How important is the spelling of your name?

How much does the spelling of your name impact your identity? I don't know why some people are so touchy about their name.

I have a friend called Dibya. So? Its a guy. What a pretty name for a man! After 25 years of his life, he realised he was not happy with his name. He legally changed it to Dibyo. Now I think its against the Indian law to pronounce his name with that spelling in mind.

Dibyo? How is that better? Like his name was not bad enough. Initially it was only feminine, now its feminine and Bongish. Why did he do it?

He fought back- "The Y (why) is silent". I had to ask him further.

"So, do you think you will be able to live up to your name?"

He was confused. I was confused.

Is something similar to itself?

Is something similar to itself?

Making such a statement is redundant and unnecessarily time consuming. Amartya Sen argued that something is similar to itself is based on certain assumptions which may be equally considered redundant and unnecessarily time consuming. But the fact is that no statement can be made without assumptions.

1+1=2

Is this a joke? Questioning this is not just a waste of time, but insulting to our grey matter.

This is true. Put 1 in your right packet and count 1 in your right hand. What do you get? 2!!! Its as simple as that. What assumptions are we talking about here?

If we use binary number system, 1+1=10. Why is decimal system the most Earthly excepted calculating system anyway? I don't worry about this assumption anyway because since birth, I have been told to think this way. All existence have similar assumptions which hides the essence of the unknow.

I am not an atheist, I believe in assumptions.

Lets not ignore Australian markets

No one cares about Australian financial markets!

The global financial community is totally ignoring Australia. Its kind of rude. They don't affect the international markets at all. Australian indexes are not that useless. I am sure they indicate something.

Think about the amount of money Australians can make selling kangaroo skin!

"But what about global warming?"

Richa rightly objected. She took a long term view. Because of global warming less people would be wearing warm clothes. Kangaroos are useless indeed.

Varun just finds it very funny.

"They have pouches..... how ridiculous is having a pouch...."

Who gives a fish about colours?

You can tell an artist by his eyes, or his excel sheets.

Some people will highlight in their excel sheets with the most ugly colours possible. If you vomit on those sheets, it would probably look neater. I understand. I am sure they have real things to worry about.

Are good presentations only for sheets without contents?

I had a business plan to sell new Power Point Presentation templates online. But then I thought again. Who gives a fish? I wouldn't buy it myself.

Appearantly black and white are not as much respected as colours. Its very rude of us. Why are black fonts so universally excepted professional font colour? Black colour fonts are only best for people who cannot see.

Once, an old lady at shop where colour TV was sold said-
"Red colour please!"

Penguines eating our society

Imagine penguines eating our society.

Please discontinue reading this blog!!! Its so impossible that its also gramatically incorrect.

At the end of two years of LIBA, me and Agnes made a list of things we had talked about in the last two years. It goes like this-
"1.The muffin man
2. Tail that wags the dog
3. Yellow submarine
4. Sky that is personally painted black
5. The black vertical hump
6. Frog with the quack of a rhinosaurus
7. "Have I began"
8. A banana that ate the monkey
9. The naughty eskimo who ate the yellow snow
10. Henry, the horse"

One would laugh and for a reason. One's logical reasoning would egoistically deprive his/her grey matter to think for itself. In daily life, we like to talk about only relevant things which can be back calculated and logically concluded. Like 1+1=2 or there is no UFOs as they havent contacted us Earthlings yet.

x1 = ( x0 * a + c ) MOD (2^24)

where:x1 = new value
x0 = previous value (an initial value of 327680 is used by Visual Basic)
a = 1140671485
c = 12820163

What does this super cool equation do? I wouldn't know.

While playing Solitaire, you might think- "How creative of my PC to distribute ramdom cards every time." Please think again. The equation is used by PCs to generate random numbers. Can you imagine? Random numbers generated by a logical equation?

Remeber, the clown is always really laughing at us.

The monkey at my office

A marketing guy and a finance guy can never have lunch together.

I realised that while doing my summers in a very well known company (Company's name purposely kept anonymous). The finance guys did not feel that respected. So one fine day they decided to do credit rating of their distributors. The Marketing guys thought the questionnaire was silly, abruptly irrelevant and too personal. They resisted. They did not consider that those finance guys just wanted to feel like a part of what was going on.

Personally, I couldn't care less. I had more serious things to worry about.

As I wrote to my friends describing my summers on 2008,

"I still cant figure out whom to report to. No1 pays attention to me. My project guide does not recognise me (he occasionally calls me by the name of Sarvesh). I think my project is over but I am not too sure. I generally hide in the library from The HR Manager. They have blocked orkut. The caretaker refuses to serve me coffee. The security guard (He is from SDB Cisco) refuses to share his pen for writing on the attendance register. I think someone tried to throw a magazine at me. They all hate me.

