The year gone by

One year of MBA and that too 2900 Km away from home would give you a small preview of what real life is all about. Even though I knew that life is not going to be a bed of roses, didn’t expect it to be this scary.

A friend of mine used to tell me that it’s always better to have worked before doing an MBA. Not that it’s going to make one more knowledgeable, but it gives one an idea about the tricks of the trade. In other words how to manipulate your environment to get what you want. My response to this was “bull shit”. I stand corrected now. I guess he knew better.

Whatever might be the profession, one is in for cutthroat competition. It doesn’t matter if one is your superior, colleague or subordinate, all are out there to get rid of you. Given a task it’s your responsibility to get the job done right, irrespective of what your boss or colleague says. The professional environment is all about getting the maximum out of others and do not be surprised if the same happens to you. Nothing is going to be given to you in a platter. If you want to survive, it’s up to you to ensure that you get everything you need to get the job done even if people who are supposed to support or guide you turn out to be the hurdles. As one the employees in the company I interned put it, “only when you perform you would be valued, else no one would give a damn about you”. If you do not know how to play the game, there is no way that you are winning it.

The scary part is that professional life is not half as scary as ones personal life. As a kid, Stone Cold Steve Austin always made sense to me when he said “don’t trust anyone”. You find a whole new meaning of the phrase when you see friends who can turn into foes within seconds. Oh wait, were they even your friends in the first place. May a time, when you lie down and look at the ceiling; you realize that not many give a rat’s ass about you.

Often reminded by what another friend of mine told me once, “Should have caught them young”. When you look around you realize that what you want you cannot have and what you can have is not what you want. I think the more valid question is, “Am I even worthy of it?” Many a days, this gives me a bad feeling inside.

The good thing about the 1 year is that, unlike previously I do not sit and morn about failures. Each failure hurts my male ego big and makes me want to prove them wrong rather than cry.

5 cool things about hostel

1. The Bitch club – We have a secret cult in our hostel. Membership is restricted and what happens inside the cult stays inside the cult. The objective about the cult is to bitch, bitch and bitch. We critically analyze and dissect individual’s personal and professional characteristics. No matter how busy we are, assignments, tests, none of them matter. It’s mandatory for members to attend the daily meetings. The president of the cult has assigned code names to all its members which range from Chennai slut to mad bull.

2. Frustrated boys – The hostel is filled with frustrated boy (w.r.t girls). It’s quite fun when likeminded people come together and express their feelings. I was pretty amazed with the level of frustration that exists here. All my misconception about metros being free and open has been cleared.

3. The ladies – The place is loaded with pretty ladies, may I add rich, pretty ladies. There is a park nearby where you would find most of them, jogging, walking or working out. As it came to me that it’s high time I got into shape, I have started to jog in the park daily (well I try to, but I fail most of the time). Let’s hope that I succeed in my endeavor.

4. The lover boys – Well as of now we just have one here, there could be more but this one is the most prominent. Now I have never seen a guy like this before. All of us know that he has fallen for this girl hook line and sinker but he won’t even admit it or for that matter deny it. He answers questions in the same way as Pakistan when asked about its links with terrorism, ridiculous and irrelevant. The answer for his every questing starts with “sala”. And he has a not so subtle way of changing the topic. If you are reading it, get some balls and own up :-P.(to us ie). Any way teasing him every night help us sleep at night peacefully.

5. This place is filled with people who talk utter crap. Especially 2 guys who live vertically opposite to each other. One guy comes to me and tells me that I am the man every 3 seconds and enquires about a girl. I am pretty amazed with the way in which he comes out with different praises for me (sarcastically of course). Another guy prefers to start every sentence with a word which starts with the letter ‘M’. It’s not like others do not talk carp, but just that these guys stand out. The thing that scares me the most is that some of these guys are going to manage thousands of people in the future :-P

John Mayer - Comfortable

Just got adicted to this song !!I can even feel the pain in his voice

I just remembered that time at the market
snuck up behind me and jumped on my shopping cart
And rode down aisle five
you looked behind you and smiled back at me
crashed into a rack full of magazines
they asked us if we could leave.

