insane inanities

back to blogging

2010-04-16T10:13:00.002+05:30

Few days back I stumbled upon a blog by a chemical engineer, and although generally this type of accident rarely happens it made me to recall that I do have a blog and somehow chemical engineering seems familiar. After 4 failed attempts to type the right password I clicked on the ‘forgot your password’ link. As it turned out the last post I made was on 27^th June, 2009 and a lot has happened since then, Obama became president and Berlusconi got impressed with his tanned skin, Michael Jackson left for heavenly abode entertaining kids over there (assuming they have vast balconies to hang kids by their legs), MF Husain kicked out of the country and last known through gossip columns by writers like Shobhaa De he’s busy finding his muse among burqa clad Qatari actresses, Sania Mirza became second wife of another loser and planning to settle in Dubai (what is it in Middle East that attracts all the loser Indians?), Prometric screwed dreams of many Indian MBA wannabes as if they are already being spared by rotten system infested by reservation policies, Himesh Reshamiya gave up his headgear due to global increase in the prices of made in china caps (consequently he’s blaming Ben Bernanke and lehmann brothers for his exposed tresses), on a personal front regarding CAT i failed to get an IIM call, screwed up MDI interview (will post it on some other day, in case I don’t forget the password again), my girlfriend Miss Venezuela Stefania Fernandez became Miss Universe, number of hair per square cm of my scalp decreased and most importantly I managed to scrape through 2 semesters and consequently I’m 2 months away from dreaded chemical engineering course.

Of all these things I’m unable to decide ki kispe likhu, ab blog hai to likhna bhi padega na yaar warna public padhegi kya. Although it is another fact that most of the hits to my blog or rather statistically speaking more than 400 of 450 hits to my blog are being made by me. Rests are done by those people who were forced to read my blog after I posted the link on their orkut/facebook profile with catchy titles like, “isey padhein aur apni sex life interesting banayein”. I don’t know how successful they are in their pursuit but I think my writing is equally interesting if not more, than ad banners of cheap local aphrodisiacs (can’t give the names, manufacturers like them read bloggers like me aakhir talent match jo karta hai) which rely more on visual stimulation than anything else. Talking about visual stimulation, I got enough of it on my recent visit to Marine Drive, Mumbai. Mumbai enthralled me on my first visit to the city in early Feb this year and may be couple of days aren’t enough to completely understand the woes of people regarding this city (and I found many dissenters of the view that Mumbai being an interesting city to live in) but I found the rush of the city to suit me. And now as I’ve been placed in Mumbai for Teach For India from July onwards I’m looking forward to squeeze all the fun I can have out of hectic schedule of TFI that’s awaiting me. In days to come, as I’ve now noted down the password of my blog trusting little on my memory, I’ll write about Teach For India and may be about my departing college and classmates but as of now it is the movie ‘Dan in real life’ that’s awaiting me.

how i met with an another way to kill time

2009-06-27T18:51:00.004+05:30

I’m not much of a TV buff, especially these soaps bore me like hell, but there was something with ‘How I Met Your Mother’, that made me sit back and see the complete first season in a single sitting, and as a matter of fact I don’t have anything else to do. The book I was reading has been finished and I’ll soon write its review, besides I couldn’t bring myself to go to the library and issue another one so I just got this season one from a friend and on a not so hot afternoon of yesterday with gallops of shrikhand as my lunch I totally enjoyed this comedy. Barney Stinson is the real entertainer, his one liners and dating strategies are the real fun of the show. Humourist to the core, every time he shows up on the screen there is something or the other that’s in the store that will tickle your ribs. Lily and Marshall are a cute couple, been there together for nine years and the magical romance still there, is something which is quite touchy. I’m lost for words for Cobie Smulders who is playing the role of Robin Scherbatsky, a reporter and an on off love interest of Ted Mosby. She is one of the cutest girls I have seen on the screen, she is obviously a no match for Penelope Cruz, but she is definitely beautiful, especially in the first episode. But among all, it is the character of Ted Mosby which enthralls me the most, he is oblivious to Barney's way of seeing people or rather girls, he is quite unlucky that he is not able to find his true love like Lily and Marshall and he is obviously not so ‘casual’ as Robin. A completely simple guy, being funny at heart, he epitomizes a real ideal guy, but the only thing is he’s smitten for a wrong girl. Robin is not the right girl for him, and he knows this too but he is not able to come in to terms with it even after a string of affairs. I think further seasons have in store the right girl for him, the girl whose kids he is narrating the story. But sincerely how come a dad narrates a story to his kids with all those one night stands description, Barney’s fundae and all, may be in US. All in all it’s a relationship drama with Ted running after girls to find his soulmate, Barney bringing him to senses in his own terms and Lily-Marshall’s lovey dovey talks. And yes their all time chatting in the bar with that big mug of beer, is there so much of free time in USA? May be yes after this recession and all.