And yes, a monkey drank from the leftovers of my coffee (it did happen!!!) "

I am not a number!

I am not a number!

It is very insensitive to call me F07055. I disapprove of any digits assigned to me by educational institutes. Is my name that verbous? This is what Roger Waters called "The Wall".

Homer disagrees- "I've never felt so accepted in all my life. These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined."

I thought I was grown up for all this when I was suddenly assigned an employee number. I guess I am still to make an identity where no one calls me a number.

I am aware, those classroom roll calls were never because the teacher misses you.

Blunt pencil

Is using pencils in office professional?

When I have the requirement of writing something, I reach out to the closest writable object I can find. (Just like I would keep a cd in the closest cd cover I find, and not the cd cover belonging to that particular cd). I am currently using a pencil. A blunt pencil (which is also not all that comfortable as blunt pencils make more noise while writing and each line is fatter than usual.)

What am I afraid of? Not that I am signing cheques with the pencil.

"Ewww, I repeat – ‘Welcome to 21st century!’"
Nidhi seemed quite concerned about the brand of the pencil. I always thought Nataraj was not one of those super looserish brand.

In two years of MBA, Agnes always carried two pens. She is comfortable with using pencils in office. Her only objectiong is something I had not really anticipated for.

Sharpening pencils in Irevna would be highly unprofessional.

An apple and professionalism

Initially The Beatles started a company called Apple Corps. (which obviously closed down extremely quickly as their ideas had no financial backing whatsoever). It is said, an apple a day also keeps doctors away (if aimed right). Apples are also declared by Christian Popes as the forbidden fruit. Even Hindus believe that we should not be attached to fruits (of our action). Newton had an unfortunate encounter with an apple (some people wish it was a coconut), and he came up with the three laws of motion. Captain Barbosa (from Pirates of the Carribean) always carried an apple with him.

As for my symbolism, I carry an ipod. Itz amaing how quickly your perception of the office decor can change if you listen to Roger Waters, even for an hour (Even the excel sheets get psychadelic).

Listening to music during office hours may not be professional, but it keeps me awake.

Correct Temperature Soup

What does goldilocks think of herself? She breaks into a strangers house, drink their soup, and is still complaining about the temperature of the soup. (Bart Simpson outsmarted her, he mixed the hot and cold soup, and drank it.)

When she was found sleeping in the baby bear's bed (apparently other beds were too big for her), she made another big mistake- she ran. Everyone knows we should never run when we see a bear. We should pretend that we are dead (not that we would be pretending for long). I guess that's why the story ended there.

By the end of 2008, we were introduced to the characters again. Goldilocks (bullion) and the three bears again (equity, debt and forex). When the bears were out, people made career decisions to sell gold. Now that gold is reaching new highs, I can safely say it was a huge mistake :P. No one has any clue how warm they wanted their soup.

Astrologers disagree. They call Earth, the Goldilocks planet- neither too hot, nor too cold). Perfect for existence of life. There is a quote in "The Simpsons" on a winter Sunday morning.

"Thanks to global warming, the weather is pleasant"

The training at Irevna has taught me a very important lesson- soups have no temperature.

Cellotape theory

I should buy a cellotape even though I don’t have an urgent requirement??? (for contingency situation). Or is it that only girls needs cellotapes?

But there are problems- which one shud I buy- thin or those fat ones? Transparent or brown? It is also difficult to find the starting point of the tape (specially if my nails are freshly cut). I might need those plastic boxes which help in rollin out and cutting the tapes.

Agnes googled it for me. I knew very little about cellotapes. Its not even one word. Cello is a company that manufactures tapes. Varun insisted its spelled Sellotape.

Eventually, I disagree with myself. Tape theory doesn’t work. What man would keep a torn piece of paper glued together by cello tapes? I mean how desperate are we to keep the paper? The paper is torn. Its time to move on. Write something new and better on a piece of paper that is new and better. Isn’t it what evolution is all about.

Darwinians don’t need cello tape. We prefer evolution instead.

Mastering laziness

Sir Homer simpsons said, "Anything that takes more than 12 steps isn't worth doing!"

Whats common between a saint and a lazy man? They spend their every waking moment to achieve nothingness or sunya. Israel Regardie wrote a book, lazy man's guide to relaxation (and I wonder why it was a small book with big fonts.) He explained how being lazy was not easy. Seinfeld agrees- "I am so busy doing nothing... that the idea of doing anything - which as you know, always leads to something - cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything. "

I gave laziness a chance at work. I tried pretending to work. I do not understand the concept of pretending to work. If I move my hands in a way it should move, while pretending to work, the work eventually gets down. Its frustrating at times.

I am still trying to master laziness.