Can anyone find my nerves?

I have a project presentation in exactly an hour. The Final One. My PPO, next year's CRP, CV hike, everything depends on these 20 minutes. It can decide my future. There will be no looking back from now on. 10 weeks on non-stop slogging comes down to this! I can feel the nervous tension in the air. My fellow interns are rehearsing and taking prints and timing themselves and everything.

I am blogging.

I am not worried if I'll exceed time limit, if I'll stumble and stutter or if I turn out to be clueless in front of the VP of the division. I'm worried that I am not feeling nervous. I have felt more nervous during Pondi's class tests, for heaven's sake! Hence I am calling out,

"Where the hell are my nerves?"

If you find them please give me a call, if not just call up and wish me. Lets see what happens.

Happy Birthday!

My last few hours as a twenty-year old, I guess its time to sit back and just list down a couple of things I learnt this year. I’m guessing you (in most cases) would be past this age, (Ha! Losers), but what do you know, you might still benefit from it!

1. How to ride a bike! (I’m quite an expert)
2. One needs to stay away from people, if they don’t make one happy.
3. Geeks are the most fun people in the world!
4. Drunk people are extremely funny to watch, especially at 4 am on a wetnite.
5. PJs are enjoyable only to those who crack them and their girlfriends. (ahem!)
6. One tends to speak like another one, if one spends hajaar time with the other one.
7. I can still dance.
8. With experience, one can get up at 8.50 and make it to class (at 9) well in time.
9. Air Deccan completely sucks.
10. Your first salary/stipend changes the way you look at malls and brands.
11. One pack of potato chips is equal to 1 hour in the gym.
12. You can get away with extra luggage on a flight, if you can make Puss-like face.
13. Linux rocks, especially Shisen-Sho.
14. There are 20 different ways to make maggi more delicious, especially late at night.
15. Cheese cake is just unbeatable.
16. Northies just can’t make sambhar.
17. You can have the best year of your life and the most painful one at the same time.
18. Case study analyses aren’t as bad as they sound.
19. There are unlimited ways to pass time in office, even if the internet is restricted.
20. Its amazing to be the youngest in the batch.
21. I can actually sing!
22. Ctrl C + Ctrl V is the solution to half the B-school problems, unfortunately.
23. Coming to XL was the best decision I ever took.
24. Time flies, when you are having the most fun.
25. Most night outs aren’t for assignments, but for arbit conversations with friends.

Things I still haven’t managed to learn
1. How to tie my shoe lace.
2. The importance of Business Research.
3. The art of stress-free shopping.
4. Which is left and which is right, without my watch.
5. How to survive the one-way fundae in Bangalore.

Size does matter!

I had heard that some 76.93% Americans are overweight. I had also seen parts of some obese Americans on TV, you can’t expect them to completely fit on screen! I just assumed that all the cheesy pizzas and McDonald burgers had finally conquered their race and I flipped channels. Little did I know that one day, it would come back to bite me, when I least expected it.

Different teams at my office occasionally get team T-shirts from the department and I really liked them on the others. I used to wonder when my team would get them and two days back, when I finally got an e-mail "requesting" me to accept the T-shirt, I almost fainted with joy! The next page asked me to specify the size I wanted and very innocently mentioned that these T-shirts were standard American sizes.

Now, I would be kidding myself if I even thought of 'small'. Not that I am 'large', but at 20, I am quite err.. fit. (internal guffaw!) I graduated to 'medium' two years ago and I am struggling to stay there. So I naturally selected medium and in the next page I was informed that I could collect the T-shirt the next day.

So at the scheduled time, I walk up to the guy in charge, sign on the sheet and pick it up. "Here it is, the coveted piece of cloth", I thought as I rolled it down and what I saw, left my lower jaw painfully away from the rest of my face. Was it supposed to be joke? Three full Sumanas could fit in there and could probably live comfortable lives. Medium? For what, a hippo? I regained what amount of composure I had refused to let go and asked the guy if I could get another shirt, small if possible. He showed me an-already-booked 'small' one and frankly there was not much difference. Resigned, I have to decided to sleep in this T-shirt when I'm 40 and well, fuller.

What’s with the Americans, seriously? They can't make these standards universal for heaven's sake! If they are screwing around with their lifestyle, why ask us to suffer too? Come here to India and look around, you'll find paunches on every alternate person, but they wear 'large' clothes, not a standard small. Its one thing to make your consumers feel nice about themselves, but blatantly lying? Not fair!

Coincidently, I today went to a mall to shop for a much needed pair of jeans. I walked in to one of the branded counters and asked for a size $@ (obviously I won't reveal that!) and the guy had the nerve to tell me that his company does not make jeans that size. I checked again to see if the brand was Chinese or something, who wouldn't make size $@? Do they expect the entire world to be skimpy? I moved to another counter and which thankfully had a few pieces in my size. I tried them on, and wow! They were really loose! Finally after a couple of trials I walked out in a size that I had absolutely given up any hope of fitting in to, ever! I actually got in to a size 30! Yay!

