Management Lessons

Shyam , my good friend, sent me the link to this site and I kinda enjoyed it. So I am putting it up here for other people to enjoy.

Lesson Number One

A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A small rabbit saw the crow, and asked him, ” Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?” 

The crow answered: “Sure, why not.”

So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Management Lesson: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up. 

Lesson Number Two

A turkey was chatting with a bull.

“I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree, “sighed the turkey, “but, I haven’t got the energy. “Well, why don’t you nibble on some of my droppings?” replied the bull. “They’re packed with nutrients.”

The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the first branch of the tree. the next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch, Finally after a fortnight, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.

Management Lesson: Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won’t keep you there.

Lesson Number Three

 

(BOSS)

When the body was first made, all the parts wanted to be Boss. The brain said, “I should be Boss because I control the whole body’s response and functions.”

The feet said, “We should be Boss as we carry the brain about and get him where he wants to go.” The hands said, “We should be the Boss because we do all the work and earn all the money.” And so it went on with the heart, the lungs and the eyes until finally the asshole spoke up.

All the parts laughed at the idea of the asshole being the Boss. So the asshole went on a strike, blocked itself up and refused to work. Within a short time the eyes became crossed, the hands clenched, the feet twitched, the heart and lungs began to panic and the brain fevered. Eventually they all decided that the asshole should be the Boss,  so the motion was passed.

All the other parts did all the work while the Boss just sat and passed out the shit!

Management Lesson: You don’t need brains to be Boss, any asshole will do!

Lesson Number Four

A little bird was flying south for winter. It was so cold, the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field. While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on it. As the frozen bird lay there in a pile of cow dung, it began to realise how warm it was. The dung was actually thawing him out!

He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and came out to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him!

Management Lesson:

1. Not everyone who drops shit on you is your enemy

2. Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.

3. When you are in deep shit, keep your mouth shut!

Saarang08 - Creative Writing Entry-Part 02

Now Coming to the entry itself. I must say that it was pretty sad. Further we were allowed to submit three entries with each of the scores adding up. I however was not in the mood to write more than one. So even before I gave in my entry, I knew that in-spite of my shrewd calculations, I would not make it through.

The entry:

Sachin was finding it hard. Just flapping his eyelids was getting hard. He felt like he had been drugged. It was hard even breathing. His heart was beating unusually fast. Was this a dream ? What was really happening ? He stayed there, lying like a wax statue at Madame Tussands’. There was a searing pain in his head like a laser was cutting it.

He tried hard remembering what had happened in the last few minutes. It might even have been days. He wasn’t sure. He tried making his brain send magicsignals. The nerves and dendrites must listen!! Else this might take infinite time. He was at-least glad he knew his mathematics. This lightened his anxiety. With a little luck he might even get up.

Then he tried remembering where he was and why he was there at all. He suddenly felt a sickening pain in his gut. He was sweating. It felt like being trapped in a spiders web with butter spread-a ready meal.

His head seemed like clearing after what seemed like perpetuity. His heard cheering and his eyes were blinded by light. His heart beat was getting alright. Then everything cleared up in his head. It wasn’t a dream alright. He was in the cricket pitch, just hit by a Brett Lee beamer. Thankfully his helmet had taken the hit and he was still there in the middle. And that’s all that really matters. 

I know it’s something you want to laugh at. Honestly even I think I goofed it up bad. As it turned out, following constraint 10 crippled my writing.

Saarang08 - Creative Writing Entry-Part 01

I had Promised to upload my entry for the Creative Writing event of Saarang08 in my earlier post Chronicles of me MIA: Part 01. I somehow never found the time all this while. Finally I am jobless again. (Not really. I am jobless by choice actually.)

I had to tear-off one side of the rules and hand it out along with my entry. So I don’t have that with me. I have another side though. If I remember rightly, the first page of the rules said something to the effect of on what scale you would be evaluated for picking a certain type of article. For Instance if it was a Newspaper article, you would be rated on a scale of 1- 10. For a play you would be rated on a scale of 1 -15. and so on.