forthcoming exam or IBM puzzle, okay i choose sleep

2009-05-02T23:40:00.003+05:30

Today I Just screwed up my exam big time. I can't recall any exam that I messed up so sweetly. I've no desire to take this exam again and I'm just hoping that my border line case just land up on the favourable side of the rope. Next one is on Monday and I just got up from a nice kip only to go for a night out. And now I think it's time to get back to the work for I do not want to post something like this on Tuesday too.
By the way checked out IBM's puzzle of analog watch and was flirting with the ideas when I fell in this slumber. This month's puzzle is easy, just a day after it is posted atleast three people around the world have already cracked it. Already half way through to crack this one I'm expecting to be in the top ten people who have cracked it, let's see how things unfold.......time to study.......to mug.

Sorry Steven I'm not going to listen to you today

2009-04-30T16:54:00.004+05:30

After some half an hour of continuous strenuous study, the maximum stretch as far as I can recall since my school days, I got this idea to take a break and write something on voting as today it’s a poll day in Ahmedabad for Lok Sabha Elections. BJP is the favourite over here in Gujarat and rightly so for the CM Narendra Modi has put Gujarat at the forefront of development in the last 6 years. And the best part in Gujarat is that here people don’t cast votes on paltry issues like casteism, cheap incentives, pseudo publicities, etc. unlike in my home state Uttar Pradesh. With few exceptions it is the development issue which rules the roost here and that’s why this part of the country is on the highway for speeding development.
Some time back I read an article by Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame on voting and the hype surrounding it. According to him the importance been attached to the individual making a big impact is nothing more than a farcical point of view. He stated a study done by Patricia Funk, "A rational individual should abstain from voting." According to her study the odds that your vote will affect to the grand outcome of the elections are very very very slim. This was documented by the economists Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter, who analyzed more than 56,000 Congressional and state-legislative elections since 1898. For all the attention paid in the media to close elections, it turns out that they are exceedingly rare. The median margin of victory in the Congressional elections was 22 percent; in the state-legislature elections, it was 25 percent. Even in the closest elections, it is almost never the case that a single vote is pivotal. Of the more than 40,000 elections for state legislator that Mulligan and Hunter analyzed, comprising nearly 1 billion votes, only 7 elections were decided by a single vote, with 2 others tied. Of the more than 16,000 Congressional elections, in which many more people vote, only one election in the past 100 years - a 1910 race in Buffalo - was decided by a single vote.
And according to Steven Levitt the reasons why people cast votes are:
1. Perhaps we are just not very bright and therefore wrongly believe that our votes will affect the outcome.
2. Perhaps we vote in the same spirit in which we buy lottery tickets. After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it's fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you'd spend the winnings - much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy.
3. Perhaps we have been socialized into the voting-as-civic-duty idea, believing that it's a good thing for society if people vote, even if it's not particularly good for the individual. And thus we feel guilty for not voting.

