Life in a Metro!

This post kindda takes off from where the previous post left off.

Saw the movie "Life in a metro" yesterday. Brilliant movie, especially the 1st half. Really l;oved the sequence where our hero is trying to co-ordinate who gets to use his apartment in which day. It was a beautiful sequence which suddenly showed how all the characters were interlinked to each other.

But coming abck to the issue at hand, the sexual promiscuity and permissiveness that exists in the corporate world(esp a BPO) was spot on. After hearing first hand accounts of what goes on in places where you have thousands of 20-somethings working together all night/day, I really appreciated the fact that the director showed the world as it is instead of trying to show us the goody-goody Sooraj Barjatya/Yash Chopra view of the Indian youth.

But coming back to the previous post, what was important was that the movue showed how the youth of this country are experimenting with sex. For some its just plain fun, for others a way to get ahead in their careers. Nevertheless, our dearest politicians need to wake up to this reality and realise why education on these topics is important. Just saying that sex education will lad to a more permissive sexual environment is incorrect, and if anything sex edcation at the right age would surely reduce the spread of STDs and decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies.

Well this kindda makes up for the guilt feeling of not doing justice to the previosu post, so I think that this topic can now be safely laid to rest.

Go Go, Mr. Minister

Ah well, slamming our Govts seems to be my favourite passtime these days, so here goes another diatribe against our "rulers".

Most states in India have banned imparting of sex education in high schools, or are making noises to this effect. Some 60+ yr old minister comes out and justifies that this is against our culture. Now if this really is agaisnt our culture, why is our population growing the way it is and AIDS spreading so fast in this country.
In a time and age when sexual content is so eaily available on TV and the internet, and the youth of this country are experimenting with sec at a much younger age, I fail to understand why some idiots need to behave like ostriches?

Please for heaven's sake, think about the youth of this country, the poeple who constitute the bulk of the popultaion and stop hanging about to this false sense of morality that seems to constitute "Indian Culture"

P.S. Wanted to mention the Gujarat arts student and Sushma Swaraj's remedies while being the health minister, but took too many breaks writing this and lost the flow.

Have work

For a change, I have some work.
Big customer visit next week, and the management wants me to collate some data and present it.
Atlast 1 day in office when I didn't have to think of new ways to kill time!

And the Govt. gets it all wrong again!

The Govt. has suddenly woken up to the fact that the Postal Dept is not doing too well.
Or simply put, the people of this country got sick of recieving letters months after they were posted, not recieving them coz the did not give "diwali bonus" (read bribe) to the "friendly neibourhood postman" or finding mail dumped in sewers. They also got fed up with the extremely impolite and unprofessional attitude of these Govt. servants, and decided to give the growing Courier Industry in India a big boost.

So after killing off the sugar industry, and almost signing off the death warrant for the cement industry, the Govt. has trained its guns on the courier industry. They plan to make it mandatory for you, me and everybody else to send all packages under 150gms (which is like most of the packages you send) using the Postal Department. So you gotta leave work, run from counter to counter, go stand in a queue, and finally beg some idiot who got the job on some minister's recommendation to "Please send my package and ensure it reaches on time". After that all you can do is pray. It might be some very important documents, but they will still go into some Govt. warehouse infested with rats, before the postal dept decides to ship them. Also tracking will be a major pain, and will involve a fresh round of running around.
Either that, or you send your packages at 5 times the price with the regular courier guy.

I really fail to see the logic behind all this. The Govt. is killing 3 birds with 1 stone:
1. The courier industry : which will see a big hit to business
2. The common people : ho will have to suffer a lot of pains to send a piece of paper in a time when an e-mail reaches its intended recipient in a few seconds.
3. The State Exchequer : which spend money collect from the common people by way of taxes to keep this almost defunct postal dept. afloat.

The Govt. seems to be getting crazier by the day. And their "Leftist" partners seem to be happiest.

The preamble of the country reads :

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:

JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;

and to promote among them all

FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

Somehow I don't see how the "Equality of status and of opportunity" is guaranteed when the govt. is killing off all these businesses.
The same is true in the quota issue also. Not too long ago some idiot wanted to enact a law making quotas in private sector compulsory.

Dumb, dumb politicians.....and dumber,dumber people who vote for these idiots.

Oh shit...

...just realised that the previous post was a really long one. And to think, I cut it short as I got bored typing!

