my life to just sit with me and have a discussion. No matter what the topic is. A similar movie in Marathi called ‘Mumbai, Pune , Mumbai’ is just about two people talking. I can watch that movie any number of times.

Last few years I’ve had some of the craziest discussions. A few topics include Can a case of monopoly be good for people, Is Pervez Musharraf the right person to lead Pakistan,  What is the next cool thing going to be after Smartphones and Tablets that will change the world, difference between love, lust and fantasy. I know most of these questions are open-ended. Most other factual or concrete questions you need answer too, you good friend Google will help out with it.

But again, do you want Google to be your best friend? Yes, it is great with what it does, I agree, but somewhere it’s hampering human interaction. The joke that you just read and feel like sharing with your friends during lunchtime has already reached all your friends through a Facebook post. Your super-cool techie friend with all the information about latest gadgets would roam around the school corridor saying ‘Hey, did you hear about this cool new technology coming’ or ‘Nokia is has come out with this new feature in their new gadget’ and ten people would surround him eager to hear about it.

Now, there is no need for that geek. There is no point in boasting about the latest phone Apple or Samsung are bringing because everybody has either seen the keynote or read about it on some Facebook post.

Somewhere we need to think that all we get from this social media is news and updates in some form. Views, analysis and opinions are still up for grabs. I am waiting for my next cup of tea with friends. That will unleash the discussion forum. 

p.s.: Realizing that I started with coffee and ended with tea. Back to basics!

The Q and A

It was 4 in the afternoon, time to play cricket. I asked dad some money to buy a Tennis ball (for cricket of course). He asked me why do you want a tennis Ball, why not a rubber ball. I was about 8 years of age and the only answer to this question he just popped me was rubber ball 7 Rs, Tennis Ball 15 Rs, tennis ball ought to be good. I knew that answer could convince me, but not my father. At the end of conversation, I ended up saying “Ok, Give me money for rubber ball, it's fine”. He would give me that. After playing cricket when I came home that day, I saw a box of Tennis balls lying in my cupboard.

Why this incident still persists in some part of my memory is not because of some stupid reasoning I gave. I will remember this for the important message I got from my father, that was asking the right questions before making a decision. Sometimes, you may not be able to give a satisfactory answer to justify the decision you are making, but atleast you have thought it through and would have less of a reason to regret the choices you make.

I once went to an auction where they were selling vintage coins. There was a high school kid sitting next to me. He was bidding for an ancient Egyptian coin. He had to raise his bid 4-5 times and every time he did that, someone else would put in a higher bid. It so happened that the bidding stopped with the kid next to me winning it. I can never forget the look on his face. You think he would be jumping with joy, but he was a bit pale. He said to me after he got his coin , 'I should have not bid so much money on it, but everything was happening so fast, I did not get a chance to think it through'.

A few months ago when the new Nexus 7 rolled out, I was just a final click away from buying it. Had filled in my address details, credit card information and everything, last thing was to click the confirm button. I don't know at that moment I thought to myself, what am I going to use it for? Good question, probably should have come in a lot earlier. I did not hit the confirm button that day.

Last year at around this time of the year, I had planned my vacation to San Francisco with a friend of mine. I got a very important interview call just before the trip. My tickets were fully refundable tickets and I could have very well dropped the trip plan and studied for the interview. Then I asked to myself, what am I going to do in the next five days that is going to summarize what I did in the last few years.

Did I taken the right decision back then? I don't know. It could have very well worked against me. But again, I had a question at hand and I had made up my mind. No answers are perfect, you have to live with them.

My current job is a result of that interview. 

The Morning Email

The morning coffee had no effect on Megha. Still feeling sleepy in her cubicle. In a corner, there stood a trophy which said 'Employee of the Year - Megha'. A couple of days ago, that one got added to her long list of achievements. Just two years in the race, she had set new performance benchmarks in the office. 2 promotions in two years!!

Today was different. She did not bring her car to office. Took the metro instead. She was so deep in her thoughts that she missed the announcement for her stop, went one station ahead and came back. Never had she been so lost. Ten days ago, she celebrated the second anniversary of her job. Her first job after graduate school. She remembered how scared she was while taking the interview and how relieved she was after getting a job offer.

