Chaotic Solitude

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2005-03-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

Forbes has released the latest list of Richest Persons in the World. I had some interesting insights. (In other words, am really 'vetti' now)1. Most of the richest persons are from Developed countries (I know...I know ... this is a no-brainer)2. The only developing economy which has the most # of richest persons in the top 100, is Russia (5) followed by India(3).3 The other developing economies

Building A Better Skunk Works

2005-03-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

An Interesting article on Corporate Venturing Being from a Middle class family, always thinking about security, I found these lines pretty interesting :"You want to celebrate failure because you learn something. It's harder to do that early in your career. You need some level of security to say, 'I screwed it up,' and be comfortable that you're not going to get fired"

Stem cell

2005-03-08T10:15:00.000-08:00

Stem cell research seems to be something that is done in far-away lands. But I heard about something that is done in our own backyard - Chennai; Here is some info from one of my friends. ---------- All of you must have heard about stem cell research in the recent US elections. Basically when a baby is born, the umbical cord contains stem cells that have been found to successfully cure Cancers,

:)

2005-03-04T10:53:00.000-08:00

Read this somewhere: "Winston Churchill once described Russia as 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.' ".. Umm...Interesting

India and China

2005-03-03T20:45:00.000-08:00

This week 'The Economist' is running the India-China story . We really pale in front of China on almost every economic indicator.There is this wonderful editorial on whether democracy is pulling india down; the conclusion made me feel a bit proud though - "democracy is not valuable only or mainly because of the contribution it may make to development. It is a great good in its own right. A

10 years, 100 moments of the Web

2005-03-03T13:07:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! Netrospective: 10 years, 100 moments of the WebObviously it misses out some important moments like Google IPO. Nevertheless nice!

Google-mania

2005-03-02T14:56:00.000-08:00

A good article on Larry, Sergey and Google I am not a great fan of Google's strategy either. But their quarterly results just shut me up everytime. But more on that later.

DEAD ?!

2005-02-22T14:42:00.000-08:00

Is my blog "DEAD"? How long should I wait before officially declaring this?

2004-12-27T10:16:00.000-08:00

Tsunami relief fund If you are interested in making donations to people affected by Tsunami back in India, then here are some resources you would be interested in PM Relief Fund: http://www.webindia123.com/government/relief.htmAID India: https://www.aidindia.org/aidadmin/DonateToRRF.jsp

2004-08-23T08:07:00.000-07:00

On Economics An old one but a good one... The country economics part of it is too hilarious. Read On

2004-07-31T17:23:00.000-07:00

Success! A long read. But worth it... Address by Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer,MindTree Consulting to the Class of 2006 at IIMB on defining success. July 2nd 2004 I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was and remains as back of beyond as

2004-07-11T19:22:00.000-07:00

So where am I ? After landing in the US, I have clocked more miles than my entire 28 yrs of life put together. It has been a crazy two and half months. Landed in NJ/NY and then moved to Houston and then to Portland, Salt lake city and finally settled in Seattle. The Good news is that my job is interesting. First time I am seeing the difference of being a married man. Being away from family

2004-05-28T13:48:00.000-07:00

If only Bush had this vision... Not that I am a foreign policy analyst or someone of that sort, but Kerry's Foreign Policy stand definitely attracted my attention. He kinda said what the world has been telling the US all along. What US has done is Iraq, as far as I am concerned, is unpardonable. Kerry had put it nicely "...America drew its power not only from the might of weapons, but also

2004-05-27T06:47:00.000-07:00

Filter Coffee Being a South Indian (and a Chennaite) , mornings have always dawned with a strong cup of Filter coffee and a newspaper ("The Hindu" to be precise). After moving to Bangalore, only one thing had changed for me - Times of India had replaced Hindu. I know I am not talking like a typical Chennaite here - by shifting loyalties to another paper; Anyway now I like TOI more than Hindu;

2004-05-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

Coding :-( Inspired by Arun, I too tried to do some changes to my blog design. Did something and the whole design went for a toss. Somehow could retrieve my earlier design changes. Shows how far I have come from those programming days :-(

