The Barcelona Life

My love for football is an old story. I still remember my father eagerly watching the game being played while cheering and commenting about his favorite, the legend named Maradona. I also remember the year when Germany lifted the FIFA World cup for the year 1990, those white and black colored demons who side lined every team out of their way with their saga called “Counter-Attack”. And how can I forget the color Yellow which soared so high along with talents like Romario & Ronaldo.

But that was all I knew. I was quite unaware of the other worlds named the champions league, the la-Liga, the Bundesliga and the likes. I met them as I started my job. My peers were eqully enthusiastic about the game. Names such as Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal were new to me but the passion was the same. It didn’t took me much time to pick up with others around on the happenings. But I lacked one true genre: I didn’t have a favorite to cheer for. Watching a game being neutral is the worst way of watching it. I always missed the energy, the adrenaline, the inquisitiveness, the expectation, the prayers, the songs, the feeling, the life…

Messi mesmerized me. The legend as he already is, took me off my ground as I watched him on YouTube. It had always been Argentina and Germany for me at the world cups. Even the recent one had me in tears as I watched my factory of players, Higuain, Messi, Klose, Oezil, Podolski etc head back home. The difference was, I mapped Messi all the way back and found Barcelona. Oh boy, what a team that was. They had everything, the history, the records, the players and the best of them all, they had Pep Guardiola and Messi. That marked the end of my aloofness. I finally belonged to a club. I could finally cry and smile, together….a sense of belongingness was here….

Yesterday, Barcelona played their biggest rivals, Real Madrid. While both the teams were in the top of their forms, anticipation of the game was huge. It was a tough call and as like others, I love being modest and a low profile till the final thing happens. But in India, the match was telecasted on Ten Action Plus, a channel which sadly isn’t provided by my T.V. channel provider. With a heavy heart, there I was, sitting with coffee infront of my laptop, refreshing the Live Score page every 10 seconds. After many a ones, finally it was a 1-0 for Barcelona as Xavi scored and a second one came in too in another eight minutes. There on, it was just a wait and watch for the final moment, Victory. But hardly did I knew that I was being a part of history. Barcelona won 5-0 against the so called Real Madrid and names like Ronaldo, Di-Maria, Oezil, Benzama and Morinho were capped the clowns. We had won the last four of them. This was ours biggest victory against a team which boasted of form and capacity to deliver. Having cherished all of it, I finally took a 4 hour sleep to hit back at the post-play relaying of the game today morning. It was another chance to relive the history. And the whole day seems to have been spent quite befittingly reading the articles of THE WIN all over the World Wide Web. It is months since the world cup fever is over. I got it back Yesterday. :)

A few links that you may cherish reading as i did:
Great Acievements of real Madrid

The Thrashing of real Madrid by Barcelona

CHEERS !!!

Groupless

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Does it matter having a group of your own, a bunch of human heads whom you know and feel like flocking together. May be it does and maybe not.

I know myself and I am a group person. I have always been the one connecting dots from different circles and making a line move. But today, I see myself belonging nowhere. I don’t belong to any group. During my engineering days, I was a loner. I never liked the people around and vice versa. Presently, in my work life too, I am a loner. Every day, the toughest part me is to have lunch alone. Not that I don’t like interacting, but that I don’t like talking to just anyone and having a time out of it. And the people with whom I might like to, well, they seem to belong somewhere else. If I take a detailed note of my life, in a day, I talk to my love and that’s it. Why and how it is all that has become of me is beyond my comprehension.

My love says, if I am to play my preferences this way, we would never have a group. To take a case in point, my closest friend being in touch with his college mates, often plans things together. I had been invited a few times and I had declined. They all stay in the same city and I never found myself invited. If that happens for a trip, that too from my closest friend and not from others, I feel bad. She may be right but I am not wrong either.

When you plan trips and when you plan fun, you do need a group. I do love to be in a group. But should I pay for being non-responsive to people who spend years putting my existence into question, I better pay.

A Hacker

Ever wanted to be a hacker? I always and shall. The beauty of this word lies in the fact that even today, the more I want to understand it, the more mysterious and vast it gets. Many often think of hackers as people with a high degree of “computerness” in them and some even perceive them as breakers who smash systems down. Well, that’s really melodramatic. The reality and gist of the term is more vast and ideal.