Once rated on the scale, your score would be multiplied by the points you get for following certain constraints. Which constraints you wanted to follow was left to you and you were allowed to club more than one constraint together. (multiplier would then be cumulative of individual points)

I present the list of constraints here:

0. Your entry must be creative, just like this rule (1 point)

1. Your entry must be in less than 400 words.(2 points)

2. Your entry must start with the words: (4 points)

(i) It crashed without making a sound. So, naturally, no one noticed it falling…”

(ii) There were ten years to make up for…

(iii) All around, there was darkness…

3. Your entry must end with the words: (4 points)

(i) “And no one saw it again.”

(ii) “And so it began.”

(iii) ….that’s all that really matters.

(iv) …happiness is a choice.

4. your entry must contain 5 words of your own creation which must be either introduced to the reader within the entry itself or be self explanatory. (5 points)

5. Your entry must be in standard iambic pentameter. (5 points)

6. Your entry must contain a sentence that repeats itself at least 5 times in the entry. (10 points)

7. Your entry must be written in a shape that describes the theme of the entry. (15 points)

8. Your entry must contain at least 10 words from this list: (20 points)

 magic, prize, mathematics, butter, perpetuity, masquerade, heart, wax, dream, luck, yellow, laser, web, rumination, ministry, card

9. Your entry must be such that the first letters of every sentence/line spells out a message. (30 points)

10. Your entry must not contain the letter ‘o’ (50 points) 

Choice of constraints:

I am the greedy type and as soon as I saw constraint 10, I knew that was actually going to be the theme of my entry. We were actually warned that the constraints did not matter if the article was not creative enough. But having been in engineering for 4 years, when it comes to making trade-offs between creativity and a higher multiplier, we choose the > multiplier obviously.

I would automatically qualify for the constraint 0. I also knew I could manage 1. Now constraint 2 could not be managed without breaking constraint 10. So that had to go. I could follow (iii) of constraint 3 and not any other. So that was an automatic choice. I did not have patience and must concede I guess the skill too to stick to 4. 5 didn’t somehow suit my format. (I was writing a short story and not a poem) I was once again not patient enough/skilled enough to follow 6. I asked the co-od if 7 meant I need to put my writing in a physical form and he seemed to think that was funny. * I did follow. 9 I was once again not patient/skilled enough to follow it.

The article follows in the next post to make it readable.

Where is the time ?

Suddenly I am finding myself short of time.  Something that never happens to me normally. It’s been a while since I posted regularly on my blog now. First, there is this final year project on which I am just getting started. So that’s taking some time. Then there’s a bit of quizzing and some symposiums coming up. I have also been watching movies on and off.

I have been postponing some of my posts for weeks now. I could actually go on and write them now. But then have other things to do I didn’t even go to the MIT Intecho quiz today. (Thanks to Vinod though for letting me know about it. It’s a pity then that I couldn’t make it.) God, please give me more time and make me sleep less please.

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Chronicles of me MIA: Part 02

Continuing….

January 27th:

Well I have no recollection whatsoever as to what I did on this Sunday. I remember that I was supposed to go to Saarang. But then we dropped the plan. Also my college Alumni Meet was slated for this day. I conveniently missed that as well. I think I stayed home and slept a lot. I might have taken a walk in the evening.

January 28th:

Ah, had to go to college. But then there were no classes. We had a symposium coming up soon (In about two days time.) and were supposed to be working on it. I was not involved with any particular event. So had nothing to do. Then I got bored so went to the lab where a lot was going on. Games were being installed and they had some issues. So I decided to help my friends Jeyanth and Naveen with installation as we were men short. Mani from third year was also helping with installation. We finished Installing NFS Underground 2. After that we played it on LAN for some time. I won most of the games. (Not a big deal considering I drive a lot of NFS at home.) We had to do things like transfer RAMs from one machine to another as we have PC’s with 256MB RAM. So we made it 512 and the game ran alright. I think we started with installing Counter Strike:CZ as well. More than anything most computers had viruses and hence we were having trouble with that.

