Blind, Who?

A small incident that I witnessed a few days back had me pondering about a few things. At the end of those sixty seconds I was left wondering who really among us is blind.
Cars zoomed. Men and women scurried with their trousers and saris lifted like lungis revealing their ankles. The street was awake and alive with life. Yet everyone – the young and the wise, the educated and the uneducated seemed to be blind, or I should probably employ the usage dead…dead.
The broken nozzle of the tap, on the roadside, allowed the water to gush in a continuous fall creating an oasis in midst of tar expanse. Water! Water is the womb of every human settlement. Water is the cradle of human civilization. Water kicks off international disputes and rakes up regionalist sentiments. But yet when it comes to micromanagement of water, public accountability is amazingly abysmal. Sealing that tap needed nothing more than two hundred seconds of ones time. But bhai, aren’t we talking of India?!
I refuse to be an ally to such an appalling apathy. I turned towards the tap, took a couple of steps and stopped. A man with dark sunglasses on walked slowly towards the sound of flowing water. Yes, towards the ‘sound’ for he groped with a stick for direction. He was seeing the water flow down only through the sound that the confluence of earth and water makes. For blind people ears double up as eyes. He turned the tap turner to its left and reduced the flow of water. Then he removed his kerchief and tied around the gap through which considerable amount of water was still leaking. That sealed it. Everything was over in less than a minute or two. Yet the pool of water indicated that it had been flowing for at least half an hour. To me this person seemed like the only living soul among hordes of corpses in a cemetery. As he walked away, I was left wondering who really was blind.
Next time you see a street lamp competing against the sun to illuminate your locality take a couple of minutes to switch them off. Hold your saliva till you reach the nearest wash basin. Exercise some restraint on your excretory tendencies. Roads are not the dust bins for your garbage. Be the change that you want to see. Be not blind in your mind.

The Most Wretched Birthday that I had!

Jan21 is a day when my phone never stops ringing and my orkut profile is flooded with birthday wishes. Well I removed my date of birth from my Orkut profile just to get wishes from people who remembered my birthday. Jayashree and Raghu were the only guys who wished me through Orkut. But otherwise my day started at 6am @ aerobics class and 9:30 am at Sterling Commerce. We were shooting for a deadline and we worked till about 9:30 pm and came back home. Full day at office! Of course Appa, Ganesh, Kiran,Saravana, Jack, athai, mama, Ctha, Silpa, Guna called. Amogh and Lakshmi messaged me. Meenakshi, Rashmi and Rahul wished me through email. But the real comedy was Nitya. She had not called me till about 3 in the evening. So I messaged her - I think it will be a good idea to call me and wish me ! :) She called back and we could not talk for more than 1 minute and 5 seconds. Both of us were busy at the office and did not have time for each other! I thought where are we going? Three years back having no time for each other was some unthinkable. But yes life and fate are pushing us through that corridor!

We cut cake at Sterling. Kaushik and Raghu got me the cake. Amit and Anita joined in. We had a quick BDay song and we pounced on the cake.

Finally the day ended with Bhallaje calling me at 11:30 pm ...Imagine! He said he wanted to do it with a difference - be the last caller. And guess what we ended up chatting about? for about an hour we talked about LIC and the way the organization runs!

Tata - After a long time!

People please dont immediately jump to conclusion that I am going to give some of my views on what Nano will achieve and what havoc it will wreak on the Indian roads.

After seven long years - 4 in college and 3 in Bangalore - I have started staying with my Amma now. Bachelors life comes with a lot of freedom and lot of friends. College abounded with friends - Guys like Nitya, Jack, Sathish, Saravana, Prabhu, Kozhi, Srini, Valar, Sudha , Seetha and a zillion other people who were around me. At Perot and in Bangalore too I was in excellent company - Swami, Udhay, Supni, Saravana, SARS, Machi, Caddy, Amogh, Silpa, Kiran, Ctha, Lakshmi, Rashmi, Rahul and Trupti. They were people who were my family for seven years. What my family did not know about me they knew!

