This may seem a curious thing to post about right now, especially since I am probably not going to join the company where I am currently placed...(which, for fear of a lawsuit by the company, and my batchmates' murderous intentions I will hereby name as ABC) However the fact remains that I made my job in such non-congenial and weird circumstances, that its something I have to share with others.
So here goes: It a couple of days before elections, tensions mounting, worrying incidents happenning, me totally confused as to what to do, and to top it all, ABC comes for recruitment, and I haven't made a single job.
I give the first test, aptitude, 40 mins, 40 questions, it goes well. I then go to the Dean's office for updates.. apparently he was out of station and just returned. So while I am with him discussing the issue, I get a message, second technical test in 10 mins. SO I excuse myself, and go up to 2201 again. This time 40 mins, 70 mcqs, and around 45 guesses(...really I am not lying). So I return to the office and now its a meeting between lots of people, so I don't need to talk much here. Meeting adjourned, lunch missed, message reads "technical interview at 3pm" I smile, but not for long. I run, tear open my packed shirt(yet another twist, 'twas my first interview so the white shirt is still in its original package) I look in the mirror, then my wrist watch. Unshaven, 8 minutes remain. 5 minutes to walk to VFAST. I decide to risk it, and go unshaven. I reach with a minute to spare, sweating from everywhere, the volunteer tells me that things are going about an hour late. First piece of good news all day! I walk back slowly, shave, relax, google for what ABC stands for, write it to my memory(too many CS apti papers, I guess) and walk back to VFAST.
Technical interview: The guy is around 45ish, balding from every perceivable angle, looking as interested as a five year-old looks at his dinner plate filled with greens. But I smile like I am advertising for a new brand of toothpaste. He sits me down, and asks me to write code. Now I'm no programmer, but its an IT profile:-(, so I take the pen in hand and start. Factorial normal, factorial using recursion, fibonacci using recursive, sum of geometric series. I look intrigued but smile from within, same questions as to the guy before me. Now the real test, what do you know about OS, DS, and some more abbreviations. I answer, "Sir, I am an electronics graduate, and during the course of my study I was not exposed to these concepts. However, if I have the good fortune of being shortlisted to your esteemed organisation, I assure you that I will acquire the requisite skill sets during this semester." I guy actually looks impressed. :) Some more questions, again answers that any 12th pass could answer. But always with a smile and with sang-froid..(this one's for those preparing for GRE). The interview finishes, and I wait for HR.
Now as I wait for HR, the whole situation, as though reveals itself to me. As of now, I had too many things on my mind, but now its like.. By God! I may actually get it.. and an IT job too. Life's weird man. I enter, and the guy starts with the all too famous, all too overhyped, all too cliched, "Tell me about yourself, something not on your resume" I act as though I wasn't expecting this all so suddenly. I then switch on the tape recorder. Perfect answer, no hesitation, no stammering, no nothing. Cool as cool can be. Then things about my family and stuff. Then the question that I think they gave weightage to, 'coz they stressed it a lot, "Are you willing to work anywhere during the training". "Yes sir, I love travelling and seeing noew places". And then the question that could have screwed it up, "Why do you wan to join ABC?" Now how do I answer that, I just heard of the company a week ago, I don't know what they do, by God, all I know is what ABC stands for. Now as all this is going through my mind and my processor just starts thinking up a brilliant answer, he looks me in the eye and says "You don't have an answer, right?". Now for a moment I am cought unaware, like a novice swimmer who realizes for the first time how high 8 metres really is. But I risk it and shrug honestly. Fow more questions, and later we shake hands and I leave.
Before I can even fathom it all, I get a call, and its urgent. Now for purposes of not wanting to deviate much from the topic at hand to an altogether different and probably more interesting topic, I will not divulge any details. All I will say is, 2 hours later, in the middle of a tense SU meeting.. well not tense but one with a potential for serious consequences, I get a call, no message this time. I got in. I smile to myself, look around and tell the nearest fellow in the ear, "I got a job" and the meeting carries on.
Now what I wanted to do here is just share an experience. Not to show off my pressure handling ability, or my presence of mind or my good..(maybe weird) luck, or my writing skills :). No, the purpose is none of these, but if you do think I need to be applauded for these or any other aspect of my experience, do leave comments.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
General Secretary: Why? What? How?
