The One-Hand-Pitch-Catch Out

This rule was born out of necessity because some of the older guys would never get out, and kept hitting the ball over our heads. To counter that, we used the one-hand-pitch-catch rule. This meant that a batsman could be out even if the fielder caught the ball after one bounce, but he had to use only one hand. Also, the ball bouncing off of trees, parked cars and uncles that were walking by did not count as a “pitch”. Our street had lots of trees, so we’d run around like monkeys waiting for mangoes to fall off the tree when a ball was hit into it, in the hope of catching it as it falls.

The-Ball-Is-Too-Fast-Appeal-And-Subsequent-Fight

Occasionally, the batsman would complain that a bowler threw the ball too fast, the bowler would deny it and invoke the “your-guy-did-it-too” argument, which would subsequently deteriorate into name calling and hurtling of various other multi-lingual abuses. Eventually though, the argument would be settled, and just as the bowler was about to throw the next ball, he’d ask “So what’s the score?”. Unfortunately, because of the previous argument, everyone would have forgotten what the score was, and the inquiry regarding what it is would lead to yet another argument with the same set of name calling and multi-lingual abuses.

Direct-Hit into House is Out

This rule was forced upon us by the next-door uncle, who’s window we hit one too many times. The other problem was that if the ball went into a house, someone had to jump the compound to get the ball back, which was a decidedly boring thing to do. Eventually, we agreed that the batsman that hit the ball into a house was responsible for getting it back, unless it went into the house with the dogs, in which case the kid from that house got it back, but he got double batting the next time.

Batting-side-Wicket-keeper and the Traitor Conundrum

Because we would never have enough players, the batting side would usually supply the wicket keeper. Normally, this is not a problem, but as soon as the batsman nicked a ball into the hands of the wicket keeper, and he caught it, the trouble would start. There would be a strong accusation that the wicket keeper was a traitor for actually holding on to the catch, which would cause the bowling side to come to the defense of the wicket keeper, causing even more accusations of him being a double-agent and a spy. This would often times lead to the wicketkeeper to defect teams, leading to an imbalance  in the number of players on each team, and could only be set right by the creation of the position of the infamous “Joker”.

The Glass-Break Run-Away Protocol

This was the only time when all the kids would come together – When someone eventually broke a glass window. The protocol of reaction in this situation was clear and well communicated. First, the wicket keeper was responsible for taking the stumps out and running away with them. The batsman was responsible for holding on to the bat for 3 days, since we’d not be allowed to play in the street for 3 days while the dust settles down. All of us would form small groups, and each group would run off into the closest house, turning on Cartoon Network, and mass-pretending like everyone was watching TV the whole time. The ball, of course, is disowned and sacrificed in order to protect our identities.Eventually, the parents would come around with the ball trying to find out who the owner of the ball was so that the kid could be punished, but we were prepared for that. Each ball that we bought was immediately inscribed with the name of a non-existent kid. Planning ahead pays!

Those were the magical days!

I’ve always suspected that what they tell us about how airplanes fly is some sort of messed up conspiracy. I mean, think about it. Airplanes are basically flying tubes of aluminum, hurtling through -50 degree C air, at close to the speed of sound, held up with nothing but wind. I mean, does that even seem possible to you?

I first began suspecting this in school, when our physics teacher was explaining to us how airplanes fly.

Teacher: “…and that’s how the shape of the wing creates “lift”, a force that pushes upwards, lifting an airplane into the sky.”
I put my hand up, and the teacher called on me.
Me: “Ma’am, so airplanes fly because of the shape of their wings?”
Teacher: “Yes!”
Me: “Then how do missiles fly through the air? They have only tiny fins, and are not ‘wing’ shaped at all”
Teacher: “Hmm… let me see… what does the text book say?…”
Me: “Also, how come fighter planes can fly upside down?”
Teacher: “What?”
Me: “If the wings are upside down, then the “lift” should also be downwards. There will be nothing to keep the plane in the air. How come it doesn’t come crashing down?”
Teacher: “Err…. You silly boy. Always making trouble in class. Get out and go to the principal’s office!”

