A year gone by!

Today Alexander Pushkin, Sukarno, Björn Borg, Steve Vai celebrate their birthdays, Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj became a King, YMCA was formed, Tetris was launched, NBA was created, Battle of Normandy started, Venus crossed the Sun, the world will shift to IPV6 from IPV4 and I completed one year at Tata Motors Limited. One amazing year spent at Mumbai, Johannesburg, making new friends, meeting new people and going to so many amazing places. Hope the journey continues forever :)

This was my status message in Facebook on 6th June, 2012.  It has been one year since I joined the dream job that I had mentioned in my last post. It has been over a year that I've not blogged as well. I would accept at the outset that it is not because I've a super busy job. I had a lot of expectations in this job when I decided to select this over the OTHER Tata job that I had got after my Summer Internship at Tata Steel Ltd. This blog entry will also be an answer to a lot of my pals who remind me each time we meet that I had left a better paying job at Tata Steel. Tata Steel had been an excellent company and I had the fortune of working with very good people while I was working there, but Tata Motors is an Auto company where innovations like the Nano and also powerful image making products like the Safari. Post acquisition of Jaguar - Land Rover, it has some of the most beautiful machines that men has created. An example of that can be seen in this ad:

 

All this being said, now I work for Tata Motors Limited for over an year. A year that took me to a lot of places, made me experience a lot of things that I dreamed of and some which even were beyond my dreamworld. I joined at Mumbai for a month long induction that took me through the various stages of getting accustomed to being in a CORPORATE culture than the relaxed life one had in a B-School. Corporate world, now it sounds funny, because I still have the fun I had in college, albeit the people around me have changed. I'm lucky to be in Mumbai which is where half the classroom of any B-School gets placed. I had a lot of fun in the initial one month, mainly because of the location where we were accomodated during our induction - South Mumbai. It was amazing to be at a stone's throwaway from the best location in Mumbai called Marine Drive. I've spent a big part of my life in a coastal town and even now I say to my friends that a beach is not a great hangout place to goto. Marine drive is not even a beach, it is simply an artificial sea-wall built in the southern coast of Mumbai to prevent the water from coming into the town. But after 6 PM it lights up and gives you a simple but not isolated place to sit and gawk at the waves crashing onto the seawall. It is one of the best places to hangout with friends, have your share of looking at girls walking/jogging/running. Have a look and decide yourself if this is a beautiful place at night or not. I've spent atleast 10-20 nights chatting with friends till midnight and later in the night and the best thing about this place is that no cop, no moral cop will come and question you "kya kar raha hai be" even if it is 2AM in the night, no matter if the group consisted of more girls than guys.

Before I make someone feel that this post is gonna be a "I LOVE MUMBAI" piece like the one Pritish Nandy wrote in TOI blog, let me assure that it isn't so. So after a few weeks of spending each night at Marine Drive, chatting to new people who joined the job with you and go out to eat at all the amazing places in South Mumbai, we all got our projects. I got lucky in that regard and went on my 1st overseas trip(barring the short walk I had into Nepal while on a break to Darjeeling in my summer internship) to Johannesburg. The place was not having a great reputation, unless ofcourse you worked for the Mafia. People and websites started scaring me about the possibility of being mugged and even being killed for sums as little as $10(yeah, by then I was talking in $ and €).

Johannesburg or Joburg as the locals called it, is one of the best places I've visited. Yes, there were moments when I felt unsafe, there were people who scared the living hell out of me, but then I also loved the place a lot because of the amazing roads, the nice work culture of 8AM-5PM and most importantly because it had places where even Europe or US would've felt less opulent and at the same time had slums which were worser than the one's we see while landing at Mumbai airport. It was another country which had the dichotomy of having few rich men who held more wealth than the rest of the nation's population. It had a high percentage of people who were HIV positive and had no means to support themselves, so they indulged in theft, mugging and even murder. 

The city was a treat to watch from the air as I landed at 8AM on a cool morning at the end of July 2011. I was simply amazed at the lack of people on the ground and the speed at which vehicles were being driven. I saw trucks doing 100kmph with full load of 40-50 tons, even old people were driving cars older than me at speeds above 90 and the city had such an amazing road network. This is how I always will remember it:

 

The reason I loved the place most was because of the amazing roads. The whole country had  some of the best roads that I've ever driven on. Some dream surfaces like this:

I drove so much in this place that some days I had so much driving that I kept on driving even without stopping for a piss. I had an amazing time both in my work and in my free time. I was living alone and enjoying it. Technology made it possible for me to be in touch with my loved one's even when I was 1000's of kms away. I saw some of the best cars that men have been blessed with on the road on a daily basis;  lamborghini's, ferrari's, rolls, buggati's, bentley's. You name it and I had seen it on the road in Johannesburg. Even had fun with a few of them while driving my 7 year old Indigo, trying to keep pace with a prosche boxster after a signal and feeling amazing when the chick driving the boxster couldn't find the right gear and I got ahead for a second. 

It was a place where I drove more than 10000 kms and totally loved the 5 months I spent over there. I came back to Mumbai and took up my new role from 2nd of January. It wasn't sales, it wasn't marketing; it wasn't anything that I had ever dreamt of when I joined TML. It was a role that even now I'm trying to understand and the less told about it the better. I had a lot of good days when I've met a lot of people who are the big names in the auto world, I've had the pleasure of visiting facilities where some of the best vehicles of the country have rolled off from.

In addition to all this I had a big promotion in my personal life, I got engaged on 19th March, 2012 and since then it has been an amazing journey for me on the personal front. I've been the butt of a lot of jokes from my friends who keep telling me how much freedom I'll lose once married and what all I've lost already by being engaged. But I simply enjoy the feeling of being in a relationship and I somehow feel better. I don't know what exactly it is, or which exact moment it is. But when I'm with her I simply have a great time, I yearn to spend more time with her and most importantly I look forward to spending the rest of my life with my wife.......