Quite a lot of people have asked me one of these questions, multitude of times. Both before and after the elections. Thinking back I realize that it wasn't a well thought of decision. Yes! I admit it. I put everything at stake and that too for an election, wherein whether I won or lost, the rest of my BITSian CDC/UC life would have been nightmarish. It is a good thing that I couldn't think this clearly then :D
So why did I do it? I do have a bunch of prepared reasons to throw at your average interviewer, but I have to be honest here. It just felt like the right thing to do. That's it. It wasn't like I was convinced that I'd be the best there ever was, ever will be. Not that I didn't want that, but that's not the point. Was it ambition? Was it the the cliched "I want to change the system". To an extent yes.
The thing is one can never know for sure, in a situation like this. One cannot say whether one's convictions will fail, whether one will give in to temptation, whether one will be complacent. If you had asked me then, my answer would have been HELL NO! But if you had asked me then, whether after a year, I would remain true to myself, and I had given you an honest answer, it would be, "I hope not."
The point I want to make here is that no matter how good or how bad a person seems, one can never be sure whether he will change, whether he will be the best President/General Secretary, because he doesn't know it himself. He may be the best candidate, but the best post-holder?? You can't say. Now this is a property of democracy, that the person who seems most confident, most suitable to the people gets elected.
So finally it just comes down to convictions.
On a lighter note:
The irony of the whole matter is that I had initially wanted to contest for President and then due to unprecedented circumstances, I withdrew and filed for General Secretary. But the most eventful, the most testing period of my tenure was when I was a stand-in President during the election time.
Another weird thing is that for the first month I was handling both these posts. Later after the elections, Ravi Teja was handling both, and now when finally things seem to have settled, Ravi gets injured and Vijay handles both. Is there a jinx that I'm not aware of here?
So why did I do it? I do have a bunch of prepared reasons to throw at your average interviewer, but I have to be honest here. It just felt like the right thing to do. That's it. It wasn't like I was convinced that I'd be the best there ever was, ever will be. Not that I didn't want that, but that's not the point. Was it ambition? Was it the the cliched "I want to change the system". To an extent yes.
The thing is one can never know for sure, in a situation like this. One cannot say whether one's convictions will fail, whether one will give in to temptation, whether one will be complacent. If you had asked me then, my answer would have been HELL NO! But if you had asked me then, whether after a year, I would remain true to myself, and I had given you an honest answer, it would be, "I hope not."
The point I want to make here is that no matter how good or how bad a person seems, one can never be sure whether he will change, whether he will be the best President/General Secretary, because he doesn't know it himself. He may be the best candidate, but the best post-holder?? You can't say. Now this is a property of democracy, that the person who seems most confident, most suitable to the people gets elected.
So finally it just comes down to convictions.
On a lighter note:
The irony of the whole matter is that I had initially wanted to contest for President and then due to unprecedented circumstances, I withdrew and filed for General Secretary. But the most eventful, the most testing period of my tenure was when I was a stand-in President during the election time.
Another weird thing is that for the first month I was handling both these posts. Later after the elections, Ravi Teja was handling both, and now when finally things seem to have settled, Ravi gets injured and Vijay handles both. Is there a jinx that I'm not aware of here?
Friday, July 18, 2008
The purpose of life
What exactly is the purpose of life. Why do we exist? This question recently came to my mind while watching Discovery the other day. It was about the BIG BANG. The scientists made it seem as though all the conditions for life on earth were just a chance affair, the sight tipping of matter over anti matter, energy converting to mass, planet earth at just the right distance and just the right temperature. So from what I understand, science says that life just came about, as in there were chances that it wouldn't have.. but lucky for us, it did.
So what is it that makes us different from say a rock or a puddle of water. Even they are basically made up of atoms and molecules. We are fortunate enough to have just the right amounts of that stuff in just the right places. So when you talk of such a large number of 'just the right amounts', such a large number of seemingly chance events one cannot stop oneself from thinking that there is something divine about life. I believe that there are no coincidences, everything happens for a reason. So the engineer in me, albeit not a really good one began to question, why the FUCK are we here? :)
And I specifically dug a little deeper to ask myself about us humans, as a blog of the purpose of the jellyfish or the lion tailed macaque would surely fall on deaf ears(or blind eyes).
So we humans who consider ourselves to be the the ultimate survivors, the top of the food chain, the final product of evolution, with large brains(...though this claim seems inapplicable to most people, it is in fact true). So why do we exist?
