Impressive

Today, around 2:30am I was getting bored of sitting in my room and had no urgent work at hand. So, thought of having a walk. So, I went to this place within the campus of my institute which is quite famous and is kind of the front face (in terms of places on campus) for the outside world. It is like being in open air theatre near where the movie is going on. I stayed there for some time and I have to stay, the experience was quite useful

On another topic, as I have said earlier, I get impressed easily by fundas which I come across. I have been accused of this by many of my friends and I completely agree with them. Some of the fundas which I came across recently are listed below

1. Each person tries to become a “brand”.

(This either came directly from my marketing course book or it struck me as I was reading it. I believe that just as a company wants to project its brand as having some particular characteristic and wants to associate it with certain category of people etc.; each individual tries to behave in a similar fashion and tries to project himself/herself as of a particular type or a “brand”.)

2. Truman Capote once defined love as “never having to finish your sentences”.

3. I am in the middle of the book ‘If God was a banker’ by Ravi Subramanian. Some from there

a. There are two basic things in life, which no South Indian will ever compromise on: The Hindu newspaper, and his/her morning cup of coffee.

b. Success is meaningless if you can’t take care of your near and dear ones.

4. Somebody speaking about people sleeping in the class (http://melodycalledlife.blogspot.com/2007/07/sleepy-hollow.html)

I see a friend…

His head tilted like the leaning tower of Pisa

O Leonardo!

Paint his portrait…Why do you need Mona Lisa!

5. A good blog I came across. Some really good posts. One of them I would recommend http://myafterlife.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/maria-and-the-dodo-story/

Why do people blog? - Addendum

A while back I wrote about what I felt were the reasons people blog. I still stick to those points but have found another strong reason for people maintaining blogs, diaries. Everyone needs someone with whom he/she can share all his successes, failures, feelings, emotions or anything one wishes to share. It can be a friend, a relative or anyone else.

The sharing is done because the person divulging (say, person D) knows that the other person (say, person P) is someone who would keep things confidential; who would not use things to his/her advantage; who would be willing to give you time when you want this individual to give you time. I feel that all these points are important. It should be the case that P should give time whenever D requires it.

Just speaking your mind sometimes does so many wonders that you are just amazed by its power. Keeping things within for a long time leads to unnecessary negative effects which can be easily avoided.

D should be able to speak anything and everything, anytime. In such cases, D can cry; can laugh; can talk; can crib; can curse; can praise; in short, can do whatever it feels like doing. P is patient; is supportive; is caring; understands; consoles; shares among other things. One more important thing which P does is to scratch through the surface and see what it can get which would make D share.

So, if P feels that something is troubling D, it would try to convince D to share what it is; but stops if D insists on not sharing.

A blog, though is far from being a P for every D, but it can be the best alternative available for the time being. Obviously, there are constraints to what you can write; still it’s a great medium of communication (though it’s pretty much one-way). With a person, you might take time to develop confidence, but once the trust is there, you can go as far as having blind faith.

Enron

I always wanted to know what all the story of the collapse of Enron consisted of. I had some vague idea but then I watched the documentary ‘Enron – The smartest guys in the room’. I will try to give my recollection of the same.

Firstly, why the name of the documentary as it is? Since that is what the people at Enron were called by others. And why am I asking these questions? Since the tag line of Enron was ‘Ask why?’ and as one of the ex-employees said in the documentary, this is precisely what was not done.

Enron was basically started with investment in some natural gas assets (like pipelines etc.). They wanted to trade natural gas and had some traders to engage in these activities. The entire basis of the vision of trading etc. was to have a deregulated market where the prices of all products (especially the energy related ones) to be determined “efficiently” by market forces. For this the executives used their contacts in the government and lobbied to have laws being made (or in some cases, avoid passage of laws) which would help them in following their vision.

The traders took huge risks and made millions for the company. The risks involved were much above what maximum they were allowed to take. Even when the management came to know of this, rather than taking action against the traders, they were appreciated for the money they had made. As you would guess, one day the traders lost almost all the money of the company.

Then a new idea was brought in “rather than be bound by the physical flow of the pipeline, Enron would become a kind of stock market for natural gas … transform energy into financial instruments that culd be traded like stocks and bonds” (direct quote from the documentary). The problem with this was that there can be scope for manipulation if the stock market actually owns a large part of the assets of the underlying commodity.