International Suit Up Day 2010

It is October 13th, 2010 and it is International Suit Up Day 2010

SUIT UP in honor of Barney Stinson, the suit-wearing womanizer we all love. If you don’t know who Barney is … ask your friends, they will tell you.

SUIT UP because suits are AWESOME, even if you don’t like Barney.

Things to do on International Suit Up Day
• Wear a suit to work
• Wear a suit to university
• Wear a suit in hospital
• Wear a suit to school
• Buy a suit
• If you see someone without a suit, tell them to go home and suit up, or convince them to watch How I Met Your Mother
• Drink in a suit – if you can find a bar called McLaren’s, drink there
• Party in a suit
• Play laser tag in a suit…. What up?

If you don’t have a suit, you’d better start looking for one right now.

The Perfect Summer Internship

Hello and welcome to Abhijith's Internship Experience. Get ready to be swept for a crazy ride filled with gigantic excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and an ungodly amount of leg/butt cramps from sitting and staring at a laptop all day......well if you haven’t immediately closed your web browser after reading that exciting introduction, I can tell that you really want to learn about the MBA internship experience (or facebook is not open in your office and you need to kill time somewhere else).

I am into the last fortnight of my summer internship here at Tata Steel, and I have begun to consider the things that I wanted to have accomplished before I leave here on June 12th.

Notwithstanding the current (read BAD, but improving) market conditions in which we have found ourselves, it can still be difficult to find perspective on the "goal" of an MBA internship. Therefore, in the spirit of blogging and to make my friends feel better about my chances after I finish here and try to find a job, I have decided to filter my experiences here in the context of "a dream summer internship".

Without further ado, here are my top 10 ingredients of a perfect summer internship.

1. Work somewhere you can make a difference. It should come as no surprise that if you can't contribute materially, it's very unlikely that you or your employer will enjoy your attempts to "drive value and create synergies throughout the value chain" (insert some other MBAisque quote here). I took an offer I knew I could contribute to, and have been busy contributing since day 1. Trust me I am :)

2. Work somewhere that is challenging. No problem here either. I am working in a role that I do have some relation to(industrial products), but in a completely new industry. Without this ingredient one could get bored... not an option for an over-achieving B-school student.

3. Work for a firm that will add value to your resume. Again, check. Tata Steel certainly undergoing a test of its business model and maybe posting losses, but Tata is still Tata and their name is definitely a strength to my resume.

4. Clarify your role and responsibilities before accepting. This is something I could have done better one, because clearing up any miscommunications makes it a lot easier to "hit the ground running".

5. Don't be a jerk. Many of your peers will work for lesser-known firms, while still others will work for bigger and more prestigious firms. Who CARES! Never forget that many of the worlds richest individuals left B-School without an offer and then started their own firms. You never know who will be successful and who won't, so be cool to everyone.

6. Have fun. Do it while being true to the company that took the risk to hire you as an intern. Having fun means a lot and certainly the two months of internship are a relief from the stress and workload of a B-School. Go on trips, have weekend parties, meet old friends.

7. Network more with the people whom you work with. This could be with your guide, with other people working in the firm and certainly be good friends with the interns from other colleges. You can never tell when you'll need to make a call to one of those guys.

8. Look forward to getting more work. This is important because if you don't look forward to doing work, it does show on your attitude in the office and the guide and others might notice this as a sign of weakness in you.

9. Be smart in your analysis. Try to impress the audience, not by using snazzy animations in your presentations, but by having done good work in the field and then analyzing the data you've got. The analysis is as important as the data collection; as one project guide said the hard work is in getting the data, but the smart work is in doing the analysis. So be a smart intern in addition to being a hard-working intern.

10. Get a job offer. No matter how awesome you feel now, the job market is a strange beast and can change at any moment. Do everything you can to head back to school with a future job locked down. This is an essential ingredient of the "perfect" MBA internship.

If you collect all 10 of these ingredients, you will head back to school with the quiet satisfaction that comes from a job well done and enjoy a 2nd year much better than your first...

At least that's what I'm telling myself right now :-)

My Generation

Don’t make someone a priority, if you are just an option......

I absolutely love this saying that I cannot find an author to give credit. It rings true everyday of my life. I have used this saying more than a couple of times in my GTalk status messages and also in my facebook, twitter and orkut pages. But till today I hadn't given serious thought to this line. You might ask what happened so much today to make me think about this sad fact of life. I believe it hasn't been a smooth sailing for anyone in their love-life, who ever says that they've the perfect love story, are either lying or are acting in a movie.

Now coming to the saying- Whether they are friends, family or a special someone they really can’t be that special if you are just an option in their life. I feel that people do make you an option in life, especially in your work, your college(at times it does feel wrong), your social circle and so on. It has been the norm in the fast moving world that we live in. I still remember the term Friendship of Convenience when it was told to me by a teacher at the TIME centre I had attended. He told about people being friends for just the sake of using eachother when they need something. People who think like:

How can I use him? He is well connected, financially well off, resourceful, he is a doctor, lawyer. Build and maintain the relationship, some day he could be useful. Usefulness goes, friendship goes.

I hadn't got seen much of FOC(not pronounced as the F word, but just F.O.C) in my life until I joined my work and their again in my training programme the company HR head told about the same term. He rather gave a 30 slide PPT on how to do the same quoted lines I've given above. But finally he told the term Social Networking, rather than FOC.

