Whats up ???

Seems lot much has happened over this week in the power corridors. Me feeling like summing up few.

1. Lalu has given the railway budget for the year 2006-07. More links are here
2.// Manu Sharma of Jessica Lal murder fame acquitted// Shameful, pathetic, miscarriage of enquiry and justice.Also, see Rediff article
3. Bush's gonna visit India on March 1.
4. Finance Budget gonna be presented by Chidambaram tomorrow. More info and expectations here...Me also getting eager to hear some tax-waiver-sorta announcements
5. Madras High Court quashes Tamil Nadu Government's new admission policy for professional courses
6. And the Best Bakery case with its new episode

JAMES CHAI

James: I've always wanted to write about this man. Always smiling and oozing with enthusiasm, he is a star-hero of TCS Kolkata. Though not directly associated with Apna Company, James is the Tea Vendor who has his stall outside the company compound. Hey, James' charisma and business acumen has a big say here. People always flock his Tthela or the petty shop through out the day, no matter, even if its noon or 2pm. Fond among Apna junta, James is the adda, the hang out for all of us.

James tea-stall campus has a typical roadside stall set-up on the platform with table, eateries, fags, pass-pass, snacks, mints etc etc (apart from tea) and lots of open space in front of his dukaan for us to stand. The popularity of the place and his chai has nearly shunned many junta from taking vending machine tea/coffee inside the floors of the office. Even I discarded that LONG back, may be due to the fatigue and boredom factor of the vending machine chai.

The relief that u get from coming out of the air-conned office complemented by the aura of his James atmosphere is just awesome. Here, u get to meet lots of people, gossip and believe me the place really makes one addicted. With the typical scenario of a tea-kadai-bench, the gossip varies from projects, technology, internal gup-shups ,politics, and to what nots of the world !

Truly, a lot can happen over James cup of Chai.

And a trivia here: James has been featured in the last month issue of Kool-katha, the monthly magazine of Apna Company.

PS: Though, the idea was conceived on 16th, I am posting it only today (26 feb). I was kinda busy all this week and after this short break I am back-to-blog again!

Snapshots from Hell: (P)review

The high acclaimed rating and astounding word-of-mouth review made me buy this �ecompelling�f book �gSnapshots from Hell: the making of an MBA�h by Peter Robinson. The book�fs blurb says -- �gA book for wannabe MBA�fs, anyone desirous of applying to a B-school or anyone in business�h. Though my dreams of apping for MBA is slowly fading away, I gave a rethought, a serious contemplation to read this, at least to make a judgment about how a B-School is really like. Change is inevitable and perhaps, who knows, I�fd be tempted or rather motivated to change my notions again. Accompanied by too much enthu, I finally bought this paperback yesterday.

The author Peter Robinson worked as a speech writer at the White House during Reagan�fs period and later looks like he took a choice to do MBA (for the obvious reasons -- earning fat pay!). The book is about the story of the author himself during his MBA days at Stanford during 1988- 1990. So far, I�fve come across ~ 80 pages and find that unlike Chetan Bhagat, Robinson has dwelled much on the plight of the students and the hectic schedule of the B-school. Chetan Bhagat�fs �e5 point someone�f had a blend of college masti, romance and very little of academics spiced with sentiments. Here, in �eSnapshots..�f, one gets to see in his pages more of lectures, case studies and class room problems. But thanks, the answers to the problem/discussion are given in very small font down the pages, so that if the reader needs he can go through them. On a lighter note, the author makes fun of the elite �epoet�f section of the class. �ePoets�f constituted the non-business/accounting background people who formed a sizeable chunk of the class.

Though not that gripping, I find the material pretty worth reading�cAnd yes, its hilarious with its fundo-joy-ride of the B-school. Chalo lets see how it moves further�c

I am one month old in ORKUT !

//I always used to wonder whats there in Orkut and why there is a hype and hoopla over this//

To find this, I too joined and discovered that its The better way to kill your time on net. With its impending jaws and strangulated web, orkut is really infectitious driving one more and more into it. And well, now I too am now caught !!! (though passively with my deliberate 'avoiding' ) in its web.

Starting with making my presence to Orkut tad late, a month back, with 4 friends and connections to 12239687 people, I am now getting the status on my orkut profile that "You are connected to 13,203,471 people through 81 friends".

Well, the former part in both the statements implies that a total of 9,63,784 (13,203,471-12239687, gotcha!) have too made their entry during this span. This is a BIG number by any statistics. Okay, enough of these fundas and calculations. Will come back soon with the new nonsense post soon !!!

Cultural Night: Comedy of Errors

After the Project Party, TCS Picnic, with ascending order of expectation, we hopped in to Rang de TCS ! the Annual Cultural night of Apna Company. We entered by 7.30 pm and found that the program started by ~ 6.30 pm, lagging behind by an hour and half with the actual schedule. Thaad, thaad, thaad straight, all the junta made their entry to the food court, which made all the serving counters crowded thereby making chaos everywhere. It was total 'confusia' there -- no queues, mismatch of boards and counters, and above all the space crunch causing mayhem among the flooded crowd.

