Thursday, June 30, 2005

Dilbert on Projects

Couldn't stop laughing after I read this... especially now, when I'm making my CV for the placement brochure.

Dilbert Principle says to avoid any project that has the following in the title:
  • Accounting
  • Operations
  • Budget
  • Quality
  • Analysis

And seek out any project with these "resume ready" words:

  • Worldwide
  • Strategic
  • Revenue
  • MArket
  • Competitive
  • Technology

Adding some of my own to avoid:

  • Implications
  • Qualitative
  • Database
  • Children ;-)
  • Paradigm (I love to hate this word)
  • Obeservational

And some to seek out:

  • Innovations ;-) :-*
  • Trends (pfaff - ready)
  • Quantitative
  • Model

:-)

Rainy Days and Thursdays

Raining non-stop in Shela. Icky mess. Frogs, crickets & some insects straight out of obscure zoology text books.

The rain-drenched campus looks beautiful. Straight out of a Robert Frost type poem.

My 7 resolutions for my final year of formal education:

1) Make the most of college life. Read a book a week.
2) Network!
3) Spend time with friends.
4) Do the Diu.
5) Work with placement focus.
6) Learn all about media.
7) Make MICANVAS 2005 the best MICANVAS yet.

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A new batch of MICAns are here. Felt a bit territorial about the campus at first. But they look like a nice group.

Yeah, ragging happens. Very mild stuff. It's mostly about people on an ego trip trying to express superiority over the juniors who come into the insti carrying ego trips. Yes, I will get a lot of flak for this comment. But it's true. Tradition is a weasel word to describe the whole process. But in the end - it's an ego game.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Tod Shekhar Tod...

(Stole a line that'll become an all-time Indian cinema classic)

Saw Parineeta today. Had heard a LOT about the movie, the music, a "twist" in the end and most of all about Vidya Balan. One line in the promotional preview was especially interesting. "Parineeta - the love story of a lifetime."

The movie is beautifully picturised... very much in the style of 1942 - A Love Story which came out in 1993. The panoramic shots of Howrah bridge and Darjeeling tea estates are masterful.

It would naturally be compared with Devdas (2003) - same author; similar story. But Parineeta highlights that a story can be told quite well without grandiose sets and opulent costumes. The 1960s feel comes through with attention to detailing, the yellow-gold hues and the period music. Melodrama was rife in every scene in Devdas; Parineeta uses melodrama in just one scene.

The performances are great... the casting was perfect. Saif was the scene stealer for me. He doesn't need funny lines or a yuppie look all the time. He's "not bad" ... :-) ... in fact, he's very cool.

Vidya Balan looks good in every frame... very Indian and very attractive. "God. She's hot," said one of the people I watched the movie with. Many times over. Hmpf.

Sanjay Dutt looks a little out of place. The bad dad has a lot of footage and looks mean enough. Diya Mirza manages to irritate in a very sketchy role & Raima Sen doesn't have much to do.

What I loved the most was the last scene. Those who've seen the movie will see that I'm evidently not a connoiseur. But it's so HILARIOUS that you come out of the theatre laughing. It's been a while since a movie did that to me. "Very filmi," said people. Well, yeah... it's supposed to be a Hindi movie.

Rekha's number (notice, it is not preceeded by the word "item") is catchy, though she looks ghastly.

And the lovemaking scene is very tastefully done. There's a noticable hush in the theatre during the sequence.

Back to the Grind, of the MTV kind ;-)

Been a couple of days since I got back to MICA. The campus is as heavenly as usual... the green pathways and the red brick walls. Moved in to Champa (it's the name of a pretty flowering tree, and not a pretty, flowering but out-of-work bar girl). I've got a lovely room with a fabulous view of the sunset, monkeys, a barbed wire fence and an electrical transformer. And I'm still so happy. Being on campus does that to me.

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Traveled from Bombay to Delhi and back to Bombay last week. Got used to the Great Indian Railways over the last one year... so flying again felt like a novel experience. Kinda like a villager in the city. Bombay domestic airport is pretty much like your Parel station. The baggage screening area looks like a huge messy garage. The groundstaff are smart and efficient but not courteous. Nope, no one to offer help with heavy suitcases there.

Flew the snooty Jet Airways which thanks to its snoot factor had much much shorter lines than Air Deccan and SpiceJet. Anf flew Air Sahara on the way back, and somehow... liked it a lot better than Jet. Maybe it had something to do with the three hunky male stewards on board. Or maybe because the ride wasn't so turbulent. And thankfully, they do not play Mrs. Suborto Roy's songs while take off.

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"Ahmedabad is supposed to be a nice city." Just wish I could vouch for that myself. Will explore city this year.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Some school time memories...

Saw hoardes of schoolkids yesterday waiting for the Maharashtra HSC results. Feels great to have grown out of that phase of life.

The KV Picket Blog is quite active these days... spent two years at that school & have lovely memories from there. A lot of memories - my own bike, coffee pubs, math tuitions, a huge crush & some friends for life.

Famous Picketians: Mahesh Murthy (entrepreneur, columnist) & Joysula Krishnamurthi (yummy quizzer, MMI semifinalist & University Challenge finalist)

Internship is finally over. Hapy with the final presentation & the favorable feedback. Itching to get back to campus now.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Oh...

The title of my previous post was not quite intended for newspapers. It was actually for those conniving sheets of glass that they call mirrors.

There are three kinds of mirrors in the world -

1) Ones that make you look good
2) Others make you look exactly the way you are
3) The ones that make you looks hideously large

Now, all apparel stores & restaurants have type 1 mirrors. They take wrong 5 kilos off the right places and make any outfit look flattering. You will naturally be deceived into buying a bad outfit or eating that chocolate brownie.

The mirror I have at home is the normal kind. You see yourself, just the way you are. And you blame the chocolate brownie that followed the shopping trip for those extra curves. Or bulges. & Change clothes twice before wearing something that just about manages to flatter... and flatten.

The third kind of the mirror is the one in my hostel. I call it the "fat mirror"... or the devil's gift. It makes anything I wear look positively scary. And I wonder how I could have been vain enough to buy that outfit - which looked perfectly good at the store.

Mirrors lie...

Another post with "mirror" in the title... Still wondering what the post should be about. Well for starters, the question that has been on a lot of people's minds... (well, at least the ones who care a little bit about what goes on in the media - or at least have time to care.) And now that internship is almost done, I also have time to write about it.

So is Mumbai Mirror going to be your ultimate replacement newspaper? It just might, if you:
a) Have shorter arms than normal people
b) Like full page ads
c) Have enough time (especially between 10 am and 11 am on a weekday) to avail their offer of ONE free movie ticket. You also need time to read all the terms and conditions

In short, it's another gimmicky output from BCCL. I mean, which paper that takes itself seriously would put the words "This paper is your free movie ticket" even above the masthead?

It's got about 35-36 pages of content including 5 pages of Mumbai news. A few national, international pages... sports and regular entertainment stories. No business. A superficial look at health & relationships, TV & movie & 2pages of puzzles n comics (none of which are interesting).

A Mid-Day wannabe.

Would rate good old Midday over it anyday, both in terms of content, design and presentation. Invest five rupees, compare & check out for yourselves.