2004-05-20T07:18:00.000-07:00

Oh! The Western Media Western Media has been closely watching the happenings on the Indian Elections in the past couple of weeks. We kinda got a lot of front-page coverage - shows the growing importance of India. Nevertheless, when the Western media writes anything about India, I am startled to notice 2 things - There will always be a reference to the caste system (or religion). For instance,

2004-05-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

Manhattan Yesterday I was in Manhattan. Lots have been written about this place...and having been here only for around 2 weeks, I guess I am ill-equiped to pass on any comments. Yeah... Manhattan is awesome. I don't think any other city can come closer to this. But definitely it is not a place for non-investment bankers like me. Something as simple as a Parking lot ticket would summarize

2004-05-14T05:10:00.000-07:00

Cry India! Cry !! What have we done to ourselves? Cry India! Cry !! and I guess this is just the beginning :-( Will the three musketeers revive my confidence? But we have no one else to blame but ourselves; NYTimes neatly summarized it by saying - those middle class voters who benefitted by NDA Goverenment's policies did not come out and vote.

2004-05-13T05:12:00.000-07:00

Now the good things about the elections... Although as a typical Professional from Urban India, I am saddened by the outcome of this elections (I have every right to whine as I had voted), there are nevertheless some good things - You may call it blessings in disguise - Rajinikanth will never again utter a word on elections. Venkat, I am sorry...but I have strong opinions on this guy. -

2004-05-11T17:08:00.000-07:00

Iraq :-( Swaminathan, in his weekly TOI article, neatly summarizes the happenings in Iraq and explains why the current US occupation in Iraq will not succeed; I feel it should not and must not succeed. I feel that would make the world a safer and better place to live in. Today's news on an American being decapitated makes matters worse. Can it become messier than this?

2004-05-11T07:16:00.000-07:00

That dream job ! A nice article for those who always wanted "that dream job" (myself included:))

2004-05-06T17:16:00.000-07:00

Google IPO I got a bit serious about this IPO today. Too much is written in the American media about this IPO. Every paper worth its name carries an article about Google IPO. Here is an article from the dadas of Wharton analysing Google titled The Buzz on Google's IPO (requires registration) And here is The How and Why of Google's Auction from Businessweek And here is an analysis on What Is

2004-05-06T04:24:00.000-07:00

Goooooooooooooooogle Am back after a long break! Here is a trivia on Google IPO - am kinda lucky to be in the US when this IPO is about to be listed. Here is a trivia about that IPO. ------------ If you take a close look at the form Google filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the exact value of its planned offering is $2,718,281,828 dollars, which some would immediately recognize

2004-03-08T02:14:00.000-08:00

Here is a mail from one of my friends announcing his wedding... I was impressed by the way he had written this. Hence posting it here ------------ This one big wheel always rotates. This wheel is a part of an even bigger vehicle. As it rotates, it takes the vehicle to all kinds of places. There is no stop to the wheel. It visits a busy market place once, while another time it treads the rustic

2004-02-24T03:43:00.000-08:00

Arun becomes famous! Read on...

2004-02-19T18:25:00.000-08:00

Thinkers ?! Have you ever heard of a ranking of Management Thinkers? If not, here you go... The Thinkers 50 claims that "it offers a unique snapshot of the practices and personalities shaping the world of work and the way we do our jobs." List looks impressive (meaning I have heard most of them ;-) But not even one from India ? (No NRIs pls)

2004-02-18T08:45:00.000-08:00

IIMs vs. Joshi Although I wanted to post my views on this issue on the first day this news appeared in ToI, somehow couldn't. After that I was amazed at people - students as well as media - echoing similar thoughts as mine. I was so endeared to my views that I even thought that the Supreme court by stating "Higher education is not elite alone" is setting a wrong direction for the PIL on this

2004-02-16T07:36:00.000-08:00

So... So...I finally did it !!!!!! Completed my Project assignment and successfully completed the presentation too. With this I can call myself as an M.B.A. What a great feeling after so much of effort and so many sleepless nights. One of my ex-Managers was the external examiner for the presentation. We had a lot of arguments over some of the points. It went on and on and on. Finally my

2004-01-20T19:16:00.000-08:00

Truly Shining My first blog of the new year... but am not planning to write about anything other than telling all of you that I am busy :( Our Final yr project is churning out something interesting and my project-mate and I are thoroughly enthusiastic about it. The credit should definitely go to our guide and the Sr. Management of IT companies who gracefully agreed to our requests. Oh Boy ! What