Can't remember what went wrong last September
though i'm sure you'd remind me, if you had to

Our love was, comfortable and
so broken in

I sleep with this new girl I’m still getting used to
My friends all approve, say “she’s gonna be good for you.”
They throw me high fives.
She says the Bible is all that she reads.
and prefers that I not use profanity
Your mouth was so dirty
Life of the party,
And she swears that she’s artsy,
But you could distinguish Miles from Coltrane
Our love was comfortable and so broken in.

She’s perfect
So flawless,
Or so they say.
Hey and
Say, Heyyyyy.

She thinks I can’t see the smile that she’s fakin’
Poses for pictures that aren’t being taken.
I loved you
grey sweat pants
No make up
So perfect
Our love was comfortable and so broken in.

She’s perfect
So flawless
I’m not impressed
I want you back

No, no, no, no I want you back.
Want you back.
Back.

That you were my first love
Is just dumb luck.
A technicality.
You were ahead of me.

That you were my first love.
Is just dumb, dumb, stupid luck.
A technicality.
You will always be ahead of me.
Oh, oh, tell me.
Why I have to practice on you.
Why I have to practice on your heart.
Oh.

Some more bitching about life in hostel

Too many peepers: I would be sitting in my room, minding my own business, chatting with my friends, showing the pictures of my life in Delhi, telling them which girl I have an eye on and so on. Out of nowhere some random idiot pops into my room and starts staring at my screen. They yell out the name of the person to whom I am chatting to and start reading out my conversation as if they are doing me some favor. Well some are more discrete, they just peep silently, without commenting. I do not know if it’s something which only I experience or if it’s something experienced by hostilities across borders. It’s quite awkward when a third party comes in and reads stuff about a person he knows:-P. Some would argue, as a solution to this problem one should lock the door, but that is not something which is practical here :-P

Studying is not something that can take place there, at least for me. It’s impossible to study there. In our course we learn that to get the maximum productivity, the environment in which work is being done should be conducive for working. Someone needs to tell that to the person in charge of the 1^st year boy’s hostel. You have this small room with a bed in it. How can any one study when they see a bed in front of them! And the chair that they have provided has a stupid design. Whenever I open my book I fall asleep.

Now enough bitching about the hostel, in the next post will write all the good things about it.

Crazy habits of my roommate

I am a person who believes that music is meant to be played out loud. Unfortunately, due to certain activities of my roommate it’s not possible me for do so. When I play some thing, he starts singing it out loud. Now if someone is a decent enough singer and he sings along, its bearable, but this guy unfortunately is bad! He tells me that he is not that bad a singer. Now I know that American Idol is all realty (when it comes to bad singers believing that they are good). Now the singing part can be pardoned, but freaks me out is his dancing. He has this weird/ridiculous dance moves. He is a tall, thin guy and very elastic in nature. All his elasticity comes in play when he dances. The worst part is when he combines both these so called talents that he has. It is quite a sight!

The next thing is actually quite funny or some might say it’s a little scary. At times my roomies takes time out of his busy schedule to watch some movies or sit com’s. When he does so, he gets all pumped up. He starts laughing like anything, start talking to himself, clapping and so on. The fact that he is doing all this while he is wearing his headphones gives people viewing the scene the impression that he is a total lunatic. I am planning to upload a video of him doing the same so that people can actually relate to what I am saying.

This is all that I can come up with now. Overall he is quite a decent roomie, who keeps himself clean and is not a thief :-P

Things my roommate would hate about me

· I am a bloody mess. It’s something that has been given to me from god since birth. My room is always a bloody mess. Before I left for Delhi, my mother would tell me that she feels sorry for my “would be” roommate. I would like to think that I am not as messy as I was when I was at home. At home I admit that I was a total mess. After a shower I would just walk out of the bathroom dripping water all over the place, or when I change my cloths I would just put them in the floor and let it dry for a few days. Here I am only moderately messy. My books would be all over my side of the room, you would need to be an expert explorer to get something from my table and don’t get me started on the way I keep my cloths. Even though my side is a mess, I am considerate enough to ensure that it doesn’t spill over to my roomies side.

