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This is a short write-up I had prepared for discussion with a senior personnel in a prominent investment bank. The context was the pattern of stock prices in recent times of popular IPOs in the tech-space (more specifically, social-media space).
I feel that currently the "theory of conspicuous consumption" by Thorsten Veblen holds lot of merit. If you remember, in our last meeting, I had pointed out that the rules of demand and supply don't really work these days in the stock market. Ideally, the demand and price of a product should be inversely related, and so we should be seeing less demand as price of a stock goes up. But the prices of the social-media stocks did not really stick to that.
While there is a lot of talk about an internet/tech (though tech would be incorrect because we don't see a lot of buzz in other tech-related fields apart from social networking websites) bubble, and even a more specific social media bubble, I feel it is only apt to extend it to call it as a "social" bubble since we see that it's not only the social media websites which have caught people's imagination, but virtually everything which has something to do with people around us. The connectivity among people is growing. Today we know more about what our neighbour is doing than ever. And it's basic human instinct that we tend to do what someone else is doing, or try to do it better just to be noticed. In the process, we fuel things beyond their correct valuation.
It is somewhat like the Keynesian Beauty contest where every person is trying to judge what everyone else is doing, and do the same. With access to information becoming easier, this is leading to people taking decisions less on the basis of fundamentals of a firm/stock, and more due to the "social" effect.
I would also like to draw your attention to this article by Peter Thiel - http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/
PS. Quite an abrupt ending, but then that is only what I was to write as a follow up of my discussion with this person. Would love to know your views.
Ya mai jhul jaun, in ghatao mei kahin
Ek kar doon aasmaan aur zameen.
This song reflects so much more than just love. It celebrates life. For no apparent reason, right now, suddenly, I feel like going back to every single day of my life and relive them. I keep thinking how I would have acted differently in some past situation or the other, but I would hardly want my life to have gone any other way. Maybe it's only that desire to know what might have happened had I done or not done something.
While going to the office early in the morning, mostly alone, there is often a cold rush of breeze flowing. Just a short walk of 5 minutes from the metro to the office building is enough to let ones' thoughts wander. Before being jolted back to reality on entering the building, I love that 5 minute walk which is almost like going through a flashback of all those days. The oddest part is, I feel nostalgic about the days I spent even a month back. Surely that is strange.
But you have to give it to this feeling called nostalgia. I guess this is the only state when you are both happy and sad beyond measure. It's the only time when the most embarrassing moments bring a smile. The only occasion when you want to fight again for being given run-out in gully cricket and "lol" about it. The humdrum of those party nights with friends. The few minutes when you want to be in that state of despair again, knowing that you would come back stronger. The chance to relish that win once more. Learning skating. Best friend's tiffin. Getting punished because of not cleaning shoes by teacher. Mom's lap.
I just love LIFE.
P.S. Image taken from http://thejackette.net/
P.S. Image taken from http://thejackette.net/
For those looking for a scoop to further their chances of spreading rumors, kindly leave the page before you get disappointed. For the rest, this is pretty routine stuff, and you could ignore it :D
Couldn't resist, could you? Now that you've decided to continue, at the outset, "figures" are of no (least) importance here. Friendships are. In the past couple of months, I have seen a strong underlying current of guidance and support from not only my senior batch, but also those who have passed out of the institution. This just reaffirms why a strong alumni base is considered very important. At every step, at each trivial concern, there were seniors to help and for no apparent reason. Yes, the institution's pride is at stake, but still, once could see the genuine concern and the desperation to help their juniors succeed.
Apart from the amazing senior-junior camaraderie, I have seen bonds evolve in my own batch. Every person standing for each other, ensuring that each one of us takes that next step together was an experience I am thankful for to each of you. We have stood the test of an enormous pressure-cooker situation, and have successfully thwarted the countless problems - it's our opportunity to show what a force we are. At the same time, it's a responsibility we have been bestowed with - of continuing to build on from here.
