Monday, December 22, 2008

Tell us something about you

- is the question that is frequently asked in interviews. In this post, I will try to analyze this question, what I think when someone asks me this question and what are the possible answers that can be told and in the end I try to summarize to reach the best answer. I don't think all this can be done at a time, not because of the length of the post but because of the importance and value that this question holds. The answer has the strength to make or mar chances of getting through the interview process.

So far, in the interviews that I came across my answer to this question was to start from the past, the places where I was born and brought up, my education etc.

" I was born in XXXXX. I had my schooling at different places in Andhra Pradesh as my father had frequent transfers in his job. Finally we settled in XXXXX and later I appeared for engineering entrance exam and secured so and so AIR and got admitted into XXXXX institute and I completed my bachelors and masters. "

Now if I look back at this answer, I doubt if the interviewer ever expected this answer. WTF can he do by knowing my place of birth and my AIR in the engineering entrance exam. I now feel that what I've told him is about my past and not about me. As a prospective MBA student, if I answer this way in my interviews of B-School's, I am sure they will not be impressed. What I lacked was the preparation for this kind of questions. Knowing oneself requires a lot of introspection and I've always evaded from knowing me. I don't know why. May be I was too sluggish or I didn't wanted to stress my brain or it was somekind of fear that I may fail to find the answer. But now the time has come to break out of the bubble surrounding me, so that I can realise where I stand in this world and to know my limitations.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Process of getting selected into a B-School; Analogy

B-Schools - Market or the consumers

Students - Products

Written exam conducted by these B-Schools - Undergoing the quality control test before getting into the market

Cleared the written test - Passed quality control test and launched into market

Interview process - Advertising so as to sell the product

Candidate with work experience - Product already exists in the market aiming for a new high

Fresher - Newly launched product

Extra-curricular activities - Product getting endorsed by a celebrity

Selected - Product successfully launched and reached it's target customers

Rejected and preparing to do well next year - Failed to reach the expectations of the customers due to poor advertising and should be re-launched some time later with some other strategy

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

HTC mobile service center in hyderabad

Recently, one of my friend, who is working in gwalior sent me his HTC mobile to get it repaired in hyderabad. The problem is that the display is not showing anything though the touch screen is responding well. So, I googled a lot to get the information of HTC mobile service center in hyderabad. There were many dealers of HTC mobiles in hyderabad listed on HTC website itself. But when I contacted them, they told they don't service these mobiles but only sell them. Atlast I got hold of authorised service center of HTC mobiles in hyderabad. So below is the contact address and phone number of this service center.

Salora International Limited
1-1-167/2 1st Floor Abdulla Mansion, Behind Hari Hara Kala Bhavan Alexander Road, Alexander Road, Secunderabad, Hyderabad - 500003
Phone numbers : +(91)-(40)-27807315,27807316,27807317,27807319,27807320
website : www.salora.com

Sunday, December 14, 2008

JMET 2009 analysis and keys

Jmet keys and analysis by different institutes
Career forum - Click here
Career launcher - Click here
IMS - Click here
PT Education - Click here
Time - Click here

Jmet 2007 and 2008 had 150 questions to be solved in 2hrs time which was quite challenging and also the quantitative section used to be the most difficult section. But it was declared that Jmet 2009 will be having only 120 questions and also the duration of the exam was increased to 3hrs. So everyone, including me, expected that the paper is going to be like that of a IIT-JEE paper and the questions will be tough where accuracy plays a crucial role and also that the number of choices will be increased to 5.

But the given paper was least expected one. The paper was extremely easy and there was plenty of time for students to look at and attempt all 120 questions. Also there were only 4 choices for a question and 1/4 marks deducted for a wrong answer. I always worried about my speed and I had this notion that I cannot do well in a question paper which has more than 75 questions (conventional cat paper). But this paper was a surprise. I had attempted 103 questions and god knows how many had attempted all 120. And the irony is that, the quantitative section is the easiest of all.

