Ajay - On the Road called Life!

After intense internal and external debates, hours spent on pondering and an equal number on (re)searching, I finally selected my electives for third semester.

So, here goes (number in brackets are number of credits):

Finance Electives

Corporate Finance - Theory and Practice (4)
Financial Statement Analysis (4)
Mergers and acquisitions (2)

Operations Electives

Supply chain analysis design and modeling (2)
Project Management (Ops) (2)

IT Electives

Software project management (4)
SAP-BIW (2)

Economics Electives

International Economics (2)

Now, I hope they prove to be a good choice, because I had a really bad experience last semester.

Marise came over last Saturday, as well as this.

It’s been a while since I had a pizza, so we ordered two pizzas from PizzaWay, which is where I normally ordered because they are tasty and cheap. This time I was told there was no deal available, but bargained my way into it. Hey! I am a regular customer when I am in town!

Went for morning mass on Sunday. It was a surprise because I normally don’t wake up in time.

Marise wanted to go shopping. I hate shoppping! But, …

Went over to her place in the afternoon. The place to shop: Bandra

Caught a bus back to Bandra. First destination was Hill Road. We roamed along the streets hunting for shoes and clothes for her. Finally zeroed in on two shops an picked up two.

We decided to visit the Reliance Trendz out there, which opened a little over a month back. The deals are amazing. I picked up a tshirt from there from just 199/- which was well worth it. I am surprised they are still giving deals like this despite running at a loss.

The week at work has been good. My work on the first project has been well appreciated so I am happy. My second project which is in the field of Operations has taken off well. It isn’t something I expected, but it helps me learn other processes at eClerx.

There have been a lot of immediate small tasks which come up on and off so the pace of my second project isn’t as good as I hoped. Have to work really fast in the next two weeks to complete it.

Elective selection is going on at SCMHRD. The entire batch is confused about what to select. I’m taking Finance and Operations subjects mainly, however am still not completely clear on which to take. Don’t want to take on too much of a load.

Foreign language also seems to be compulsory. I really wonder how I am going to manage Spanish

Yesterday and today have been quiet days at home. Marise came over yesterday. Grabbed a small lunch and then went over to Lucky’s for dinner. Decided to eat tandoori chicken and kababs. The food and the service wasn’t up to the mark yesterday. Went over to Natural Ice Cream on Hill Road

Woke up well past 10.30am this morning, and have been taking it easy at home today. Have to go for mass in the evening and have decided to head back home instead of wandering about the city

Tomorrow is Monday.

AMEN: The only part of a prayer that everyone knows.

BULLETIN: Your receipt for attending Mass.

CHOIR: A group of people whose singing allows the rest of the Parish to lip-sync.

HOLY WATER: A liquid whose chemical formula is H2OLY.

HYMN: A song of praise usually sung in a key three octaves higher than that of the congregation’s range.

RECESSIONAL HYMN: The last song at Mass often sung a little more quietly, since most of the people have already left.

INCENSE: Holy Smoke!

JESUITS: An order of priests known for their ability to find colleges with good basketball teams.

JONAH: The original “Jaws” story.

JUSTICE: When kids have kids of their own.

KYRIE ELEISON: The only Greek words that most Catholics can recognize besides gyros and baklava. (it means Lord have mercy)

MAGI: The most famous trio to attend a baby shower.

MANGER: Where Mary gave birth to Jesus because Joseph wasn’t covered by an HMO. (The Bible’s way of showing us that holiday travel has always been rough.)

PEW: A medieval torture device still found in Catholic churches.

PROCESSION: The ceremonial formation at the beginning of Mass consisting of altar servers, the celebrant, and late parishioners looking for seats.

RECESSIONAL: The ceremonial procession at the conclusio n of Mass led by parishioners trying to beat the crowd to the parking lot.

RELICS: People who have been going to Mass for so long, they actually know when to sit, kneel, and stand.