You see? There is no way a plane can be held up with the wind. I mean, do you know how hard it is to lift a 20Kg rock? How can just the wind lift a 400,000Kg airplane? Not possible. Also, an airplane takes off at 200 kmph, but how come a F1 car going at 350 kmph doesn’t fly off into the sky?See? SEE? It’s all lies the evil government has been feeding you.

Airplanes have become such a common occurrence these days that people don’t think about it anymore. But if you tried to explain how airplanes work to a 16-th century British gentleman, (let’s call him Gentleman Williams), you’d see how absurd you sound.

Gentleman Williams: “So this airplane that you talk about – It flies because of the wind?”
Me: “Yes, the wind blowing over the wings creates lift…”
Gentleman Williams: “Kind Sir, are you implying that if I blow at you, you will start flying too?”
Me: “Err… No, I mean, you have to blow at a wing”
Gentleman Williams: “Like these delicious chicken wings?”
Me: “…I mean, probably, but…”
Gentleman William: “Dear Sir, are you suggesting that one can make a chicken fly high in the sky simply by putting it in front of a fan?”
Me: “…that’s what they tell me…”
Gentleman Williams: “I’m afraid to inform you, kind sir, that someone has been yanking your chain. They’ve made quite the fool out of you!”

I think the real reasons airplanes fly is that there are some alien insects holding up the airplane from under the wings. That’s why they make you sit above the wings in airplanes – So you never see what’s really under it. It’s probably some secret government program to protect the aliens from extra-terrestrial bug-spray or something.

Don’t blindly believe the explanation the government has been feeding you all these years. It’s a giant conspiracy. Ask for the truth!

Think about this the next time you’re in an airplane.

I had been cornered into an intellectual showdown with a ceiling fan, and it was fighting dirty. I mean, the ceiling fan was all dirty, and the The Wife had “persuaded” me to clean the ceiling fan in preparation for having the in-laws over for dinner the next day.

The only problem was that I really really didn’t want to do this dumb chore, but my previous arguments against why a ceiling fan should not be cleaned had been conclusively disproved. Unfortunately there was nothing that I could do about it, and the prospect of standing on a chair with a upside-down broom was looming large on my mind.

At that very instant, a brilliant plan came to me. Isn’t it fantastic how, when faced with the prospect of doing household chores, my brain comes up with these highly brilliant and innovative plans? What the apple hitting his head was to Newton, being asked to do chores by The Wife is to me – Inspiration!

Anyway, onto the plan. The awesome thing about fans is that they go round-and-round, so the cleaning device doesn’t really have to go round too. All I had to do was to hold up the broom to the fan, and the fan would go around, cleaning itself. Furthermore, I didn’t have to hold the broom either. I could just duct-tape it to the chair, turn on the fan, and 10 minutes later… taadaaa… A beautiful clean ceiling fan!

There was a small hiccup though – The broom, when ductaped to the chair was not long enough to reach the fan, so I had to introduce my star-wars light-saber in the middle. But soon after, the contraption was ready. And boy, did it look beautiful – It looked like a weapon fit for a Jedi. As I was proudly admiring my cleaning robot, The Wife walked by.

The Wife: “What the hell are you doing?”

Me: “Check it out. It’s the Ceiling Fan Self Cleaning Jedi Robot – CFSCJR. You pronounce it ceef-sco-jar”

The Wife: “Why is that thing hanging off the fan?”

Me: “No, no. It’s going to clean the fan.”

The Wife: “This THING is a bad idea”

Me: “It has a name. Please address it as The Ceef-sco-jar”

The Wife: “And how exactly is that thing…?”

Me: “…The Ceef-sco-jar…”

The Wife: “…going to clean the fan?”

Me: “Oh, it’s quite simple. I’ve attached the Ceef-sco-jar to the chair with duct tape, and now we’ll turn on the fan. As the fan rotates, it will clean it automatically. Brilliant no?”

The Wife: “This is a bad idea”

Me: “Maybe I should get a patent on it. I could be a millionaire!”

