A relaxed Sunday

Didn't do much today. Spent the best part of it drafting my essays for ISB. Almost thru with them. Watched a bit of the Srilanka-Pakistan match and the IIFA awards. Waiting for the Euro finals to start. And thats about it.

Chilled out Saturday

Was up the entire night chatting with friends...the alcohol played its part too ;-). Gave my refrigerator for servicing, finished some pending jobs and picked up the IELTS complimentary prep material. I have my exam in a week's time. So, decided to go thru the book. Then, slept for a while.

Saw a movie, 21, in the evening. It was a good movie. It is about this guy from MIT who aspires to study at Harvard Med but doesn't have the money to support him. The story revolves around how he starts off with writing his not-too-extraordinary scholarship essay and ends up putting his mathematical aptitude to test at the casinos in Las Vegas. The result - one helluva roller coaster ride. I could relate to the protagonist as I find myself in a similar position - writing essays for my b-school apps!

And yes, I also caught up with the score - India thrashed yet another team - Bangladesh this time.

Ah...there goes my power

A frustrating start to the day. Almost half my apartment was without power; thanks to the refrigerator that decided to blow off. I spent almost the entire morning trying to sort out the problem. Finally managed to catch hold off the electrician and got it fixed. Apparently, the entire building had been affected!

Got to office in the afternoon. Work was peaceful - TGIF! Will probably be out partying tonight.

Cya later.

Random...

Was reading up on a recent interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the developer of C++. He talked about the troubles that he had faced in convincing people to use C++ for systems programming, the evolution of the language and the road ahead for the developers. If you ever wondered how C++ got its name then the answer, in Bjarne's words - As "C with Classes" (my ancestor to C++) became popular within Bell Labs, some people found that name too much of a mouthful and started to call it C. This meant that they needed to qualify what they meant when they wanted to refer to Dennis Ritchie's language, so they used "Old C", "Straight C", and such. Somebody found that disrespectful to Dennis (neither Dennis nor I felt that) and one day I received a "request" though Bell Labs management channels to find a better name. As a result, we referred to C++ as C84 for a while. That didn't do much good, so I asked around for suggestions and picked C++ from the resulting list. Everybody agreed that semantically ++C would have been even better, but I thought that would create too many problems for non-geeks. The interview can be found at http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;408408016;pp;1;fp;16;fpid;1

I also came across this interesting blog http://vestpocketconsultant.entrepreneur.com/. The blogger, Rosalind Resnick, is the founder and CEO of a consulting firm in New york. I will be keeping a keen eye on her blog. Will probably provide me with useful tips to achieve my long-term goals.
The day at work was pretty good. I have officially started work on my new project. I am excited about the things I can achieve by working on this new venture.
I hope India defeats Pakistan today. I have a friend's birthday bash to attend at 12 midnight. Also, can't wait for the Spain vs Russia SF. And thats me signing off for the day...

Safin def Djokovic !

Well...Safin's victory, that too in straight sets, over Djokovic came as a surprise to many. Federer is well on his way to victory even as I type in this blog. Also, watched India win by 256 runs, although that didn't come as a surprise. The day, otherwise, was rather mundane.

The major work that I did today was to get information about the new project. The hours spent in office today were, otherwise, pretty lame. I hit the gym in the evening today and will probably do the same for the rest of the week.

I plan on watching the Euro SF tonight. Though not a German fan, I don't expect Turkey to win today. So, that's about it for today. See you tomorrow.

A Tuesday with The Incredible Hulk

The day started with the usual workout in the morning. When I got to office, I was surprised to see a 1000 mails in my inbox. There had been an issue with our software. I quickly got down to investigating it and managed to fix it in an hour or so. Phew.... the root cause of the problem has to be debugged though...guess my team-mate will be doing that as owns that piece of the code.



Had a long meeting with the team and my manager just before lunch. Was informed that I'll be moving to another project. Am happy with the move coz I'll be more or less heading the project and the team working on that project, in the near future.



Lunch was bad. So had some pav bhaji in the evening. Decided to go to the movies after work.

And we chose The Incredible Hulk. Well...one word describes the movie...INCREDIBLE!! The special effects were amazing. The movie had a pretty decent plot, unlike its predecessor. Another thing that I really liked about the movie was the delay in showing the main protagonist. Overall, the movie is worth a watch and I can wait for the sequel which, I presume, would have the Ironman teaming up with the Hulk! Now, how spectacular would that be..sigh...why did I ever grow up ;-D

Until tomorrow...over n out.

A good start to the week...

We had released our next version of software on Friday, last week. Today was the first trading day with the new software. Most of us keep our eyes open, on the first trading day, for major issues (show-stoppers) that might have escaped QA tests. Well...this release went smooth. Nothing, that'll keep me awake all night, happened. Thank God for that!

The day started as usual - gym at 6.30. Got back home at 8.30, took a shower, read the headlines and headed for work. It wasn't a busy day. In fact, I actually got time for some personal work. I decided to rephrase a few sentences in my ISB essays so that they read better.

I happened to read an INSEAD admit's blog (http://strawberrytints.blogspot.com/). It made quite an interesting read. The guy is from the film industry. He had a GMAT score of 720. He managed to get thru ISB, got dinged at LBS but cleared INSEAD. He has written about his preparation for an MBA and his experiences at the interviews and also at INSEAD. Something in his blog that caught my eye was the Alladin concept. To quote his words, "basically a reworked Alchemist theme. The idea is to see yourself as Alladin and the whole world as your genie. Every thought you have strokes the lamp and the genie i.e. the world goes out there to make it happen." Hmmm...thought provoking indeed!

I was done with work by 7 pm. Joined my friends at the cafeteria, grabbed a bite and then got back to browsing the net for more MBA stuff. I have been contemplating on apping to Ross for a while now. I, finally, decided to take a call. I will be apping in R2, the reason - I'd know the fate of my ISB app by then. I will be applying thru Ross' consortium - that way a few more good schools will have access to my application. Nevertheless, I do have a few other schools in mind - Stern, INSEAD and a long shot at Stanford. A few more would be Chicago GSB, HKUST, Tepper and may be RSM. But I am slightly inclined towards pursuing the PGP at ISB. Then again, my options are open.

And so ended my Monday. Wasn't majorly exciting but a steady start to the week. Guess I'll hit the sack now.

PS: I did see Federer win his opening round at Wimbledon.

and finally a blog....

After years of just reading blogs on the internet, I have finally decided to start blogging. 'Why now?' one might ask. Well...I wasn't actually lazy earlier but felt it was time I started bacause it is a good way of keeping track of things you do, sharing information with others, meeting interesting people and making new blog friends. And so here goes....



I got up pretty late today...after last night's Euro QF (was hoping that Netherlands win but Russia played well; Arshavin was marvellous towards the end of the match.). Made some breakfast and then got hooked on to the net. Spent some good time reading blogs and articles. Listened to an interview with Dr. Chetan Sankar, Professor, Auburn University. He spoke about the life of an academician. It was quite interesting. Then, I resumed with my ISB essays. Yes, I am applying to ISB this year, round 1. However, I managed to squeeze out some time to watch the French GrandPrix. I was at home the whole day. Wanted to relax a bit and take time off for myself. And I did just that !