TEN COMMANDMENTS: The most important Top Ten list not given by David Letterman.

USHERS: The only people in the parish who don’t know the seating capacity of a pew.

Little known facts about the Catholic Church in Las Vegas :
There are more churches in Las Vegas than casinos. During Sunday services at the offertory, some worshippers contribute casino chips as opposed to cash. Some are sharing their winnings - some are hoping to win. Since they get chips from so many different casinos, and they are worth money, the Catholic churches are required to send all the chips into the diocese for sorting. Once sorted into the respective casino chips, one junior priest takes the chips and makes the rounds to the casinos turning chips into cash. And he, of course, is known as The Chip Monk.

This last week (since Saturday) has been rather painful in some aspects. For some strange reason my head started throbbing Saturday evening. I assumed it to be lack of sleep and so headed off home from Marise’s place.

Went for mass at the Sacred Heart Church in Worli on Marise’s invitation. She wanted me to do the reading there, so did just that. Didn’t realize I had a singing session coming as well!

Tried to get rid of the headache with enough sleep and water, but neither worked.

Had to go to R’s place as she had invited all of us over to her place. The ride the Thane was fun, big empty roads. The two crocins before helped for a few hours. Had plans to go to Worli but wasn’t in a position to do so and headed back home.

Two crocins in the evening and a ton of water did end the headache, with just lingering splits all through Monday.

Was perfectly fine on Tuesday. Also completed the project I was working on and have been assigned another.

We received our cheque for our stipend yesterday. Money finally

And today yours truly managed to get a catch in my neck. It sure has been a pain in the neck.
I’m hoping it is good tomorrow.

My Dad sent me an email today of an online system to address grievances in India. The mail goes like this:

Can you imagine this happening in INDIA ?

Government of India has an online Grievance forum at http://darpg-grievance.nic.in/

The government wants people to use this tool to highlight the problems they faced while dealing with Government officials or departments like Passport Office, Electricity board, BSNL/MTNL, Railways etc.

I know many people will say that these things don’t work in India , but this actually works as one of the person working in CSC found. The guy I’m talking about lives in Faridabad . Couple of months back, the Faridabad Municipal Corporation laid new roads in his area and the residents were very happy about it. But 2 weeks later, BSNL dug up the newly laid roads to install new cables which annoyed all the residents including this guy. But it was only this guy! Who used the above listed grievance forum to highlight his concern. And to his surprise, BSNL and Municipal Corporation of Faridabad was served a show cause notice and the guy received a copy of the notice in one week. Government has asked the MC and BSNL about the goof up as it’s clear that both the government departments were not in sync at all.

So use this grievance forum and educate others who don’t know about this facility.
This way we can at least raise our concerns instead of just talking about the ‘ System’ in India

Can’t believe my last personal post was on March 4th.. Then we were just getting into the exam spirit and a lot has happened since then.

For starters, we had to get through a barrage of exams, that just didn’t seem to stop. Everyone desperately looked towards March 29th, the last day of the exams, also the day when we could all rush home.

Exams were ok, though they seem to be at some point of my distant past!

Headed to Mumbai on 29th, dropped off my bags, picked up my bike from ABJ, who has been taking good care of it.

Work began on April 7th. I got placed at eClerx. The place turned out to be in Ghatkopar, a part of the city I don’t normally frequent. It turned out that the place is just 20 minutes from my home when I ride through Powai. Also end up skipping most of the traffic.
The place is good. Was given a choice of my project and chose one which turned out to be live in the field of Finance, IT and a bit of Operations. Well, I’m glad.

The first week was spent with reading as my immediate guide was on leave, but the week after that things took off at top speed. Jobs great so far. Doing well I guess. Hope it continues that way for the next five weeks.

Also been spending a good amount of time with Marise atleast on weekends. We watched Transformers (my review) and The Spiderwick Chronicles (my review).

Had plans to catch many more movies, but for some strange reason there is absolutely no good movie running! Isn’t this summer vacation time?

