Occasional Musings

60 Seconds Deep

2008-10-10T23:14:00.001-07:00

The story of 4 standard sized lives. And 4 larger than life dreams.Welcome to your life and mine. Welcome to our stories.Let’s take a Journey that’s crazy and expensive and doesn’t know how the rules work. Maybe we’ll meet my parents and your uncle and drink coffee at our neighborhood Bakery. Sharing space is important, and so is sharing a bathroom. No nuisance allowed. Welcome to where you work

Once Upon A... Grrrowwll!

2008-06-07T21:27:00.000-07:00

A dull rainy start to the day - with the rain washing away my tennis game - turned so cheerful as my 10-year old niece and I watched "Once Upon A... Tiger" at Prithvi this morning. Just what was needed to liven up two weary faces (her tennis semi-finals match at the academy had been washed away as well)."Once Upon A... Tiger" is a free-flowing fun-filled play that attempts to educate kids and

A Funny Take On Runaway Oil Prices

2008-04-15T03:32:00.000-07:00

CPOH - A Powerful Maxim Long Ignored

2008-04-14T05:22:00.000-07:00

Traditional methods of maximizing profitability focus on maximizing margins through the levers of market price and product cost. These methods ignore the significant impact of difference in throughput between different products. A product with high margins but low throughput may fetch a lower gross profit than a product with low margins but high throughput. The impact on profits in such scenarios

Insomnia

2007-09-06T15:28:00.001-07:00

The euphoria was short-lived. It has given way to insomnia. My celebrations have been dampened by the realization that I have not even completed the first draft of my essays yet. I did outline some of the essays last month, but am at completele loss in figuring out what my strengths and weaknesses are. Maybe I can tell the adcom that lack of self-awareness is my weakness, so I don't know my

The Smartphone Gets New Friends

2007-05-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

"Ask an american kid if you were to take his cellphone or his PC away, which one would he kill you for." - Scott McNealy, responding to a question on the future of personal computing.So you review your powerpoint slides on your PDA while the taxi winds its way through traffic, but wish you could simply walk into the conference room and display them? Or wish you didn't have to rush out the room at

Bangalore Theatre Update

2006-08-28T05:14:00.000-07:00

Chekhov's Mistress - Anecdotes and Hilarious Sketches from The Good Doctor by Neil Simon - @ Alliance Francaise, Aug 30 and 31, 7:15pmSpotlight - a family driven by power, money and fear - @ ING Vysya House Auditorium, MG Road, Sep 2, 8:00pm

Bangalore Theatre Update

2006-08-25T00:57:00.000-07:00

Bikhre Bimb - Written and Directed by Girish Karnad, Played by Arundhati Nag - @ Rangashankara, Aug 25, 26 and 27, 7:30pmFinal Touches - a pallette of four plays - @ Guru Nanak Bhavan, Vasanth Nagar, Aug 27, 7:00pmAn Interactive Theatre experience where you make your Final Touches to all four plays by becoming the director of these plays and get a chance to "Complete the story" as you wish.For

Bangalore Theatre Update

2006-08-03T01:45:00.000-07:00

Othello - @ Rangashankara, Aug 12 and 13, 3:30pm and 7:30pmMake Sense Who May (A Tribute to Samuel Beckett) - @ Rangashankara, Aug 17 and 18, 7:30pm And @Alliance Francaise, Aug 25 and 26, 8.00pmNarratives on Beckett's life and scenes from some of his lesser known but aesthetically brilliant sketchesWords and Deedah - @ Rangashankara, Aug 19 and 20, 7:30pm And @Alliance Francaise, Aug 23 and 24,

Bangalore Theatre Update

2006-07-20T22:14:00.000-07:00

The premiere of the musical theatre “Kaifi Aur Main” featuring Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar, and Jaswinder Singh, in support of India Foundation for the arts (IFA) on July 29th at 7 pm at the St.Johns Auditorium, Koramangala.Find booking details here

Medical Camp For The Poor By i2 Share

2006-07-20T08:06:00.000-07:00

2006-07-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

2006-07-20T08:04:00.000-07:00

'Art' - Go Watch This Play!