So I thought that one must delve deeper into what effect we have on the earth. Just as finding the purpose of an ingredient, requires comparison with a control curry (prepared exactly but without the ingredient in question) I tried to think critically about what effect one average human has on the curry of the cosmos. By average I mean, a typpical typical guy,(joke to be understood only by EEEites of BITS-Pilani before 2006 batch) about 30-35, office goer, with many friends, not too affluent but able to subsist, with a family, living alone, friends ad relatives visit often, wife, divorced once, with 2 kids, one from previous wife.... you get the picture right?
I realized that this guy is useless, I mean seriously, critically speaking he could well have not been born, and nobody would give a tiny rat's ass. He is born, lives, has friends and family, he loves, he hates, and one day he dies. What I mean to say is, his life has meaning only in the eyes of others like him, as in humans. He is incapable of causing any substantial change whatsoever.
So I upgraded from the average Joe to someone we humans consider one of our best. Say Bill Gates(for his philanthropy..mind you) or Mother Teresa. These personalities too aren't any different. Sure, they made a big difference to humanity. But the argument remains.
This, I argued was not so for others, that is other fauna. For one, they all play a role in balancing the ecosystem(we(continuing the argument) have done anything but that), and more importantly, they are not conscious enough to really care or even understand the meaning of purpose (this conclusion may remind most of a very famous Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strip). So basically the discussion is moo.
Now this line of thought was getting very depressing! :( We're all useless! So I know why we shouldn't be here, but that still doesn't tell me why we're here. And I'm already so far along into my post, that half of my readers, will have pledged never to return. But I've come so far along and I'm not gonna back out. The scroll will be mine, I will discover the secret ingredient.
Next I thought about what we humans usually run around for. Fame, money, lust, love, success, comfort are what come to mind. But these too were a dead end. We all know that famous people needn't be happy or satisfied, there are too many examples and way too many movies about this. Money, I don't even need to talk about. Nor about lust. Both are shallow and hollow and don't bring in happiness or satisfaction by themselves.
Love was a serious contender, but doesn't really fit the bill. Take my example, I haven't found real love in my life. This is not to say I'm a loner, who hates everyone. I have the most loving parents and some ammazing great friends, but the kind of 'soul-mate'ish, made for each other, Jaane tu waala pyar, I don't have yet. But that doesn't mean my life has no meaning.
Success too doesn't satisfy. Anil Ambani may be more successful than the fourth son of a tribal farmer in Andaman, but that doesn't mean he's happier. What is success, but the feeling of achievement, and that is not restricted to people who have the power to change the stock market to suit their needs.
Comfort also crumples, under scrutiny. Now this deep search got me even more depressed. And coupled with the previous depression, I became one sad guy.
So I gave up, and decided to take a walk. It started to drizzle, and the cool rain drops felt wonderful. After a while it rained harder, but I kept walking. I noticed everyone running for cover, and I was puzzled. Same rain, same water, but different perspectives. It then dawned upon me.
There is no 'one' purpose in life, no 'one' thing that makes us happy, or gives our lives meaning. We all need to go about life and do things that need to be done, just because they need to be done. Not just because they may or may not make us happy. A soldier knows that he may die, that killing another man will bring him sadness, that war itself sucks, but he still does it, because he has to.
The things we do need not necessarily make us happy... meaning that happiness too isn't the ultimate goal. However if you feel that yo want to be happy, and that earning money gives you that, go ahead and do it. If you feel that you need to do something bad, or against your conscience, just do it. But only if it needs and begs to be done. Now this is the hard part. We all know what needs to be done. But we often ignore this calling, because we think too much about it. We weigh its risks and benefits, and often decide against it.
The confusion between what we want and what we need, is what makes us take so many wrong decisions. We often do things, without really thinking about why we're doing them, and we don't do a whole lot of things that need to be done.
Tony Stark first thought that making weapons, and sleeping with sexy journalists made him happy and satisfied, but he realizes that he needs to stop making weapons and make an Iron Man suit. Now wasn't that a purposeful ending?
THE PURPOSE OF OUR LIVES, IS TO FIND THE PURPOSE OF OUR LIVES, EVERYDAY OF OUR LIVES, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY TO FULFILL THAT PURPOSE.
So what is it that makes us different from say a rock or a puddle of water. Even they are basically made up of atoms and molecules. We are fortunate enough to have just the right amounts of that stuff in just the right places. So when you talk of such a large number of 'just the right amounts', such a large number of seemingly chance events one cannot stop oneself from thinking that there is something divine about life. I believe that there are no coincidences, everything happens for a reason. So the engineer in me, albeit not a really good one began to question, why the FUCK are we here? :)
And I specifically dug a little deeper to ask myself about us humans, as a blog of the purpose of the jellyfish or the lion tailed macaque would surely fall on deaf ears(or blind eyes).