But despite this galaxy of friends, there was a kind of loneliness that kept knocking me once in a while. It only increased when I shifted to Sterling Commerce. Having lived in attitudes and cozy comforts of these people I found it difficult to adjust to people at Sterling. Not that the Sterling guys are not a jolly bunch - In fact they are exactly such kind of people. But I am not able to break the ice with a lot of them. Its my problem. Well I am like that. When I first joined Perot this was the exact sentiment that I harbored. But I really did take off!

So the counterattack to my loneliness came in the form of my mom expressing her willingness to stay with me in Bangalore. Life now is a far throw from the indiscipline that marked my last seven years. I wrap up bedsheets, neatly broom my house, switch on the heater only for 15 minutes, clean my bike twice a week, watch less TV, read a lot of books, reduced obscene utterances, reduced time on phone, gathering knowledge about my relatives and the life in Madurai and ...whew the list goes on. This change in me happened without her forcing me to do any of this. So I realized that I am capable of this but just that I want that motivating force. My biggest ambition of life is to keep my mother and father happy. I have worked my back out at times when I felt that they would not be happy with the efforts that I was putting in. During my XI standard when a certain teacher told my mother that at this rate I would become a terrorist :( I mended my ways. When in my college my mom kept motivating me for my placements, I worked like a lunatic from 3am to 10pm mastering every method in the R.S.Aggarwal book on quantitative analysis and the personal interview books. I reduced my driving speed when my parents asked me to. All this for the happiness that comes associated with their happiness. And all that happiness in manifested in a simple tata - or the traditional bye - that my mom bids when I go to office. The first day I did that I was overcome with a strong nostalgia of my school days when my mom, dad, grand pa and grand ma all stood outside the gate to say just the tata. I didnt realize the beauty of it then. Today I feel the power of it!

The Cheapest Thing available - Advice!

Once you are done with your initial introspection and have finally decided to give GMAT a go ..Here is what to do.

Set a target:

I will divide people into two categories. People who have taken up CAT and people who havent.
For people who have done some serious preparation for CAT and have consistently scored around 70 - 90 percentile in TIME , Career Launcher, IMS Career Forum mock cats aim at a 770. People who have scored consistently above 90 percentile, have a target as high as 780 - 800. Though a lot depends on your performance on the day of GMAT this must give you a rough idea of what target to set for yourself. For people who have scored less than 70 percentile in CAT consistently in the GMAT set yourself a target of 740 to start with. Remember for IT Indians with about 3 years of work experience and very average extra curriculars and an average professional progression, a score of less than a 680 will be a screaming ding, UNLESS you have exceptional writing abilities that weaves such a compelling application packet which can hypnotise a essays hardened BSchool Adcom member. Ding is a GMAT prep junta's lingo which means no admission offered at a BSchool. I repeat, underline the "unless"

For people who have not given the CAT, take up a GMAT prep from the website www.mba.com without any preparation. This is the diagnostic test that can help you assess your potential. Anything above a 720 in the GMAT sans preparationset your target as 780 -800. A 660 - 720 set your target as a 750. And people with less than 660 set a 740 as a target.
However I must present an exceptionally important disclaimer here: A brilliant GMAT score does not assure you of a place in the BSchool. Similarly a meagre GMAT score will not refuse you an admission. GMAT is just one facet of your application. If you have a not so great GMAT score, say a 640, but you are confident you can weave magic with the rest of the application packet take a call based on your discussions with some Bschool students, forums etc. Forums have some gyan providers like GMATBong in www.testmagic.com, Stacy Blackman in www.beatthegmat.com

I set a target of 780 for myself though I fell into the 70 - 90 percentile range in the CAT. I pushed myself too hard at times emotionally drainig myself. After the GMAt I felt that if I had set myself a target of 740 or a 750 I would have fared a lot better than the 710 that I ended up with. So the essence of presenting this breakup is so that you guys do not overburden yourself with targets and feel a lot of unwarranted pressure. I never understood it when Ravi Shastri used to say that Indian bowlers are trying too much. They just have to play within their limits and they will be awesome. I realized the magnitude of his advice post GMAT. If I had not tried too much and too hard I would have gone to score a 750.