I had heard about networking since I am a part of the Orkut era, the Facebook generation, the guys who wake up and tweet their status and check their mails before going for a piss and will even F**K for the next best thing. Now when my generation decides to make friends it is a simple step. There are a thousand different places where you can meet people, maybe real, maybe virtual. But anyways you will always find people; more so because you live in a world with 6.6 Billion people. But still people will be happy to talk to some unknown on a website rather than with their next door neighbour or even to the people living in their homes.

There is a saying "my enemy's enemy is my friend." Common enemy goes, friendship also goes. True Friendship cannot survive without the element of mutual respect and that I feel is the one thing that lacks in these ONLINE, always there for you friends :).

I am not pointing fingers at anyone, I am very much part of this generation, I get happy when people say they "LIKE" my stupid messages in Facebook, or when someone RT's my tweets; why go that far, I ADORE the one's who comment on my blog and for me and my generation this has become a way of attaining social recognition, of having a status that they won't get otherwise. Especially fat guys like me who would not be able to make it to any happening parties or be invited to movies or hang outs because of their looks or because they can't dance that well and so on and on........

Now I feel I've digressed quite a huge bit away from the saying at the start the blog; so let me just FOCUS and get back to the point. (MBA has been doing its good bits to me too, don't you see the jargon's I've used till now :D). So I was talking about someone making you an option when you make them or rather plan to make them a priority. I feel that in the family life the FOC should just F*** off and you should have sincerity in your relationships. I can't imagine a father having a caring relation with his children only so that he thinks they treat him well when he's old. Going by the present way MY generation is going ahead I don't think even if we care for our kids they will take care of us when we're dying. Maybe this fear is making my generation to run more after the all elusive MONEY.

I still remember my dad's words when I had told him that I want to quit my job and go for an MBA, he was shouting into the phone that I am mad to leave such a well paying job and I don't realise the value of a government job. It is true, my generation doesn't know the value of a government job. Even after working in a government company I feel that I would do good in a private firm because their I will get recognised for my work. Its true that private firms reward people who show dedication and usually in govt. firms and departments good dedication means trouble for the person.

But then when I joined my course in July and in the discussions in class when people diss about government jobs and the work culture and how corrupt the officers are and that if the country is allowed to run by private firms then we'd beat US in a matter of years and all that wonderful ideas go around. Only the handful of people who've worked in govt. firms and have led a non-corrupt, non-maligned career(albeit short) will disagree and try to persuade that NOT ALL the officers are like that(heck I too was in that category a few months back, so how can I agree??).

My generation takes pride in the discussions and dialogues that we all carry out, but still we either never vote, or never care to know who wins the elections. As far as we are concerned it is always one corrupt guy to another, one uneducated fool to another and one idiot to another. But like the Tata Tea campaign I ask isn't it time to wake up and do something about it?

But then I myself am not doing anything about it other than proudly showing my finger off about the vote I cast, then why will anyone else do anything about it??

PS: Title credited to The Who for their wonderful song - My Generation.

*Disclaimer: I am being overly emotional tonight. These are the rantings of a person with absolutely nothing fun to do right now. And instead of getting studies done, is making non-sense blogs.

It happened to me..

I've been not very active in the online world since last week; the reason being I've been going to duty in B Shift since 15th of this month. It was my last request to my boss as I wanted to sleep peacefully(*till 10 AM) during the last fortnight of my life as maintenance engineer. Ofcourse I can't tell him that I wanted to sleep, so my reason was "To enable better transition of knowledge to the guy who's come in to fill my spot, he should come in general duty(8AM-5PM) and I'll assist him in B shift(2-10PM)". So I was going to the office the last few days with books, newspapers, magazines and what not to keep me busy after 7 PM, as most of the jobs are complete by sundown and even if there are jobs continuing they usually don't require my physical presence at the work site. So I just goto my office(if you remember the pics from previous posts you'd know) and pull out the reading material I brought and go over it. In the last few days thanks to B shift I've managed to read half of "Love in the time of Cholera"; a book I've kept with me for so long, but couldn't get to read. I also took my net browsing thingy to the office and used to sit in the planning office and chat with people/read blogs/scrap on orkut and what not.

Coming to the point, today i was supposed to go in General duty because of the reason that am participating in Mahaquizzer 2009 from Bhubaneshwar and so I have to go in the evening train and stay there overnight. I ofcourse didn't tell my boss about this, the reason I presented before him was that both me and my replacement have our weekly-off's on sunday. So if we both take leave on sunday then no one will look after the plant activities on sunday(*you see plant comes first, even if its a BIG quiz). My boss was happy with my dedication to work even on the last weekend I was working and sanctioned the change of shift without much fuss.

So I was to getup and go at 8 AM to duty today. I was watching 27 Dresses, a romantic comedy, yesterday in HBO past midnight and it was 1 AM when I slept. I setup 2 alarms on my phone and 1 more in my roommate's phone. Today morning I got up hearing the hooter which sounds at the beginning and end of each shift. I was stunned to see that the table clock(a digital clock given free by some supplier as a courtesy gift after a long seminar on bearings) was showing the time as 08:02. I jumped out of my bed and ran to the toilet, didn't bother about other things but started brushing my teeth furiously, cursing Nokia company for making incompetent phones which can't even sound an alarm on time.

I finished brushing in record time of 1 minute 30 seconds and then took my clothes from the hangar and started to put them on, when I realised that my phone doesn't have sufficient battery charge to last the day. So I took the phone over to the charger which was on the table when my eye fell on the clock again. It showed 06:05. I was stunned AGAIN and to verify I checked the clock in my phone, then confirmed by checking my roomie's phone as well.