My attempts :
English - 30
LR - 23
Quant - 29
DI - 23

Total - 103

And so far I'm scoring 74.25 according to Career forum key and 71.75 according to CL Key and 75+ according to IMS key. I think that the cutoff for IIT B would be around 75 and for IIT D would be around 70. So, I have a very few chances of getting a B call and I'm hoping for the best.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

How to delete songs from ipod nano?

This is a query. First you need an ipod nano in order to delete songs from it. Since you have already visited this page, I assume you have one. You need to have iTunes software installed in your system. When you plug in your ipod to your system, iTunes software get started automatically. On the left side menu bar, your ipod is listed and when you click the dropdown list, the playlists on your ipod are shown. If you select a playlist, then the songs in this playlist are displayed along with all the attributes like name, album, genre, year, date added, rating etc. For every song in the list there is a checkbox to the left side of the name of the song. Usually it is checked, as the song is currently there on the ipod. Now you can do two things to delete the songs from your ipod.

1) Uncheck the checkbox of the songs which you want to delete and finally before unplugging your ipod, click on 'sync my ipod', so that it synchronises your ipod with the settings selected in the iTunes.

2) Select the songs which you want to delete by holding the control key and delete these songs from the playlist. Then sync the ipod.

I have tried the above two methods to delete songs from my ipod but both these methods failed. After disconnecting the ipod, I found those songs still on my ipod and i can listen to these songs as good as ever.

So if somebody really knows how to do this please let me know in the comments section. My ipod is getting stuffed up and i am finding it hard to load new albums. Hope the title is rightly justified. This is a query.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Laugh my ass off

The other day, an elderly sardarji, a co-tenant in our apartment came to our house to discuss something with my father. He recognises me just as my father's son and another living being in this apartment. He didn't know what I was doing and we didn't had any interaction till now except once when my father introduced me to him in a party hosted by another tenant in our apartment.

I was sitting on the sofa, busily solving sudoku that appears in The Times of India newspaper. I greeted him saying " Hello uncle ", he replied back " Hello son ". And I went back to my puzzle solving. Then he asked me " what are you doing? ". " I am solving this puzzle in the newspaper ", I replied back. He was confused and asked me again " In general, what are you doing? I mean not now ". Then, controlling my laughter on thinking what might be his reaction for my silly reply, I told him the routine answer which I have been telling my relatives and others " I have completed my education, got a job and waiting for my appointment order ".

Immediately I went to bedroom as if I had some work there and I burst out into laughter. I wondered that he might have got a shock after listening to my reply although he kept his face straight and expressionless when he asked again. Later I shared this funny conversation with my mom and my girl friend. I remembered a funny conversation between venkatesh and prakashraj in the telugu movie ' Nuvvu naku nachavu '.

Prakashraj : Neeku em vacchu? ( What do you know? )

Venkatesh : Naaku eetha vachu uncle ( I know swimming uncle )

Prakashraj : Adhi kakunda inkem vachu? ( Other than that what do you know? )

Venkatesh : Sangeetha ante ishtam. Harmonium, tabla vayistanu ( I like music and I can play harmonium and tabla )

Prakashraj : avi kani ikkadiki pattuku raledu kada! ( hope you didn't get those instruments here to my house )

Venkatesh : ledu uncle ( No, uncle )

Prakashraj : neeku brathakadaniki em vacchu? ( What do you know to survive in this world? )

Venkatesh : nenu BA complete chesanu ( I did BA )

Prakashraj : ennellolo? ( In how many years? )

Venkatesh : ( raises his hand and shows three of this fingers and then lifts the fourth )

Prakashraj : abbo, chala early gane complete chesavey ! ( sarcastically, Oh! you took very less time )

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Is Dhoni going to be the best captain of India?

Okay. It's been a long time I wrote something on cricket. I have predicted earlier to the end of my previous post ' Should they do it? ' that there might be more retirement announcements at the end of India - Australia Test Series and my prediction has come true. Anil Kumble (Jumbo), one of the best spinners India has ever produced, has called it a day and hung up his shoes after the 3rd test match against australia. Dhoni captained India for the fourth test match and India has won it. It's the third straight success for Dhoni as captain in test matches. Be it defensive or aggressive, whatever the critics may call it, Dhoni once again proved to be lucky mascot when victory matters.

