Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Tamil on Google Current

Lol. I found this very funny. The word "Tamil" has been figuring in a lot of Google searches these days. Google Current does a small feature on this!

Extremely funny to hear this guy say "Imsai Arasan 23m Pulikesi". But to his credit.. he was VERY close and almost said it right.

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Monday, October 30, 2006

Ha! Trapped the mouse!

We did well in MouseTrap. The results of the final qualification round are not out yet. But I think we made it in comfortably into the top 35. I think some 600 teams participated. The 4 elimination rounds were grueling I should say. Starting at 12.00 in the night is criminal. We were up till 4.30pm almost all those 4 days.
We had a slow start in the first round. Started off qualifying for the next round reaching only the 80th position. From then on we picked up good momentum as we learnt from our mistakes.
If this comes through, well, I'll have a problem again. I just managed to bring my resume down to one page. Now will have to kick out one more extra-curricular to fit this in. Well, I guess its better this way than any other :-). Embarrassment of the riches in this sense, is any day better than having to search for things to fill up space I guess!
It's been a while since I traveled to any place new. I hope we qualify! Looking forward to Ahmedabad.

Edit : Ha! Ahmedabad, here we come!

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Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Diwali and its after effects.

I was EXTREMELY thrilled to be celebrating my first proper Diwali in 6 years. I decided to take off from studying duties the evening before Diwali, till the day after Diwali. There was nothing specific/important to be done anyway (or so it seemed). I took great pleasure in gloating over the plight my fin-major colleagues who had a couple of assignments due on Diwali and the next day. Had a blast celebrating the festival twice. Once before sunrise (as per the South-Indian tradition) and once after sunset (North-Indian tradition). The evening party organized by the SLC was a blast. They spent quite a large amount of money on crackers and they had a spectacular show. They also had a DJ from outside belting out music and I had good fun dancing to it.

At ISB, ofcourse, everything pays-off or gets paid for. Working hard does pay-off. In my case, I am paying for hardly working those 2 days. The weekend passed and I figured that my work load had piled up neck high. I started off working on my resume one whole night so that a very helpful alum, AW could review my resume the next morning at the scheduled time. Slept at 5.00am. Post the review session, I figured I have a LONG way to go before my resume is ready. Following that, I've had 2 bad days of assignments with Pricing and Global Manufacturing Strategies coming up back to back. The Pricing course delivered a double whammy with twin deliverables on the same day. As a result, I was up again till about 5.00am and up by 7.30am this morning. Here I am, half dazed, half incomprehensive. Two classes to go today, with a case to be read for each one of them. Have to participate in class discussion if I hope to score anything in the Technology and Business Innovation course because it has a 25% CP grade. Besides, I really am interested in the discussions.

Post that, I have a Branding class, and then a probable group meeting right after that for Global Manufacturing Strategies for a 2 page deliverable due tonight. We are also presenting our first set of findings to our ELP sponsors tomorrow night and hence, whole of this evening and a large portion of tomorrow will go in preparing the presentation and document to be submitted.

At 12.00am midnight, the MouseTrap (IIMA's online strategy game) opens up. This requires about 6 continuous hours of time between tonight and the 27th to actively play the game. I feel like a Mouse Trapped by my timing schedule. Ofcourse, I do enjoy playing these online strategy games than writing a paper for a contest. I think I'm better thinking on my feet, rather than sitting and analyzing and writing a comprehensive report on some stuff I have no experience in.

Phew. If you were exhausted reading that post.. well, imagine my plight. I don't see any sort of light at the end of the tunnel (atleast for the near future). I hear that there are more assignments due day after, and the day after the day after. But then, they're not in my limited short-sighted vision. First things first. I need to get done with all these stuff and get them out of the way.

May the Lord have mercy on me.

p.s. Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank call for applicants just opened up today. I can see some sort of fervour building up regarding placements now. Though both companies appear to be looking for one person, I am hoping against hope that some 10 people get picked :-). Lesser heads to worry about before the actual placement week! SAP consulting and MAQ software follow next week I think.
Let the placements begin!