Take the Plunge:

By plunge I really mean Plunge...while sleeping you should get dreams of a DS question, while eating a solution to an unsolved quant question should strike your brain, while chatting with your fiancee notice the mistakes in her sentences etc etc etc - Well you must be thinking I must be one helluva psychopath..Ahem..I didnt do all this and hence scored a 710. But I know of atleast 12 people who scored in excess of 750 and one trait that appeared with such astonishing regularity was the PLUNGE that they had taken.

Everytime you make a mistake take a oath of not committing a similar mistake again. I did this but kept repeating mistakes -it is easier said than done :)

GMAT Materials:

There is a whole lot of materials that are available on the net, book stores, websites and blogs
that you will feel overwhelmed. A simple secret to a good GMAT score is use only as many materials as required.

The absolute Essentials:

Preparatory Materials:

GMAT Official Guide 10 - Though it is an instance of serious copyright infringement, I am forced to say about the OG10 ebook which is extensively used by GMAT preppres. It is the most comprehensive guide to your GMAT success. Make sure you have gone through OG10 - Every SC, CR, DS, PS atleast twice. I am conciously not advicing RC as RC takes a lot of time. Go through the last 100 questions in RC. That should more than suffice. But if RC is the section which you are the weakest then its your call.

GMAT Official Guide 11- This has a brilliant Diagnostic CAT that can cause flutter in some people. Just keep your cool. It is much difficult than the actual GMAT. This is not to say that GMAT does not give you questions that are lesser in intensity. This DCAT is difficult because the DCAT is not adaptive and you are served questions from the most difficult bins, whereas actual GMAT will pity you and reduce the intensity of the questions once you get a couple of questions wrong. But again all the questions front cover to back cover twice, of course with an exception of RC if you wish.

Have OGs for the last four weeks of GMAT prep. This way the most important rules, your most recent mistakes will all remain intact in your memory.

Princeton Review SC Rules - The rules of SC have been very crisply stated. This book is IMPORTANT for the SC rules than for anything else. Buy the book if you have to. The SC rules are worth the purchase.

1000 SCs, 1000 CRs, Jungle Juices - These sets may be available on a variety of sources on the net. I took it from the files section of the GMATnetwork yahoo group. Jungle Juices are the actual GMAT questions that appeared recently. These prep material will more than suffice.

Test Materials:

GMATPrep - Nothing is as good as a GMATprep test. There are two free tests that you can download by just registering free of cost on the www.mba.com website. Take and retake and re-re-take the test until you feel that you have seen all the questions. Everytime you retake the questions most of the questions refresh barring a small percentage of repeats. I got about 5 questions from the GMATprep without any change in the actual GMAT. I cannot emphasize the importance of the GMAT prep anymore.

GMATSets - These sets may be available on a variety of sources on the net. I took it from the files section of the GMATnetwork yahoo group. Join that group and you might get some more useful information. Disclaimer: I am not a moderator of the group trying to get more people into the group ;) I used to take verbal set21 and quant set 21 in one go so that it was like a replica of the actual test. It is a good way to build stamina.

I took just these two tests and felt that the prep I got there was sufficient for me.

I think this post has become too long that the reader might feel a little exhausted after reading all this information. I will give it a break here and add a little more about GMAT mode in the post to follow.

-V

Foreign MBA from an Indian perspective..The Initial Introspection!!

I have been getting calls from quite a few people ( as I did when I started off a novice) who want to know the basics of a foreign MBA. And I have kind of become tired reiterating the same thing over and again. Not that I am not willing to explain it over the phone / email but that I think all these points, if solidly documented will help me save a lot of time. All these points are available on most forums and MBA preparation sites. But people get a whiff of satisfaction when they a get a personal response with all this data. So here I go!!! And yeah one more thing. I will write things from the perspective of an Indian student. So yo will find a lot of desi things..So now again..get set ...Go!!

The Initial Introspection:

This is the first step towards an MBA. The following questions have to be analysed and satisfactorily answered before one jumps into the MBA prep and application process. Because MBA is a seriously costly affair, any mistakes during the initial introspection can cost one dear financially, emotionally and mentally.