My understanding defines “hackers” as people who want to understand everything they are interested in, try playing with the conventions of the system that surrounds their interest and often tweak their practical object of focus and interest in a never thought of way to realize a betterment and deeper understanding. It is this deep understanding that differentiates a hacker from the mass and also quenches the so called “thirst” of a hacker. The realization of this satisfaction gained through the knowledge acquired is a motive of truly a supreme kind. And if you stare from these nooks, you would find them not only in the world of 0’s and 1’s but also all around yourself. As an example: To me, even a passionate driver who drives in the big cities might qualify for a hacker for he has mustered the roads of communication. And if he is what I think he is, I would often see a look on his face, as he discovers a new sub lane which might gain him a few minutes, and believe me, it has always been infectious.

World has always merited the hackers and shall continue to do so for their brilliance remains unquestionable. Deep down, it’s the hunger and the focus which is the real winner. Questioning the existing is the rule which rules them, as says Albert Einstein “The important thing is not to stop questioning”.

Few are those who can see with their own eyes and hear with their own hearts. - Albert Einstein

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Never Ever Ever Give Up ? ? ?

Presently, if I were to replicate my situation, I would choose a dog in a boat amidst the ocean. The only way for it to survive is to hold on to itself till the boat reaches some friendly shore with time. My intellect can’t think of anything which might draw a better analogy to my life at this juncture. A curios mind may ask "WHY". It goes as this...

My love is depressed and frustrated and is badly in need for a job. And with her, I share the same concerns. The problem is that she is having a tough time for a gap she has in her career which was due to me. And that makes things as complicated as watching the movie “Inception” without the sound or the subtitles. She is down and so am I. And to make things worse, we are in a distance relationship. All your care and concerns and love are supposed to follow the protocol “cell phones”. It feels like a pain in the (whatever...take your pick), the place where it hurts the most.

I have my parents as my dependents and as I struggle harder to make things better in every possible way, their complaints and views on life still remains as a never changing weather. Nothing can make them happy. It is becoming increasingly difficult for me to stay at home. My words are often assumed as an offense, my behavior constantly criticized and monitored and my views, all together impractical. It is now like this: I am reduced to stay in my own room in my own house. I seldom go out of my room. My cell phone and Internet connection are the only channels I have for outside communication. I don’t feel like confronting them for whatever.

My job too, being the bitch life is, resonates perfectly with everything else that I have been just scribbling about. I am a 4+ years server side developer doing what a fresher out of college is supposed to do at work and I am hugely under paid considering that I work for one of the best investment banks. I often wonder why i was recruited. And on top of it, I have people in my team who are politically active, culturally racist and professionally moronic in their behavior. There seems to be no way ahead for me to rise here. I am stuck once again. It’s the same quick sand story.

On a personal front, my ambitions to get an MBA are now looking like day dreams. An MBA, the way I want it, needs dedication, motivation and a constant strive to improve on a lot of grounds and to have some substantial leadership experience which is a must needed aspect of my profile. But, being a human that I am, I am unable to muster anything to get me going. A cat not even able to go for the cat race…....

The only solace I now-a-days find is in peeing when I want to and sleeping when I feel tired. Apart from these two I don't identify with any other joy that might exist in this so called world. And I hurts the most when I remember the words...



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GMAT

While I am on my way to be done with my GMAT and get eligible to write “my GMAT” story, I thought of contributing as an introduction, information which many to-be-gmat-givers may find useful as they start on this journey. I would address the most often asked questions and the best way to approach the exam and resources which are of help.

GMAT differs from CAT. This is especially for the Indians to understand. Indians consider CAT as the only examination possible of the highest caliber and often wonder whether GMAT is tougher. While CAT may be ranked amongst the most competitive examinations around the globe, GMAT is certainly tougher. The duration of the exam and the adaptive marking process makes the GMAT score more over the CAT. This is an exam which requires speed as well as accuracy, but both along with tenacity. That makes all the difference. While questions may appear from any topic randomly for a section, their difficulty varies depending on your answer and it is mostly said that even the top ACE candidates find it hard to answer 8 questions correctly in a row in the GMAT. A single question correct may get you a coveted 760 and the same one wrong may put you into the average 710 bracket. While luck does exist everywhere, a human brain usually finds it tough to focus with time. It is this aspect of the exam that expects you to perform after 4 hours, at your peak with 5 minutes of breaks in between sections, which makes its comparison with a marathon race inevitable.