Whoa! What thinking he has, although I love his writing and Freakonomics is one of my favourite books but on this issue I totally disagree with him. What if everybody starts thinking like this, and do not cast their vote? The so called intelligentsia will refrain from voting, buying this line of thought and the fate of our country will fall upon idiotic ruffians who in fact are already sitting in the parliament. Had there been no exam tomorrow and my voting card available to me (things like voters id, driving license, passport, etc are as easy in UP to get as stray pigs in Ahmedabad), I might have gone to Kanpur to cast my first vote, and no matter how many awards Steven has got including flashy degrees from MIT and Harvard, no matter how sincerely I like his works I’ll still not listen to him today, because it’s the future of my country that’s at stake and I know individual vote counts.

my second Brand Equity Quiz

2009-04-28T23:28:00.002+05:30

Yesterday I went to Economic Times Brand Equity Quiz hosted by Derek O’ Brien, and it was a nice outing altogether in the evening after being almost boiled up from unendurable sun. Attending quizzes have always been my favourite spin and when it’s a Brand Equity or a Tata Crucible, the fun part gets incremented astronomically. Last year it happened in the month of March, I think it was 13th March 2008, I remember it because it was the day of the technical symposium organized by Chemical Engineering Association, and since I don’t find these technical symposium a tad interesting I left my college a bit early only to find retreat at the Sports Club of Gujarat, the venue of Brand Equity Quiz. That was a lucky day for me because as an audience I got the chance to be called on the stage for I answered a quiz question which teams failed to answer. That question involved identifying the name of the music band which composed the jingle for a commercial. Why I’m saying I was lucky is that because I didn’t know the answer of the question either, although I identified the voice of the singer and that was Bono, hence the answer U2. I raised my hand to the limit for I was sitting in the last rows, I thought Derek couldn’t see me but he did and called me up on the stage:
Derek: Yes, you over there, the guy in the black shirt, come over to collect your prize, the lady (the girl who was distributing the prizes) won’t come to you, you need to come to the lady.
After reaching the dais.
Derek: so what you do?
Me: I’m studying engineering.
Derek: you have just won a suit length from Digjam worth 4000/- bucks, what will you do with this?
Me: ummm I don’t have any clue right now.
Derek: okay I’m giving you four options
1) Give it to your dad.
2) Use it for yourself
3) Forgotten what the third option was J :?
4) Sell it.
I thought to take the fun ride and answered;
Me: option 4 sell it.
Derek: good so shall we start the auction right here itself?
Me: yeah okay.
Derek: okay before that I need to ask you few questions, turn around and have a look at the names of our sponsors, you’ll be given only 5 seconds for that.
(At this moment I got a bit nervous, I knew Derek has a feat of pulling people’s leg and on that evening he was in his sarcastically best form, not leaving even the professionals from the teams, leave alone obscure audience. Well finally I turned around and trusted my little bit of presence of mind to save me from being reduced to a public comic)
Derek: okay now you tell me who is the main sponsor?
Me: Idea
Derek: spell it backwards
Me: aedi
Derek: okay who is our media partner?
Me: Times Now or was that NDTV profit (don’t remember right now although I gave correct answer at that time).
(He then asked me few more questions on the sponsors and fortunately I answered all of them with élan, although I don’t remember them now)
Derek: so we return to auctioning of your suit length. This costs 4000/- bucks, so for how much amount will you sell it?
Me: ummmm greater than 4000/-
Derek: you better stick to engineering!!!
And with that I saved my ass and my prize too.
This time things were different as far as luck coefficient goes, of all the answers that I knew, I wasn’t given the chance to answer any of them. But all in all it was a great quiz, especially as far as prize distribution was concerned. Sponsors were too generous on the Brand Equity quiz and Derek was too generous on the audience. The theme of the quiz was “Ignorance is the complete Darkness”, the words of Louis Braille commemorating his 200th birthday, yesterday. The venue was an open air amphitheatre so by the time finals started it was totally dark and I couldn’t write any questions, still I think somebody must have got the questions and sent it to Rohit Nair’s blog.
Defending champions Triton Communications won the show again but were given a tough fight from Gujarat Gas team till the last question. Nice outing, good quiz, humourous quiz master (although he got a bit disparaging in the beginning of the finals), cool weather was all there to skip my semester exam preparation and I’m glad I did so.