The Wife at this point gives up, and goes off. Ha! When she returns, she’s going to see a spic-and-span fan, and she’s going to be so sorry she doubted my invention. And then I’m going to say to her: “See, SEE! I TOLD YOU SO!” and it’s going to be epic!

Time to start The Ceef-sco-jar! I turn on the fan’s switch, and it slowly starts turning. The broom makes first contact with the blade, and as the face of the fan brushes past the broom, there’s a clean patch on it. Just like in the Tide TV Ad! Oh Yeah! Success! Hahahohohahaa… I’m doing my evil genius laugh!

The fan gathers up speed, and the Ceef-sco-jar is doing its job rather well! Just as I’m swelling up with pride, the stupid ceiling fan gets the broom stuck with it. Oops… The fan is picking up speed, and the hairy brush of the broom has gotten stuck in the fan’s blades. The whole Ceef-sco-jar starts vibrating violently. The fan picks up even more speed, and now it has picked up the chair as well. It’s wildly swinging the chair like only a maniac ceiling fan could. This ceiling fan is deranged! The chair is now rotating wildly in the living room, until it breaks free and…

*Crash*

…a moment of silence…

*Bigger Crash*

The Wife rushes into the living room. She looks up to the ceiling fan, which has come dislodged from the ceiling, and is hanging by a thin wire. Still stuck to it is the broom. The lightsabre is lodged into the sofa, and one of the chair’s legs is lodged into the TV, who’s LCD panel has cracked.

The Wife gives me The Look™

Me: “Good news! We’re going to get a new TV!”

What happened in the next few minutes has been censored in the interest of my own safety. Plus, I had to look up some of the words that were used subsequently, since it was the first time I’d heard of them. There was also some multi-lingual name calling that I had to look up in two separate dictionaries.

Anywho, that’s the story of how I got a brand new flat-screen TV.

Also, we don’t clean ceiling fans anymore.

The Wife: “Do you want to clean the ceiling fans?”
Me: “Not one bit”

And I returned my nose back into the adventures of Asterix, just as he was about to thrash up Julius Ceaser’s bodyguards. The comic book was suddenly snatched from my hands.

The Wife: “Let me rephrase… I need you to clean the ceiling fan.”
Me: “But… What for?”
The Wife: “My parents are coming over for dinner. We need the house to be spic and span”
Me: “Don’t worry, they’re never going to look up. It doesn’t matter how dirty the ceiling fan is”
The Wife: “Please… That’s not true”
Me: “Nobody looks at the ceiling. Unless you make them choke on the food. Hehehehe”
The Wife: <She gives me The Look™>
Me: “Err… OK, quick, without looking up. What color is the ceiling?”
The Wife: “Hmm…. White?”

Truthfully, I’ve never noticed the color of the walls, let alone of the ceiling. But wait… She’s staring straight at me as well. She doesn’t know the color of the ceiling either. I’m scared to look up, because I don’t want to be the idiot that doesn’t know what color our house is. But neither does she. Oh dear, this has turned into a staring contest. We’re looking straight at each other. She’s not even blinking! Oh my God! She’s going to look up at the ceiling as soon as I blink. I can’t let her have that. I continue to stare harder.

She’s now giving me the “I’ll-kill-you-if-you’re-wrong look”.
I counter with a “There’s-still-a-small-possibility-I-might-be-right look”.
She turns it into a “You’re-going-to-pay-for-this-dearly look”
I meekly offer a “Maybe-we-can-come-to-some-sort-of-agreement-? look”

The contest comes to a premature end with my intellectual surrender, and we both look up at the ceiling. Damn it. It’s white.

The Wife: “Right. Get up on that chair and clean the fan”

Sun Tzu, the author of the great treatise on marital arguments called “The Art of War”, offers some helpful advice in this scenario: “When cornered by the Tiger, act like a Penguin.” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I think it means you slime away like a penguin when asked to do any work. Therefore, it’s time to go into backup plan.