On the other hand, at the podium, with very little audience a classical dance was going on. I was expecting my friend�fs drama at 8.30 pm, but there were no signs of it for a long time. After an hour or so, bowled over by the long wait, I checked in back stage to see kya chal raha udhar.
Poor heavens, the drama people didn�ft get any chance to show up to the stage. The slot and sequence were sort of monopolized by those few from the Ramp show. They came in many installments, dragging the show. What the heck, there at the back stage, I could see lots of verbal fights, ego clashes amongst those who were not given chances to present their event. Announcers seemed to be stuck in between the web of organizers and fighter- comrades. It was pathetic with pandemonium there too!

Finally when the drama was hosted it was already close to 11 pm and by that time most of the people had left following the announcement that company buses plying to regular routes would leave at 10.30 pm. Given this, with all spirits, these guys made a bold entry and they did a good presentation, boy! I still wonder, where elsewhere, do you give sort-of-last-slot to a drama? With very few people remaining (hardly less than 50) , still few sequences of dance and an orchestra-band were left. And that fianlly had to be cancelled.

Well, that�fs how Apna cultural night ended with misery; thanks to mismanagement and poor organizing skills...

Tryst with Maitree

Being involved with the Adventure and Trekking club here made to meet people from Maitree, the community club of Apna Company. Corporate Maitree Junta from Mumbai came in to take testimonials from us and thus make a corporate video out of it.

Tuesday morning, with bit of whats-gonna- happen (?) of expectation, dropped in to the HR wing. Additionally, I was there to represent Bibliophiles, the Book Club too. First, the video of Book club as well as some members was taken. Huh, some people had to give serious poses of reading books stuff�c Even I was made to sit on a couch, placed with a Maitree Matters magazine on my hand giving a reading pose. A few girls, I and Suprio da then were discussing about the Book Fair and the recent additions to our repository. The camera guy found that natural and told he�fd be shooting this.

Phir kya, with his P.C. Shriram�fs view, focusing his camera ulta-pulta with different angles and frames, he made us rearrange here and there, moving things in and out of the room to capture our conversation. Later, we were told to express in a line about Maitree, I opted to say one word ? Energy. It sounds good, though totally fallible. I recently had a grudge against few HR folks, who made me �eunacceptable�f for a particular event. Well, that�fs a different episode although. And by this time, my entire rancor has subsided. Then next, for the Adventure Club session, along with the coordinators, I joined at the conference room. We played the video of our trek and few photos. Finally, here too I gave in my �eviews�f and briefed about our trek tour. Unhappily I had to part my CDs to the camera guy, loosing my invaluable treasure�c

Hamara Treat and AADI

Well, this time I had no options left. The much awaited me-sponsored-treat (though partially) came to an end with all my roomies getting free from their vetti schedule. Last Sunday, I and Kalp joined to give a dinner to our roomies and Uma Achi to celebrate the occasion of new-arrivals in both of our sister�fs homes. Yeo, the venue was the same old Banana Leaf restaurant. Looks like, we�fve become habitual treat goers there!

After that, we went to the Tamil CD shop and bought the CD of the movie Aadi. Perhaps, we didn�ft know then that we are gonna repent soon. Heck, what a disgusting-nonsense-movie was that; I almost couldn�ft control myself laughing over the serious scenes.
Well, I really don�ft want pen down more on this issue; watching that (unfortunately twice!) owing to unavoidable circumstances had made me kinda sick.

PS: Still I wonder how this brilliant piece of bullshit is consistently being given No. 1 rank in Top ten Movies.

The Weekend and after...

Mukunth's Treat:
Sunday, 29 Jan 2006
Mukunth had got a transfer. I could see that electric smile in his face as rushed out to tell his transfer to Chennai. All of us joined to give him grand kicks and bumps. Following the tradition, he gave us the treat at Banana Leaf Restaurant on Sunday. 10 of us went and had a gala get-to and a good meal �c Needless to say, it was a feast for me who had been deprived of Dosa for quite a long gap!!!

Kolkata Book Fair:
same day!
Then, we headed towards the Kolkata Annual Book Fair or the Boi-Mela.. Wow, it was amazing to explore those big arrays of bookstalls replete with resources. The more interesting part is the crowd. Such a BIG crowd to a Book Fair, I haven�ft seen before. Many stalls had queues formed by the junta themselves�c An enthusiastic-visitor-crowd is for sure, the success behind this annual event. Later, we gazed around the mela, had Cha-Pani etc. Sathish, Pankaj and me hopped into the British Council stall and registered membership to avail its library facility. Looks like this deal of intellectual investment is worth it (till Jan 2007, it would expire then!).

French classes:
Tuesday, 31 Jan 2006
Then w.e.f this date, I�fve joined French classes conducted by Learning & Development wing of Apna Company. Ms. Dolon, the French Ma�fm started with standard introduction phrases. Then we had all the alphabets (I am sure gonna mess up with English and French pronunciation as well as words at the end of the course! lets see...) Class was very much interactive and we had to play conversation in groups at the end. Was eduMy French gyan will be up in the next post !!!