· I have weird sleeping habits. Fortunately for my roommate, he has only witnessed only a few till now. Now I am a big guy and most normal beds won’t fit me. I prefer to sleep in a diagonal manner and I am used to sleeping in that way. Unfortunately when you have a roommate who is 1/5^th your size, this habit becomes a problem. I think every night he fears getting crushed by me! Apparently the poor guy begs me at night to give him space and surprisingly I oblige.

· I love to have ventilation in my room. Unfortunately at our hostel, if you get ventilation you get a lot of blood thirsty insects with it. I hate staying in a room with no ventilation; I rather get bitten than get deprived of oxygen. Now my roomie gets all emotional when it comes to insects. He jumps up and down, screams like a girl when he sees one. To avoid all this he keeps the doors and windows close, which is not something I would agree to and in the end we both get bitten by bug and get ridiculously huge and disgusting scars and he blames all that on me!

· This is kind of a secret. I am not sure if he knows about it or not. He has this liquid soap which is so convenient to use. I tend to steal it at times. Well who am I kidding; I use it at every possible opportunity that I get.

· Now this is a very emotional issue for my roommate. I sometimes like to indulge in gay humour and he gets all sensitive about it. I have spread the word that all the scars on my arms and legs are not insect bites but have come as a result of certain things that he did during night. The guy doesn’t have any sense of humour to takes these things as a joke and would go all emotional.

There would be plenty more things which would drive my roomie crazy, which I believe he would let me know loud and clear in the days to come. But as you can see, one should be blessed to get a roommate like me, who has only a very few bad qualities:-P

Hostel Life

This is the first time I am living in a hostel; so naturally, I would be very “bitchy” about it. The thing I hate most about our hostel is the Indian toilets that we have. Goodness gracious me, we are bloody MBA students in the 21^st century and we have to forcibly do squats every morning! As I recently found out tummy trouble and Indian closet do not go hand in hand. Sitting in a crouching position for more than 30 seconds is not the most comfortable thing in the world. Getting up after 30sec for some pain relief aint the most comforting feeling either. I could go on, but to maintain some order its better if I stop now. Ah one more thing, there is no bloody ventilation inside the toilet! When you are sick it’s not the best place to be in.

Next in line would be the room. It’s too bloody small. There isn’t enough space to move around or even keep my books. There is proper ventilation but the problem with the ventilation is that, when it’s there, all our insect friends come in. I have insect bites all over my body and it’s pretty nasty. The insects in Delhi are quite mean. They are out to kill you! My arms and legs are filled with disgusting and painful sores.

Now something that is very close to my heart, food! We are served garbage here. Its filthy and tasteless every day, well let me be fair, some days it tastes good. I seriously doubt if they wash the plates. The way the people who serve the food play around with it using their hands arises a special feeling which cannot be explained. The bloody food is same on most of the days. These people are obsessed with potato and chappaties!! They give you lassies which taste like water! On the rare days they give us sweets, its pretty good. I had never thought that a day would come where I would eat just for the sake of eating! And don’t get me started on the quality of water I get. I get the feeling by the time I pass out; I would get familiarized with all the water born diseases.

The worst part of the hostel is that it’s about 2km from the college. So a whole lot of fun is lost. Regardless of all these atrocities, it’s pretty cool being in a hostel, one gets to have a whole lot of fun. The birthday celebrations where “Happy Birthday” is sung by boys in the worst possible way, getting to know about the swear words in different languages, sitting at talking about girls late at night, all the “brotherly love”, wacky roommate with whom you would have stupid differences with, etc are things which you won’t get if you stay at home. So over all life in the hostel is fun and one would just ignore all the crappy things around and have a good time.