I would have loved to name all the PGP2s (second year students) here in a thank-you note. But I won't. Since that would force me to name someone first, and someone second. Batch of 46/16, I extend my heartfelt gratitude for what you have given us over these last few months. Thank you for forging bonds so strong, for guiding us the way around those corners, for becoming better as a person, for being able to bring out the best in us, for giving every kind of help conceivable. Having worked for the various teams during the placements, I have realized the huge support system you had in place. It was unbelievable how you managed a work of this magnitude and importance. I would, in particular, like to mention the placereps. You guys were amazing. With so much pressure, not just from inside the campus but also with outside expectations, you did a fantabulous job. I hereby promise you, we as a batch, shall carry forward this heritage you have introduced us to. Each one of us will be equally committed to contribute in the future of IIM Calcutta.
A final word for my batchmates. Thank you for being there; for being able to say "I will not sleep since my friend needs me."
Love you guys. IIMC Rocks.
~GiveMeSomeSunshine
~GiveMeSomeRain
~GiveMeAnotherChance
~IwannaGrowUpOnceAgain
~LetPeaceAaaandozzz
Chhedi, Aseem, Aunty's, Bhaat, Bhajan, Bong, Billoo's, Bhondu, Batti, CL, Cali, Cal, Jam, Candi, 90 degrees, Carlos, Park, Despo, Diro, Dep, DOSA, Eggies, Funda, Frusst Corner, KAT, GC, DC, Delta, GolB, Ghasi, GolC, GPL, Gult, Gymkhana, Tempo, Illu, Insti, Intro, LS, LAN, Matka, Rassa, Rassi, OP, Sher-e-Punjab, Schols Ave,Stud, Bady, Presi, Vikramshila, SAG, SOP, PSI, Shantanu's, Tinku, Thoka, Juice, Veggies, GOD,Maal, Maggu, Makhau, Arbit, Huha, Halu, Frusst, Load, Peace, Poltu, PAN, PD, 2.2
Within the first couple of months, these poor souls start thinking if Guantanamo Bay could have been any worse. The mess food which was great initially, starts degrading at a super-fast mode. There are no motored vehicles in a never-ending campus. There will be professors/rassas who'll be more concerned about you not putting the correct page number on your P.T. sheets than the incorrect experimental results. There are no girls, or hardly any girls. :O Dada, Cholbe na!?! :O
Then as a few more months pass, it gets only worse. Seniors, poltu, every half an hour doors getting banged by a "concerned" senior, candi, VP, GSec, End Sem, DepC, this, that .. makes one go ugghhhh.
Come second year and suddenly, you knowing a lot of intros becomes very important. Illu becomes a nightmare. SF, KTJ become more than fests. GC becomes more important than CG. Everything passes in a blur. It's the fastest one year a student spends at kgp, and wishes that the worst is over. If only wishes had wings ..
Third year sees everyone clamoring for a FT. Lakhs of mails go out the Kgp server to foreign lands, 99.9% of the times, failing to do the job. Suddenly one realizes that not many opportunities before placements remain to increase one's CG, a term which slowly starts making sense. This is probably the slowest (the first year passes in a daze) year in Kgp. It ends with the training period, which is more of a paid vacation for most cases.
And finally, the final year. The "Cholbe Na"-land has had given enough reasons to be frustrated with it to everyone. Everyone gains an immunity to any kind of pressure or deadline. As the placement season draws near, CVs start getting made and re-made. Group discussions and interviews become the order of the day. For a change, not only candis, but everyone is in formals. Everyday, people return elated and people return dejected from the TnP. There's a wave of optimism and pessimism at the same time.
By the time all this ends, by the time everyone gets what he/she had come to achieve at an IIT, you start believing that the outside-classroom learning was much more than inside.
By the final month of departure, you start realizing that you always hated this place, but always loved every bit of it. It has made a defining change in your life, it has become a part of your identity - a part of you. You still detest having to appear for those exams and studying for them hard the last night, but you'll exchange the life you're going to live once outside with this in a blink.
I've always found it hard to be mushy about leaving and all. I see around - fb updates, Gtalk Status updates, and every available online media - a deluge of "nostalgia"; "miss you", etc etc messages. I don't feel a thing. Not yet. I'm just around 72 hours away from leaving the campus. This has always been me. I've never been able to gauge beforehand, how hurtful it could be to have something taken away. Maybe because I think that it's just a matter of a vacation and we'll be back again, together. I'm wrong - but that doesn't make any difference. But I also know, that a couple of months down the line, I'm going to miss this all .. and miss it bad. It's then it would sink in. I dread that moment. I only hope I don't cry this time around. When I'd left my high school to enter a new school for my XIIth, I was very jubilant for having got through a good school. But one day, a month or two into the new school, I suddenly broke into tears during the recess remembering my old school. And I felt bad, seriously bad. And I didn't have anyone around to share.
