Mumbai nightmare continues

There are no heroes. Only victims.
How many wake-up calls does our fucking government need.

If you are laid off, you will most likely not get laid.

Tracking the lay-offs world over at news.com.

Tucows is restructuring - Will become Onecow.

LinkedIn slashes 10 percent of its workforce - the fired people will use their linkedin network to find new jobs.

Freescale dragged to loss; will lay off 10% - The scale was breaking, they had to downsize.

Anadigics cuts 15 percent of workforce - by giving them an overdose of analgesics

Pandora cuts 20 employees - they had a staff of 20.

Jive Software lays off 1/3 of staff - 200 staffers will be dancing without their partners.

Micron to cut workforce by 15 percent, slash flash output - Will be called Picon

Centipede caught in a stampede. Loses a leg.

The new breed of cricketers have sure achieved a God like status. A near stampede (for God's sake!)

Stampedes at Indian temples happen like floods in Bangladesh

Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace. Stupid movie. I saw it yesterday. I couldnt remember most of it within an hour of the movie ending.
I think Quantum of Shoelace would have been a much better watch.

Loved Mystic River (there was a massive feeling of deja vu, can't pin it down still, only means one thing - I am getting old). I thought Marcia Gay Harden (Marcia Hay Garden would be such a funny name) was FAN.TAS.TIC. Just extraordinary acting skills. I couldn't take my eyes off her.

P.S. Didn't I say I was getting old. My older blog post on Mystic River here. Couldnt remember most of the movie (though I had seen just 2 years ago. Vaguely remembered who the killer was, but nothing much beyond that. I am turning senile quickly and irreversibly.

Hee Hee Hindus...

Guess what, most Hindus will take this statement at face value

Orkut profile deleted

Hurray, Hallehujah, Joy Be to the World, Three Cheers..

 

I HAVE DELETED MY ORKUT PROFILE. PERMANENTLY.

 

I am glad I did it, without much thought.

 

P.S. actually, I don't feel that happy, but I think it's a Monday thing.

Dreams are made of cheese. They go bad.

I have been obsessed with doing at MBA for such a long time. Doing my masters from IIT was no good. There was no recognition of that in the offers I was got (though I think it was academically the best 1 1/2 years I spent). It wasn't even considered equivalent to 1 1/2 years of experience. So, basically, that period is counting for nothing.MBA even from a shit institute has always been worth something.

Obviously the degree matters, but for me, the education was more important. A chance to learn from others. A chance to get my finance fundaes ironed out. A chance to study with no distractions. And also a chance to critique what I had done at work so far. From afar.

A shit institute - no I wasn't looking at one. I gave my GMAT, got a okish score, and apped. Got through into Instituto de Empresa, one of the top 10 b-schools in the world. But then, I was encumbered by too many responsibilities - marriage, a baby on the way, a massive home loan. They just got the better of me. I postponed my MBA.

I hoped things would get easier in a year's time.Well, they worsened. Now, the world is conspiring against my dream. Even the IIM graduates aren't getting good offers. My school though highly rated, has been so-so in terms of placement. Bringing a family (with a baby) is extremely difficult in the UK, esp if you are not a UK citizen (no benefits). So, I just can't take the chance of taking on another massive mortgage for my MBA and hoping I would land a high-paying job later. Considering the economic situation we are in, the probability of me getting placed in one of the blue-chips is small.

So, basically, I have bid my dream good bye. MBA definitely counts to get top jobs. It will be longer and more difficult for me to get there. Calibre doesn't count, if you work in isolation from your supervisors - like I have to. Its been impossible for me to get my voice heard so far. Will it get easier? Will I get there?

Who knows?

CBIP certificate

I have received my CBIP certificate. My marks for the three exams are 69, 67 and 71. Which means, I have missed the expert level certification by a fraction (70 in each exam).

The certificate is fantastic - bound in a folder, with detailed assessment for each group of questions.

Hope it counts for something.

People needing help with the type of questions asked etc, mail me (atoras at gmail). Please go through my previous posts on the subject. 1, 2

Dad, can I eat jargon?

What this downturn has given us - new buzzwords

1. Credit-crunch

2. Black swan

3. Austrian theory of business (though it was around, people just ignored it)

It has also given us a furrow on the brow, less cash in the pocket, and uncertainty aplenty.