Me: “Why don’t we just turn on the fan? That way, no one can see the dirt.”
The Wife: “What?”
Me: “See… When the fan is rotating, you can’t really see the dirt on it – It’s all blurred!”
The Wife: “That’s not the solution”
Me: “But its ONE solution. One that works too”
The Wife: “But the dirt will still be there…”
Me: “…and no one will be able to see it. Problem solved, right?”
The Wife: “Yes, but the dirt will still be there.”
Me: “Don’t worry, it’ll be our little secret. Literally our Dirty Little Secret. Wink-Wink. Hahaha…”

Oh dear. There’s that look again. That tingling feeling of impending doom crosses me. But this is not the time to give into tingliness. Sun Tzu and I are going to fight this out, fight it out to the end. The damn ceiling fan is not going to outwit me. I mean, what does it say about me if I let a stupid fan – all it does all day is go round-and-round – defeat me. Surrender is not an option.

I am going to win this one.

[Update - Part 2 is here]

Anyway, I was talking with a friend about this problem, who shall be called only Diri, and at the end of a rather productive brainstorm session around how to reduce the pain-points of the marriage ceremony, we came up with the WRAP methodology. Wedding Reception Annoyance Prevention.

You’ll remember that I’d earlier proposed a new protocol for conducting marriages. A simpler, more efficient and straightforward process that benefits all parties involved. It was called Marriage 2.0. Despite its brilliance, I notice that it didn’t catch on as widely as I’d hoped. This is a new and refined version of the original proposal.

Photos and Fake Smiles

The first observation is that most people that go to a wedding tend to feel obligated to get a photo clicked with the bride and groom. It’s almost like a payment for the free food that they’re about to eat. This tradition has no benefits at all. Here’s what we propose instead:  We’ll place cardboard cut-outs of the bride and groom all over the marriage hall. People can come in, stand next to the cutouts and get their pics clicked. The advantages of this approach are obvious: You can have several cutouts, placed strategically next to the food counters, so that the photo-taking process is highly parallelized, increasing throughput of the guests. Improved guest flow dynamics will result in better resource utilization.

Choice of Food

Previously, we had proposed that people go to any restaurant of their choice and order whatever they like, and finally send the receipts to the groom for reimbursement. Apparently, this is not a good idea, because one of the reasons people like to go to weddings is to meet other friends that they never otherwise see.

Fine.

So our slightly-modified proposal is to have everyone call their favorite Pizza/Restaurant place and get them to deliver their favorite food to the marriage hall. This way when you arrive at the marriage hall, your Pizza will be waiting for you. You can then take the Pizza to the cut-outs to get your pics clicked with the food you’re eating, so the bride and groom can later see what you ate. I assume this is an important feature – seeing what guests are eating – because at most weddings, the photo-and-video people keep following guests to the dining hall, clicking pics just when the food is about to enter my mouth. The other advantage of this process is now the reimbursement step is completely eliminated, since the delivery guy can go straight to the groom to get money from him.

Why leave the couple out?

You will notice that in this new and improved flow, there is no need for the bride and groom to be on stage. Instead of bring hungry and tired, they are free to go to the star attraction of the day, the food. However, appearing in the dining hall means that guests may be unable to resist the temptation to shake hands with the couple and wish them best of luck. In the worst case, this will degenerate into the couple having to shake hands with 100s of people congratulating them- The very thing we’re trying to avoid.

Therefore, our proposal is to have the bride and groom wear disguises, and mingle amongst the crowd and eat the food as it was meant to be. Apparently, Akbar, the Mughal Emperor and Shah Rukh Khan have both employed this strategy with great success. This way, the happy couple is really happy because they are well fed, instead of starved and tired at their own wedding.

The brilliance of this strategy is undeniable. This process makes the guests and the bride & groom happier. I can’t see why this shouldn’t become the default process for managing wedding receptions.