I cursed myself for this stupidity and was having a good laugh. By this time I was fully dressed and was going to wear my socks. I was laughing for a full minute before I started to undress and go back to bed. I called up a friend and was telling her all this. At first she must've thought "Why is this idiot making me getup this early" and it was clearly evident in her tone. But in the end she too had a good laugh about it and she said she's gonna get up and study. Then I tried my sister, but she conveniently ignored my calls and must be sleeping in her dreamy world now(hugging teddy I gifted her this birthday)

So moral of the story:Don't sleep too late and then get up earlier than you want to, it gives a THROBBING headache.

OMG its 7 AM, I need to go now!

Pagal Post

The below post is something i posted in PaGaLGuY.com in the IIFT final converts forum. Here's the original post link. Felt i should put it in my blog as well.

I personally feel good to have worked too the past 18 months. Coz i came to know a lot of things that i never knew as a fresher. One was regarding my knowledge in my subject and the most important was my skill of dealing with people. I worked(still working) in a chemical factory and there i never got the hi-fi life i dreamed. I dealt with people who're having little or no education but still masters in their craft. I feel its more difficult to deal with such people than with educated people. No offence to them, if they had better conditions when they grew up then am sure they'd have had a better career than me. I was more in the role of a facilitator, a sort of bridge between the top management which didn't deal with these workers directly, but used engineers like me to get the job done. I had lot of tough days, days when i thought why i chose this job instead of the software job i had got in Wipro. Each day i lamented about my decision to come here when some crisis happened in the factory. But then this enabled me to deal with crisis, one after the other over the past year i've learnt how to deal with problems that crop up without any notice. I feel the job has helped me know myself better. I feel more confident taking decisions.

Back in my college days the only such experience i had was when i was coordinator for my college's fest. That's the maximum exposure a small town guy like me could get in his college days. Those days i used to deal with people who're like minded, who're educated like me, who're having the same ideology; and i dealt with a few lakhs of rupees and that was a BIG thing for me back then. In my job i dealt with people who never got any extra incentive for doing a job in the night shift, and it was very very tough motivating them. In their eyes i was someone who earned a lot more than they ever will, just cause i did a few more years in college or school, when they were out earning a living. I dealt with equipment worth crores of rupees. I used to make purchases of machinery worth millions of dollars. I signed bills worth lakhs. I was 1st perturbed by the idea of people my dad's age or more calling me SIR. But i slowly gained their respect and they used to discuss with me more than just their factory problems. I became the young-guy-who-helps. I was invited to each and everyone of their functions, weddings, kids' birthdays and what not. But then I had a nagging boss who made me wanna quit this job each day. Even today while coming for lunch I was asked when i will be going by 4 men. They all had a sadness in their eyes when they spoke to me and had a pride in their face when they said "We'll tell the next batch that comes in that someone went for MBA from this office". I feel good about this fact. I feel good that i worked.

My friends in IIM's and other top colleges who got in the 1st time i wrote CAT were telling me how wrong they were to have entered without job-ex. Some of them struggled to get GREAT JOBS inspite of having excellent acad's(i mean 90+ all thru career), awesome extra currics and sports. I didn't say they didn't get jobs. They did get, but they never get the kind of DREAM jobs we hear about in the papers. So i feel good that i didn't get through any tests in my 1st and 2nd attempts and that i made it to IIFT this year. I hope to have a great 2 years ahead of me with batchmates like you.

Looking forward to it.

PS: This post isn't meant to counter anyone's stand or to demoralise anyone. But i thought i should say this out here.

iResign

Warning: This is a Looooooooooooong post and has a lot of me bitching about my boss and my work life in general. So read when you're in the worst of moods and best of free-time :)

Yes! I resigned from my job today. I had taken leave yesterday to work out on THE perfect resignation letter and searched google and a host of other career websites before getting onto something which was a mix from many good letters I saw. In short i copied from many and used my copy - paste skills to the best. I got to see a variety of letters; funny ones, short ones, to-the-point ones, one-up-your-@$$ ones and what not. I even went to read Satyam's Ramalinga Raju's resignation letter. In the search i found a few good ones too. Like Roosevelt's resignation letter, one-liner resignations, even those with abuses and what not!

One even had BLOGGING as its main theme. Couldn't help but posting it here.



The one-liner's were of the type

Dear Boss,

F**K You

Regards,

XXX

Or the best one i got online was:

MC,

Main Chala.

Tujhe jo ukhaadna hai ukhaad le,

XXX

PS: The above letter can be RIGHTLY understood only if you've a good knowledge of colloquial Hindi, especially what MC means :)


Even though i really wanted to write one like the two above, but finally i settled on what's given below:

To

The Executive Director

IFFCO Paradeep Unit

Through Proper Channel

30^th April 2009

Dear Sir,

Sub: Resignation from the services of IFFCO

I write this letter to tender my official resignation from IFFCO, as Senior Engineer (Mech) in Phosphoric Acid Plant, effective today, 30^st April 2009. I also inform you that I would be completing my one month notice period as required by the company policy.

I do this with a quintessential feeling of regret which is bound to come on leaving a wonderful organization as IFFCO and also with a feeling of joy, borne out of taking a new career path in pursuing higher education, i.e., MBA for the next two years.

My association with IFFCO since December 2007 has been a great learning experience and I am grateful to the entire organization and in particular PAP Staff and Workmen for their unrelenting support and understanding extended to me.

I do affirm of providing all possible assistance in my capacity to ensure a smooth knowledge transition, in keeping with the high standards of IFFCO.

Finally, this is to request you to kindly initiate the exit process so that I might be relieved of my duties by 31^st May 2009. I would like to thank one and all who have been a part of my IFFCO work life and would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to them.