believing

2009-04-21T19:13:00.001+05:30

“Yes, your viva is over; just find out how you will find the VLE data for a homogeneous mixture of acetone-water assuming they aren’t forming any azeotrope under any temperature?”, and with that my couple of minutes of viva was over. This was my shortest viva ever; it was different in more than one way as the concerned prof is one of the most intelligent in chemical engineering faculty. Well after about half an hour I got the answer that acetone can’t be titrated normally (my little education has told me that acetone is weak Lewis Base as it has two lone pairs on oxygen, the logic was rightly rebutted considering even water has two lone pairs on its oxygen!!). The answer to the problem lies in Carl-Fischer technique of titration (absolutely no idea what the hell it is, got the answer from my Chemistry prof and later puked it in front of MTO prof and now doing it on my blog). So finally when I returned conceding my half knowledge regarding acetone (all I can tell about it is that, it’s what nail-polish removers have in abundance and well its molecular weight), I found that the two of my classmates were still ducking the slew of questions mercilessly fired at them, ironically one of them was a class topper and the other is a topper from the bottom of the class. Seeing their condition I thanked my school days when I didn’t gave a hoot to chemistry and consequently have this messed up fundas of Lewis Bases, but the line of the day or better line of the semester was just around the corner, “You have an analytical and R&D brain, best of luck for the next sem and produce something interesting”, wow! I couldn’t believe my ears; I thought I’ll get a decent 3rd degree upon my confession but he later asked me about my next seventh sem’s minor project and on the cue I started boasting about how mathematically intensive my project on SAFT (Statistical Associating Fluid Theory) is. Finally I was asked to leave as there were few of my batch mates who were standing outside waiting for their turn and fuming over time I’m taking over frivolous talks. Well I’m roaming in the heavens right now as I was completely unprepared for the viva and I know it’s a big beautiful A that I’ve just got engraved against my roll number on the MTO viva sheet. The only regret I have is that I never paid attention to his class. Still, if you are reading it sir then let me tell you in the next sem I’ll pay complete attention in your class, I’ll NOT sleep, talk, yawn, play chess, read fiction, ogle girls, read newspaper, solve Sudoku or crossword, copy assignments, scribble on paper/desk/wall/bench, day dream, mark proxy, etcetera etcetera. All I’ll do is to pour my brains out in your subject, and make sure that I attend all of your lectures and do all the assignments on my own (okay this last one is a bit too much of an asking, I hope you’ll be contend even without it).
Thank you Pareen Sir for believing in me.

When Capillarity Saved Me

2009-04-20T19:54:00.002+05:30

Today I had my first viva, the subject was Hydrocarbon Technology and it’s a true blue mugging typo subject. And as my disinclination towards this kind of subject goes I wasn’t prepared beyond my lab file experiments today. The scheduled time was 12:00 but my turn came only after 3:00 P.M. , and as expected the first two questions that were thrown at me were refuted very politely by a slight nod and a ‘sorry sir, I’ve no idea about why Pensky-Martin differs from Cleaveland method’. Fortunately the next few questions were about capillarity and viscosity and their interdependence and here I went with full throttle, strewn with hypothetical examples I made sure that I blew my prof off the hook. He was completely taken aback of my transformation from a back bench sleeping beauty to James Braddock kinda Cinderella Man, knocking every question with a formidable answer. Some 25 minutes later when the viva was over I couldn’t help thanking my luck. Surely it was one of the best of vivas I ever took. And as I write this I’ve to prepare for tomorrow’s viva which is of Mass Transfer Operations, a big subject for chemical engineering students. It’s especially a tough nut for me as the concerned prof has to level several scores against me as I used to have sweet forty winks in his class, and when I wasn’t sleeping I made sure that I’ll make appropriate use of my time by writing assignments or playing chess sitting at the last bench. So I’m logging out for I need to fetch class notes, get them photocopied and burn mid night tubelight so that I can at least utter the names of the chapters in the syllabus tomorrow when my mental torture begins.