He made Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma bowl continuously outside the off stump to the two left handers Simon Katich and Michael Hussey in the first session on the third day of the match. The field set was 8-1 to the offside. Australia knew that they had to win the match to level the series. So they took the risk and hunted the outside the off stump balls and lost their wickets. What seemed like an Australia's match at the end of the second day turned out be and Indian one at the end of the third day. India won this test match and won the series 2-0.

Then came England to India for seven one day internationals and two test matches. Being the home side and that too after a series win against Australia, India was clearly the favourite. No body would have expected that the India will drub England 5-0 in the one day matches. The last two matches were disrupted because of security concerns post mumbai terror attack. So English team flew back to England and the last two matches were cancelled. Many indian fans including me must have deeply disappointed for not witnessing the rare chance of what would have been a total whitewash with India defeating the English 7-0.

I don't think this will happen rarely anymore. No doubt, India is emerging as the best team in the cricketing world under the captaincy of Dhoni. Sooner than later, India will replace Australia as the number one team in the world. I always admired ganguly as a captain of Indian cricket team. He was very aggressive on the field. I thought that being aggressive would make a better captain. But here is a man, cool and composed, not aggressive by body language but by his shrewdness, in the making of a best captain. Here are two things I liked about Dhoni during the test series against australia.

1) When australia was nine wickets down and India on the verge of the victory, and what were the final moments of ganguly's presence on the field, he asked ganguly to captain the team for the next five overs. But ganguly's job lasted only for three overs.

2) When Border and Gavaskar were handing over the Border-Gavaskar trophy to him, he called kumble to come and they both together lifted the trophy. Although kumble captained two test matches in the series, I never expected such kind of pleasant gesture.

Indian cricket has a long way to go under the leadership of Dhoni. With already the inaugural twenty-twenty world cup under his belt, I hope he would lead us to victory in 2011 one day international world cup.

Monday, December 8, 2008

My experience with Guitar

Today, I'll talk something about what to know before one starts to learn playing guitar which I've been doing for the past 3 months.

How did this idea of learning guitar came across my mind?

I always had this interest and enthusiasm on dance and music. But I never had the opportunity and resources(whatever that may mean) since childhood. Even I participated in some group dance competitions in my engineering school. But now, thanks to the economic recession, I got some free time to pursue my interest. Also I was inspired by the movie Rock on that was released in this summer. What an excellent movie !! So, when I planned to learn some music instrument, first thing that came to my mind was guitar. This is the generation of rock and playing guitar has the look and the style and most of the songs can be played on it. So I joined a music institute 'Melowings' to learn guitar.

My initial experiences

First thing I learnt is that learning guitar or any other music instrument requires a lot of patience and dedication. What I had in mind was that I go to the music institute, attend some classes and then I will be able to play most of the songs. But once I started learning it, I came to know that it's not as easy as I thought it would be. It takes quite some time like 6-8 months to attain some degree of perfection. It would require a lot of patience in the initial days as one might be learning very basic stuff like notation, parts of guitar, how to read the notes etc. But it is the most important part of learing guitar. If you dont know what is what, forget about how.

Believe me, learning guitar is not as easy as one might think before starting learning and not as tough as it might seem during the initial days of learning. Practice for around 30mins to 1 hour every day and you wouldn't believe yourself after 3 months. Practice and Consistency are the key words here. Of course with practice and consistency, one can achieve anything in this world.

I went to the music institute for 2 months, 3 classes per week and I bought the guitar in the first week itself.