Thanks & Regards,

Yours Truly,

Abhijith B

P No. 109231

Sr Engineer (Mech)

PAP Mechanical

Then in the morning I faced a lot of questions when i walked into my office. My office isn't the kind of office one would expect to get after a engineering degree. Its not the kind that one dreams of, not the greatest view, not the best of AC's, not the plushest of chairs. To cut the crap short i'll just put a pic of my office. Here it is:

A typical site office in a factory, but still not the norm, but a bit off colour. I walked in to see my boss, the chief manager sitting in the blue chair above and the shift engineer sitting in the black chair. Discussing about a breakdown that occurred in my section. I was then assigned the job taking making the pump ready by the evening and then i set about the task of finding what my technicians and workers were doing. Then i assigned various jobs to the people and went to the planning office which is more like an office with the AC, PC and cabins, files and stuff. There I took a print out of the letter I'd typed and marched into my Boss's office and gave it to him. He just glanced through it and was just reading and reading, not even asking me to sit. Well that's his usual style. He never asks me to sit when I go to his office. He quickly fires a lot of words and I scoot before he gets time to think what he said. This time he was just reading and reading. I remembered the words from my senior in the planning office who 1st saw the letter and told me to take a dictionary to my boss who's got a great vocabulary and is the best person when it comes to English, especially due to his Bimaru state background or his crude working culture which he learnt after working in a cement plant for 20 years.

Anyways he just kept on reading and then finally after 3 minutes and 21 seconds he asked me to come back after lunch and get it from him. I went out happily after the deed and then i was expecting to get a serious talk from either my boss, the paandi HOD i've, the GM Maintenance(who's the most vocal spokesperson of my company; about how great an organisation IFFCO is). But none of them seemed to bother that i was quitting my job. They just forwarded the letter to the next higher authority until it reached the Exec Director's table. He is on leave and I'm pretty sure he'd not care two hoots if i leave the company. For him I'm just a resource who planned to quit.

Truth is i feel bad that none of these people value my 18 month long stint in this place. It seems to me now that it was a wrong decision on my part to have taken up this job instead of the Wipro job I had. It is true that I loved some aspects of my job; like the good trips I had thanks to the job, the good times I had in the job, the bad days @ work.

But overall I hoped the people here cared for the work I did. This is the main reason I'm quitting my job, NOBODY appreciates the good things I do here. I feel leaving that my 18 month long work-life in the World's Largest Phosphoric Acid plant was a great experience.

Some snaps from my work life.

Overhauling a pump at 1 AM in the morning isn't something I loved to supervise.

That's SULPHURIC ACID flowing down the pipe, yeah the same H2SO4 you learnt about in school, only that it's 98% concentrated. Burnt a good shirt of mine once.

A gas cutting work under progress in a vessel. Was a fascination when I 1st saw these things.

The 1st thing you'll see when you visit Phos Acid Plant(PAP). It really is the world's largest and will be forever, coz no one's DUMB enough to make a single reactor plant with more than 2500 Metric Tonnes production per day. Mine's 2650 MT per day of 100% Phos acid.

This job will always have a special place in my heart, just like my 1st job. Hope the last month here will be a good time as well.

The New Me........

Check out the NEW me :)

Finally the long wait is over

Yes, the wait for getting into a prestigious institute for getting an MBA degree has culminated in my life with me securing admission to the MBA(International Business) course at Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT). The news came on 19th evening with the publishing of the list of selected students to the 2009-11 batch. I got in the list of students selected to the Delhi campus. I was in my room after coming back from work that day. My room mate was having night shift and was on the laptop doing what he does best(don't get me wrong, but he goes through financial news and chemical process updates; my guru in financial terms and funda's).

I had a feeling that the result would be out even though the IIFT official version was to wait till 20th. I came in and typed in the address and then changed. The site always was showing the GD/PI shortlist until then, but that fateful evening it showed something different. Something that looked so good to my eyes, but at the same time brought fear in my mind. Fear about the fact that, if i didn't make it, then i'll have to work for another year and i was sure i won't be able to prepare with the same fervour i had this time, thanks to my boss who's always on my @$$ to point out some mistake or the other. So with all those fears i downloaded both the lists, the one for the Delhi campus and for the Kolkata campus.

After downloading, i put in my name in the find bar, 1st time due to some error, my name didn't come up in the list and the search bar glowed RED. I was shattered; totally devastated and just got up and went to the balcony of my room, from where i get this wonderful view of the plant.


I know its not wonderful, but i was just standing there and was thinking what'll happen to my life in the coming year. At that time my roomie said the file's loaded fully and he could see my Name in the list. I jumped back into the room and confirmed with my own eyes that i'd got in. The list brought tears to my eyes. I called up my ex-girlfriend 1st and told her that the result is out, but i can't see it as the net connection here is too slow. But i guess she could understand from my happy tone that i made it. I called her up coz I'd promised that she'd be the 1st to know when the results are out. Next I jumped out of the bed and went to inform Debasis, my partner here for writing the mock cat's every Sunday morning. He was sleeping in his room, and was quite shaken, he was very happy that atleast one of us made out of this hell.

Then i called up my parents. My dad was home and he was very happy as well for me. But being the dad he is, he asked me if i was sure that i wanted to quit my so-called-well-paying job and go for this course. I said YES YES YES! I've had enough of this job, with a Chief Manager who's never satisfied with your work and constant maintenance issues in the plant. I had enough of the work already and i had even planned to quit the job after completing 2 years in it, and take up a lecturer's job in my home town if i hadn't made it to IIFT.

More about my MBA journey in another post. Till then let me just enjoy the glory :)

A plain life

Ajay was a real simple guy, with simple dreams. His simpleton nature maybe attributed to his village life. He was the 1st person to become an engineer in his town. His father had great ambitions for his son. His father was the 1st graduate in town and was the 1st to get a government job as well. So Ajay had to improve upon that and he did that by being the 1st engineer in the entire village. He went to a town to complete his engineering degree. He got into mechanical engineering. Like all village boys in towns, he was also made fun of; for his dressing style from the 80's, or for his hair that he used to oil and curl up like some 70's film hero, or his simple study technique-where he used to write down each and everything he learnt 3-4 times so that he could get it into his head. He used to believe that he's from a village and has to work extra hard to overcome the shortcomings in his life and he did work hard and was lucky to get into a prestigious PSU when they came calling to his college campus looking for bright, young and dynamic engineers.

