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Learning and Technology never Cease to Change

Opinions

1
June

Federer was down with two sets today at French open fourth round against Tommy Haas. Third Round it was 4-4 and suddenly my Hero rose to the occasion by giving a deathly blow. 6-4 followed by a bagel 6-0 and a 6-2 to uproot the opponent. This scene would give lot of confidence for any Federer fan. I am boosted with Confidence today.

I am just Hoping Federer would achieve the most expected win at the French Open this Sunday.

Category : Opinions | Blog
25
November

I have created a photo gallery, it was quite easy for me to do with the aid of Google Picasa. To check my photo gallery , Click the Photos link in the top navigation bar. I have made the slide shows with the auto code generated by Picasa. Followed the steps mentioned below.

You can embed a Flash slideshow of any web album. It’ll be automatically updated when you make changes to your album. Follow these steps to embed a slideshow:

  1. On the My Photos page, click your album.
  2. Click Link to this album on the right-hand side.
  3. Click Embed Slideshow.
  4. Choose your slideshow settings, such as image size, captions, and autoplay.
  5. Once you’ve chosen your settings, copy the resulting HTML code (Ctrl-C).
  6. Paste the HTML in the source code for your site (Ctrl-V).

- Google Help

This feature is very helpful having easy galleries instead of Static Image Folders which according to me is not an attraction in this Web 2.0 Era. Have a look at my Photo Gallery and you decide Static Image Folder Gallery Vs Flash based Slide Shows.

Category : Opinions | Technology | Blog
26
October
I think the role of Teacher – Guru has a great influence in our interests. My interests did not vary a lot because of my personal interests. The Gurus who taught me and guided me were one of the major reasons in my passions. I observed that very recently in my introspection. I must say the first time hostel experience life gave me some leeway to introspect in-spite of the pressing schedule of XL.


Computers became my passion when I did a course on computer applications ( Basic Course : Windows 3.1, Fox Pro – All Stone age Era :P and Microsoft Office 97).I must really confess one thing my real interest in computer came out of me not the moment I started working with computer. It came due to proper facilitation by my life mentor Mr.Elango, who was the faculty of course. I am still passionate of technology and Computers – though I never prefer to spend too much in these because of my usual habit. This passion carried on from my Higher secondary school to my work seeing computers day in and out. To add to it, in-spite of my interest in computers I never owned a PC till I landed in XL. Still I managed to keep me abreast with the pace of technological change.


The same holds true for my interest in Training and Development. This interest was the primary reason why I landed in XL for my post graduation on Personnel Management. The 3 days training on Personality development by International Faculty Jc.Mahesh Bagawandas was a moment of enlightenment for me. I never imagined how a role of a trainer could be. The three days totally gave a new career path which I aspire now.


Before my first term in XL I never thought Economics was a very interesting subject to study. In my state it was a norm that only if you do not score well in SSLC exam people land up in economics group for their Higher Secondary education. Had I known about this subject earlier I would have opted for this was  my thought recently. The interest was due to the professor who taught micro-economics Mr.Sumit Sarkar. I struggled in the beginning to understand the subject, but the pressure gave by him by continuous quizzes and completely problematic approach really made me work hard. Eventually I started to like the subject a lot. This term I am studying Macro-Economics. In the initial two classes of macro-eco I could not understand the new professor’s style. But eventually now I have got a little grip of the subject, Hope my interest stays on and the professor too should facilitate a little to better my interest.


A good teacher according to me should not just impart education or knowledge. He/She should create an interest in the subject, show a student a path in his life to survive. He should make the student find out one’s strength and weakness. I am just reading a  book on leadership ( My interest area) and I find no difference in the influencing process of a leader and a Guru. For a student his guru should lead by example as a leader is to his followers.


My Thanks to all my Gurus!!!


Category : Opinions | Blog
2
October

“And allow me to leave you with a pinch of optimism, just because I can. I call it Adams’ Rule of Obvious Calamities. It states that any calamity that is foreseeable by the public at large won’t turn out so bad after all. The best recent example was the Y2K problem, where computers worldwide were expected to fail. It seemed impossible that those issues could be resolved in time, but they were.

The problems that hit hardest are the ones that sneak up on you. Our current financial problem is big, but I expect a recession to be mild and even useful, precisely because so much human energy and attention is being focused on the fix.”

- Scott Adams, The Credit Crunch Explained.