As usual, the answer comes from Shahrukh Khan. Have you seen that SRK movie – Rab Ne Bana de Jodi? It’s this epic movie where Shahrukh Khan goes undercover as a dancer. SRK and I have similar problems – We’re both trying to do shady things while protecting our legitimate careers. SRK is trying to protect his career in the electricity company, and I’m trying to protect my life against all the people that I’ve pissed off. Thinking about it, Batman, SRK and I are in the same boat here. We’re all doing this great service to humanity by risking our lives, but we need to protect ourselves from the evils of society. Batman has the Joker to worry about, SRK has the US immigration department to worry about, and I have The Wife to worry about.

Anyway, The way SRK solves the problem in the movie is totally brilliant! He – get this – stops wearing glasses and taadaaaaa! He becomes a brand new guy that no one in his regular life can recognize. Totally inspired! What brilliance!

I was going to use this same strategy, but unfortunately I don’t wear glasses. So instead, I decided to continue to write this blog under a pseudoname. Enter PowerPanda!

That’s right – I am now the PowerPanda. @powerpanda7 on Twitter. PowerPanda has all my superpowers, so you shouldn’t really see a change in what gets written here. Now, I can say whatever I want here without any fear that I might one day get a letter filled with white powder sent by some deranged character. Now, to be completely fair, my name has appeared in several blog posts here, and there’s at least one picture. But no matter. This is the internet, and as everyone knows, the internet is the safest place to lock away secrets. My secret is safe here.

So, ladies and gentlemen, the time has come to let the PowerPanda take over. Behold, The power of the panda.

Every religion needs some basic tenets, which form the foundations of the principles of the religions. Based on this, the other stuff flows, mythology of the religion, the Gods (I’m thinking Angelina Jolie will be a uber-goddess) etc.. but I have to still figure this out. I do, however, have a draft of the 5 major tenets of Adityaism.

1. Rotating Gods and Goddesses
I’m thinking it is really important to have attractive Gods and Goddesses, since they must justify being worshiped. For example, I think Angelina Jolie will make a great Goddess, because she is just so easy on the eyes. However, if the Gods and Goddesses are given permanent status, then they might slack off, do some stupid things or just stop caring about themselves (case in point: Britney Spears), and then we’ll be in this embarrassing position of having a Goddess who’s in Jail or in Rehab.

To get around this, I think Gods and Goddesses will be initially appointed for a 2-year term, and their status will be subject to review and renewal at the end of the period. This should keep everyone on their toes and ensure that we don’t have any slacker Gods or Goddesses.

2. Flexible Vegetarianism
Most religions have a strong view of food – what is acceptable and not acceptable. Jains for example, are not allowed to eat roots, Hindus beef etc… I think this is too stringent, since it limits choice, but capitalism has comprehensively proven that more choice is always better. I mean just look at how many options we have for cell phone providers.

Dietary restrictions in Adityaism will follow a similar approach. Everyone will be required to be vegetarian, except when they feel like eating non-veg food. Acceptable reasons for someone to feel like eating non-veg food include (but not limited to): “It smells good“, “My friends are eating it“, “The restaurant is close by” and “I haven’t eaten non-veg all day“.

3. Dynamic Holidays
Religious holidays are awesome (actually all kinds of holidays are awesome), but they suffer from a fatal flaw. They’re based on I-don’t-know-what-calendar, which means several of them are wasted on weekends, overlapping holidays and random distribution across the year etc… Wouldn’t it be great if there was an all-religion-holiday-rationalization summit where everyone agreed to move around religious holidays so that we could get 4 continuous weeks off during the summer? However, since the big religions are not going to do that, Adityaism will solve the problem by creating dynamic holidays.

All holidays are required to be either on Mondays or Fridays to facilitate long weekends. No two holidays can overlap, and they must be distributed throughout the year such that any 4-week period has at least 1 holiday. Plus, followers of Adityaism will be able to declare holidays on-demand as per their convenience to overlap with certain sporting events (Hint! Hint!)

I don’t need to give you examples of how this works, I’m sure everyone of you has experienced it firsthand. But I’m going to complain about it anyway.

I remember the first time I was supposed to buy The Wife™ a gift. I can’t remember the occasion (it doesn’t matter anyway), but I was counselled to buy something that “shows how sensitive I am while simultaneously flattering her“.