Damn, these Americans are creepy! For them, it is normal to gain weight, but a huge thing to lose it though. If an American lost some 100 odd pounds in three odd years, he/she gets to come on Oprah (one guy even got a Porsche), but when Indians lose weight they usually end up with grooms. Bah!

Get off your couches, get some exercise! Do everyday things! My office, I guess like most other MNCs, does not have a staircase! We only need to use elevators! No wonder their idea of ‘small’, is like a full fledged swimming pool! (which reminds me of Ana Ivanovic, ok… deviation alert!). If nothing, have more sex!! Get thinner! (This advice holds for an average American, not an almost invisible Paris Hilton. There is no way she can get any thinner! Or have more sex, for that matter.)

Shady American companies, size 30 it seems! I guess one of them must have read my request in my previous post!

Koffee with Rohan*

A few weeks ago, I was having coffee with an old friend of mine, Rohan* at office. I had just found out that he too was working there and I mailed him, we decided to catch up. In fact, I'm glad we did because we hadn't spoken to each other since we left college (a year back).

After the usual, How-are-things-at-home and I-heard-he-broke-up-with-her, he asked me the question I was waiting for. "So, How is life at XLRI?" I immediately started a rant on how its the best place in the world, the most fun experience ever and how we somehow land up with fat packages at the end of it. He took me over the moon and reminded me how I was always the most brilliant person, I totally deserved to get in there and that he always knew I would make it.

Now, I don't understand when people say they don't like flattery, because its the best thing that I ever get to listen to. It lifts me up when people say nice things to me and for my own listening pleasure, I tend to believe them. In fact, I boast of modesty only in being modest. So, I nodded along, as listened to him call me a genius and how I should give his little sister career guidance.

Thats when a colleague of his walked in and my friend immediately called out to him.

"Hey, Rahul!* Come here!"
"(approaching) Tell me."
"Remember, I always used to talk about this friend of mine, Sumana? She topped my college and she got in to XLRI when she was 19! Remember??"
"(clueless, irritated, yet confidently) No!"
"Oh! (hesitantly) Meet Sumana" (pointing at me)

I don't know who was most embarrassed at that point. I got up to shake hands with him, but we never actually got to doing that. The three of us somehow found other people at the cafeteria interesting and hence started looking at them to avoid further awkwardness.

Ah! So much for what I thought was a good day for my ego. I'm still feeling down, I could do with some buttering. Anybody else has something nice to say about me?

Disclaimer: "The story you have just heard is true. The names have been changed to protect the guilty."

'Intern'al issues

Ah! Just another Sunday morning I thought to myself, as I woke up to the persistent alarm ringing next to me. But as I rubbed my eyes and sat up, wondering why I had kept an alarm in the first place, it flashed. Damn! I need to go to office today, at 8 in the morning!

It felt weird walking into my office in jeans. But who cared! The 15 km ride on my bike had been pleasant and quick, and I walked in to my room feeling pleasant. I had a good feeling about my project presentation, as I waited for my manager's phone call. She called on time and the first thing she said to me was "I have a plane to catch in a couple of hours, Can we rush through this, please?"

Well, not a great start, for a presentation that was planned to stress on the details. I began, thinking if I rushed she probably would miss any hidden flaws. The second thing she said to me "Don't take this personally, Sumona. But your accent is a bit of a problem. Would you mind going a bit slow? I don't understand anything that you say!" I have a problematic accent! What would you call 'Sumona' then?

So far it hadn't gone well, she made me skip all the parts that I believed were results of the pure genius in me. I went on anyway. At the end of it, (rather she cut me short), and said "Sumona, there are a few loopholes in your project. With the given information, you have done quite a great job! But I'd really like it if you were more detailed and did a deeper analysis."

In the split second of silence that followed, several thoughts ran through my head. I had put in a great deal of effort! She never guided me in the first place! Did I really think that an internship would be this easy! Why couldn't she just accept what I had done! If nothing, couldn't she consider the fact that I was in office, early Sunday morning!

"So Sumona, you can take another week to work on the project. Can you present again, same time, next Sunday?"

All I can say is that I was glad this presentation was on the phone. Glad that she couldn't see my face at that precise moment. Tough work for another week, Sumona.

Alter blogo

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine. ~Robert C. Gallagher

Well, following the above said wise words, I have changed around a lot of things on my blog. The template, the frequency of writing, the links, the side bar blah blah. I have even brought out new lists and what I call "Pic of the week". Hopefully I'll be able to keep this updated regularly.

Do let me know what you think of this!

Big innings...

June 2006
A final admission in to one of the biggest business schools in India, new friends, a new place, an MBA, I had so much to look forward to. But the nagging thought in my head reminded me that it would not be easy staying apart for two entire years from my parents, my bike, my room and a thousand other things I was addicted to. I was so going to miss home, I wondered if I'd be ok staying away.

June 2007
An impending end to a summer internship at Bangalore, my home city, and another year waiting at XLRI. I feel terrible that I just have a year to go, after which I need to come home. I yearn for the stale mess food, the late night maggi, the sleepless nights and all the things that make life normal at XL. I so miss the place and I don't need to wonder. I am definitely not ok staying away from XLRI.

Yes, I am the same person. But things change, you know...