Don’t refer to any GMAT material sitting out there on the World Wide Web. There are ample questions and materials available for Critical Reasoning (CR), Reading Comprehension (RC) and Sentence Correction (SC) to be more precise, but hardly the owners know what really is checked during the GMAT. The choice of topics, the language used and the concept tested are often different.

Apart from using Quant materials to increase the mathematical skills, don’t even think of using IMS and TIME materials for CAT in place for GMAT. CAT passages are often detailed and the questions refer to answers which are direct. GMAT has more variations and uses passages which are dry and often structurally different than the English we read. For the same reason, make it a habit of reading the New York Times or The Economist as a routine especially the “Opinion” section.

If you haven’t appeared for any CAT examinations before, please make sure you go through the GMAT review book available from Princeton Review. Though the book is targeted for an audience who target 650+ scores, it is the best in the market to introduce you to GMAT across all the sections. Complete it once before moving on with the Official Guide and other materials. Consider Kaplan only when you are done with your preparation and you feel a need for an extra practice and curve in your preparation. Of all the books from Kaplan, Kaplan 800 is the best and is a very good collection of tough challenging problems. The 7 books, 5 on Quant and 2 (one for SC and one for CR & RC combined) from MGMAT (Manhattan GMAT) is a must. I would reiterate the fact that a GMAT preparation is not complete unless you are done with at the least the 6 from MGMAT series. The one for CR & RC can be an exemption. Official Guide (OG) and the official guide reviews for Quant and Verbal are a must. Their importance has been stressed upon again and again in every book written for GMAT.

From a test series point of view, MGMAT seems as a sound option. Their questions are tougher than the real GMAT and give the best review analysis of your exams. The type of metrics they provide for every test you write is something you should see to believe. Giving thought on those reviews is what pushes you up the curve from a 650+ to a 700+ achiever.

Two websites in particular, Beat the GMAT and GMAT Club is of immense help. Both have a huge list of followers, varied questions get discussed during a day which is very ideal for ample practice and both have people from all the test preparation companies to help you with your doubts and preparation process. You can also view threads where recent achievers and losers discuss their plans, what worked for them and what didn’t and also the exert advice offered by the real time professionals.

Rather than going for a 6 hour or so taxing schedule for the preparation, a healthy effective focused 2 hours a day schedule can work out more in your favor. Typically, candidates need anything from 3-4 months to be ready for their target score. Starting with the GMAT exam provided by Official GMAC Website is a great way to gauge where you are and plan the way forward. Needless to say, a candidate placed at 650 at the very start of the preparation stands a better chance of soaring up to the 750+ mark, but examples of even a 200 points progress is all over. Consistency matters more. Nothing can harm you more than a 2 days break in your study plan. The plan has to be followed religiously and quality of questions should be given weight age over quantity. The same reason goes in for the fact as to why so many professionals would always ask you to keep out of the so called 1000SC, CR & RC question sets.

Review is more important than study. A day spent in review after every 6 days of study can ensure that you don’t falter in your work done till date. Keeping a track of the errors is very important and often keeping an “Error Log” is suggested. Pondering over the concept tested against the number of questions answered should be a priority. Timing of 2 minutes per CR, 1.30 minutes per SC and 1.45 minutes per RC questions is ideal. Data sufficiency is trickier than it seems and Quant often involves tricks than calculations.

That is all I can share as of now. I am yet to take my GMAT, as said already and if destiny has it, I will surely let all of you know how my GMAT journey was in a more minute detail. Hope this post was long and of use to the new GMAT-takers and feel free to comment if you need any further help.