 

Chamunda Devi stampede

Its happened again - another stampede at the foot of the Gods. Its not the people to blame, or the Gods. It's the temple trustees, who have such poor crowd control mechanisms and terrible disaster management systems.
I did ask the question then - When will we ever learn.
Never.

Madaross strikes (a match) again

40% of India's health problems linked to smoking: Ramadoss

Remaining 60% are linked to Ramadoss

Mr Patil does it again

While people get blown to bits almost every fortnight, our be-luv-da Home Minister, Mr Shivraj Patil, is busy changing clothes like a model on catwalk.

What the fuck!

STAY OFF THE STOCK MARKETS

This is more about reminding me than anyone - THINGS WILL GET A LOT WORSE BEFORE THET BECOME BETTER.

 

The bottom is no where in sight and there is no point surmising that the market is fallen a lot and so stocks valuations look attractive.

 

No, they don't, not in the current scenario. More bad news will come, most definitely. If we are talking a recession of 12-18 months in the Western world, then, then it will be after that, that markets really stabilize in India.

 

So, STAY OFF THE STOCK MARKETS. Else, you will make a killing - yours.

 

Masumeh, Masumi etc

I am not sure, but I think I first saw Masumi as a participant on Antakshari, where - and this was like 10 years ago - she wasn't particularly good. I mean, in her knowledge of songs and stuff.

Would be great if someone extracted those episodes out
1. to confirm whether I am right or not. and
2. do a compare with how she looks now- she looked extradionarily average then.

Run baby run

By the by, just for the record, I have a nice paunch whose arrival coincided with my daughter's arrival, and I believe at the exact moment that she was born (why should I just thank her for all the happiness in my life, my problems are her courtesy too).

I am trying to get rid of it, one paunch at a time. Have started running.


P.S. - Its incredible how the body (not the mind) remembers. How to breathe, how to pace, I could just go on and on, and I am not talking about praising the body, but about being able to run for a long time, in spite some really really slothful couple of months.

Away from DWH

After a career of more than 7 years in pure data warehousing and BI technologies, I am finally out of the space. No, if that sentence reads like a sigh of relief, it is not.

It's just that it was difficult getting any work in that space after my stint up in York, and this new one is a good opportunity, if not better. Working in Solution design space, with the same client, though now, for a different technological unit. I have come to like the solution design space, you learn about stuff, propose how to improve it (with due diligence, cost benefit analysis, feasibility etc), write the overall design and move on to the next piece. Don't really involve with the deliveries themselves, which invariably tend to get messed up with poor management, budget and time constraints, and lack of good technical resources.

But no longer doing DWH, hope the separation doesn't last too long

Bata ke joote

Yes sir, Bata is a multinational. It is NOT an Indian company and the owner is NOT a Parsi.

CBIP certified professional - third paper update

Finally gave my third paper - data management. And guess what, I passed. Just missed the mastery level by a whisker. But its fine. Overall, I think the exam was tough and I did well.

I took the exam by remote proctoring. I am not sure of the extent of control of your laptop that the proctor has, I mean, to what extent he checks on programs open on your laptop/pc. I played it safe and didn't have any reading material on the laptop or paper. Anyway, there is hardly any time to refer to notes as you have to answer 110 questions in 90 minutes. That's less than a minute for a question.

Some of the questions didn't make sense, but overall the exam did test your knowledge of the domain quite rigorously. I have jotted down areas that are not that common but brought about a lot of questions. Will write in subsequent posts.

Previous Post

Kosi breaks banks and lives

The river is the people.


I don't think we have seen the end of such catastrophes. India has one of the poorest defences against natural disasters and ZILCH understanding about environmental matters.

More and more of this will happen. It's inevitable.

Update-Great article in rediff showing a litany of fatal mistakes regarding the Kosi embankement management strategy.

Wipro Technologies registers 64 as TOGAF 8 Certified

Great achievement this, I think.

The course itself was so-so, and the TOGAF framework itself needs LOTS of rework, overall, I came out benefitting from the training, due to the fantastic thought provoking discussions. The training group consisted of really experienced, hard boiled architects, so the insights from their previous projects were just really really useful.