Thursday, February 28, 2008

Its Official! Bajji and Symonds Tie the Knot!!

I cant believe it... after all this time... this what they really wanted.

A good clean marriage :)

Pregnant Pause...

I had the best weekend ever… if crouching in front of the TV and watching it with bulging, droopy, watery eyes if your idea of fun. On the other hand, if you are like most ppl and prefer going out somewhere on a weekend, then… well, I dint get any of that… All thru the weekend I was stretched out in front of the TV as if I was about to give birth. And if a mid-wife were present, I’m sure she would have pulled one bundle of joy outta me by the end of it all.

Why was I in this predicament you ask? Well, the speakers to my TV conked out and the only way I could listen to the sermons from the holy box (and by that I mean program information about upcoming bikini shows on FTV) was to connect my earphone to the damned thing and slop 2 feet from the screen. You will appreciate the difficulty and gravity of the situation. Here I am, watching the TV with all the intensity and reverence that I’ve always held towards it, but with no space to maneuver, it was a constant struggle between man and machine to see who will buckle first.

Well, I can proudly say that I won the struggle for supremacy albeit with a god damned pain to my rear end, not to mention my spine (the good thing is now I know for sure that im not spine less)

Thursday, February 14, 2008

DINK, DINKY, SITCOM... the urban acronyms

was so insulted the other day! An acquaintance used the filthy D word on me! He called me a DINK! How utterly insulting! Dude, I’m not a DINK… I’m a DINKY… Hello… will u keep up with the times please… But seriously, what id really like to be is DINKWAD… but as it stands I’m a DINKYANDE.

I know what you are thinking… that I’ve gone bonkers? I’m way ahead of you buddy, I’d gone bonkers a long time back :P But that’s a topic for serious discussion at a later point in time. For now, lets get back to and stick to the insult I had to undergo. I’m quite sure most of you would have heard of the word DINK. But have you ever given it a thought? Have you ever thought of what it means? Have you ever thought of what it does to people who are called that? It’s shocking I tell you… shocking!! Sob… Sob…

DINK is part of a wide array of urban acronyms that have bloomed since the 1970s – 80s in the western world and like all things western which takes 2-3 decades to reach India; we are now exposed to this fantastic phenomenon ourselves. Talk about aping the west! Sometimes I think we are on a path to negative evolution as so rightly illustrated here! :)

evolution

Coming back to our post modern urban acronyms, its fun to see what each of them means. As the famous line goes – “In the beginning there was the command line…” Oops! Wrong line. The real line is “In the beginning there was nothing... Then God said ‘Let there be Wi-Fi’” and so began the lifestyles that gave rise to these now iconic acronyms. And boy, they come in different flavours… one for every aspect of post modern urban life.

Starting with the basics, one of the first acronym to have been coined was YUP (Young Upcoming Professional) which eventually became YUPPIE. YUPPIE is a HIPPIE who works except they are far from being HIPPIEs. YUPPIE stands for Young Upcoming Prosperous Professional. In simple terms (s)he is a self-centered egoistic, materialistic, very mobile, gadgets and gizmos loving, on the hottest wheels and carry themselves about in an air of bluff heartiness. As they get older and become team leads and managers they metamorphose into MUPPIEs (Middle-aged Upcoming Prosperous Professional). Basically much older and wiser(?) YUPPIEs. And like Canara Bank, nothing changes with a change in Logo does it?

DINK (Double Income No Kids) – Both partners too busy with personal and professional life to have kids to bother them. This is a fast growing breed. And if the breed grows beyond control, there goes human race!!! What with all the work pressure and fast paced life, sprinkled with impotency and a touch of poor health, its no wonder the breed is growing.

DINS (Double Income No Sex) – I would reckon many DINKs are also at this place in life. Atleast no sex with each other ;)

NOK (NO Kids) – These are couples who may or may not have a double income, but they surely do not want to have kids. Just like DINKs, they value their independence and freedom too much to have a screaming demanding baby demand attention.

DINKWAD (Double Income No Kids With A Dog) – A variation of the DINK but with a yearning for unconditional love and gratitude which they get from their sweet cute doggie.

DINKY (Double Income No Kids Yet!) – Mostly a Confused desi or too busy at the present. But there is hope. These couples will sooner or later succumb to social pressures and have their bundle of joy. This will earn them the right to metamorphose into DEWKs, SILKs or worse, SITCOMs or SINKs. Once this happens, life comes full circle and the couple can’t wait to go back to being DINKs! Basically, all hell breaks loose and they can’t seem to tie their loose ends!!

DINKYANDE (Double Income No Kids Yet And No Dog Either) – Basically life sucks. They are no closer to being a DINKY than being a DINKWAD.

DEWK (Dual Employed With Kids) – They are poor people. Not monetarily, but poor for time. They have money and lots of it. They can buy all the happiness for their kids but don’t have the time to be part of it. They burn their asses out to earn even more so as to give even more to their kids to make up for lack of time. Typical catch22 situation.

SITCOM (Single Income, Two Kids, Oppressive Mortgage) – I have no words for them but I do extend my heartfelt condolences.

SILK (Single Income Lots of Kids) – It’s a war zone out there. Parents struggling to keep the boat afloat, kids struggling equally hard to sink it!!