One of my friends,forwarded me an email about the Sub Prime Crisis which explained the Credit Crunch in very easy language. Have a look at the Presentation. It is a good read to understand the credit crisis in a funny cartoon language.

Category : Opinions | Blog
27
September
I was shocked seeing that number. It is the Inflation rate of Zimbabwe - HYPERINFLATION. The Fortune magazine reports as below.

“If purchased on the newsstand in Zimbabwe, the issue of Fortune you’re holding would have cost you 270,543,825,555 Zimbabwean dollars.”

You need to carry cash in cartloads to buy simple goods like eggs and bread to the nearest departmental store where the store owner can only weigh the currency notes to deliver you the goods. He has no time to count those notes, even the IT system are struggling to handle the bank transactions which are giving a data overflow error. Of course the programmers would have never imagined the basic withdrawal transaction of an Automated Teller machines would ever be of billions of Zimbabwe dollars.
Parade magazine ranked Robert Mygabe the dictator of Zimbabwe one among the worst 10 dictators of the world. Of course this year he is going to top the list, in transforming a country, which introduced Zimbabwe dollars in the 1980s, at a conversion rate 1Z$ = 1.47USD. The transformation has been a collapse of a country, and I have seen these many days Zimbabwe for Cricket and never seen this worst governance in the country.

Worth of a 100 Billion  Carry Bag for Cash Currency does not give a good livingHe is going for purchase of GroceriesInflation Rate
ZWD-EUR_2008 (1)

These photos and graphs are relatively skewed too much in this country in the recent years.
The fate of the people here is a Big Question.
The Economic Imbalance of the world was very much shown in this, may be after this term if I am well equipped in Macro Economic theory I would really do a detailed analysis on the complete background of this.
Category : Opinions | Blog
3
September

My friend wrote a post some time back, which I happened to look back at it again today. I wanted to mention it here, because its a good read, if you happened to understand the intended pun related to a small group of B School guys.

Category : Opinions | Blog
2
September
This is life without a safety net-Thrilling and Dangerous.
Misjudgments are punished ruthlessly.
When competition gets tougher, small business feel it first.
Financing is hard to find, sometimes impossible.
Regulatory costs hurt more in companies with less fat -One Reason, Growth is slow.
Owners lie awake at night worrying…. Yet Entrepreneurial Sector THRIVES…
-Charles Burk (Fortune Magazine)
Category : Opinions | Blog
19
August
Of late, after a long break, I resumed one of my favorite hobby - Graphic Designing. Adobe Photoshop was one of the tools which revered the most during the 4 years of my period at Rotaract Club of Saibaba Colony. I was given opportunity in the club to test any kind of ideas I had, and in that way I started doing graphic designing for the club as a cost cutting exercise. It turned out to be a great hobby where in some instances I got paid for some huge banners which I designed for my friend’s college festivals. For designing I always wanted a PC with a good Processor Speed and at least 512 MB RAM a couple of years of back. I did not have the hardware at that time and hence for every design I need to request someone’s PC Hours, that is what I call for borrowing their PC for doing my work.
Today I own a laptop with a specification of  2.1Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo and a 2 GB Ram. I never imagined I will own such a sophisticated hardware. Now at XL I got a couple of opportunities  to start with my hobby, so I did not want to leave now, I loaded my Laptop with Photoshop CS2 and started with some initial designs. Though my designs are very scratchy in some time it will improve. I am going to publish the designs which I will be doing here afterwards. For that I am using my Beautiful Rants Blog at Yahoo 360.
So to look at my recent designs click here.
Category : Opinions | Blog
31
July
So continue my narration, from my earlier post, after joining TIME Mumbai things were not showing hope immediately for me. I started to struggle in class, as CAT comprises of three major areas - Verbal Ability and Reasoning , Quantitative Aptitude and Data Interpretation. I must accept I am neither strong or weak in any areas. With an average aptitude in all the areas, the classes were a big learning for me. I understood the effect of  skipping some areas in lower standards at school.
The first of that I struggled was Basic Geometry. Its only in  Tamil Nadu I hope there are four boards for passing your 10th Standard. State Board, Matriculation Board, Anglo Indian Board and the CBSC Board. How far 4 different boards for a high school education with in a state effective is a debatable question. Because of this you cannot judge performance of the students till the high school based on their grades as there is additional parameter required to weigh the grade. State Board - easiest of the lot to study, so of course its more crowded with students who like to boost up their scores. There is always an argument made by the students of CBSC board that their education standard is high and State Board syllabus is no match and of course its like that. I understood this arguments validity in my CAT coaching class. I had sailed through my School education without learning basic concepts of Geometry, and the best part is I scored a 100% in my Mathematics board exam. This was easy because I can leave the complete geometry chapter and still manage a 100 because of the question paper pattern and the content in the chapter.
I had to cope up with this problem, so I revisited the NCERT 8th, 9th and 10th standard mathematics book to understand the basic axioms and theorems. So that was about My Quantitative Struggle to score. The next dreaded area for many and also loved by many is Verbal Section. Here Norman Lewis gave me a little confidence that I too can perform well in this section. With that confidence I followed the sample question booklets to manage the other section. I would suggest people who feel they are very bad in Verbal skills especially with words Norman Lewis is my recommendation to start with.
The TIME mock cat series was like a struggle for me in the initial exams, where every 20 Sunday afternoon I after the test I would think am I in the right place trying for the right thing. I could not find out any pattern in my exam results, sometimes I performed Quantitative section extremely well but the next time I failed to clear my cut offs also. All these were a better learning to show my instability :).
After all the struggle On the D-day, November 18th 2007, when I saw the CAT paper the paper had no surprise in terms of number of questions. But that is the only thing familiar, the quantitative section this time had gone through a big upturn with really teasing questions. The Data Interpretation was full of calculation intensive sets instead of logic based. Verbal section which I though was the easiest and attended the maximum count of 17 questions. I did not know I have entered into the trap myself by attempting these many questions in verbal section. The result was some thing that was totally disastrous for me when it came January 2008.   (To be continued….)
Category : Opinions | Blog
27
July