2003-12-29T04:40:00.000-08:00

M(e)S(s) Did you know that in 2002 Microsoft released security patches at the rate of one patch every 3.5 days? Any guesses for 2003 ? So much for the Microsoft's Trustworthy computing initiative ;-)

2003-12-20T20:34:00.000-08:00

"Anything can happen over a cup of coffee" One of the first things I liked after coming to Bangalore was the Coffee-day Parlors. Of course, in those days Coffee-day joints were a novelty and were not so ubiquitous as they are now. The variety of coffee flavors that they offer is one of the prime attractions for me. Coffee-days are unique in the sense that they cater to a very niche population.

2003-12-16T18:37:00.000-08:00

:-) ET's Brand Equity is out with this year's most trusted brand listing. They have introduced a new listing for services. If you take enough care to look through the listing, you will find this funny fact: IMS is ranked above the IIMs - A coaching institute is trusted more than the institute it is coaching the students for ;-)

2003-12-15T18:58:00.000-08:00

MBA and IT industry People outside the industry always think that those who work for IT industry are code jocks simply churning out lines and lines of code. People who are in the industry and are MBAs are considered as "misfits" by many . Even inside, People management and Project Management are the only two things that most of the 'engineers' in this industry know of Management (that's the sad

2003-12-07T21:40:00.000-08:00

Make hay while the sun shines ? This is what I call "enterprising". Have a look at this site

2003-11-26T18:43:00.000-08:00

No cure for this epidemic ?? :-( With Microsoft releasing security patches at the rate of one per week, it was interesting to read this ZDnet article on Viruses. Did you guys know that IBM was the first company to release anti-virus software ?

2003-11-05T21:26:00.000-08:00

When the elephant strategizes… In the last one and half years or so, the series of big ticket acquisitions by IBM has left me dumbstruck. For instance the Strategy behind acquisition of Rational Software (to nullify Microsoft tools’ dominance in the developers community) convinced me that the Software group of IBM has some finest strategy-craftsmen at its helm. Now the Novell-SuSE deal

2003-11-03T07:48:00.000-08:00

India's economic growth Off-late a lot is being written about Indian economy and its growth potential. But the recent economic report by Goldman Sachs has generated an unusual level of enthusiam and interest, partly becos of the credibility of Goldie and partly becos of the 3rd rank given to India. But the article by Swaminathan titled "Miraculous effects of a rising rupee" puts things in

2003-10-29T03:54:00.000-08:00

Fiscal Deficit One of my economics professors used to tell us this way - "The best test of whether you have understood a concept or not is to ask the question - How will I explain this to my grandma?" Well, fiscal deficit is one such concept. The article titled "Meena auntie and the fiscal deficit" helps you precisely in that.

2003-10-27T06:08:00.000-08:00

Everytime you fail... Whenever I am euphoric about some success that I have achieved or feeling sullen about the failure that stares at me, I tell myself a story. I have found this very enlightening and soothing. At least it helps me think in the “All-for-good” direction. I am not good at story-telling. But let me give it a try. Long long ago, an old man lived in a small hamlet. He had 4 sons.

2003-10-22T21:07:00.000-07:00

:-( If you want to know if a person is hopelessly lost in work or not, have a look at his Telephone receiver cord. If it is twisted like a sphagetti, then you can be rest assured that he is indeed lost. My telephone cord atleast tells this story :-(

2003-10-11T22:41:00.000-07:00

Someday, I will I have been wanting to blog on a lot of things, but unfortunately finding no time at all. I get a lot of thoughts on what to blog when I ride to my workplace, when I am in my class and even when I am reading the daily paper. How good it would be if what I think is instantly transformed into a blog :-(( Some of the topics I have been wanting to write-on off-late - Why IIM-s can

2003-09-30T20:51:00.000-07:00

I am against posting forwarded mails in blogs... but have been doing it too often lately. Anyway, found this irresistably good...read on ! Somehow didn't like certain things here though...like the 3rd one ----------------------------- Top 10 most stupid questions' people usually ask in obvious situations : 1. At the movies: When you meet acquaintances/friends... Stupid Question:- Hey,