I mean, what does that even mean?

Anyway, since it was my first time, I decided to give it a shot, and bought a nice looking dress. After I gave it to her, she made this “Oh, you dear, cute little fool” face, advising me that while she thought it was a cute gesture on my part to make an attempt to buy a gift, she couldn’t use it, since she “doesn’t wear pink, except when it is accompanied by purple, but only in a skirt”.

And then, she said something that has bothered me no end. It is that one phrase that simultaneously adds 7 layers of mystery to the whole process of gift buying, clouding the thought process more than my college professors’ explanation of Eisenstein’s theories.

“But it is the thought that counts!”

I’ve pondered for days over what that sentence could mean in the context of buying gifts, but it is hopeless. I’m sure even if the enlightened Buddha himself were to appear today and contemplate that sentence, he would be stumped.

But I decided to have a go anyway, since the alternative was a second humiliation. So, the next time an occasion that demanded a gift be bought rolled by, I decided to go “with the thought that counts”, and thought about buying a present.

Without actually buying it.

I mean, that’s the right way to do it, right? Right? RIGHT?

Worst. Decision. Ever.

The Wife™ was convinced that this was another one of my stunts to get out from doing some real work and buying a present, and she barraged me with accusations of being lazy, even managed to accuse my thought-only gift of being “thoughtless”.

At this point, most people will give up and fall into the routine of buying gold or platinum jewelery as the safest bet, but not a brave soul like me. I decided that I should give this one last go.

And so, the next time, when the gift-giving occasion came around, I was ready.

Me: “I have the best gift ever this time.”
Wife: “Really?”
Me: “Yup, it is the most thoughtful gift ever!”
Wife: “This better not be another of your scams”
Me: “Nopes, it is for real this time!”
Wife: “Well, lets see it!”
Me: “Aaha! See, my gift this time is so thoughtful, that not only did I think about it, but unlike last time, I have something to show for it, although you can’t physically see it!”
Wife: “…”
Me: “Here’s my gift: I thought about it, and I’ve decided to give you a Nickname!”
Wife: “Excuse me?”
Me: “That’s right! I’ve thought of a great nickname for you. Most Thought Full Gift Ever – Full of thought.”
Wife: “Nickname?”
Me: “Yup, and your nickname is … are you ready for it? … ‘BUBBLES!’ ”
Wife: “Bubbles? What does that mean?”
Me: “You know, bubbles… Like a real estate bubble, stock market bubble etc… Don’t you love it?”
Wife: “…”

Oh Yeah! You know your gift is the most wonderful ever, when it leaves the receiver totally stumped! I’d finally succeeded! Take that, evil empire of gift making corporations! Who’s laughing now?

I met Doctor Domnath (name changed to protect anonymity) 1 week into the course. As he was a real doctor (you know, the MBBS-MD kind, as opposed to the fake PhD kind), I had assumed that he’ll be those nose-in-the-book bookworm types who spends most of their time mugging books that are so thick that they can viably be used as attack weapons against terrorists. While this was largely true of Doctor Domnath, he also had a very unconventional trait that was very interesting: He was one of those “Super Networkers”.

What is a “Super-Networker”, you ask?

Simply defined, a super-networker is someone who wants to “network” with everybody. They feel like they have to get to know every single person that they come across. Most of them do this out of sheer curiosity, others in the hope that sometime in the uncertain future their “network” and “friend-of-a-friend” will help them out when they are in need of something. To a true super-networker, however, getting to know people is something that comes naturally, somewhat like snoring. They feel an irresistible urge to get to know anything that moves and many things that don’t, and they do it effortlessly, simply and delightedly.

Doctor Domnath was one of those true super-networkers. Let me explain with an illustration.

Doctor Domnath and I were walking towards our dining hall one evening, speculating about why it is socially unacceptable to send a life-sized carboard cut-out of yourself to a wedding that you don’t want to attend. At the dining hall, we are supposed to sign in, so that they can keep track of who’s eating what, and while we were doing that, I recieved a call on my cell. I answered the phone, and maybe spent 2-3 minutes explaining to the lady on the other end why they shouldn’t give me a credit card now that I was a student and had no income.