2006-07-19T19:34:00.000-07:00

Brilliant! 'Art' was amongst the wittiest dramas I ever came across. Written by Yasmina Reza and performed by Evam, a Chennai based group, 'Art' was about three friends Serge, Marc and Ivan whose relationship comes to a turmoil over Serge's purchase of a painting. The script took the characters through a range of moods through the play - from pride to anger to frustration to envy to amusement to

"The Indian at the Center Of the Global Economy"

2006-05-05T00:04:00.000-07:00

TIME lists Nandan Nilekani among "100 People Who Shape Our World"... profiled by Thomas Friedman as "The Indian at the Center Of the Global Economy"

Fuel Woes - Part I

2006-03-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

More facts from the IMF report:- Petrol price in India is double that in China.- Kerosene is cheaper in India than in any other country.* fob (free on board) is the price standard for international tradeI found another report by TERI, which tries to analyze the issues involved in petroleum pricing in India and comes up with some interesting observations. I am trying to build upon the analysis in

A Carrot For Privatising India's SEBs

2006-02-21T21:41:00.000-08:00

IMF's 2006 country report on India brings some interesting macro economic statistics to the fore. I will draw upon these numbers in this post and the next few.This one is relates to the electric power infrastructure of the country and its effect on the manufacturing industry.Apparantly, electricity prices in India are amongst the highest in the world. This is hurting our export competitiveness

Reminiscing Placements

2006-02-21T21:01:00.000-08:00

Eileen Gunn @ WSJ writes about some basic interviewing tips. Some of these reminded me of things I did right and things I messed up during my campus interviews two years ago :)- Recruiters note that business-school students seeking jobs regularly slip from grounded confidence into arrogance and an inflated sense of entitlement. As a result, they often knock themselves out of contention for

2006-01-01T14:40:00.000-08:00

Midfield Menace!

2006-01-01T14:33:00.000-08:00

The Magnificent Harbour Bridge

2006-01-01T14:28:00.000-08:00

Man On Fire. Change the hat to a 12mm. :-)

2005-10-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

Surf meets the rocks... chaotic but beautiful

2005-10-28T17:04:00.000-07:00

Could I swim across...?

2005-10-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

On to a well-trodden path now...

2005-10-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

Wish you were here...

2005-10-28T16:59:00.000-07:00

Me takes a break. Btw, the piece of land in the background is where I stay...

2005-10-28T16:56:00.000-07:00

Out into the wilderness...

2005-10-28T16:51:00.000-07:00

Morning glow...

2005-10-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

Magical horizon...

2005-10-28T16:34:00.000-07:00

Sentry of the coast...

2005-10-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

The '92 Chardonnay is the best!

2005-10-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

The famed Hunter wine cellars...

2005-10-28T16:21:00.000-07:00

In search of wine country...

Extreme Sports In Oz

2005-10-11T05:55:00.000-07:00

I had my first Aussie-style injury, mountain biking in the forests. The rollercoaster trail was so much fun and the steep downhill ride through bush and stone was macho and exciting until I fell and almost broke my knee. Did the Chicken Run rest of the trail :-) They don't call 'em extreme sports for nothing :-) But I know I'm gonna be back next week! It's a way of life out here. You surf, bike

Room With A View :-)

2005-10-11T05:02:00.000-07:00

View from my apartment on a Sunday morning...

2005-10-11T05:01:00.000-07:00

2005-10-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

I'm Back Baby!

2005-06-30T23:40:00.000-07:00

Months slipped by so quickly, silently. Each day was just the same as the previous one, like recurring schedule entries on a computerized calendar. Like clockwork. I wanna break out. Break free. Wander. Write. Dance. Until I begin to long for this comfortable certainty of things again. The couch is an object of gravity. I always tend come back to it. But for the moment I'll wander a little.

Bangalore Theatre Update

2005-04-24T20:32:00.000-07:00

My Experiments With Sense - @ Nani Arena-CFD, 5th Floor Sona Towers, Millers Road -- April 29, 8:00 pmThe criss-crossing lives of the most unlikely people, brought together by destiny.

Bangalore Theatre Update

2005-04-20T23:31:00.000-07:00

Final Solutions - @ Rangashankara, April 21, 7:30pmI've heard a lot about this play. I've heard it's a very powerful commentary on communalism. Playwright Mahesh Dattani was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for this play in 1998. There was a performance at college (IIT Bombay) a couple of years back, but I missed it that time. I might miss it again this evening, coz I expect to be stuck in

Of Friday Mornings And Survival Of Statistics

2005-04-14T22:03:00.000-07:00

There is, I think, a strong correlation between the occurence of Fridays, a good game of tennis, and my posting something on this blog.Sometimes you do things just to strengthen your random proclamations .