2003-09-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

WOW! Another interesting fwd... ----------- The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida has put up a very interesting Java applet on their site. It begins as a view of the Milky Way Galaxy viewed from a distance of 10 million light years and then zooms into towards Earth in powers of ten of distance. 10 million, to one million, to 100,000 light years and so on and then when it finally

2003-09-23T23:47:00.000-07:00

Corporate Donkeys One of the usual forwards...but this one caught my attention... --------------------- Once upon a time a Washerman was bringing up two donkeys: Donkey-A and Donkey-B. Donkey-A felt it was very energetic and could do better than the other. It always tried to pull the washerman's attraction over it by taking more load and walking fast in front of him. Innocent Donkey-B is

2003-09-20T22:27:00.000-07:00

AoE I have heard a lot about Microsoft's Age of Empires, but never got a chance to play. Finally, yesterday I did (thanks to my wife and Bil)! A pretty neat game on Strategy and more importantly Project Management. Although all games are about the resources in your hand and how you play it, what makes AoE interesting is that it is about Human Civilization and how it evolves (or evolved). You get

2003-09-09T21:39:00.000-07:00

Recently I came across a couple of instances which were kinda disturbing. A question has been popping up in my mind, since then. Why sometimes people make a larger-than-life image of themselves or others? Can't they be normal :-(

2003-09-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

Another article on the Outsourcing Binge; but of a different genre -"Daniel Soong, who lost his programming job to Indian offshore companies, is willing to relocate to India. But Indian officials have told him they don't hire Americans." Read on...

2003-09-01T21:01:00.000-07:00

Hakuna Matata Yesterday I saw "The Lion King" for the fourth time. What a movie it was! Although many would dismiss the movie as resembling "mid-70 Bollywood" movies, the dialogues, graphics and above all the "Simba" character adds the neccessary garnishings to the movie. The subtle humor in some of the dialogues (particularly those of Timon's) makes the movie one of my all-time favorites. And

2003-09-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

Hurrah! Yes... I have fixed the problem that I had with "comments" link. Dunno what had happened. But the "impatient" software engineer in me, instead of debugging, chose the easy way out - deleted the code and cut & pasted it again... and bingo! it started working :-) So folks! pour in your comments...please do ;-) Also as per Naren's suggestion, I have made the necessary code changes to make

2003-08-31T20:41:00.000-07:00

What happened ?!@#$% Something seems to have gone wrong with my comments link. It just doesn't appear at all. May be ennetation.com got irritated by my whinings on lack of comments in my blog site:-( Any ideas on what would have happened ? Please use the zonkboard on the left navigation bar to post your trouble-shooting tips. Danke!

2003-08-31T20:19:00.000-07:00

Fluffy Strategy! Ah! Just completed a couple of major exams this quarter. This has been one of the toughest quarters:-( But we did some of the best subjects one can do in a B-school. I will write about other subjects later. But for now I would like to blog only about this course called -"Advanced Studies in Strategic Management" (ASM). Any B-school student will get the so-called "kick" when he

2003-08-25T17:38:00.000-07:00

:-( On an average, I get around 10 visitors per day. Discounting the 2 visits that I normally make to my blog, I get around 8 visitors. How come none of my visitors leave a comment :-( Should blogs be more provocative? ;-)

2003-08-24T08:05:00.000-07:00

"We don’t like to make big bets. If we are making a big bet, it probably means we failed somewhere earlier" - An executive at Capital One, a credit card company

2003-08-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

More effective but less clever ? If you place in a bottle half a dozen bees and the same number of flies, and lay the bottle horizontally, with its base [the closed end] to the window, you will find that the bees will persist, till they die of exhaustion or hunger, in their endeavor to discover an [opening] through the glass; while the flies, in less than two minute, will all have sailed forth

2003-08-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

Google! I surrender to you!! Thanks to my friend Sandeep, I have the brand new Google toolbar on my browser. As usual, Google is awesome. Some of the features make me feel that Google should steal the tagline "I am Chevrolet (Google)" from GM :) Here is a gist of new features: > The pop-up blocker, a long pending feature from IE, is here :-) Another cute (sorry for sounding feminine;-))

2003-08-10T20:41:00.000-07:00

Are you scared ? Rush to the betting parlor Do you have information on the next suicidal bombing attack ? Well, you can rake in your dollars now (of course, not millions though...only thousands). Late in July, DARPA came up with this idea of betting parlor on speculating geo-political events. It is based on the same idea that the market forces can better predict an event, be it business or

2003-08-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

Here is the bigger picture ! I have been voraciously following the Outsourcing-to-India story that's appearing in the American Media. Here is an article titled "Outsourcing Jobs: Is It Bad?" in Business Week. Seems like an answer to my earlier blog on this subject. A pretty decent and balanced attempt by BW.