Then a big fault from the regulators; they agreed on the use of mark-to-market accounting by Enron. The auditors, Arthur Anderson signed off and the SEC agreed. That way Enron can book potential future profits on the very day the deal was signed (no matter how little cash actually came in). Thus now the company can show profits as much as they want.

The culture at the company was made very competitive and everyone was driven solely by money, no ethics, and no scruples. They had a strong liking for the stock market price of their company, as a large part of the compensation was being paid in the form of stock options. Thus, they came up with one story after another just to ensure that investors have faith in the company and the stock price continues to go up.

Meanwhile, some of the projects started making losses. For example, the Dabhol power project in India was by no means a success. However, the culture made it impossible to accept failures and they tried everything from buying companies to entering into newer markets like leasing of broadband lines. But the mark-to-market accounting methodology came in handy each time and any unsuccessful venture can still be shown as a profitable one.

At this time some of the people started smelling something fishy, though even they had no idea of how huge the fraud was. Any kind of speculation was blown off as mere criticisms which accompany a success.

However, as Enron suffered losses, it had to have cash flow from some place. So, it borrowed a lot. However, it cannot borrow more than a certain amount before people start driving them off. So, they had the problem of showing a lot of debt on their books. The way out was some “creative” accounting. They took refuge in some fake companies where the debt and losses can be buried. The big investment banks turned a blind eye on these wrong doings and agreed to fund these companies who further pumped in money into Enron. The collateral was Enron’s stock, increasing their dependence on stock prices remaining high.

A special event happened which was actually the first hint of the forthcoming earthquake. In an analyst conference call on 17^th April, 2001, an analyst asked “You‘re the only financial institution that can’t produce a balance sheet or cash flow statement with their earnings.” The reply from the CEO was “You, you, you … Well, uh … thank you very much. We appreciate it … a$$h***.” It said that something was bothering the CEO which he did not want to share.

And then was the whole issue of California. As I mentioned before, if Enron has control on a large proportion of assets for some particular commodity and you are also involved in the trading of this commodity, then there is a hell lot of a scope for price rigging. So, what Enron did was stopped generating electricity in California (they could do this since they owned one of the power producing companies and had successfully made the government pass the law for deregulation of the power markets). As a result, the power prices shot up and Enron was able to sell power at a much larger price. At the same time its traders had betted on power prices going up and Surprise! Surprise! the bets went in their favour.

The above issue has the whole angle of ethics where money was being made at the expense of the sufferings of people. The traders were involved and their conversations showed how inhumane they were. (There’s a reference to Milgram’s experiment about giving electric shocks to individuals, wherein it was observed that “… 50% of the subjects were willing to shock to the death so long as commands came from a seemingly legitimate source …”).

The result was price caps being introduced in California and Californians electing Arnold (The Terminator) as their Governor (as the former Governor had to face the wrath of the power-deprived Californians).

After that, suddenly the CEO resigned; the confidence plummeted; the stock price went down. The accounting frauds (related to the fake companies) started surfacing and only then did SEC wake up. Enron, along with companies like Arthur Anderson (auditors), Vincent and Alkans (law firm) tried their best to cover up but to no use. All companies collapsed (bankruptcy) as a pack of cards (in a matter of weeks).

Finally, think of the people who lost their money. And I am not just talking about the debtors. All money from the pension funds, retirement funds were lost. An employee of a company owned by Enron says that he had 348,000$ at the peak which he had to sell for 1,200$.

Bahut sahi funda hain

I generally am inspired easily by sentences/fundas which I come across. As part of the curriculum through readings related to the courses or through the mouth of the Professors, I have come across various statements which have made me say “Bahut sahi funda hain” (It’s a very good funda). I use this sequence of words quite lavishly, but I cannot help appreciate statements which I like but which may not impress many.

Some thoughts have also started surfacing in my mind. I guess these are probably due to a mixture of the environment in my institute, the syllabus, the Profs, my observations etc. I sometimes jot down these points so that I can have everything in front of me , rather than in the mind.

In one of our courses in the last term, we had a reading which said that people tend to listen and agree to things which are said by people who are not close to you. As it might have sounded to you, it did sound a little universal. It will depend a lot on what the context is. So, in some cases or for some people this might be true; and for others just the opposite might be true.

I came across an example of the same within our class. We had a heated debate about an issue in the class sometime back. Everyone had his/her opinion and not many were ready to budge. After a while, various events happened and many things were said by Profs and by students about things which might seem far away from the debate. However, the core issue people were trying to address/discuss was the same. You might get a hint of that from one of my posts.