And then we have SINK (Single Income Numerous Kids) – On the brink of bankruptcy. And looks like it’s the lady who works. The guy has no other job!!

Apart from this we also have,

BURP - Branded Urban Rebuilding Professional
MURP - Massively Urban Rebuilding Professional
SLURP - Single Literate Urban Rebuilding Professional
TWURP - Totally Wholesome Useless Rebuilding Professional
SYRURP - Sexy Young & Restless Urban Rebuilding Professional
SNERT - Snot Nosed Egoistical Rude Teenagers.
YAVIS - Young Attractive Verbal Intelligent Successful.
KIPPERS - Kids In Parents' Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings.
SINBAD - Single Income No Boyfriend And Desperate.

And where do we all go from here?

GLAM - Greying, Leisured, Affluent, Married.
PODWOG - Parents Of Dinks WithOut Grandchildren.
WOOF - Well Off Older Folk.

Go figure!!

Monday, February 11, 2008

GLIM - GD/PI

Saturday, 8AM, BVB, Race Course Road. I was part of the first Bangalore GD/PI batch of Great Lakes Institute of management, chennai for the year. Reached there at 7 AM (Yes, I make it a point to be much earlier than necessary as I hate the concept of IST – Indian Stretchable Time ). And the security guys were not even UP!! Anyway, ppl started trickling in by 7:30 AM. And caught the first sight of a GLIM student by around 7:45AM. I don’t know his name, but I had met him when he had come to Bangalore for the GLIM tour in September, 2007. He soon led us to the waiting area where our GMAT/CAT scores were validated.

The whole process, according to me, went very smoothly and to my surprise, got over in just over 2 hours. This was very pleasantly different from other interviews I have faced and I have to give a Thumbs Up to the organisers and students from the current batch who came for the process. Very well executed and done. In most other institutes, it normally takes an entire day and would amount to a logistics nightmare. That dint happen here (At least not for my slot, not sure about the rest) Only negative I saw in the process was that none of the organisers thought of introducing themselves and putting the candidates at rest about the entire process. Apart from this, all went like clock work.

There were around 17 ppl in the 8Am batch. We were split into 2 groups. I was the first one in group A. Both an advantage and a disadvantage in my opinion. Advantage coz my interview was scheduled as soon as I came back from my GD. Disadvantage coz I (and no: 10 in the Group) was sitting the closest to the GD evaluators (rectangular table, evaluators at one head of the table) and also coz I had to crane my neck to get a view of most ppl in the discussion.

My case based GD topic was “Mr Y is a small hotel owner who caters to the middle class providing good local food and low prices. 2 new hotels come up in your vicinity, also aimed at the middle/upper middle class. The new hotels are multi cuisine and offer online ordering of food for specific time etc. but Mr Y does not want to get into all these gimiks. What marketing should he do in order to survive?” The GD was OK... Not too much of fish market, though there were very strong ppl there. GD was for 15 mins, but we were asked to conclude much earlier. (Maybe the evaluators felt we weren’t doing justice to the topic). When we were asked to conclude, we got into another round of discussions!! Over all I was not too happy with it.

After the GD, we has the personality profiling test. 24 sets of 4 words, choose the words that most (M) and Least (L) describe you. 7 mins. This is one area where you should NOT (yes, NOT) think. You need to mark the first thing that comes to your mind. Since the questions are related, if you try to fudge some answers to make you look “better” (again its debatable if a persons personality is better than someone else’s), it will be caught in some other qn and you will come out as not consistent. Keep in mind that there is NO right or wrong answers in this. It’s about your personality. And there is nothing right or wrong about that.

We were asked to return to the waiting area to wait for the “kill”. PI I mean. After about 10 mins I was led to be butchered, or so I thought. But, again I was surprised to find that my interview panel put me at rest. 2 ppl, one professor and one young chap (either an alumnus or a student). Again, they dint introduce themselves. After the usual pleasantries, the interview started.

1) Tell us about yourself, your work.
2) Why do you want to do your MBA
3) You have a good thing going on in you present work, why do u want to change it?
4) Why GLIM
5) If there are 3 things that you look for in GLIM, what would it be?
6) Why do u want to do 1 yr MBA and not 2yr? Obviously, 2yr is better right?
7) Your recommenders have mentioned that you do not like processes. How would u comment on that?
8 ) Why do you want to change to finance?
9) If you want to meet your targets at the end of the month, but say you want to be honest about selling financial products, how will that work out?
10) What are your hobbies?
11) What do u do when you don’t go on bike rides?
12) What’s the diff in your opinion about a wealth manager and HR manager? Both of them interact with ppl right?
13) If you are HR manager of a company and you have 3 body guards with you (??? I immediately asked if I really need to walk around with 3 body guards ), and you see some of the workers not working and simply wasting time, how would you deal with the situation.

I would have guessed the interview went on for about 20-25 mins. I do not know what to make of it really, I felt I did a pretty decent job, but that’s what I hear everyone say!!! When I returned to the waiting area, I was told I could leave.

So I guess it’s a 2-3 week wait for the results to be posted. Keeping fingers crossed in the time being