2003-08-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

Only Dilbert ! Seems I violated the Contract agreement by using Geocities only for storing files :-( Here is the direct link to the Dilbert Comic strip

2003-08-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

FAQs of a different kind ?! A website for people who wanted to know all about Farting, but never dared to ask ;-)

2003-08-04T02:04:00.000-07:00

Should I drop-out of my MBA? Henry Mintzberg is known for some hard-hitting views on MBA scholars and thinkers. His animosity towards Porter,arguably one of the finest Strategy thinkers of our times, is well known to the MBA world. Here is an article by him titled "MBAs as CEOs". Hits very hard on MBAs with facts and numbers. He says, "Unfortunately, or atleast less fortunately for everyone

2003-08-03T22:01:00.000-07:00

Way to go Google !!! I was in for a pleasant surprise on Saturday morning when I typed in www.google.com; I was actually redirected to www.google.co.in. Google seems to have launched its search engines in 5 Indian Languages. Oh Boy! It was fun to see Google telling "Indhiya naattin pakkangalil irunthu". Does it show the growing strength of Online Indian Populace?

2003-08-03T20:44:00.000-07:00

Is there a bigger picture ? In American society, there are certain indicators, which convey to the outside world about what America really thinks and what tops the mind of common Americans. Time magazine is one such bell-weather. It recently ran a story on outsourcing to Low cost countries particularly, India. Although this trend has been around for sometime now, suddenly it is gaining the

2003-08-03T05:43:00.000-07:00

Time-Travel !@#$% A day to post weird blogs.So here I go !!! Can anything get weirder than this Time-travel story? And think about this; Yahoo has posted this in the entertainment section :-) Who knows... one day Yahoo! and my blog would be criticized for being so short-sighted in vision :-(

2003-08-03T05:25:00.000-07:00

Threat for the Indian Software Industry :-) Object oriented Programming, Extreme Programming and now Primate Programming !!! How many of you would have thought that one day the Indian Software Industry would have to compete with poor Apes :-) Time for Narayanamurthy and Azim Premji to do some serious thinking to fight it out in this new marketplace err... zooplace ;-))

2003-07-29T19:41:00.000-07:00

Enlightening moments An article titled "Timeless in Time" in Deccan Herald by one of my friends Madhav. The question,“Don’t you realise how fortunate you were to get all the 45 minutes of time to spend with yourself?’’ seemed profound not only for my friend but also for me.

2003-07-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

Phone Booth When you see brilliance unfolding in front of your eyes, what do you feel like? I feel like surrendering to it. Nothing else gives me that kind of a high! Today I saw "it" again - in the form of a movie; I have seen a lot of Hitchcockian suspense thrillers; but Phone Booth made me understand and appreciate what it is all about. A crisp and packed 80 minute plot runs like this; a man

2003-07-23T04:29:00.000-07:00

The Civilization of Selfishness I recently came across this article by Dinesh D'Souza titled "The Civilization of Selfishness". Quite a neat article in defence of Capitalism. I particularly liked the way he reasoned out why capitalism works : "... capitalism works to civilize greed, just as marriage civilizes lust. Greed and lust are human emotions: They cannot be eradicated by all the

2003-06-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

Is there a way to beat piracy When I read the news item titled "Cinema houses close as film industry in doldrums" in Times of India the other day, I got the following thoughts 1. I am yet to come across a person who has said that he/she wants to watch "Matrix Reloaded" in VCD; all of them prefer to watch it in theatres 2. Indian film industry itself is not known for its respect for copyrights

2003-06-18T05:12:00.000-07:00

Symphony and Process I am in the middle of executing a Business Process that I had put in place a couple of weeks back. I am finding the process workflow extremely jarring :-( (cacophony - as one of my colleagues put it) Can we compare a perfect process to a harmonious symphony? I suppose, we can! Things should just flow like a sweet symphony; the person supervising the process workflow can be