The Social Network & Marc Zuckerburg

I saw “The Social Network” today. I can’t say how much I loved it. It was the second best movie for me this year post “Inception”. The movie was a justice done to Zuckerburg’s character and “facebook” being the buzz word these days across many Asian lips, gave the required marketing and promotion. I always love movies which are based on the generation greats and the hackers and the coders and the ones who changed the way the world would have been and is. I didn’t know that Zuckerburg ditched his best friend and that the idea behind facebook wasn’t solely his own. But I also didn’t know that he coded up the impossible and hacked into the Harvard systems and got 22000 hits for “facemash”. I can’t help but salute his prowess and the coding genius in him.

There are people who say that facebook isn’t going right with privacy and that many a features as suggested over a course of time are yet to be implemented and new features get added without any notification system caring about the users. They all are right. Post the movie, many who are now aware of the way facebook was formulated, do blame Zuckerberg’s actions. They are right too. But what all of them forget while holding Zuckerberg accountable is that he might have done something which was someone else’s idea but he did it in a way which no one ever could have done. Isn’t that what we all consider as the act of the master? Google’s “GMAIL” wasn’t the first mail provider over the World Wide Web. They became the market when they came up with a new world for mails and that’s what made Yahoo and Rediff pay. Skype wasn’t the first voice calling service available but that’s what we all are turning towards with Yahoo messenger and Rediff bol and Gtalk still hanging around. Often, the master is the one who walks the same path but with difference. Zuckerburg might have travelled the faulty ways to reach where he is today, but that’s not all about what he is. There is more to it. While you choose to consider the other half, make sure you do give him the half that’s his own. Be fair.

And when he flips his card which reads “I am the CEO, bitch”, I can’t agree less.

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Marriages

Everyone is getting married. Everyone eventually does. But when you see everyone around, going for it, that’s when you realize that someday you are going to be that everyone.

I still don’t understand marriages and more so when it’s a love marriage. It always looks to me as a social mandate than a personal fulfillment. Nothing changes after marriage. We love each other, we believe each other, we know and understand each other, we fight each other and we can/can’t stay with/without each other. None of it changes with marriage. Then why the marriage…?

Of all the reasons that I have come across the most popular one’s have been “it enforces faith, togetherness and security of a relationship”, “it is a social ritual”, “it takes one to be old to realize it’s true meaning” and “it is necessary as at least my parents or my partner wants it”. Read each of them carefully. The more you dwell on them, the more you feel like they all imply the same message: marriage isn’t necessary, it’s just a habit. If a social ceremony is going to get us the faith, the bondage and the security of my relationship, I don’t belong to this century. If a social ritual is what I have to care about, I would like to see how the society cares about me after my marriage or has been caring about me. If I need to grow old and realize the true meaning of marriage, I better die than waste my years waiting to understand something at an age when I am supposed to lose majority of my brain power for understanding. If all I care about is my parents and my wife, I should do it, but I also deserve a fair explanation for the act.

Some other reasons that I came across are “it’s a singular lifetime occasion to celebrate” and “it’s a dream”. For the former I would like to say that just as a mortal is unable to stop himself/herself from marriage, no one would ever stop him/her from such multiple occasions. When someone gets married, I always see the people who attend being happiest of the lot. They come, they enjoy, they eat and they leave. No where on earth can you get a better deal. As for the latter, I wonder how the celebration of an occasion can be dream. The word “dream” gets belittled when you use it for marriage. The occasion is that of union and getting together and being bonded and love is what it amount to and you already have it. Love as a dream sounds ideal and real. Marriage as a dream sounds as a one-liner motive explanation of some marriage organizing committee. “Wish” would have been more apt.

I am not aware of any other reasons as to why people marry. If anyone of you knows of any other reasons as to why marriage is so huge a necessity, please chip in your comments. I would love to enlighten myself…..

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Me & MBA

I became an Engineer without a thought. Becoming an engineer here is easy and has remained the preferred choice for graduation as all that is required from you to get the degree is to fill up the examination forms. With a sea of colleges at your disposal, getting into an engineering stream isn’t hard at all. This country has a place for you as an engineer and you are at your own will to grade yourself as either the high scorer or the mediocre or the below average slow minded.

Once you are an engineer, the case that often takes shape is that you end up in Information Technology: the country’s biggest job market. Irrespective of your stream, IT offers you the chair. Often people lack guidance, vision and understanding of what and why they are doing during their engineering days and a job from welcome-all industry can hardly be overlooked. Being an Electronics & Instrumentation engineer, I ended up in IT too and today, I am a software developer quite proud of my technical skills. A matter of joke/shame that still remains is that till today, no one ever asked me “What is a Process control?”, something basic of my engineering stream. Neither did I ever bother about it.