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Thursday, October 19, 2006

Electives begin

Term 5 began with a bang. The whole of ISB is buzzing with activity. Everyone is running around on different schedules now and it has an entirely different feel as compared to the core-terms. People have begun resume preparations in preparation for the placement season which is in February. Today we have the first Pre-placement talk (PPT) by SAP, Germany for a position in the US. I guess SAP will be one of the hot favourite amongst those who have a tech backgroud and are looking for a consulting position.
The club activities are going on hyper-drive now. The consulting club has multiple sessions lined up from companies like BCG, Diamond, etc in the next couple of weeks. Preparations for the consulting interviews (case analysis) will also kick off this week. I better start getting my act together. My resume needs a lot of work to fit back into the one page format. I cannot believe that I blew it up to 3 pages to apply to ISB and now I"m having trouble fitting it back into one page.

Sigh.

Miles to go before I sleep..
Miles to go before I sleep.

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Monday, October 16, 2006

Yogi B and Nachathira featuring Lockup

When I got this link first, I thought it was something like the "Changing worlds" advertisement that did its prowl a year ago.

But, after watching it....

I am at a loss for words. Who says only Black Eyed Peas can remix Ilayaraja and churn out rap hits?? Here's Yogi B and team remixing classic Ilayaraja (Song : Madai Thirandhu) heavily influenced by western rap artists like Outkast and 50 cents!
They have done a great job at it. Beats are really catchy and the rap lyrics are in a mixture of English and Tamil. The Tamil lyrics (wherever they appear)are written in pure Tamil.
Right out there in the leagues of BEP! Now where have I heard of Yogi B before? Name sounds very familiar!

I love the way the songs ends with "Kalai, Manidhanaga pirandha ovvoruvanum alli alli parugavendiya amurdham ada adhu!" (A poor translation that cannot do justice to the powerful lyrics: Art, something anyone born a human should drink like Nectar). Is it Kalaingyar's voice that I hear?

Question would be now.. Do I like this song because of the original or because of its own rap essence?

Vallavan I think is the name of the album. Can't wait for my next trip to Chennai to buy this CD!



[Thanks Megh for the link!]

p.s. Tamil music has been constantly surprising me with these hybrids it keeps throwing out! No wonder Tam music is still light years ahead of Bollywood.

EDIT : Listen to the orignal here
Movie : Nizhalgal (1978)
Singer : S.P.Balasubramaniam
Music Director : Ilayaraja

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Sunday, October 15, 2006

Is this great or what?

Wow.. a whole gamut of Mp3 players hit the stores this christmas!

What is it about technology that excites me so much? I"ll never know! Check out the amazing array of mp3 players coming out. All of them have some unique features. The Archos players are of special interest to me because they seem to have features light years ahead of the mainstream market players!

Click here to read the article!

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Saturday, October 14, 2006

He and She say some final words..

Looks like this will be the final post of the battle of the sexes.. atleast for a while.

Great one Suderman!

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Welcoming Thaatha & Paati

I read this article on The Hindu. A very simple article, but nevertheless it tugged on a few heart strings inside :-).

The next time your grandparents visit, check if your home is as ready as your heart to receive them

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Thursday, October 05, 2006

Types of people..

One of our exams got postponed today.. at the last hour. A severe out-burst of emotions amongst the students followed. I was partly irritated and partly relieved. But a lot of people's different reactions reminded me of the title I'd given these two images a week ago, when I posted these pictures on my Flickr stream. Two types of people I guess. Are they that very different? Or are they that very similar? Which one of these categories do I fall into.. I really don't know!


Chaos in Clarity



Clarity in Chaos

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Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Salsaville featured!

Activecities.com carried a small feature on Eric Freeman (my Salsa guru) and his dance school Salsaville. Pretty cool video! The bunch of people shown dancing are the people who I learnt my Salsa with. Anyone who watches this video will easily be able to appreciate how good Eric is, at teaching Salsa. Kudos!

Click here to watch this small 7 min demo clip on him..
http://activecitiesusa.com/?q=node/69

Sigh.. Nostalgia.

Back to slogging it out for my @!#$!@# exams!

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