PINK FLOYD

2009-04-08T20:21:00.003+05:30

Back in 1965 little did people knew that what started as The Tea Set by a group of Regent Street Polytechnic architecture students Nick Mason, Roger Waters, Richard Wright, Bob Klose and later on joined by Syd Barrett in Cambridge, UK, will continue to alleviate all the ‘another brick in the wall’, even decades later. There is something very different with Pink Floyd’s music; they have this knack of mending that painful nerve in the mind. No matter how glum my day is, Floyd’s music is what I’ll need to just throw those rotten thoughts out of my mind. Just listen to ‘Comfortably Numb’ or ‘Wish You Were Here’, or ‘Coming Back to Life’, and you’ll come to know how it feels when in one of those after dinner walks, cool breeze beats your face and ‘Fearless’ is wafting through your ears. For me a very tough puzzle or a Wodehouse story or a Sherlock Homes case and very recently a blindfold game of chess can only match Pink Floyd’s music. There have been many occasions after I enrolled in my engineering college when I reduced myself to nervous wreck (I’m not getting a milder word, although ‘nervous wreck’ wasn’t even my worst of states!), and in all of those times apart from calling Sandeep or catching up a movie, either it was a Wodehouse’s or a Floyd’s work that helped me sail through those rough times. Just listen to their songs or read the lyrics, you’ll come to know how deep they touch in the soul, and that’s exactly what one might need in those days. And as I’m right now listening to, ‘On the Turning Away’, one of my all time favourite songs, all I can do is to thank Nick Mason, Roger Waters, Syd Barrett, Richard Wright, and especially David Gilmour for creating the eternal song, ‘Learning To Fly’.
Good work guys. May your legacy continue.
LEARNING TO FLY
INTO THE DISTANCE, A RIBBON OF BLACK
STRETCHED TO THE POINT OF NO TURNING BACK
A FLIGHT OF FANCY ON A WIND SWEPT FIELD
STANDING ALONE MY SENSES REELED
A FATAL ATTRACTION HOLDING ME FAST
HOW CAN I ESCAPE THIS IRRESISTIBLE GRASP?

CAN’T KEEP MY EYES FROM THE CIRCLING SKY
TONGUE-TIED AND TWISTED JUST AN EARTH-BOUND MISFIT

ICE IS FORMING ON THE TIPS OF MY WINGS
UNHEEDED WARNINGS
I THOUGHT I THOUGHT OF EVERYTHING
NO NAVIGATOR TO GUIDE MY WAY HOME
UNLADENED, EMPTY AND TURNED TO STONE

A SOUL INTENSION THAT’S LEARNING TO FLY
CONDITION GROUNDED BUT DETERMINED TO TRY

CANT KEEP MY EYES FROM THE CIRCLING SKIES
TONGUE-TIED AND TWISTED JUST AN EARTH-BOUND MISFIT

ABOVE THE PLANET ON A WING AND A PRAYER
MY GRUBBY HALO, A VAPOUR TRAIL IN THE EMPTY AIR
ACROSS THE CLOUDS I SEE MY SHADOW FLY
OUT OF THE CORNER OF MY WATERING EYE
A DREAM UNTHREATENED BY THE MORNING LIGHT
COULD BLOW THIS SOULRIGHT THROUGH THE ROOF OF THE NIGHT