I thank KGP for the friends it gave me. For every single person who made a difference to me in any way. For making me realize, that there are always better people at everything. For instilling the confidence to be myself. For amazing seniors and lovely juniors. For experiences of a lifetime. For everything.
To KGP, with love.
PS1 - Dhavy left the campus, 6 hours back.
PS2 - This post made me nostalgic .. maybe am not so in-humane.
PS3 - If you're from kgp, and I know you, I just want to tell you a "thank you" for making this journey so great for me.
PS4 - If you're from kgp, and I don't know you, I want to tell you a "thank you" for making KGP what it is :)
PS5 - Don't tell me it's a typical post with nothing new/good/useful/important/interesting to add. I don't give a damn .
PS6 - Credits: The list of trigger-words from a friend of mine with a few more words inserted by me. Sorry, forgot from whom I took that. Photograph from Bhalu's album.
PS7 - Take Care
9th April, 2006 was the day I appeared for my JEE. It changed my life. Or should I say, I started knowing life thereon. The result of the examination was certainly not up to the mark since I was performing better in the mock tests. Infact, I was saddened by the fact that I was not able to pursue the branch which I wanted to due to my rank. 10th April, 2010 was the day, when all that disappointment faded away. Finally, I got something I had always wanted - a call from C; IIMC.
JOKAr; JOKAite; IIMCian; call what you may, it only accentuates the aura associated with the tag. I would be cheating myself if I said I always wanted to go to C. B was my dream (please don't bug me with 'A is the best' rant). It did not matter which one is the best. I always placed the three - ABC - in the top brass and had always seen myself in B. Though, as I read more and more into the various facets of the three, I found C to be most of my liking - bole toh, ekdum my type. Infact, if I do convert A (results still on hold .. and honestly, I don't even expect a call), I might as well go against the more common way people chose and take C over A. I have my reasons and I'm satisfied with them.
So, for the moment, am reveling in the glory. I also plan to eat the Rs.2 chocolate I received two years back as a condescending gesture from some who could never gain back my respect. Will do that when I'm reading my call letter. I really look back at the four years in kgp with great self-contentment and having left an impression on some, if not many.
It feels awesome :)
PS1: Yay!!
PS2: Going to the "Alvida" dinner :|
PS3: Will miss kgp .. sachchi!
PS4: I dread the day when people like Amit Sahu will become IAS/IPS/etc ..
PS5: It still feels awesome :)
Every engineering graduate goes through the two-credit (read: do kaudi ka) trauma at the fag end of his (am not a sexist, but 'hers' please don't take offence on my persistent usage of the male pronouns .. as it is, 'hers' is a rare species in engineering campuses) undergraduation. As soon as the GV dates are announced, a distinct buzz can be noted among the final years. No one gives a damn for a two-credit lab, but everyone around feels the pinch of the Grand Viva. Strangely, it's found that practically no one ever flunks the GV (if you're one of those who did, I have no words for you) and still, every one is more worried than they ever were.
Interestingly, students see this as the one opportunity professors have to get on their nerves. I feel, attendance is a much more potent weapon than a GV :P
Anyway, like any other hapless engineering student, I too had to go through the torture today. Four precious days, which could have been spent far more productively on tv series, ipl, facebooking and cricket were wasted in preparing on subjects many of which I never liked. Though, even at the face of such great impediment, I managed to carve out time for innumerable rounds of mindjolt games ;)
Kum-akal-alert: Here on, I'll speak in a language more conducive for Chemical Engineering students. Though, there's nothing which should discourage you to read further since I have successfully (almost) managed to scrape through the four years despite of this language being alien to me till now.
Time: 1345 hours
Date: 7th April, 2010
Location: Room 311, Department of Chemical Engineering
Scapegoats: Moi, Damz, Maddys, Sneho, Bansax, Ghosh, Bholam
The GV scheduled to begin at 1400 hours and we, (well, most of us) who have never had reached a class on time, had reached for the GV before time .. situations.