Kindda sums up how my internship is going.
Really need to figure out what to do all day in office. Already finishd off the complete Naruto and Bleach mangas online. Most websites are blocked in office, restricting access to the outside world, and avenues to removing boredom.
Damn them for blocking Meebo and Bracket!

HRD Ministry and the IIMs...the stupidity never ends

March 29 : SC says that the OBC quotas are not justified and stops their implementation for the current year.

1st Week of April : All IIMs are expected to announce their final lists. This is to allow the selected candidates with around 2.5 months to choose which college they want to join, pay the fees, offer the seat to someone else if the selected candidates choose to take up admission with someone else. This 2.5 month period also allows candidates with work experience to quit their jobs in a reasonalble time frame, without being forced to walk out of jobs leaving their employers fuming. Also, there is the small matte of the prep courses for the very students the Govt wants to dole out free seats to : the reserved category students. The prep course is supposed to give them a head start into what to expect from the 2 yr MBA course, and try to "get them on par with merit students" (as if something like this really happens). The starting dates of the courses can't be delayed as there is a very tight schedule for the next two years(wih only 3 national holidays, with compensatory classes on the following weekends).

Now the Govt, in its ignorance, asks the IIMs to defer admissions till they can get this mess sorted out. IIMs decide to impose a April 21 deadline, just 2 months before classes are supposed to start. They will have to give a further 2-3 weeks notice to students to pay their first fees, come out with their extended lists and then have the students pay the 2nd installment of the fees. This process in itself takes some 5-6 weeks, leaving people with very little time to choose the right colleges. XLRI has already announced their results, ISB has already started classes, MDI,SPJain and the likes will not be far behind. So the students will be left with very few options. They will have to take admission and pay a hefty sum as fees to these other institutes, while still hoping they get admitted into one of the IIMs. If they do get admitted into one of the IIMS, they'll forego the fees paid to the other institues. Am sure our (dis)H'nble HRD Minister and his "very well qualified" advisors never thought about this.

Some stupid vote bank politics is much more important than the careers of some of the brightest in this country.

And what about the students admitted under the OBC category? Will they really have the time to join the prep course? And if not, then will they really be able to fit in without the prep course?
Most students at IIMs who end up taking 3 yrs(instead of the normal 2) to complete their course, or those who have to drop out are from the reserved categories.
Is the HRD Ministry being fair to these people by getting them admissions, and then practically throwing them to the lions without the prep course.(anybody who knows anything about life at the IIMs will vouch for the fact that "RG" rules on all campuses and fellow students are no better than a pack of lions ready to tear you to pieces).

Well what can I say, the Govt doesn't think about these students beyond the "We got you into the best colleges in the country wihout you having to work for it". These students don't really think beyond " I got admitted into one of the best colleges in the country", never thinking about "With relative grading, I would need to be at par with the other students just to pass and survive there".

Please Mr. HRD Minister, use your head for a change and think about all the careers you are playing with. Don't act like a stupid fool trying to salvage false pride by delaying admissions.
Please let better sense prevail ( well I know it won't, but no harm trying)

Tales from the crypt...er Chennai - Volume I

Okay so its been like 9 days in chennai now.
This is my second sojourn into the land of idliaa, dosaa & sambaraa.
Internship started last week, still coming to terms with the complete joblessness that exists here. Well I always knew that in the IT industry, the higher up you go, the lesser you work, but I never thought that it would be this bad. Internet access is restricted, and most websites are blocked. So killing time during the day becomes a pain. The project sounds amazing on paper, but for somebody who has the technical know-how and who knows the working of an IT company inside out, its plainly obvious what exactly needs to be done; and its a 1 week job.
so all day long I try to come up with new and innovative ways of killing time.

So, after a 10 month break I'm back in office, but its not Infy, and this feels really strange. There is a different work culture and different policies. Even after 1 week, it somehow feels strange to be wearing some other company's ID card. Well, lets hope its a temporary hangover, or better still, I'm back in Infy this time next yr after final placements.

Chennai is really hot, but thankfully our house is completely air-conditioned. Food still remains a problem, but hopefully that can be sorted out in a few days time.

Well nothing much to write about write now, am still strying to remove the cobwebs and get my blogging shoes back on.

New Beginnings

My old blog wasn't really the best place to be putting the kindda stuff I was putting there.
Simply put, too many people reading it, and not everyone liked what they saw.

So here is a brand new blog; Cleaner,Meaner and without any dirty laundry being washed in public!