After 2 months

I didn't attend classes in the last week of 2nd month as I had Cat'08 on the following sunday. I thought I would resume my classes from monday onwards. But Cat didn't go well for me and later I had no mood to attend music classes. Suddenly many things cropped up in my mind like ' I am still jobless(waiting for my joining date) ', ' My dreams of MBA this year almost ended this year ', ' What to do next? ', ' I no more can spend my father's or brother's money ', ' I'm now 23 and am still depending on my family.' Am I sounding ridiculous and silly? But that's the case and I had some sort of guilty feeling and I wanted to cut down all the expenses except one thing. That is my mobile bill, the service of which provides me the facility of making unlimited free std calls; minimum necessity for a person who has a girl friend.

And so, I had not touched my guitar for the next one week. After that I started practicing again by taking the help of vast amount of material on the internet. There were lots of video lessons on how to play guitar on youtube and many other sites which provides the tabs for playing some of the popular songs.

Now

I'm learning with the help of pdf's and video lessons that are there on the internet. I can play few popular hindi songs. Now that I know the basics, I'm getting hold of all the new things I now come across. Again thanks to the economic recession, I am able to devote some time to this interest of mine. By practicing regularly without getting frustrated at any point of time, I'm sure I can be a good guitarist in the days to come.


Sunday, December 7, 2008

Car parking facility

Full version of Title : How important it is to have car parking facility even if you don't have a car !!

Five years back, when my father bought this 2 bedroom flat, there was car parking facility available to be bought. But my father, being an ordinary private employee never felt the need of a car and so the car parking facility. Of the 17 tenants who reside in our apartment, there is limited car parking facility for only 11. It was then available for 30K. But now, even if we pay 3 lacs nobody is willing to give up their car parking facility.

Today, especially in metros nobody is interested in buying a flat which has no car parking facility. Some prospective buyers were coming to see our flat for the past 3 weeks. After looking around the flat many were impressed with the spacious rooms, excellent ventilation, 24hrs water facility, semi-furnished bedrooms etc. These buyers can be classified now in the following 2 categories.

1) Impressed, they ask about the car parking facility, knowing about the inevitable truth, husband and wife look into each others eyes and then say ' Sorry for taking your time, but we thought there was car parking facility. ' and they leave. wtf? Prior to visiting our flat, they inquired everything about the flat including the car parking facility and now they just leave citing this as the reason.

2) Impressed, they sit down for some casual talk. Then they ask the question ' how much are you expecting? ' Then they start the bargaining business. They think of various reasons to bargain such as a) this flat is already 9 yrs old b) the economy is in recession and prices are falling, but you are quoting very high price. Okay, considered. We come down by 1 lac. Then they point out the ultimate flaw by saying that this flat does not have car parking facility and they bargain for another 3-4 lacs. Oh! come on.. that was being told from the first and now they act like they have discovered the unrevealed truth. Then they leave by saying ' if ever you want to give at this price, please intimate us '.

And the irony is that, we want to dispose off this flat to buy another flat for which we've already paid the advance and for which there is no car parking facility !!!

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Service agreement - Doom or Destiny

Aug 7th 2007

A product development company visited our campus for recruitment. They conducted a 3 hour long written test followed by 2 rounds of interview. I got through the written test but screwed up the first round of interview(technical round). Though I thought I did well in second round ( HR ), it was just a formality as I already knew the outcome. Given my poor grades and pathetic performance in the interview, I knew I had no chance. Dejected, I awaited the next company.

Aug 10th 2007

A leading IT exporter came to our campus for recruitment. This time I was cautious and prepared a bit well for the interview. Again I got through the written test stage, but this time the interview was just a formality. The questions that were asked in the interview were :

Q) Are you willing to relocate?
Q) Do you have a problem in speaking hindi?
Q) Do you feel the package offered by us is less compared to other companies?
Q) Tell me about your previous interview experiences?
Q) Do you have a problem in signing the service agreement?
Q) Any questions from your side?

I was in a mood that I should definitely get this job. So my answers for the above questions were all positive as expected by the interviewer. So I got this job. I thought that I would never join this job as I was planning for higher studies ( MS or MBA ). I was reluctant to this service agreement thing which I had to sign at the time of joining the firm.

Service Agreement

I have to be with the firm for at least 18 months from the date of joining failing which I have to pay 1.25 lakhs.