Since the issue was the same people generally stuck to their initial points of view. But a lot was dependent on who raised the issue. So, if it was a Prof saying things against your stand and you did not like that Prof, you tended to defend your stand. While if it came from a Prof you liked or maybe from a student you were on good terms with, then even if the stand being taken by them was the opposite of yours, you tended to agree at least for that bit.

Another thought. Cursing and cribbing has kind of become a fashion. So, if you don’t crib, you do not “belong” to the general crowd. The best thing to do is to listen to someone cribbing and then agree to whatever is said. To add to that, you put in another 2-3 cribs and everyone is happy (or at least they seem to be happy).

I agree that listening to what others say is very important but if you agree, just for the sake of agreeing, then it might not be the best thing to do (as I see it). You can listen to them and may be try to remove the issues being faced by giving some other perspective (You do not have to do it always, but there can be times when you can). Obviously, doing this makes you the bad guy. The other person will not like it but if you are scared of that, assume you did not read this post.

Bragging and sympathy

Life is not as easy as it sometimes seems to be. You need to find ways to live it. You need to find happiness in small things. You might have to ignore things which are not behaving in a fashion you would like them to behave.

People employ various approaches in different areas to keep living and enjoying. Sometimes, it may get to the nerves of the inhabitants around them. However, these methods may be important for the intended performance/results of the former or sometimes for the mere survival.

I have this habit of speaking highly of myself. So, even if I achieve a small result, I tend to brag about it. Internally, I might not consider that as a big achievement, yet from outside I would show it as if I have reinvented the wheel (a little exaggeration). I do not know why I do this, but I feel sometimes it is important. Sometimes, it gives you a boost when you give yourself a pat on the back.

I believe, till the time you are clear about the magnitude of your achievement (internally) and the bragging does not go to your head, it is kind of healthy for yourself. I agree that, that might not be the case for people around me who have to listen to me praising myself. To them you might look as an arrogant self-obsessed chap, yet I have seen many examples of people who are just the opposite and still have this habit.

There was this guy at my workplace who was one of the hardest working guys I have ever seen. I had the opportunity to sit beside him at work. The good part was that he loved to do what he did. That was what kept him motivated. There are people who work very hard, but it seems that they are being made to work. Any chance they get, they just cannot stop cursing the job they are doing.

Coming back to the guy I was talking about, he used to help others a lot. The situation was such that if anybody wanted some help, the default name which came to one’s mind was that of this guy. However, jokingly this person sometimes asked whosoever came for help, to say some words for praise for him. For someone dealing with him for the first time, this would seem an indication of egotism. However, within no time you would realize that he was a very down-to-earth person.

I think the general populace would like a person (over the one described above) who keeps thrashing himself/herself, sometimes for no reason and sometimes just for gaining sympathy; Or a person who would keep on cursing the system; who would portray the system as the combination of all that could go wrong. I have nothing against this category of people but I believe it is important not to take the things at face value and give a thought to the intentions behind particular behaviours.

Finally, though this might feel as an attempt to defend my habit, I myself am OK with it. I feel I am erring on the right side when it comes to differing in the way I think and the way I behave (may be this statement is just a manifestation of my habit).

Names galore

There is a tradition of giving a nick name (henceforth, NN) to each and every student in my institute. Giving NNs is not an uncommon event. Whenever people work in groups, NNs spring up. The reasons for these may vary from convenience to liking to disliking. I have been given NNs in my various groups (and perhaps by others, in which case the NNs have remained unknown) before but this time it was more of a universal thing.

Many of the nick names given are just unmentionable, especially to people who do not know of this culture. We had an incident in one of our classes, when a Prof asked a student to tell his dorm name. The student avoided mentioning the same so that he is not embarrassed in front of the Prof. The entire class was in splits. However, to his dismay, the Prof got the name known from some other source and recited it in the next class.

The NNs tend to be of varying nature. Some are so catchy that people actually forget what the real names of the NN holders are. So, after a while, if a person with such a name is referenced by his original name, people tend to have a reaction (genuine!) of not knowing that person. Some other NNs are not so catchy and tend to wither off or not pick up at all. NNs of smaller length or those which are easy to speak may not guarantee their widespread use. In the end, though there may be speculations about different NNs getting different levels of popularity, the actuals are generally very different from what is forecasted.