While I was chatting on the phone, Doctor Domnath had noticed that a lady was talking to the dining hall waiter in Bengali, which also happened to be his native language. That was enough to trigger the super-networking switch inside the doctor. He immediately swung into action.

He walked up to the two, and introduced himself. What followed in the next 2-3 minutes was sheer magic, the kind of thing that takes your breath away. Doctor Domnath managed to network with both the lady and the waiter simultaneously. He found out that the lady was the wife of a professor who taught on campus, and that the professor’s dad’s gardener had been his grandfather’s driver’s 2^nd cousin. He also established a connection with the waiter – His second wife’s uncle had been Doctor Domnath’s neighbor in his previous life.

Not only was Doctor Domnath’s ability to establish networks across languages, time, space, species and rebirths remarkable, he immediately managed to gain the trust of people as well. The Professor’s wife invited him to dinner the next day, and the waiter agreed to supply fresh fish to a restaurant Doctor Domnath was planning to set up 20 years from now.

I later complimented Doctor Domnath on how cool it is that he manages to remember all the people he meets and how well he maintains his networks. I asked him to teach me some of this skill, and he told me something very insightful. He said

“Teaching someone to network is like teaching a pig to sing. It wastes your time, annoys the pig, and in the end what you get is just a pig that wants to mud-wrestle other pigs.”

I didn’t really understand what that meant, but I guess that’s why I’m not a super-networker.

There. That should more or less explain why I’ve not posted in such a long time. However, it also means that I have lots of stories to tell. <evil smile>

ISB was a very enriching experience. It allowed me to broaden my horizons and study in detail the state of the art of management research, and has enabled me to leverage my strengths and to equip myself with the requisite understanding and knowledge of the tools, processes and frameworks of modern management science that allow for efficient administration of 21st century businesses.

ROTFL. Got you there, didn’t I?

As you can see, I’ve spent most of the year honing my Jargoneese skills. It was great fun being in the company of like-minded people, people who believe that God has given us only one mouth and two ears, so we need to talk twice as much as we listen to compensate.

For the duration of the course, which is a year, the Wife and I had come to an arrangement – She would work hard and earn money, and I would blow it away spend it reasonably on living expenses. I tried to convince her to extend this arrangement to a more permanent basis, but she refused. More on that some other time.

Back to the MBA: It was a very valuable learning lesson, and the 1 year added to my already vast knowledge-base. Some of the top new things I learned at B-school that immediately come to mind are:

1) Jargon Matters:
You know how the ancient roman army had “passwords”? Everyone in an army battalion would know what this secret pass-phrase was, and if you wanted to enter the camp, you had to say the password to prove you were one of them. The MBAs have a similar thing going on. Allow me to demonstrate:

MBA1: “How’re the reports coming along?”
Correct Answer: “We need to pull data from the excel pivot tables and perform conjoint analysis to leverage insights from intermediate business process frameworks and polish it on the powerpoint”.

Wrong Answer: “They’ll be done tomorrow!”

The wrong answer is wrong not just because it doesn’t have any jargon, but also because it shows a firm commitment, something which is a strict No No.

2) Networking matters:
They say that the most important thing you take away from B-School is your wide network of future industry leaders and captains. This is undoubtedly true. B-School is the one place that suffers from the all-leader-no-follower syndrome. Since everybody is a leader, the only things that are following are stray dogs, peacocks and the occasional mosquito. The mosquito might be following only because it wants to suck your blood, but that is besides the point.

The goal of the MBA, as far as I can decipher, is to do spectacularly smart and/or stupid things, so as to etch yourself permanently in the memory of the rest of the batch, so that later when you call them asking for favors, they remember who you are.

3) MBA students can consume unbelievable amounts of alcohol:
No explanation needed.

So there you have it. Over the coming days and weeks, I will reveal all the secrets of the much-hyped MBAs, everything and anything you’ve ever wanted to know. Watch this space!