2003-06-17T20:15:00.000-07:00

Venture Capital Joel's latest article on Fixing Venture Capital. As a student, I learnt more about VC funding through this article than I had in my 2 courses related to this subject. I particularly liked the reference section! Another good insight was that Good software takes ten years. The Lotus Notes hockey stick chart sets us thinking. Wish some customers understood this :-(

2003-06-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

Subjectivity makes things interesting The Dollar's Weakness Is a Strength: This Wharton article shows why Finance and Macro economics are the most interesting of all subjects. Everybody has a viewpoint! As one of my professors used to say, "... has a high amount of subjectivity in it and that makes it interesting"

2003-06-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

Cut the jargon Bullfighter Software : My post titled "Jargons are like big baloons ?!" has an answer now :-)

2003-06-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

Life, quirky life Last Sunday I watched "Road to Perdition". Some of the dialogues were real punch lines in that movie. The most impressive and haunting dialogue was this - "People always thought I grew up on a farm. And I guess, in a way, I did. But I lived a lifetime before that, in those 6 weeks on the road in the winter of 1931". Although it is nice to say that everyday we learn something,

2003-06-16T19:54:00.000-07:00

Put a shark in your tank One of my friends recently forwarded this wonderful mail. Teaches a point or two about life. Read on. ------------------------ The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The farther the fishermen went, the longer it

2003-06-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

Am I irritable or irritated? At work, I have been feeling this for a long time now. Empty vessels not only make more noise, but also make people around irritated.

2003-06-12T20:03:00.000-07:00

Oracle's bid for Peoplesoft I liked the way Peoplesoft's CEO responded to Oracle's hostile bid - "atrociously bad behaviour from a company with a history of atrociously bad behaviour”. Yuch!

2003-06-12T19:48:00.000-07:00

Self-destructing Movies Will Sony's new technology - Digital Rights Management - help movie industry in its current fight against VCDs and DVDs? Highly unlikely in India at least, I believe

2003-06-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

Speed...Speed...Speed... McAfee's Internet Connection Speedometer - As a victim of erratic Internet speeds so typical of Indian ISPs, at last I have a tool in my hand to speak rationally about the speed that my ISP offers; Check out McAfee's promo site - It has some really nice & cool tools. Btw, my connection is amazingly at 60Kbps - not bad for a home connection, I suppose! Mogambo kush hua :-)

2003-06-11T20:24:00.000-07:00

Utterly Butterly Delicious Amul's hoardings have always fascinated me. It never ceases to attract the attention of the passersby. I, for the one, always used to turn my head to see the Amul hoarding that used to be there near Johnson's Market in Bangalore. I don't know why Amul decided to remove it from there. But anyway, for fans like me Amul has a site dedicated for these hits. As usual, its "

2003-06-11T20:14:00.000-07:00

Was it God himself ? I was pretty disturbed by some incident that had happened in the workplace the other day. Came home sullen and switched on the T.V. Rahul Dravid, in his usual "as-cool-as-a-cucumber" style (sorry for the cliché :-( I just couldn't avoid it) was telling this to the interviewer - "If you make the bowler angry, half your job is done"; Oh! What a profound statement it was, for

2003-05-21T19:13:00.000-07:00

Nice Article A nice article by one of my friends, Madhav Kurup in Deccan Herald. His articles always remind me of V.Gangadhar's Slice of Life column in The Hindu

2003-05-10T20:41:00.000-07:00

The art of perfection Most of you might have seen this Macromedia file that is floating around in emails. This Honda ad is yet to appear on the Indian Television screens. But the power of perfection of this ad made me say a "Wow!". My Engineer-Brother's arrogant (!) reaction to this was - "Only an engineer could have executed this ad!". Check out this Link and find it out for yourselves

2003-05-10T20:28:00.000-07:00

War Recently, I came across this quote that caught my attention; "The first casuality in any war is Innocence"

2003-03-08T21:53:00.000-08:00

Information is Power. Go! Misuse it !! Recently one of my friends forwarded this mail. It left me thoroughly confused. Here is the source of confusion. The mail had 2 links - both reporting on a fire in National Chemical Laboratory in Pune; One from rediff.com and the other from Paknews.com. As a true Indian I would like to "believe" the rediff version :-(