As for my NN, it is not one which cannot be mentioned to people. In fact, I told my parents about it. They were quite surprised at such a tradition (and such a NN for me). However, I like my NN and in fact have started liking being called by it (at least in my institute campus). Actually, if you search this blog carefully, you will find a mention of it somewhere. (Hint: the mention was not by me).

A compliment which I received regarding my NN goes as “…it reminds me u know like in comics and cartoons they have a bulb that lights up on top of the head of the genius who gets brilliant eureka types ideas...”. (Disclaimer: The person was praising the NN and not me). Though the NN becomes quite revealing from this, it can take a while for people to guess.

I generally call only those people by their NN whose NN I like.

“Soft” skills

My first term ended a few days back and I am back to my hometown for about a week. In the final class for each subject, the instructors generally deal with a topic which is close to their heart and which they have not touched for the entire term. These give fundas away from academics, fundas of life. The theme running across all of them is to respect your personal life and not just get swayed away in your career or in your quest for money. The message was also to look beyond what was taught as part of the curriculum and think about the people you would be dealing with, both in work and personal life.

In my posts, I try to be ordered and present a structured flow of thought. But as a friend commented on one of my recent posts, “life does not have flowcharts in store for us”. And so I many a times digress a lot (This is also the reason why I am not able to find a suitable heading for my posts). I just write things which I have in my mind, and so, please bear with me.

I always remember a few quotes from the movie Good Will Hunting

1. Real loss is only possible when you love something more than you love yourself.

2. She is not perfect. You are not perfect. The question is whether or not you are perfect for each other.

For some, the latter one can also be interpreted as

She is perfect. But you are not perfect for each other.

These points actually say a lot, and are applicable in varied domains. One applicability is the context in which it was mentioned in the movie. It is said that love is blind and nobody knows when it happens. But one needs to be careful as the idea of being perfect for each other (some might like to include their families etc. in their definition of each other) need to be given a thought.

The other applicability can be in organizations. An interviewer might like a candidate a lot on a standalone basis. But whether he is good enough to be offered a job does not just depend on this. It involves looking at the candidate from the company’s perspective. Hence, if a company cannot afford to lose its employees in the first few years of their term, a potential employee who has ambitions of studying sometime in the near future may not make them an ideal pair (though on individual basis, the candidate may have been the best of the picks). So, the same interviewer should select or reject a candidate depending on the company the recruitment is being done for.

I feel that the above issue is very important in both the contexts mentioned above. You might have some short term benefits by ignoring this issue but in the long term, I suppose you would be better off thinking it through.

God

I had heard that many of the Professors in my institution were Gods. I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to be taught by one in my first term itself. Yesterday was his last class and it was one of the worst moments of my first term. I am scared that this post would be far from doing any kind of justice to what I want to convey. But I cannot resist myself from writing.

I have learnt so much from him, not just academics but general fundas of life. His examples always came from the real life. One wonders how can a person observe life to such a depth, analyze it from various angles and is able to get his point across to people like us who (at least a majority) have not seen life at all. He cannot be an earthly figure.

I can go on and on with the learnings from his lecturers. What amazes me is the applicability of these learnings in various areas, in your personal life, in your career, in your day-to-day dealings with people etc. His examples were such that the audience was able to relate to them instantaneously and from that he would bring in the academic funda in such a fashion that there was no chance of not understanding. He gave us a framework for everything in a subject which is known for being lacking in any kind structure. You require someone more than extraordinary to do that.

I want to go over all his teachings and the things I could grasp but there are some time constraints. However, I will try my best to post them sometime for the benefit of all (including me). How much one implements those in one’s life is left to the concerned person, but at least people should get an opportunity to know these fundas.

He said and I try to recollect…

… for a balanced life, we require four things family, career, friends and a religious side.

We have talked of so many situations where we face challenges and conflicts. And where our aim is to overcome them and emerge as winners.

In real life, you will find many situations in which you want the other person to win. In such cases, your win lies in yourself losing and more so, the other person winning …

I have wondered about this many times. In many situations people say that you would be used by others. I say, so what if I want to get used. People warn against others taking you for a ride. What if I want to be taken on a ride? People say that you are stupid. What if, I want to be stupid?

CP

In my last post, I talked about how I had so much to talk about the ‘Learning’ issue.

Not a day goes by when our batch is not told how “different” our batch is from all other batches. No professor looks satisfied with our batch. Sometimes, it may be a sense of making the people more committed. However, I feel that even as the first term is coming to an end, the commitment in our batch is not visible (at all).