January 29th:

Another day in college where everyone seemed to be busy doing something or the other. That’s how days before some important event works. Everyone wants to be seen as busy. Even I made myself look busy by making a few trips to the urinal. I tried my best to look active , but then slept for a while in my class. After a while, I again went to the lab where we once again set CS:CZ up and started playing against each other. I am not particularly good at CS, and hence was fragged quite a few times. Naveen was playing particularly well. We decided to pack up at around 15:30 and I left home.

January 30th:

The day our symposium was to be held. I skipped college since somewhere in the past two days, I had received an intimation from PSG stating that my paper had made it to the final round and I was expected to present it. So I booked the train for 30th night after consultation with Vibu. The plan was to go there on 31st, hang out with my friends for a day and attend my event on 1st. The whole day was spent with paper to an extent and packing for most of the other part. I finally had everything I needed and left home at around 20:30. The train was at 22:20 , but didn’t want to take any chances. Boarded a bus from the Thiruvanmiyur bus depot and reached the station about an hour from then. By 22:00 I was already in my seat on the train. Then I just let people in CBE know that I am coming and people here that I am leaving.

to be continued…

 

Chronicles of me MIA: Part 01

In the days after 22nd of January, I was doing a lot of things. There was Saarang coming up, Kurukshetra was also sometime soon, and Odyssey quiz was around the same time. Here’s a short account from my memory as to what all happened in the last two weeks or so*:

23rd January:

After having attended the IT Symposium at MSEC the previous day, I was down with a slight fever and cold. So the whole of the daym I remember resting and doing nothing more. I seem to have written a post on 23rd. Must have been late evening after I woke up. I also remember going to Odyssey and Cafe Coffee Day to ask for tickets for the Choreo Nite, which they told me had been sold out. Only the Rock Show tickets remained.

Also, on 23rd night, I received a mail form PSG guys that my paper abstract had been shortlisted for Kriya and I was expected to send in my paper latest by 25th. As pleasantly surprised as I was, this was going to throw my plans in disarray. The plan was to attend Saarang on almost all days as this would be the last year I would be able to attend it as a student. I didn’t actually want to go to IIT the next day, but I had already dragged other people into my plans and it wouldn’t have been very decent to cancel on it. So the plan was to go to IIT and come back late afternoon.

24th January:

I went to IIT for Saarang 08. A couple of days before this I remember sending my entry for the Saarang Online Quiz 02. The results of which was never announced (nor the answers for that matter. I shall be posting the answers soon on my blog for the benefit of the quizzing society. ). Ah, what a wonderful way to conduct online events.

The plan was to meet up Marc (who somehow never showed up or showed up and didn’t bother to call me, or as he claims stored my number wrong.) Shiva had also agreed to meet me in IIT. He was pretty pissed off when I told him that I had still not left home by 10:00. I finally went to IIT slightly after 10:00 and met up Shiva in the Creative Writing venue. I even gave an entry for Creative Writing. (Again something I shall be putting up on my blog along with the rules later.) Thing was we were permitted 4 entries and the score of each entry would be added. Since I gave in only one entry I was sure as hell that it wouldn’t make it. Plus I am not so sure that it was all that creative.

We missed the Buzzer Quiz because of the Creative Writing. I tried the daily Crossie and the daily Quiz as the Creative Writing was going on and wasn’t able to get those many. For someone who considers himself a crossword buff, I think I suck at it. Thankfully, I did get a few answers right. Next up was the actual Crossie. We went in an hour late and by the time we went in, people had already cracked the full Crossie. So we left in something like half an hour. By then we knew that we stood no chance in hell of making it to the Crossie finals. (Not even by fluke. )

We did give the Cluedo prelims a try and did pretty well too. We screwed up a question or two, but that’s ok. Thing is, other teams did much better and hence qualified. By onw I was weary and tired. Also, I had a paper to complete. So we decided to give the India Quiz a miss and leave home. 