He got into NTPC and was posted to Singrauli Power Plant after his training in Gurgaon, where he learnt and re-learnt many of the funda's in mechanical engineering for suiting to his work life. He once again learned about Power Plant Engineering. He learnt new techniques like FEMA, TPM, Maintenance concepts etc etc. He was delighted to work in an organisation that powered the lives of millions of Indians everyday. He was also proud of the fact that he worked in a installation that produced 10% of the total power produced in the country. He was on 7th heaven when he was made a panel operator just after one year of getting into the job. He had the power of controlling the entire complex from his hand and at times he felt lucky to be at such a high position for a village boy he is.

He used to be well behaved to his superiors and subordinates and all of his subordinates were so happy that they vied with each other to get along with his shift for their duty. He was a soft spoken person and had a jovial attitude. He was an able decision maker and took the right decisions at the right time for the smooth operation of the plant. Slowly slowly the thrill of operating the panel died down and he felt bored doing the same monotonous job of watching the parameters on the panel. He needed some adventure in his job and jumped at the 1st chance when his boss needed a supervisory engineer to oversee the activities relating to the erection of a new fume stack(chimney) in the plant.

It was amongst the tallest chimney's in the world. Heck it was so tall that it had a lift for getting to the top of the stack. Except in special cases the top floor was kept out of reach for most people. The chimney was 181 mts tall. It was so tall that one could see the clouds below on winter times. He was to oversee a work for changing the airline mast which would warn approaching low flying air-craft about the tall structure. His job was to just stand there along with the safety inspector and make sure the job was done with proper safety equipments and precautions. It was simply boring standing there all the time but then he wanted a change from his boring routine in the panel.

He was to do the job in 3 days and would just stand there watching the workers put up the support structure for the light masts. He would walk down the steps and then take the elevator down. On the final day he was to inspect the wind deflectors by going down on the side of the chimney via a wire rope. He wasn't someone who was afraid of heights, but hanging down on a 181 mtr tall structure with just a rope isn't for the faint-hearted. He went down while watching each of his steps on the way down and also looking above at the safety inspector coming down.

After inspecting three of the wind deflectors he was going to the 4th and final one on the west side. The time was almost over for the day and the sun began its slow descent into oblivion over the horizon. He thought this is his last day and just turned around to see the sun go down. He slowly turned and saw the glory of the sun going down leaving streaks of reddish orange all over the sky.

He was very happy to see this and felt a special sense of happiness, never felt before in his entire life. He was happy to have seen the sun like that, happy to see the world from such a vantage point. That's what heights do to you. He was happy and just was enjoying the view when he heard a small sound, the sound of a rope snapping. He had just seconds before he felt the adrenaline rush to his head, the release of the special fluid that happens when body is extremely vulnerable or extremely excited. He was flying through the air and could feel nothing but the wind blowing across his body. At times he was trying to stay calm, but his mind was telling him about his impending death.

He fell on the ground on the evening of 5th March, 2009 and died. While he fell on the ground he could only think about all the unfulfilled dreams of his life. It is absolutely an absurd belief to think that your life flashes in front of your eyes while you're about to die. Ajay didn't feel a thing from his past. All he could imagine were all the unfulfilled dreams of his life; to be a lover, to be a caring husband, to be an affectionate dad, to be an admirable role model for his kids, to be a guiding force for his grand children. All dreams that he'd never dreamt about, but wished he'd the time to see them come true.

For Ajay death came as a unwelcome surprise, and it never made him see the life behind him like a fast forward film. Instead Ajay saw the unfulfilled dreams of his life.

So i tell you, never wait for the right moment, coz you never know what's in store for you the very next moment in life; so if you love someone and haven't got the guts to tell them, do it NOW! If you've been cruel to your friends, accept that in front of them; if you've been rude to your family, tell them you're sorry for it. As they say, life is not measured in the number of breaths you take, but in the moments that take your breath away! So keep it in mind and act accordingly.

Nurturing the Entrepreneur in you

Being an Entrepreneur isn't a small thing. For one thing all the people applying for the various MBA entrance tests want to become entrepreneurs and start a firm of their own. It's a good thing for a country like India where we have a huge population in the working age group. So if many individuals start their ventures it'll be a great burden off the shoulders of the already overburdened government. But then jumping onto the entrepreneurship bandwagon without knowing its consequences is a foolish decision. So one should know all the risks and benefits of being a entrepreneur. Unlike many states, Kerala in spite of its high literacy rates still is a place where we don't see many individuals becoming employers. Always one is interested in doing job for someone or getting into a government agency. Its sad that even professionally educated people like engineers and doctors would go and follow this path. Maybe it's the way we are brought up, maybe its the low risk low pay remuneration route that's being traditional followed by our forefathers that's being followed by us.

Nobody tells us the bad things about being in a govt job, the endless routines, the stupid system of time bound promotions, the hierarchy system where one always is a junior even if he's intellectually superior to his seniors, a system where he's always supposed to follow while his brain loses all its creativity and he too gets into the system and becomes unproductive.

All parents want their kids to take up some good paying job with a cushy chair in the home town. Nobody wants their kids to venture the dark street all alone and get to the heights from which you can't see the bottom. I don't completely blame the parents, our educational system, our society as a whole has made it so. I came to realise this because most of the Keralites i know don't actually think in Money terms, we think in value terms. But if you've ever met a Gujju or a Marathi, they'll teach you to think in terms of the money. I happen to know this coz the head of the plant where i work is a Gujju and he always tells me the cost to the company due to some fault in my department. At the same time a Mallu would've fired me for the bad policies and the faulty maintenance practises, but never in terms of the money.