THERE’S NO SENSATION TO COMPARE WITH THIS
SUSPENDED ANIMATION, A STATE OF BLISS

CAN’T KEEP MY MIND FROM THE CIRCLING SKY
TONGUE-TIED AND TWISTED JUST AN EARTH-BOUND MISFIT

VALKYRIE

2009-03-11T00:39:00.005+05:30

After a long sojourn I turned to blogging again, it has been a completely unproductive time period since last few months. Last time I wrote for my blog, economic recession was not in public vocabulary, Lehmann Brothers was the dream company for many B-school students and aspirants alike, and well of not so worldly importance, I hadn’t lost my college chess championship and hope of getting into finals of Tata Crucible Quiz competition. But today I’m not in mood to rant about these trivialities it’s in fact my unprecedented performance in recently concluded mid-sems that has made me to revert to conventional ways to keep my mind occupied. Never before I had a strike rate of failing in 4 out of 5 exams, never before I cut the whole paper after attempting some 80% of it, never before I came out of examination room after fifteen minutes from the start, and I celebrated all this by watching Valkyrie.
This movie is a real treat to watch especially if you are a history buff. The story is a true one about the last attempt by the dissident Generals of Hitler’s army to kill Hitler and his main counselor Himmler. The success of the assassination attempt was based on staging a coup by enforcing Operation Valkyrie, an emergency plan to be enacted in case of Allied bombings of German cities or in the death of Hitler. July 20 was the day chosen to stage the coup and to kill Hitler. The main officers involved were Tresckow, Olbritcht, von Haeften, Carl Goerdler, and others but the main role was that of Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, played by Tom Cruise. Col Stauffenberg was the youngest among the Generals who were behind the plot, he had also lost his left eye (or was it the right one) and right hand during war. The story is riveting despite the fact the outcome is known.
This July 20 plot of 1944 was the last attempt on the life of Hitler by German dissidents who wanted to restore peace in Germany and Europe, indicating all the German army men weren’t fanatic like Nazis. And eventually Hitler committed suicide after nine months of this attack on his life.
Above is the picture of the conference room after the explosion. Unfortunately this conference room was chosen at the last moment disrupting the plan of killing Hitler in a closed concrete bunker for the plastic explosive was meant to function better in a reinforced bunker where the explosive force would’ve been re-bounded causing immense damage. Imagine if Hitler would’ve died in this blast how many millions of lives could be saved.
The movie has done the right justice to the history, although it had shown Hitler as a psychotic guy, (he was truly a psychotic). Tom Cruise with his impeccable acting skills has rightly dominated the second half of the movie. All in all a must see for all those who believe in meaningful cinema, and for the rest they are spoilt for choice in our bollywood.
Fortunately after the movie while I was browsing through books at Crossword I came across the book on Operation Valkyrie and July 20 plot by one of the conspirators who was lucky enough to escape from a firing squad or to be hanged from violin wire till death. And as I sifted through the book I found Col. Stauffenberg’s role wasn’t up to that degree in the coup as was shown in the movie. Still I think I might not have opened the right pages, because the guy who puts the briefcase under the Hitler’s table and later on singlehandedly manages the coup has to have a major role. Although the right way to approach is the book before its movie but in this case book after the movie can be pardonable as the movie is truly meaningful. Time for the Valkyrie book now!

Tata Crucible Corporate Ahmedabad round, IIM-A

2008-08-31T19:50:00.001+05:30

TATA-CRUCIBLE CORPORATE QUIZ AHMEDABAD 20TH AUGUST 2008, Venue- Ravi Mathai Hall, IIM-A
ELIMINATION ROUND
The elimination round had some 24-25 questions dictated by Pick Brain, the quiz master and all the registered teams had to answer them in a paper provided to them. The questions were-
1) A Frenchman in 1954 brought something in India for the very first time, the name of the Frenchman was given and the place in India where he brought it.
Answer: VAT, the value added tax
2) The phrase which Google has immortalized.
Answer: I’m feeling lucky
3) An ad of was shown in which people were itching different parts of their body.
Answer: itch guard
4) An entrepreneur born to a 17 year old mother; father an immigrant to USA from Alice Island.
Answer: Larry Ellison of ORACLE
5) There was some question on the site where Mukesh Ambani’s home Antalia
6) A manage ment guru who coined some phrase.
Answer: Edward de Bono
7) A tea making company which calls its outlets embassies.
Answer: Republic of Tea
8) ISIS music idol
Answer: Bob Dylan
9) Burj Dubai’s 37th floor is booked by which firm?
Answer: Armani
10)Picture of Harsh Goenka to be identified.
11) Something regarding the slogan, “Battle between corporate giants”, may
be the catchline
Answer: Fortune
12) Publication of GQ?
Answer: Conde Nast
13) a question on Tyson food.
14) “easy day”
Answer: Bharti
15) A quote by Adam Smith
16) It means “sun rise” in Japanese?
Answer: Hitachi
17) What does RA1804 represents?
Answer: Real Estate business in India
18) Which EPL club is owned by Thai president Takashin?
Answer: Manchester City
19) Some question on the ICICI bank in Russia
20) &21) Ads by TATA AIG and CRISIL
22) Which Formula 1 team will you identify with ING?
Answer: Renault