I came back home and started typing in some crap on a MS Word document. I remember sitting with it till late night and finally giving up and going to sleep.

25th January:

All I remember is trying to work on my paper and sending it in on time. I must have worked on it all day I guess. Typing out crap first and then editing it to make it look much less like crap and more like a paper. I sent in the entry finally at around 23:30. Another half and hour and my entry would have been rejected. I wasn’t fully satisfied with the paper. but what was done was done and it would have to do for now.

26th January:

Don’t really remember what I did in the morning. Around afternoon I left for the Odyssey Quiz. Madhusudan (Another of my college seniors who is currently with TCS.) was supposed to meet me opposite Birla Planetarium. I did not know the route to Music Academy. From Birla, I followed him upto Music Academy. We met Shiva in a while and chatted up for a while. We were lucky to get seats, even if it was in the Balcony and the seats were quite cramped. Actually it was pretty empty compared to Landmark quiz.

We gave the prelims and as always I screwed up the answers to many a question even if my teammates knew the right answer . I am happy to be alive. I did this with about 5 questions I think. (Answered wrong when we knew the right answer.) So we ended up doing the prelims pretty badly.

We did see the finals and some pretty regular teams were on stage. Sundar and Vinod won the best team name prize which was cool. We left the finals even before it got over and left home.

more to follow…….

* - May not be very accurate. My memory is quite bad and I conveniently forget lot’s of things. If you notice any such thing you can bring it to my notice.

MIA for 6 days

I haven’t posted on my blog for the past 6 days. Speculations have been rife that I disappeared and/or went into hiding, was hibernating,  finally lost it and ran away, joined some terrorist group or even worse, joined Anna Univ. (In some lab assistant capacity or something)

So here I am back after 6 days of inactivity (I am sure no one noticed and even they did were kinda relieved not to see posts. ) denying all these rumours. I shall be writing later in part as to what I have been upto for the past few days. For now all you have to know is I am fine and will continue to write.

Blogging is Addictive

Blogging has become pretty addicive for me these days. Well, for some people, it’s just a part of their life and it goes on. I like writing, myself and thanks to WordPress, I have been doing so for the past few months. Normally I don’t write unless I feel like writing, (Now, who does ? People actually do.) but having a say on every topic, simply takes too much time. And I am already crawling along at snail’s pace (and I am pretty sure the snail is going to win )on the project front and that’s a real concern.

So for the next few days, Project (and Saarang. Darn, I am torn between wanting to attend this and finally getting down to some work on my project.) will take centre stage. (Atleast Saarang will ) Having said that, I don’t know how long it will be before I write my next post. I hope it’s not tomorrow. Kinda, defeats the purpose of this post.

ORK-03 is coming up soon and its going to be meaner this time. (Muahahaha….) So stay tuned for that….

Stock Markets Crash-…Like my Career Graph.

This was all over the News Channels. The Sensex and nifty had lost points. Meaning that investors in stocks had lost money and a lot of money at that. Now I am not qualified to talk about stock markets as I know very little about economics, but the market graph resembles my career graph.

Atleast here, the scale is on the positive axis. Mine goes into the negative axis. (Starts at around 1.0 and steadily loses ground)

However, I have to make one comment whether people like it or not. Everyone on TV was saying that the Govt. must take steps and make sure that small investors don’t lose money. WTF ? The Govt. doesn’t ask you to invest in stocks. Even the stocks say “subject to risk”. When you want to become rich overnight, you have to take risks and at times it doesn’t pay off. Ypu have every right to feel bad and my sympathies with everyone who lost money. It’s hard to make money these days and losing money you thought you had is a bad sinking feeling. However, don’t blame it on the Government.