Never Share A Doc By Mail Again!

2005-04-13T22:11:00.000-07:00

I found this new utility called Instacoll this morning. It's a web-based real time file sharing utility. What this means is that you can work on a document, a spreadsheet or a presentation together with your colleagues sitting in Shanghai and Sydney, all in real time. You can deliver an interactive presentation online. You can also share your desktop or just one application, so Amit can check his

Moonlight and Skytoffee

2005-04-08T03:50:00.000-07:00

Always curious to watch a play with an intriguing title.At Rangashankara, this weekend (April 9 & 10), 7.30pm, by a group from Chennai called Magic Lantern.

Here's My Fiver For French Open

2005-04-07T04:17:00.000-07:00

The French Open has quite some time to start, yet my bet's already on Rafael Nadal to play Roger Federer (who else!) in the finals. Why? He said so, so it must be true. He said so shortly after he had lost his first Masters Series final (the Nasdaq 100 Open) to Federer 6-2, 7-6, 6-7, 3-6, 1-6 in a gritty 5-setter.I play Valencia, Monte-Carlo, Barcelona, Rome, Hamburg. I stop one week and play

Life After iPod

2005-03-28T03:39:00.000-08:00

Business 2.0 prophesizes the next generation of blockbusters from Apple based on the iPod. A Wireless iPod and an iPod that plays video are virtually on the cards for a launch. There's also a nice photoessay on the shape of things to come.

The Blue Mug

2005-03-10T23:11:00.000-08:00

Watched "The Blue Mug" at Rangashankara yesterday. And it was fabulous, so much so that I'll prob'ly watch it again when I get a chance.At its centre, four characters constructed bits and pieces of their past as they remember it... significant and insignificant moments - which sprung to their minds as they speak... collecting glass from broken bottles at the sea shore as a little girl,

Brilliant Win!

2005-03-01T20:36:00.000-08:00

On the frontpages today - Sania Mirza pulled off a remarkable turnaround to beat US Open champ Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4, 6-2 in the second round of the Dubai OpenSania started off on a nervous footing and was 0-4 down in a blink. She fell and hurt her left ankle in the third game, then was a point away from dropping her fifth straight game in the first set. Faltering in her serves and struggling

Retro Bollywood Masala!

2005-02-25T06:14:00.000-08:00

Anurag posted a fabulous countdown list of classic bollywood dialogues of the 70s and 80s. A preview - (read the best ones here)"Kuttay, Kameenay mai tumhe jaan se maar doonga!""Tum mere liye mar chuke ho!""Bacchhhaaaaaooooo!!!""Mulzim ko baa-izzat bari kiya jata hai.""Ma, tum kitni achchi ho!"

Banglore Theatre Update

2005-02-17T07:33:00.000-08:00

Looking forward to two long anticipated comedies from Bombay. This time, thankfully, they gave Chowdiah a miss and are playing at Rangashankara, so tickets will be affordable at 150 bucks.On the 10th and 11th, The Company Theatre will present The Blue Mug at Rangashankara. The play stars Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Shoreay and Sheeba Chaddha.On the 12th and 13th Rangashankara will host C

Chennai Open

2005-02-10T05:11:00.000-08:00

Those are pics from Chennai Open 2005. Lifted from the Chennai Open website, I acknowledge; I didn't carry a camera I'm afraid, but it was an amazing experience watching Moya and Srichappan up so close. The final was a treat to watch, it went down to the wire and had plenty of entertaining rallies. The best part was watching these guys serve. Matches on TV hardly ever show a full serve

Bangalore Theatre Update

2005-01-31T05:11:00.000-08:00

Perchance To Dream - @ Rangashankara, Jan 30 to Feb 3, 7:30pm Footsbarn travelling theatre troupe of France brings a colourful presentation to town this week. The production is an amalgamation of extracts from various Shakespeare plays that Footsbarn has staged over the past 30 years. The plays include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, portraying the