Each student pitted against each of the three professors. The first three students went in and I was called in after a tantalizing 45 minutes. Imagine what could be running through the mind of a guy who knows he has to enter a den of man-eating (I don't think women would want a woman-eating lion :P ) lions and has to wait for 45 minutes before that. Now go further and imagine another guy waiting with you to go in and keeping on telling you, "yaar kum se kum ek-do haath toh bach hi jayega" (and that guy being the ring-master of the lions :| .. umm, since this could be a far-fetched analogy, read the endnotes for clarification). And if this was still not enough, how about this den being in Libya - home to the hottest place on Earth.
Thankfully, the 45 minutes ended. And then, I met one of the most coolest professors I've ever come across. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to be in his class, but I never thought that I'd regret that within just 10 minutes of interaction with him. Anyway, he went on catching me on some basic fluid mechanics' concepts and was soon over with me when he found that I knew nothing :P
And then, suddenly, as soon as I changed over to the next professor, I was hit by a Agni-III missile. He handed me a piece of paper, encoded in that alien language I told you about with nothing decipherable (later, even the ring-master told me he could not fathom what was written .. so, I did not do that bad :P). Thankfully, I only had to answer in True/False without giving any explanation :D Who'd miss that chance :D
Next, a barrage of questions on IPC, which I had no clue about. Not that I had not prepared IPC, but come on, IPC is IPC. One is not supposed to ask difficult questions on that. And that too questions with terms I had not even obscurely heard of :O
Somehow, I extricated myself giving answers which went nowhere. God save me!
The next professor gave a answer-as-I-ask-or-you-don't-know type round. Rapid fire questions with some rapid-fire answering (yay!) and some rapid-fire blanks (yay! again :D).
Sooner than not, it was over. Am pretty sure that my group's viva did not last for 45 minutes which was a clear indication that by the first group's viva itself, the professors had understood it's useless to grill them much :P
All the while this happened, the three earlier scapegoats (from the first group which entered), were made to sit in the viva-room itself (so that they do not go out and spill the questions to the people waiting outside for the next round). AND, they were giggling :x :x
So, there ended my viva. Eh, GRAND VIVA. Hope I don't get the dreaded "Re-viva". :)
PS1: I scored my highest score in Qilox in Mindjolt which overshadowed the guy second in my list by more than 3 times his score :D yay!! and this, yesterday, ie, night before the viva :)
PS2: That ring-master would be the guy who is DR 1 and the one who's almost absolutely sure to get an Ex grade. Imagine him continuously ranting - "B toh lag hi jayega" while waiting for your turn in viva :|
PS3: No more of those ugly subjects .. yay!
PS4: Beginning of the end of my 4-year stay ..
PS5: Played volley for a couple of hours .. :)
PS6: Do see the cartoon I made on GV posted in one of the earlier posts :)
Haddon has given an amazing insight of how autistic people look at the world. Christopher, the protagonist, a 15-year old, can wonderfully relate to the world of mathematics but cannot understand how life functions. Trying to categorize everything into black and white like in mathematics, Christopher shies away from the unknown and looks for a pattern in everything. As Haddon proceeds into the story, he's given some amazing quotes through the character of Christopher which makes one think (or made me think). I'd like to list some down here:
I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.
I want my name to mean me.
You could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.
When people tell you what to do, it's usually very confusing and does not make sense.
People break rules all the time.
I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.
Mrs. Alexander was doing what is called chatting, where people say things to each other which aren't questions and answers and aren't connected.
In life you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.
People think they're not computers because they have feelings and computers don't have feelings. But feelings are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happen, and if it is a happy picture they smile and if it is a sad picture they cry.
I like timetables, because they make sure you don't get lost in time.Many of these lines might not mean much to you if you haven't yet read the book. But I wanted to get these lines written somewhere to make a record so that I could come back to them whenever I wanted to relive the book.
I have definitely missed on many other quotes which I relished while reading the book. Looking for another such amazingly written novel.
PS1: The chapters in the book are numbered in prime numbers. Very well captured the thought of the title of this post
PS2: Suggest some more thought provoking books if you can.