So we humans who consider ourselves to be the the ultimate survivors, the top of the food chain, the final product of evolution, with large brains(...though this claim seems inapplicable to most people, it is in fact true). So why do we exist?
So I thought that one must delve deeper into what effect we have on the earth. Just as finding the purpose of an ingredient, requires comparison with a control curry (prepared exactly but without the ingredient in question) I tried to think critically about what effect one average human has on the curry of the cosmos. By average I mean, a typpical typical guy,(joke to be understood only by EEEites of BITS-Pilani before 2006 batch) about 30-35, office goer, with many friends, not too affluent but able to subsist, with a family, living alone, friends ad relatives visit often, wife, divorced once, with 2 kids, one from previous wife.... you get the picture right?
I realized that this guy is useless, I mean seriously, critically speaking he could well have not been born, and nobody would give a tiny rat's ass. He is born, lives, has friends and family, he loves, he hates, and one day he dies. What I mean to say is, his life has meaning only in the eyes of others like him, as in humans. He is incapable of causing any substantial change whatsoever.
So I upgraded from the average Joe to someone we humans consider one of our best. Say Bill Gates(for his philanthropy..mind you) or Mother Teresa. These personalities too aren't any different. Sure, they made a big difference to humanity. But the argument remains.
This, I argued was not so for others, that is other fauna. For one, they all play a role in balancing the ecosystem(we(continuing the argument) have done anything but that), and more importantly, they are not conscious enough to really care or even understand the meaning of purpose (this conclusion may remind most of a very famous Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strip). So basically the discussion is moo.
Now this line of thought was getting very depressing! :( We're all useless! So I know why we shouldn't be here, but that still doesn't tell me why we're here. And I'm already so far along into my post, that half of my readers, will have pledged never to return. But I've come so far along and I'm not gonna back out. The scroll will be mine, I will discover the secret ingredient.
Next I thought about what we humans usually run around for. Fame, money, lust, love, success, comfort are what come to mind. But these too were a dead end. We all know that famous people needn't be happy or satisfied, there are too many examples and way too many movies about this. Money, I don't even need to talk about. Nor about lust. Both are shallow and hollow and don't bring in happiness or satisfaction by themselves.
Love was a serious contender, but doesn't really fit the bill. Take my example, I haven't found real love in my life. This is not to say I'm a loner, who hates everyone. I have the most loving parents and some ammazing great friends, but the kind of 'soul-mate'ish, made for each other, Jaane tu waala pyar, I don't have yet. But that doesn't mean my life has no meaning.
Success too doesn't satisfy. Anil Ambani may be more successful than the fourth son of a tribal farmer in Andaman, but that doesn't mean he's happier. What is success, but the feeling of achievement, and that is not restricted to people who have the power to change the stock market to suit their needs.
Comfort also crumples, under scrutiny. Now this deep search got me even more depressed. And coupled with the previous depression, I became one sad guy.
So I gave up, and decided to take a walk. It started to drizzle, and the cool rain drops felt wonderful. After a while it rained harder, but I kept walking. I noticed everyone running for cover, and I was puzzled. Same rain, same water, but different perspectives. It then dawned upon me.
There is no 'one' purpose in life, no 'one' thing that makes us happy, or gives our lives meaning. We all need to go about life and do things that need to be done, just because they need to be done. Not just because they may or may not make us happy. A soldier knows that he may die, that killing another man will bring him sadness, that war itself sucks, but he still does it, because he has to.
The things we do need not necessarily make us happy... meaning that happiness too isn't the ultimate goal. However if you feel that yo want to be happy, and that earning money gives you that, go ahead and do it. If you feel that you need to do something bad, or against your conscience, just do it. But only if it needs and begs to be done. Now this is the hard part. We all know what needs to be done. But we often ignore this calling, because we think too much about it. We weigh its risks and benefits, and often decide against it.
The confusion between what we want and what we need, is what makes us take so many wrong decisions. We often do things, without really thinking about why we're doing them, and we don't do a whole lot of things that need to be done.
Tony Stark first thought that making weapons, and sleeping with sexy journalists made him happy and satisfied, but he realizes that he needs to stop making weapons and make an Iron Man suit. Now wasn't that a purposeful ending?
THE PURPOSE OF OUR LIVES, IS TO FIND THE PURPOSE OF OUR LIVES, EVERYDAY OF OUR LIVES, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY TO FULFILL THAT PURPOSE.
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