June 18th 2008

I graduated from my school. I dropped my MS plans as I wanted to do an MBA. I didn't do well in Cat 2007. So now I had to join a job and plan for my MBA at a later stage. So I thought of searching for another job before I get the joining date for the company in which I got recruited so that I can get rid of this service agreement crap. So I started looking out for jobs.

December 7th 2008

I am desperately waiting for the joining date from the company in which I got recruited in. My plans of searching another job went awry with all this economic recession. Given the long break after graduation, I am beginning to forget my technical knowledge. With the current state of mind, I even doubt of clearing an interview if any comes my way.

PS : Cat'08 didn't go well as well :(

Monday, October 13, 2008

Should they do it?

Pretty catchy title to pull those who read it into the subject. Ain't it funny? Who are they and what should they do? Now the hot discussion that is going on in the unofficial national game of India, cricket is about the senior players in the national team. The players who served the team for so long, who have very impressive records so far. Should they call it a day not giving chance to the selectors to make controversial decisions by excluding them from the team or Should they be given preferential treatment by letting them play as long as they want to?

First and foremost thing is that the players of such stature, they no longer play for money because they had enough. They no longer play to prove something because they had done it many a time. If not these two, if they are still playing with passion, for their love to the sport, if they still believe they give perform their best, I believe they should be accorded the second option. But passion alone will not be enough, scores on the board matter. If they are consistently failing to put runs on the scoreboard they should retrospect on the things no matter what their energy levels are and with how much passion they are still left with, it would be wise for them to take the tough decision.

The fans will definitely get disappointed if their icon players decide to retire. In a country like india, where people are mad about cricket, the team has some icon players like sachin, ganguly, dravid, laxman and kumble. These are the senior most players in the team who are in their late 30's. They have some finest records on their names. But still if are not playing like what they had played in their prime, it would be even more disappointing for the fans.

Some of the best australian players like steve waugh, adam gilchrist, glenn mcgrath and shane warne had retired when they were at their best. They know that the age is catching upon them and keeping in mind the fact that the next world cup is 4 years from now, they called it a day so that the young team gets enough experience so as to be successful in the next world cup. They were lauded for their decision and they received an overwhelming response when they played their last match and a great farewell too.

This doesn't happen with the indian team. Ganguly recently took the decision that the going on series with australia will be his last one. I think it is a very wise decision. Now the pressure will be on the other senior players and if they don't perform well they may follow the footsteps of ganguly. I think the players should be judged solely on their performance but not on their age. If a player performs well even in 40's, I don't find a reason to sack him. No wonder if we hear couple more retirement announcements at the end of this series.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Obama or McCain

Right now, the hot topic about which most people are discussing is about the present scenario in US. You may be wondering about which one am i talking about? Is it about the financial crisis or about the US presidential elections that are going to be held in 1 month from now ? Actually it a fusion of both. Confused? Read on. . .

Since the end of primary elections in US, both the presidential nominees did a lot of campaigning to articulate their stand on various policies and what would they do for the betterment of citizens once they assume the office. Of course there were war of words as well. There were lot of promises too which require a lot of spending. But now the financial scene in the US has changed. And so are the speeches they are giving of late. No more promises are being made. I wonder if they can fulfill what all they promised till now. There's a huge budget deficit in the US economy and there's not much money left to spend for the succeeding president.

Lehman bro's has filed a bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch was sold out to Bank of America and the situation of American International Group(AIG) is also somewhat similar. The stock markets fell and the Dow Jones has plummeted down the 10,000 barrier. There were losses all over the world with various economies linked tot the US economy. The government, last week, took a decision to provide a $700bn bail out package to the AIG to somewhat mitigate the effect. But the situation has not improved yet and the analysts believe that this will become more worse in the days to come. The present condition is being regarded as the worst ever since the Great Depression occured during 1930's.

So, be it either Obama or McCain, one would be in a very tough position from the very day they swear in. The road ahead is not a bed of roses but full of thorns. So both of you, watch out !!!