That’s just about everything I have been up to, viz. work and weekends. No holidays, except for May 1, which was treated as another weekend

Had a lot of plans these two months, but have surely been out of touch with a lot. Going to take a while to get back. I’ll be back

After watching this movie I realized that it’s been a while since I grew up!

Spiderwick Chronicles is a tale of fairies and ogres. Jared and Simon Grace (Freddie Highmore), along with their sister Mallory (Sarah Bolger) are brought by their mother (Mary-Louise Parker) to the Spiderwick Estate after her husband leaves her.

What seems to be an old rundown place turns out to be a home with a past, a strange past that Jared stumbles upon when he finds and reads a book written by his great-grand uncle Arthur Spiderwich. A book about fairies and ogres and the secrets in that realm. A book that is hunted by the ogre Mulgarath so that he can take over the world.

It is up to the children to find a way to stop the evil ogre. In the process they need to battle several creatures as well as befriend many more.

I should have skipped this one…

My rating: 6/10

Imax Adlabs offers special Rs.49 prices for movie tickets in some shows before 6pm.
So, went off to watch Transformers in the Imax Dome.

Excellent experience, but the fast paced movie was kinda overwhelming.

Transformers tells the story of Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), a young teenager who convinces his father to buy him a car, a car that would change his life.
The car turns out to be Bumblebee, an Autobot sent to protect him from the Decepticons. Both, the Autobots and the Decepticons are after the Allspark, a cube, with the power to create life. While the Autobots had managed to smuggle the Allspark off their planet, Megatron, the head of the Decepticons followed the Allspark to earth, but crashed before he could retrieve the same. Megatron was later found by Captain Archibald Witwicky, the grandfather of young Sam.

The story continues in perfect predictable style with Sam joining the Autobots in their fight against Megatron and the other Decepticons.

Overall the movie is done really well. Sam plays a really good role and talking robots … who wouldn’t love them

Worth watching once. Nice cars and vehicles to watch. Its fun. However, I do suggest a flat screen!

My rating: 7/10

It’s amazing, you will understand the above word by the end of the conversation…

Read aloud for best results. “Tendjewberrymud” Be warned, you’re going to find yourself talking “funny” for a while after reading this.

The following is a telephone exchange between a hotel guest and room-service at a hotel in Asia, which was recorded and published in the FarEast Economic Review…

Room Service (RS): “Morny. Ruin sorbees”
Guest (G): “Sorry, I thought I dialled room-service”
RS: “Rye.. Ruin sorbees.. morny! Djewish to odor sunteen??”
G: “Uh.. yes.. I’d like some bacon and eggs”
RS: “Ow July den?”
G: “What??”
RS: “Ow July den?… pry, boy, pooch?
G : “Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry, scrambled please.”
RS: “Ow July dee bayhcem… crease?”
G: “Crisp will be fine.”
RS : “Hokay. An San tos?”
G: “What?”
RS: “San tos. July San tos?”
G: “I don’t think so”
RS: “No? Judo one toes??”
G: “I feel really bad about this, but I don’t know what ‘judo one
toes’ means.”
RS: “Toes! toes!… why djew Don Juan toes? Ow bow singlish mopping
we bother?”
G: “English muffin!! I’ve got it! You were saying ‘Toast.’ Fine.
Yes, an English muffin will be fine.”
RS: “We bother?”
G: “No.. just put the bother on the side.”
RS: “Wad?”
G: “I mean butter… just put it on the side.”
RS: “Copy?”
G: “Sorry?”
RS: “Copy… tea… mill?”
G: “Yes. Coffee please, and that’s all.”
RS: “One Minnie. Ass ruin torino fee, strangle ache, crease baychem,
tossy singlish mopping we bother honey sigh, and copy…. rye??”
G: “Whatever you say”
RS: “Tendjewberrymud”
G : “You’re welcome.”