“Profits are a Signal to resources holders where resources are mostly highly values in society”

- Michael R Baye
I think, I was fascinated a lot about Economics before landing here at XL, because of  Tim Harford’s Under Cover Economist. This book was the eye opener for me. And Why I started to say all these, Profits are Signal, we always are in search of becoming a unique from one group and that is a never ending process. When we are in school we would like to go to college which is the best and that gives you an identity, so we would look for “Signals”, like which is the best college to join, based on the “Profits of others”, may be the advantages of the existing students of the college. Once we reach that college do our search stops. That again starts, we would like to make our self Individualize and would want to look for the best company. And the search continues there on…Now I had two question. Are we looking for excellence and perfection ? If So what is that will end this search?.
From Here on I would give my narration of how I ended up in this institute at Jamshedpur . I still remember the first time I read this name of the city during my Social Science class, when I read about the revolution of Jamshedji Tata and Tata Steel. I never thought I would land up in this city and would spend a couple of years in this place.
Doing an MBA was a major aspiration in my life, but I never had a plan to do it after my Graduation. So I ended up working with TCS for the last two years. As I loved Mumbai a lot after a visit during my college days for a South East Asian Rotaract conference at Daman. The packed train I boarded at Dadar was the biggest attraction for me to spend my initial two years of career in Mumbai. So I landed the same way in Mumbai working for TCS.
Joined a Domestic project of TCS, since technology interests me a lot, the big Implementation project for the domestic client was a Huge learning opportunity for me.The best part of it was that it happened so I was able to work with my best friend Pratheeba also in the same project. I had a good mentor, Arun, who taught me the skills required and that really helped me in delivering my work with a sustained high performance. I made some Friends here at TCS, the list I am giving is not exhaustive so I can name a few, Vivek, Charan, Karthi, Gokulan, Niraj, Ram, Prasanna, Rakesh, Chezhian, Archana, Vidya, Anu, Amol, Pulkit, Ashish & POS Team…and the list does not end there…. it goes on. So when I started to work I was not in any idea of doing my MBA in my near future. But it was my Pratheeba who nudged me on my head to remind me of doing it soon. I started my preparations for management entrance exam off late in 2006 in December.
As I never researched on this, I did not have any Idea of what all B schools exist. I was aware of only 2 exams one was the CAT and other was GMAT. I was planning of GMAT. The first day I saw the astronomical fee I need to spend stumped me and that was the end of GMAT story. The next Best option was CAT. So I started my preparations aiming at CAT 2007 from December 2006 by joining TIME  Mumbai.
(Will be Contd… # 2….)
Category : Opinions | Blog