1. Determine if MBA is your cup of tea:


MBA should not be the choice of career just because the post MBA jobs pay astronomical pay packets. Answer if you have the natural ability and infinity to beat some neck wrangling competition. Or if they dont come to you naturally have you nurtured such qualities in you?
If the answer to either of these questions is a yes then move on to the next questions. Others do some serious retrospection on whether this definitely is a career for you. For example communication and networking are very important assets one must have inculcated to be successful in the business domain. If you are not great at it then probably it is worth reconsidering your decision.


2. Will it give you happiness?

Happiness is the emotion for which we really slog it out. But if this slogging does not give you happiness, it may not be worth pursuing. I believe that happiness is a sum total of many factors of which money is just one factor. Job satisfaction, spending time with family and so many other such things are the other important ingredients of happiness. So people who are brilliant at technical stuff who think will fare better in the booming IT industry, people with a spouse, parents and kids who cannot relocate etc need to think and rethink before they decide to shoot for your MBA. But if you are brilliant technically and still feel that MBA is where your future lies and family and other needs can cope with the pressure, then why wait..Get into it.


3. Do I have the resources at my disposal?

An MBA may cost anything between a 17L INR to 75L INR , assuming the worst case scenario of a zero scholarship/aid. So do we have the resources at our disposal to meet such a huge financial burden? Unfortunately most Indian aspirants will not be able to garner such huge bank balances to fund their education. So we will have to depend on an aid / loan to support the education. Getting an aid in a good school is the most awesome thing to happen, but not everybody will be able to secure an aid. So most of the students will depend on a loan. Getting a loan adds a lot of dependencies. Say you are 26 and you take a a loan fr 60L INR / 1,50,000USD. And a post MBA job pays you 1,20,000USD per annum.

By 28, the Indian tradition mandates that you get married. So your effective savings for the month will be 5000USD, of which you will pay back 3000USD per month. So it will take you about 4 years to pay back the loan that you took. So yo will be forced to work in the US even if you want to return to India. And as you must have realized, investing in USD and reaping in INR will be no fun.

To add to all this fun riot is the 65,00 US H1B visa cap issue that I will discuss in a different post. The baseline is you might be an MBA from a top university, in a top company, but still providence might have other ideas for you. Your visa might get rejected just because your fate was against you. So you may have to pack your bags to earn in INR!!

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can decide if you want to do an MBA abroad. And once the decision is a "Yes" . Get into the GMAT mode. More on the GMAT mode in the posts to come...

My GMAT day experience

Though I took my GMAT in the April 2007, I never took time off to publish my ideas and thoughts on GMAT. So here is a much delayed insight into my MBA prep process

My GMAT day was one of those bad days of my life.

I had never felt so suicidal, insipid and demented in all my life.
Probably it was because I was stressing myself too much with my ambition of wanting to scale a 780 in the test.

The previous day, I took a few sample SC questions from the OG and found that I was committing mistakes at regular intervals of say one in every 8 questions. To top it all, I was getting unusually many quant questions wrong. Never have I been so depressed at seeing a few questions go wrong. But it happened on that day.

On an afterthought I think I would have scored better if I had not touched the books on the previous day.

So lessons for you from me

1. Dont touch your books just the day before the exams. Believe me it helps.
2. Treat the DDay just as any other day. Do not over stress yourselves.
3. GMAT is more about holding your nerves on the day than anything else.
Be cool and confident and that should help.

A note of caution:
All the above points apply to people who have put in sincere efforts all through their preparation.

Start..My MBA quest 2k8

After getting bitten and clawed by the wild CAT, thrice in a row, I decided to give a shot at the more domesticated GMAT. Started preparing for GMAT somewhere in the mid March and after seemingly infinite rounds of self introspection finally decided to give it a shot.

I and Jack started the preparation with a target of 780. Well we scored a seemingly decent 700+ in our first GMAT prep sans any preparation and were justified in dreaming that kind of weird dreams.

We did put in lot of efforts. Finally on the DDay I came out of the exam hall with a 710 and he with a better looking 740.


This was just the beginning. More on what happened on the dday will follow..Stay tuned..