The way forward into the top bracket of management or a fat salary or a role of your choice with challenges that you may be ecstatic about brings before us another often pursued engagement: an MBA. Though I always felt that this country needs a break from the huge crowd of MBA’s that graduate every year, today I find myself in the same race. Unarguably a rat race, my expectations of myself has never been the less. I expect myself to make it into one of the top 20 MBA schools across the globe. Feel free to hit the LOL or a ROFL status. :-)

I am a huge reader of blogs and I really feel blogs do make a huge difference to this world. As I scanned through 100+ blogs of MBA aspirants of the past, I can’t help but feel their pain. The journey which lies ahead is an uphill task. It’s one which even might not have a destination. And as I start upon this road, I am scared and at wits end to justify myself and my actions of the past. I have always been someone without a plan. Today, a plan for everything needs to be chalked out. This sudden shift from my comfort zone and my gears have left me wondering if this blog would also add onto those numerous ones which ended up being an MBA-journey blog.

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Toastmasters & Me

Going to clubs alone for the first time doesn’t feel nice. Someone by your side always feels better. But not every time people around you share what you might be interested in. In those cases, venturing alone is the only option.

I had heard of Toastmasters a lot. I had read about it all over the blogs. And if you are one of those souls who are dying for an MBA and know what profile building is all about you better go and read about it. It’s a non-profit organization that targets improvement in your elocution traits. You also get to know a lot of people, you get to know how your body language is, how your eye contact is while you are speaking and you also get an opportunity to do something somewhere where there are no bars. It runs on the “everyone learns from everyone” model. Typically, they meet twice a month. Every meet has three sections: prepared speeches (people give prepared speeches related to their level before everyone and their assigned reviewer), impromptu speeches (people are randomly chosen to speak for 2 minutes on any topic decided upon) and review session (the reviewers discuss a critical analysis of their assigned speakers’ speeches and suggest as to whether they cleared their level). For those who find 2 hours a long stretch, they do break in between for 10 minutes for snacks.

It was nice out there. Although being there for the first time, they didn’t make me feel the same. I felt pretty much a part of the group. People are nice, eager learners who work hard to achieve and prove their cause for their presence perfectly. It is inspiring and a lot is in store for people eager to master the art of speeches. Personally, I am not a public person and I do share the same cold feet as others. I went there with no decisions made and tried exploring what they do and what it is all about. I am convinced now that it would be great to join them. But before I do that, I need to ask myself more about it. With me, things always start but sadly, they just start. I never reach the end. To reach the end is what I am looking for this time.

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My Winter Trip: Canada

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The current cloud on my mind has “Canada” written all over it. Ideally, if you are working in IT in India and you have 4+ years of experience and you haven’t visited the US/Other lands, people often conclude effortlessly that something is wrong with you.

I had the opportunity to become sane and belong to the common crowd, thrice. But I didn’t have a passport. It took me a big 7 months to get that. And when the fourth opportunity came for me to go abroad, recession became a hero. I never died over these as I never felt the urge to go.

Today I need bucks. Love for other lands and foreign currency is growing day by day. I seek a good 4-5 years abroad. With no idea how, I am asked if I would be fine for a month’s trip to Canada during Nov-Dec months at work. I aimed for years and I got a month. I asked for options, tried declining, stated issues and failed. I had to be there. I was required for a server side change to the application which has to be done before the Christmas. A chaotic 10 days followed until I submitted my passport for VISA approval yesterday.

The wait begins. The wait for something I am not interested in. No one is sure if a VISA to Canada is possible this sooner. But if it is, I am really scared about quite a few things. Firstly, Money: I wonder what good would I make out of the heavy winter clothes I would be buying for my travel once I am back to India and I am staring at a big shopping list. Secondly, Winter: Of what I have heard, I am lost as to how I would survive those freezing temperatures. My body never works well with cold.

Apart from a good exposure to my Canadian counterparts, I am at a loss to figure out any other good that this trip might do to me. Being opportunist isn’t easy.