ROUND 1: “BUSINESS HORIZON”
1) There was a huge surge of its demand, associated with Mandhiv & Salya in Gujarat, what product is this whose main market is the Middle East?
Answer: Wooden Boats (the teams weren’t able to answer this very first question so it was passed to the audience)
2) In 1833 David Sasun founded SASUN in Bombay in a carpet vault room which nowadays is a famous brand, name it?
Answer: Raymond Wool ( again the teams fumbled and audience rocked!)
3) Zumobi is a mobile tech in Seattle, spin off from Microsoft 3 years ago….??(don’t remember the complete question)
4) In Dec 1853 water company CJE( some french word) was founded by Napoleon’s decree, supplied water to the city of Paris in 1861, what it’s known today?
Answer: Vivendi
5) Tom Morres (wrote about it, may be)……a family in Goa…….from the world of Portuguese’s sport…..???(yeah I know I’m incoherent, don’t exactly remember the question)
Answer: Dempo
6) Started by an accounting professor at University of Chicago in 1925, name it?
Answer: Mckinsey & co. (I sincerely prayed that none of the teams would be able to answer to this one & I may get a chance to win a freebie!!)

ROUND 2 “NANO GAMES”
1) TATA subsidiary marketing CROMA?
Answer: infiniti retail ( why it happens that whenever I know the answer of a particular question it’s always answered by the teams!)
2) John Coatman’s architectural piece……?
Answer: Taj Wellington Muse, Mumbai
3) Jakranta & Narmada are served as food & wine at?
Answer: Taj Unmad at Ahmedabad (teams must have kicked themselves on not answering this one)
4) The name of a place which means ‘salt’ in gujarati?
Answer: Mithapur
5) founded in 1972 under parent company F.Mali now a division of Tata tea?
Answer: Good Earth Tea

ROUND 3 ‘LATERAL THOUGHTS’
It was a round on connections, few pictures were shown and the teams had to find a common thread between them.

1) pic1 ‘IT revolution’, pic2 ‘MCA 21’, pic3 ‘NBA’.
Answer: TCS, pic1 is the book written by FC Kohli, NBA has tie up with TCS
2) pic1 ‘Tom Hanks movie pic’, pic2 ‘ you’ve got mail’, pic3 ‘oscar trophy’, pic4 ‘steve cost’
Answer: AOL, Oscar is their IM, Rain Man the movie’s name is their social network platform, you’ve got mail is may be their protocol (do confirm this though)
3) pic1 ‘choice convenience control’, pic2 ‘Active Wiz kids’, pic3 ‘show case’, pic4 ‘kasam se’
Answer: Tata Sky (self explanatory!!)
4) pic1 ‘mirror’, pic2 ‘superman flying with a roll of paper in his hand’, pic3 ‘mahatma gandhi’s statue with other leader’s following him, the one in delhi’, background song-tum chalo to hum chale
Answer: TOI, mirror is there flagship project going on in various cities, superman has to do with marketing stuff, song is their Lead India campaign slogan.
5) answer: gang of girls, a song was played of priyanka chopra who is their brand ambassador, then there was its logo which made this question a sitter.
6) pic1 ‘gladrags’, pic2 ‘brittania’, pic3 ‘ jinnah’
Answer: Bombay Dyeing (arguably the easiest question of the quiz)

ROUND 4 ‘CODE BUSTER’
A new round introduced by Crucible, it had 4 pictures of logo of the four different companies underneath each logo written something like L-2 or U+1 , these codes were actually the letter that comes 2 places before L in APPLE COMPUTERS i.e. A & the letter coming after U in DABUR i.e. R, now with these 4 letters a brand name is unearthed which is the answer.
1) logos of Heldi (H+3), Havells(l-2), Mont Blanc(n-2), [fourth one forgotten!!]
Answer: DELL
2) logos of: CNBC, TIMEX, levis
ANSWER: nike
3) BLACK DECKER, GO AIRWAYS, KFC, EPSON
Answer: COKE
4) PICASA, LUFTHANSA, YAHOO MESSENGER, PARLE
Answer: PUMA