There are many reasons why one takes up the Entrepreneurship route, some are dejected with their present jobs(hell am one of them), some are having that one idea in their minds that'll revolutionise the way the world works(or so they think), some are doing it for proving that they're not part of the herd, some do it just for the heck of it; not knowing why they actually did it.

So i'll say first identify why you want to do it, why you want to start a company and have something run in your name. This is important because we can't have more Raju's running around with 50000 employees in the fray. So think of all this and then choose the route. The route will be MBA/Non-MBA, Technical/Generic, Small/Big etc etc. Then the next thing will be to look out for funds, if it's a small startup there are many banks out there to provide the moolah. But if you're going to go full steam then the fire will have to come from some venture capitalists, which unfortunately isn't that easy to come by. That's where contacts come to play a crucial role. If you're sure that you'll be an employer, then make contacts with anyone and everyone you come across. That'll help you in some way or the other when you're gonna need the funds. It helps in having more people say "Hey i know this guy, he's good"; rather than having people say "Who the F*** are you?".

So now you've the route, the money; what next. Well what next, find the right time to launch yourself. The time is the crucial factor, coz if someone launches the same thing before you did or even on the same time as you did, then you lose a BIG thing in the marketing world. Something starting with I called as IDEA. People will not trust you and will think you're a thief and then that's the last we'll hear of the Start up @ Technopark.

So time's right, money's there, idea's there. Now what we need is constant work to keep the thing running and the NEVER SAY DIE attitude, because some statistics say that 95% of all startup's die in the initial 2 years of their start-up :). So we need to cross that HUGE hurdle and then make ourselves good.

So now you've got my two cents, what're you waiting for? Join the Herd of Entrepreneurs or the Herd of Employees, or choose something totally different and own the world and enjoy your small time on god's sweet earth.


PS: This post had been under draft for a long long long long time and it was the pathetic state of the blog with no posts for a long long long long long long long long long time that made me publish it. More to come up soon how i was abducted by aliens(yeah that's my alibi) and where i get to write this post from :)

Birthday blues

Today i celebrated my 22nd birthday. Well it'll be wrong to say that i CELEBRATED, plainly because i didn't celebrate anything. Not because i don't like the idea of celebrating myself getting old or because i'm a snob who hates such celebrations. But then there were two main reasons why i didn't like the idea of CELEBRATING my birthday. One being that i'm not in the best of financial conditions to celebrate anything, let alone give my friends at work a decent party. Second being i'm not in the best of mental conditions for any kind of celebration. The financial conditions got so bad mainly due to my bad management of my salary. I ended up spending a lot more than i'd planned when i went to Kolkata. I more than 3k for the books i bought. I'd planned to buy around 1000 bucks worth of books and save the rest for my birthday and also for my now-cancelled leave to go home. But after getting back happily from Kolkata i'd a really bad week. It started with me being down on one day because of the extreme heat in the plant. The temperature in the town in around 40 deg and due to the conditions in the plant it's 5 deg more inside the plant. All this took a toll on me and i had a real bad time on tuesday evening and on wednesday morning i'd so much pain in my body that i couldn't get up from my bed. I decided to have a day off from work and just sleep thru th day. After spending half the day sleeping, i just got up and had some water. Slept again till evening and then went to see the doc. I'd told my problems and she first asked me if i'd fever. When i said no, she asked if i'd been out too much in the sun. When i replied positively, she said that i was suffering from sun stroke. WOW. Now that's something that you only get to hear in hi-fi fashion mags. I was elated bt at the same time worried too. She said i'll be ok in a day and it was good on my part to take rest. After this i had an ok kind of week. Only the usual pump getting a vibration problem and some gearbox getting oil leaks i had a tension free week. Now while typing this post from my mobile i'm watching Lakshya, the Hritik starring action picture about the transformation of a young man from a carefree guy to a military man with responsibilities. I don't know why but i felt i'm also getting the same kind of transformation. Not that i'm in a war front, but this will be the closest i'll get to a war front. These scorching temperatures, the squabbling workers, being far from home, missing my friends. All this. I know i'm comparing somethings that are far far apart. But then why do i feel so, i don't know. I got up today to my girlfriend calling me at 5 AM. She'd set a 12midnight alarm to wish me but it ended up waking her at 5. So i got my first wish of the day from her. That was a great thing for me. I just don't how to explain but i think guys and gals in love would understand. Actually it wasn't the first wish, I got a few wishes at midnight. But then i slept at 1 in the night after watching the film 'Shooter' in a senior's room. I saw a lot of scraps in my orkut scrapbook and also got a few messages in my phone. All these make me happy, but then now the boredom hits back. The day is going on and i don't know how i'll celebrate in the middle of all this. It's just another boring day in orissa :)

Holi- the festival of colors

My HOLI day began when I heard a loud knock on the door. I slowly yanked my head up from under the pillow (yeah sometimes ppl do sleep under pillows as well :-)). I looked across to see that my roommate nagendra hadn’t yet got up, then I looked at the time on my mobile and it said just 10:30 AM. Then I slowly dragged myself upto the door cursing the mofo’s who dared to disturb my sleep on a off day and asked “Kaun hai be?? Subah subah soone bhi nahi dete *****mi!” In reply came a Harbhajan singh style “Teri maa ki….” Which poor Symonds mistook as MONKEY. When I opened the door I saw two of my senior colleagues waiting with their faces hardly recognizable with all the colour splashed over them. As soon as I opened the door, one guy poured some colour onto my shirt and the other put some color on my face and with shouts of “Holi hai……………” entered the room. Hearing all this commotion my roommate jumped from his bed and before he could do something, with another shout of “Holi hai……………” the seniors, now joined by 5-6 other pals of my own batch pulled him off the bed and carried him all the way to lawn of the hostel and then put him on the ground and started pouring colours from all sides. It seems they had this ritual planned for all, except the heavy duty guys like me and a few others who needed more than 4-5 people to lift. They couldn’t afford to get permission for a hoist crane or a hydra machine to lift us. So instead they made sure that we were most colourful in the group(by now I know that most would have scrolled down to see the pictures and would be laughing at the way we got up from sleep :)