2003-03-08T21:04:00.000-08:00

Excitement inversely proportional to Profits Yesterday our Brand Management Prof made an interesting observation. The discussion was about "Hi Tech Brands". The companies - IBM, Microsoft and Apple - were the subjects of discussion. They were being compared on several parameters; One such parameter was "Excitement of work place". Apple stood top followed by Microsoft and IBM, in that order. The

2003-03-01T21:18:00.000-08:00

The Talent Myth - Are smart people overrated ? Malcolm Gladwell on "The Talent Myth - Are smart people overrated"; All the theories that the management gurus talk fall flat in face of this article; One question by Gladwell makes us think - Enron is bankrupt; Its auditor -Arthur Anderson- has been driven out of business; How come Enron's other partner, Mckinsey, is largely left unscathed ? (

2003-03-01T20:22:00.000-08:00

Shame, Sony Max!! Shame Before I begin this blog, let me confess. I am not a great cricket fan, nor do I claim to know how a good cricket telecast should be. Yesterday, true to my "Indianness" I was watching the Indo-Pak cricket Match on Sony Max. No doubt, there were many moments, wherein the blood pressure was mounting. Of course, Indo-Pak Cricket matches are supposed to create that; that’

2003-03-01T19:34:00.000-08:00

I am Chevrolet Did you guys see the Chevy ad that was beamed yesterday? What a brilliant (albeit arrogant) ad it is!! If you have not yet seen it, here it is for you. The ad starts like this "I am sun"; "I am rain"; "I am the prize" (the baby looks cute); "I am your prayer"; "I am your neighbor"; It then closes with the final slide showing - "I am Chevrolet"; What an ad !!! Brilliantly

2003-02-25T05:43:00.000-08:00

Does intel still matter An interesting article on the relevance of Intel in today's world. The initial paragraphs of this column are really thought provoking and convincing too to some extent.

2003-02-24T18:46:00.000-08:00

Why US wants to attack Iraq I am a big-time fan of "swaminomics" by Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar. However busy I am, I take time-off to read his articles in Economic Times and Times of India. His arguments, whatever the subject of discussion may be, are too convincing to be ignored. A couple of weeks back he wrote this article on US-Iraq standoff. In the past few weeks, I have read a lot of

2003-02-24T17:25:00.000-08:00

Joel - On software I got introduced to this website through one of my friends. Joel's viewpoints on software Development and Project Management are pretty interesting - I totally disagree with some of them though; He keeps updating his website regularly. Do visit this site.

2003-02-24T17:14:00.000-08:00

ITES - Is it Good, Bad or Ugly ? Lots of newspapers are writing pages and pages on ITES operations in India. Somehow I feel these "popular" newspapers/magazines never give the true picture. They always want to publish their viewpoints however incorrect they may be. They thrust it on the person being interviewed and selectively publish what they want. Fortunately, we have some academic-journals,

2003-02-24T17:00:00.000-08:00

Interpol Website Heard about the famous Red-corner notices of Interpol ? Well, they maintain a pretty detailed website on that. The most interesting part in the website is the section on Football Hooliganism . Never knew that hooliganism in a sport could get such an attention from the Interpol. I feel it is a must-read site for those who crib about the crazy albeit innocent Indian cricket fan :-)

2003-02-23T04:27:00.000-08:00

Jargons are like big baloons ?! MBAs are often accussed of using too many jargons too frequently; Infact the first thing that we learn in b-school (intentionally though;-) are these jargons. Recently I got this mail from one of my classmates. I myself used one of the jargons mentioned here in one of my earlier blogs :-( --------------- Last week I found myself on the Tube with nothing to read

2003-02-23T00:03:00.000-08:00

Atlast... a guide to driving on Indian Roads !

2003-02-22T23:27:00.000-08:00

WIFFM To be frank, I was never interested in blogging myself; Many of my friends are bloggers- but it never occured to me that I too should start one. Somehow the recent takeover of Pyra by Google made me think about the compulsive value proposition that these blogs give. This is just an experiment to get an idea on how it feels to be blogging. Let's see whether it is worthy enough ! So far, so