I feel quite bad when a majority of the class has not prepared for the class. If this happens on some days, I can understand. Maybe there were some pressing issues or there was a large workload the previous day and so preparation was not possible. But this has become more of a rule rather than an exception. So, you have people who have decided that there is no use of preparing for the class and the breaks in between would be sufficient to do whatever it takes to get ‘prepared’ for the class.

As I am talking about this issue, it is important to bring the whole issue of the objective of coming to this institution. There is always the cardinal debate of the objective being ‘Learning’ vs. ‘Marks/Grades’. Though the two should be interlinked, the degree of linkage may not always be high and sometimes may be totally absent. Obviously, the approach of students would totally differ based on the objective they choose.

Personally, I had been following one of them. But then one of my friends made me realize that a bit of both is required. This helps not only sticking to your actual aim but also enhances it since giving some weightage to the other objective leads to better achievement of the first.

Anyways, whatever be the objective, I feel, a basic level of preparation for the class would help in getting to what you want. I have preference for one of the two and sincerely believe that everybody (or at least a majority or at least a few more of my batchmates) should have that having a major weight in their aim. But one thing I have realized is that you can force nothing on anyone. People only want to be taught what they like to be taught. So, if one does get an opportunity to gain from someone else’s experience, more often than not he/she would be reluctant to grasp/ask and might actually demotivate the other person to share.

I have talked so much about preparation; what actually is expected from us? We are not asked to get correct solutions before the class; we don’t have to be right to the second decimal place in our numbers. But what is expected is that we have read what has been told; we have dwelled into some issues/numbers and have some idea about what is happening. There are two advantages of this: 1. You will be able to understand what is happening in class 2. The discussion would happen at a much higher level.

But, as I was discussing with one of my friends, if you have one of the two above mentioned goals (‘Learning’ vs. ‘Marks/Grades’, and you are intelligent enough to guess which one of these I am talking about), the discussion cannot get above a particular level. But even that is fine, if we are actually able to reach that level. For the majority of the classes, this has not happened. And in most discussion based classes, we move to mediocrity.

I am no judge and probably I should not pass any judgments, but I am yet to see any kind of seriousness on this issue. We listen to all such kind of stuff and the next moment, we go back to where we belong. We start worrying about how to achieve our objective without considering if that is the “right” objective or we need to move around some stuff.

Learnings

I am an ardent viewer of the comedy series F.R.I.E.N.D.S. I know I must have said this before, but it is the best series ever. Many a times, here are things which have a hype created around them. And when you actually encounter them, they are nowhere close to what was being said of them. For e.g. many books (like Alchemist, The Monk who sold his Ferrari etc.) are very famous and are selling in huge numbers even after being in the market for quite a while now. I have read the two books mentioned above and was utterly disappointed. I just could not understand what all the fuss is about. The books have a lot of knowledge about life, how to lead your life etc. I believe everyone knows what about these things. Mostly people are aware of what is good and what is not so good; what one should do (ideally) and what one should refrain from doing.

It is when one goes to the groundwork of implementing things (in their life or elsewhere) that people are not good at. So, whatever you are trying to teach them is redundant and the area where people have issues (namely, implementation) cannot be taught. It has to come from within. People are just being fooled when the authors and publishers mint money. The problem with the authors (and for that matter many of the modern sages) is that while they say that one should not run after the materialistic world, their aim of doing that is to get all the worldly pleasures for themselves.

I started the post to write about friends (not the comedy series) and related topics, but have somehow got drifted away from it. This is the reason I like to keep the topic of the post for the end, since even I am not sure what I would write about.

It has been almost a full term at the institute and everybody is ready to head home. I would say I have learnt a lot. I have been able to identify non-academic areas where I need to work on and am trying to work on those. Some of the learnings (I know I have criticized people for this very thing above, but I do not want to explain my point on this. I came across this insightful statement about explaining stuff.

Never Explain - Because Your Friends Don't Need It and Your Enemies Will Never Believe It)

1. It is not necessary to have a view on everything.

2. Be tolerant towards others’ habits and avoid ill feelings for them.

3. You need to pick and choose your battles.

4. You need to listen to people and not always comment (even after listening).

5. It is not necessary to defend yourself every time somebody says something about you.

I am at various levels of trying to internalize (one of the words I have learnt at my institute, mainly because of its liberal use) these points and am working towards them. I have to write a lot about the issue of ‘Learning’ but may be some other time.