Stephen Wolfram at Techfest 2005

2005-01-20T07:17:00.000-08:00

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica and the author of A New Kind of Science. Having had a distinguished academic career beginning at an early age, Stephen Wolfram founded Wolfram Research in 1986, and has been its CEO since. Catch him live at Techfest 2005, Jan 28-30, IIT Bombay

East Coast Rally

2005-01-20T00:29:00.000-08:00

Shree Kumar cycled all the way from Chennai to Kolkata in 15 days. A distance of over 2000 kilometres! He's blogged all about it. With pictures. [via Anita Bora] Showed this to my new roomie, Vineet, who early this week had proclaimed me crazy when I recounted a 60-km bicycle trip through the ghats north of Bombay last year. "Occurances of irrationality cannot be used to rationalise

Go Sania!

2005-01-19T21:32:00.000-08:00

Play your heart out!

Gonna be a beautiful day

2005-01-18T21:06:00.000-08:00

I played well today. I played aggressive, dominant. I served brilliantly, and hit some incredible returns. I won. It feels good.

Bangalore Theatre Update

2005-01-16T21:47:00.000-08:00

Monologues - @ Rangashankara, Jan 21, 7:30pm Creeps - @ Grasshopper (Bannerghata Road), Jan 21, 7:30pm, and @ Rangashankara, Jan 22 & 23, 7:30pm A shocking comedy on the increasing influence of media and a commercialised society in shaping the personaly being, relationships, desires and aspirations of "Generation Next". Katha Collage - @ Chowdiah Memorial Hall, Jan 22 & 23, 7:30pm Directed

On New Year Resolutions

2004-12-31T21:23:00.000-08:00

Calvin sums up my thoughts :)

The Phantom of the Opera

2004-12-22T05:25:00.000-08:00

Never Judge A Book By Its Musical - Me :) Geston Leroux's The Phantom Of The Opera is not an exceptionally gripping novel, nor is it widely acclaimed for literary brilliance. It is but a unique, compelling combination of horror, mystique and romance. That probably is the reason why the "legend of the Opera Ghost" has for a century caught the imagination of some of the most illustrious directors

Google adds more punch!

2004-12-14T06:42:00.000-08:00

Check out this new feature on Google - As you type, Google will offer suggestions. 'ts Real Cool!

Bangalore Theatre Update

2004-12-12T23:59:00.000-08:00

Dec 14 - The Open Couple - @ Rangashankara, 7:30pm Dec 16 & 17 - Where There is a Will - @ Rangashankara, 7:30pm Dec 18 - Evam Indrajit - @ Rangashankara, 7:30pm Dec 19 - Final Rehearsal - @ Rangashankara, 7:30pm

Bangalore Theatre Update

2004-12-06T21:31:00.000-08:00

Plays at Alliance Francaise (@8 pm) 8th & 9th Dec -- Woza Albert! -- A political satire set in South Africa 10th & 11th Dec -- Two Plays at Chowdaiyah Memorial Hall 10th Dec -- The Class of '84 -- Rahul Da Cunha's blockbuster comic drama (highly recommended) 11th Dec -- Pune Highway -- Sequel to The Class of '84, no reviews yet Plays at Thespo Youth Festival at Rangashankara (@7:

Bangalore Theatre Update

2004-11-23T21:55:00.000-08:00

Shabana Azmi and Farooq Sheikh will present Feroz Khan's 'Tumhari Amrita' on Thursday, November 25 at Chowdaiah Hall, Bangalore, at 7 pm. Inspired from A.R. Gurney’s ‘Love Letter’, the play chronicles the lifelong correspondence between a pair of friends. An easy intimacy allows the two characters to slip into the roles of people who love each other for life, but, for one reason or another,

Supermarket of the Future

2004-11-19T03:38:00.000-08:00

Metro has taken a flight to the future with its concept Metro Future Store in Rheinberg, Germany. The store is a testbed for technologies in retailing, hoping to create standards in the use of RFIDs, info-kiosks, auto-billing, inventory management and CRM applications that might in the future completely change retailing as we know it. Not unlike my own imagination of the RFID era that may be...

The Cola War. Gossip In'corp'rated ?

2004-11-19T02:25:00.000-08:00

lazygeek.net guest blog: The Cola War. Gossip In'corp'rated ?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Presenting

2004-11-15T01:46:00.000-08:00

The Best Indian Business School Blog!