LAST ROUND ‘RAPID FIRE-BUZZER’
This round had three clues each having lesser points as the teams progressed through, buzzer round with negative marking, same old round.
1) Only state owned gas Production Company (resist your temptation to say ONGC)?
Answer: GSPC
2) a question on Mudra
3) question on Adani the person not the organization
Last two were nailed by QUANTUS software which was already in lead thus leaving no point for the fourth one to be asked. Incidentally this team has been winning for the last two years in the Ahmedabad version so this was their third consecutive win and even more they were the national winners last to last year (2006). And if you are thinking the competition was feeble then let me tell you there was the winner of Brand Equity Ahmedabad among the teams, the Pune runners up of the last year & runners up of the last year Ahmedabad Crucible.

no pun intended

2008-08-17T13:46:00.001+05:30

Munching on grilled sandwich which happens to be my dinner tonight I’m writing my first post on the blog. Just engulfed a Disprin as a condiment, I hope that an analgesic would improve my writing ability and might put me into a flow. There have been authors who’d write better after getting high, but since this is a dry state (Gujarat) and me being a law abiding citizen (hypothetically assume it for few minutes), I’ve to be my natural self when it comes to writing without any accessorial help. By the way boozing before one turns 25 is also against law but I wonder how many of us follow or even know about this, besides I think even alcohol companies have a major chunk of their market segment in <25>

So I was thinking for all these days to start blogging, the only glitch was about what to write. I remember right from class 6^th I scored pathetically in my essays, although I managed to pass my English Language exams but this one particular thing used to leave me in a real sour taste as the girl I had crush upon was a real pro in essays and you just can’t afford to be dimwitted in the area where your love interest was almost at the top of the game. For example, if you are on a date with Ana Ivanovic (stop dreaming and continue reading) you might not have much chance to score a point if you don’t know what a ‘deuce’ is. So the options with me were either to find some other girl or get better in essay writing. First one was obviously out of question considering my value system although now I can’t even recall her name. Second one though wasn’t out of question; its solution was eluding me. So I reverted to that age old foolproof formula of mug and puke and class after class I performed, at least in exams. When I reached class 10^th I had to forego this formula and get into real learning like reading editorials, penning my thoughts on topics like ‘my favourite animal’ or ‘Dussera celebration in my neighbourhood’, etcetera etcetera. Reading editorials is incidentally an activity CAT coaching institutes insist on developing. But this is something which has to be there in you since you were 15, and at 20 if you still find yourself finding the editorial pages in your daily newspaper then I recommend you to forget CAT and put on your boxing gloves, win a medal or two in the Olympics in flyweight or whatever category your mass multiplied by acceleration due to gravity permits you to be in. For then you can press your candidature to Harvards and Whartons in a better way. Even getting a podium finish at Asian Games won’t be too bad if you find yourself busy with taking autographs of Michael Phelps & Roger Federers in Olympics for we Indians are really good at knocking Chinese and Tajikistanis rather than Cubans and Americans out of the ring. Cricket is also an option but I don’t know whether participating in say kabaddi at SAF sports requires more hard work or getting a century in the finals of World Cup. But as far as rewards/return on investments goes being a twelfth man in the Indian Cricket Team is better than to win a gold medal at Olympics, in the longer scheme of things obviously. So returning to class 10^th, my developing reading habit really improved me in getting passing marks in essays and when I finished school little did I knew that this monster of essay writing will haunt me few years later in the form of analytical writing section of the Graduate Record Exam. So this is one of the many reasons why I’ve boarded the blog-wagon, to improvise upon my writing and make it as much analytical as possible (phew!). And since I’m not a celebrity I can’t write about the names of the pet dogs my neighbours own or the names, which I’m yet to think, of the street dogs I disown, who wake me up almost every night. I think SRK would be a nice fit to the most robust of them after the Soave-Redlich-Kwong cubic equation of state in chemical engineering thermodynamics, which also gives me restless nights. And by doing so although my blog wouldn’t get advertisement on the major news channels but it might tickle a rib or two of absolutely futile readers like you (no pun intended).

Will try my best to make your reading even more futile in the days and posts to come!