With this start I also joined the party and soon we were knocking at all the rooms that were closed and pulling guys out and colouring them or in worst cases pouring colour through the balcony windows and ventilators for the DARING one’s who refused to open the door. By 11 AM I was very hungry, we thought about going to the mess and having food. Since I’m now a member of the south Indian mess i’ve to go all the way around to the mess through the factory township. While going through the road, I saw small kids running after each other with colour guns as if they were all Anakin Skywalkers’ and Darth Vader’s fighting each other, only difference being that instead of the laser sabre they had the colour water emitting pistol :)(What a cool name). I remembered my childhood when I was in such a township back in the days when dad was in airforce. Being a mallu the guys here had thought that Holi would be something alien to me. But then they were in for a surprise.

I didn’t mind when they poured the colours and unlike the other mallu(siby) in our group I didn’t pick a fight with the guys who coloured me. Siby was hiding in his room after he saw the colours being sprayed on each other by the seniors and our batch mates. He wasn’t opening the door to anyone and finally I had to call him some nice words in our mother tongue to make him open the door. When he opened he was in for a treat like the others who didn’t open the doors easily.

By late afternoon the next KALAPARIPAADI or item of the day began-boozing off and singing songs. It seems that no matter what be the occasion, we Indian’s never miss a chance to have a good booze and shake a leg and dance or sing some songs. Here also it happened the same way, with a huge booze party being out up in one of the rooms. We had a huge collection of beer bottles, whiskeys, rums and even a scotch to top off the holi mood. Since I’m a light drinker : ) who likes to be in control even after a drink, I never go for the hard one’s and don’t do more than 2 beers. It’s because mostly I’m the one who goes and buys refills when we empty the stock, so the guys also agree with my philosophy that I should be able to drive without much trouble and be able to speak to the security persons at the gate without slurring :) And so it began, the booze fest and singing competition, songs in telugu, tamil, hindi, bhojpuri, oriya, english all began to ooze from the lips of the guys. Even I added a nice mallu song :), now you’ll know what kinda singing it will be, where even my song had audience :). After this when we got bored of hearing each other we had music blaring from the DVD players of one of the guys and also from my iPod.




Some of the other stars of the show



Both the mallu's in the batch-Enthoru sneham...........

So by 2-3 PM all were very hungry and headed for the mess. Some who were in a semi fluid condition ( AKA Paamp) had to order food to the room :). After the fooding, we decided its time for a bath to get rid of all the colours from the body and what better way to wash off than to go to the beach and have a bath :). We headed for the beach in two cars borrowed for the day from one of the senior officers and had a great time there too. At the end of the day, I lost my room keys, one other guy lost his pair of glasses.

This is how i looked at the end of the day

In the evening we had the official holi celebrations in the township with all the senior staff coming and had a blast of a time there as well.

All together this was the best HOLIday I ever had after coming to paradeep.

Things that make me smile………….

Here are 15 facts that make me smile even in the gruelling heat and tough work conditions.

1. That my girlfriend still remembers the last time we shared an ice-cream together :) and awaits for another opportunity.
2. That I came to know how much my parents love me, while they were saying all the time that they just want to get rid of me.
3. That I earn a few more thousands than my friends and still work less number of hours in a day :)
4. That I am free to spend what all I can in anyway I want and still not be answerable to my dad.
5. That I miss the homemade food even when I hated it all the time I was home.
6. That I work at a place that’s being listed in the record books as the largest in the world :)
7. That I have earned the respect of people older than my dad.
8. That I am losing inches off my waist and kilos off my body even without going to a gym or getting up in the morning :)
9. That I have learnt to live without browsing the net for a week: D
10. That I get time to spend just to lie on the bed and think about the past and plan for my future
11. That I am being invited to weddings of my college mates and schoolmates.
12. That I can wear a T-shirt and not look ugly :)
13. That I loathe at people speeding down the road on bikes, while I used to be one among that group a few months back.
14. That I can put on music as loud as I want in my room, without anyone stopping me :)
15. That I have regained my favourite hobby-Reading.

Changes..........

I had read long back that CHANGE is the only constant thing in the world. I believe that's what's happening to me, and my life. Changes are happening in things that i assumed will never change! I had never thought that i'll be walking 3-4 kilometers a day, never did i think i'll be missing home like this, never did i think i'll be spending my time writing notes even after grueling 16 long years of education.

But here i am thinking about all those nice times i had when i was in college, days when MOP was Master of Puppets, DAP used to be the download accelerator and SAP used to be a software company. Now MOP is Muriate of Potash, DAP is Di-Ammonium Phosphate and SAP is Sulphuric Acid Plant. What else do i say about my job profile. I just wish i could enjoy those lovely days under the trees once again!

Now a discussion from me not talking about FOOD is not a proper one, isn't it! I hadn't thought that i'll be drinking oil mixed with some spices as RASAM and potatoes cut and sambar powder mixed with water as SAMBAR. But then here i am missing those nice dishes that my mom used to make. I still remember how i hated to have food at home. "Ippo thonnunu veetil poyi enthelum thinnnal mathi ennu"