Killer words in divergent series die of exhaustion

2004-11-15T01:03:00.000-08:00

Read the sentence below carefully: "I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications' incomprehensibleness". This is a sentence where the Nth word is N letters long. e.g. 3rd word is 3 letters long, 8th word is 8 letters long and so

RFIDs to Keep Tabs on U.S. Drugs

2004-11-14T22:18:00.000-08:00

The New York Times > Health > Tiny Antennas to Keep Tabs on U.S. Drugs The Food and Drug Administration and several major drug makers are expected to announce initiatives today that will put tiny radio antennas on the labels of millions of medicine bottles to combat counterfeiting and fraud. Experts do not expect the technology to stop there. The adoption by the drug

Me turns a theatre buff

2004-11-13T23:39:00.000-08:00

The seven-week ban on new movie releases in bangalore, together with the hangover of my final years at college, has turned me into a theatre buff. It took me some time to dig out solutions to solitude over empty weekends, once I was done with the essential pub-hopping and stuff... Bangalore threatened to bore me to death. Then I found a couple of cultural centres in town that host plays

Gump Memorabilia

2004-11-12T05:37:00.000-08:00

The Great's been egging me on for some time to blog more often. And now he's shown me t he highway to blogging through Blog This! It is only befitting that this post be a tribute to His Highness. And what better form of flattery could I indulge him with than imitating his own style myself. Much inspired by The Great's recent post with favourite quotes from one (series) of his favourite movies, I

A First Take On Bangalore

2004-08-05T21:32:00.000-07:00

I'm in bangalore.. 2 weeks in town infact. It's been a mixed experience so far.. the company's great, work's exciting and workplace is super cool. The city is full of rowdy traffic on a rampage on broken roads overseen by helpless cops who dress up like cowboys. I've been through hell looking for a decent place to stay. Finally settled for a flat which is steeply expensive but is big and in good

Blogger: Hey, look who's here!

2004-06-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

Me: How 'ya doin' fella? So sorry man, it's been over a month, and I didn't e'en notice! See I've been so tied up and drained with work here, couldn't find the time or the spirit to see ya. Blogger: Yeah, I understand, pal! No sweat. Me: My project, you know.. i'm testing these scheduling algos.. here, look.. Generating Schedule... machine 1: 11 (0) 3 (37.2) 1 (14.4) 8 (3.6) 2 (26.4)

Caught me napping!

2004-05-14T07:29:00.000-07:00

Last year when Jumbo and I made a class presentation on the product development plan for our imaginary shoe company, conjuring up all sorts of gizmos to fit into our "future-ready" shoes, we chuckled at each other in the middle of it, as amused as the rest of the class at the outrageously sci-fi shoes we said we had plans for. We had force sensors, health trackers and shock adjusters powered by

E-Governance in India

2004-05-14T01:39:00.001-07:00

I recently read an article ("E-governing India" by Sunil Jain, Business Standard, May 3, 2004) that pointed out the ways in which the use of technology is creating fantastic improvements in public services, from railway reservations to customs clearance to the election process. The landmark e-election just held is of course the most impressive automation exercise ever witnessed in this part of

Day dreaming an RFID future

2004-05-09T00:54:00.000-07:00

I've been reading stuff on applications of RFID technology in supply chain visibility. For the uninitiated, RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification... it's a microchip that replaces the barcode on products and can be tracked and identified by RF sensors. Each item has a unique code on its RFID chip and a retail store, for instance, can not only automatically keep track of the shelf-stock

Four Seasons In One Day

2004-05-08T07:42:00.000-07:00

Four seasons in one day Lying in the depths of your imagination Worlds above and worlds below The sun shines on the black clouds hanging over the domain Even when you’re feeling warm The temperature could drop away Like four seasons in one day Smiling as the shit comes down You can tell a man from what he has to say Everything gets turned around And I will risk my neck again, again You can

Launchpad

2004-05-07T21:58:00.000-07:00

Here it is, finally, my own blog! :) And I have absolutely no idea what to do with it now. It's an open diary, I hear... I hesitate, wondering whether what I write would make any sense to others, let alone be interesting enough for them to read it. My fears are helped along by an entry by Ankur the Great, a friend and a veteran blogger, one that warns against having others read your blog unless