Her chain of thoughts were interrupted by Aditi who came to her to ask some questions. Megha was now the 'To-Go' person in the office. Her quick success did not go well with her colleagues, but the junior folks in the company admired her short term accomplishments. Megha was not used to being in limelight. She did not have a good schooling record and her college performance did not paint a pretty picture to be noticed. This was new to her.

Megha was good at 'making sense out of numbers'. Infact, that was her job. She was paid to take unstructured and complex data and to derive meaningful conclusions from it. Last couple of months, she was getting the feeling that the only numbers which made her more happy where the numbers on her paycheck.

Two months back, she was thinking of moving to a more technical job. She wanted a new challenge. But this new challenge meant a lot of things. It meant giving up something you are really good at to go into an unknown territory. Giving up safety, the comfort zone. Giving up the success stint she had achieved in couple of years. Being in the race, she had the chance to create history. One more quick promotion and she would be the youngest manager of her company.

The longer she stayed here, more difficult it would have been for her to try something different. The last time she spoke to her friends about having thoughts of shifting to a new job, they had a good laugh. Some of them were struggling to be efficient at their current job and feared that someday they would be thrown out. Megha throwing away a secure job to go through the insecurity of finding a new job in a different field was beyond their imagination.

She looked at the 'Star performer award', opened her mailbox, replied to the unread email items which needed a response. Opened up another email window and wrote 'Thank you very much for everything, it's been a great journey, looking forward to a new one, consider this my two weeks notice'.

Sometimes, logic defies sense! Giving up the job two days after being declared the performer of the year.

Some decisions are best made by the heart and not the brain.  

India trip

Dude, next trip pe mera laptop leke aana. Dekh, I told u first.

I haven't booked my tickets yet. I am not even sure when I am coming. 

Are jabhi bhi ayega, leke aaja. Koi jaldi nahi. 

And thus the first laptop gets booked. Way before my journey to India begins. The second one is usually my work laptop. Then starts my hunt for the cheapest flight to India.

Wait, this isn't just my story, this is the story of every Indian/ Chinese student who has come to the USA. Trust me, there is no exaggeration!

One fine day you get that flight ticket deal to India which is a 'super steal' according to you. The excitement levels are to a maximum, you have started counting the days remaining. You call your parents and inform them. The happiest day of your life!

Your cousin brother/sister comes to know about your 'surprise visit'. And yes, they want a laptop from you. Macbook air US mein sasta hai na. Now you have the bad task of informing the first guy that you can't bring him a laptop.

In the meanwhile, you think you should probably buy your sister/brother a Tablet. She would feel nice. So you order that thing online while the deals are still there.

Then one fine day called thanksgiving day comes, the shopping festival of the US. You shop the whole night. Gifts for every family member and friends. The day when the world calls broke and you call your friend and ask, do you have 500 dollars, I'll give you from my next paycheck.

In the meantime, some well wisher(idiot) posts that you are going to India on Facebook. Your surprises that you planned (if any) are put to dust. You bring the post down, but it's too late till then. Now comes the most important part, Mobile phones.

I am not kidding, but this is a conversation that happened between me and a friend.

Dude, can you do me a favour? Can you bring the new Galaxy S3 for me. I'll pay you the money. 

You will not save more than 5k on Unlocked Galaxy S3. Are you sure you want me to do that. 

Then this guy sends me a link which has Thanksgiving day ad about Galaxy S3 for 99 bucks. He asks, what about this??

I roll on the floor on seeing that. Show a few of my friends that message, they roll on the floor (I'm a bad guy! Plus, I have every right to share a joke!). I reply to him, it's At&t phone with two years contract.

"So what, I can unlock it here", he replies. Anyways, you have At&t, you can have the contract for two years.

I am still on 'rofl' mode. While, I still keep receiving messages from friends who haven't been in touch for years, to bring in a mobile phone.

Meanwhile, the people who you really care about and actually want to bring something and help out, never really reply. When they reply, it's either too late to order or your bag is packed with every pound of weight allowed on the plane.

Then the last thing, two bottles of Chivas Regal which we carry for our friend at the airport duty free.  India trip is incomplete without it.  

Somehow, I've always liked a different picture. A picture in which I carry a single backpack and board the flight. I can buy things for the people I really care in India itself. Even if it's a little more expensive. Someday, I'm sure I'll be able to travel like this. 

Someday, surprises will be pleasant!