It started with a panicked call on my cellphone. She asked if my room-mate was around. Sure he was, he was in the washroom. Momentarily I was concerned. How else is someone to feel when you are woken up by the piercing ringing noise at around noon? As soon as I handed the cell phone to my room-mate who had just walked out of the washroom, he said those scary words, “sure,come over, glad to be of help”. I immediately indicated to him “NO NO NO”, and he quickly understood and tried to steer the venue of the meeting somewhere else. Alas, he was defeated in the logical conversation what he could not counter. His attempts show off his skills at some softwares have earned our room the status of ‘the photo and video studio of the hostel’.
Oh darn, I havnt even properly got up out of my sleep, and I get to know that 2 ladies are gonna be coming over to my room to work on some project. Why do I have to sacrifice my sleep over someone else? But then my room-mate reminded me that these are our “friends”. It was obvious that they would be staying for quite some time. And believe it or not, even I become uncomfortable doing my morning rituals when women are around, the ones that are not really my blood relatives.
So the process of us getting ready to clear our room and get ready started. The fast forward way in which we brush, take a quick shower and so on. But by the time I am out of the shower, they are there. Well only one of them was there and not two as I had feared. And my room-mate was in some sort of deep discussion. I quietly tip-toed and got some stuff and stepped out of the room. My intention was not to make any contact. Im not the chatty type early in the morning you know. And yes, despite whatever you may say, I will still call 12:30 PM early on a Sunday morning. I quickly & quietly tried to get my cell phone and take the key to sneak out of the room, but the damn keys got stuck in the lock and made a ruckus. It was enough to turn the 2 heads in the room towards me. I knew I was spotted, and so I swiftly took the keys out of the lock and as soon as the two people stared at me, I was grinning and dodging out of the room. Within minutes, I was at my neighbors and was planning how to go around doing some work. Under normal circumstances, I do not have trouble conversing with girls, but as I said, not the chatty type in the early morning. The growling stomach reminded me of the most important meal of the day – Lunch. In our case, lunch is the first meal of the day, the ideal conversation starter. I gave a buzz to a few of my friends to ask if they are up for lunch. Usually, I go with my room-mate, but it seemed obvious that his (our) lady friend was gonna be sitting put for a while. Having quickly grabbed a bite at lunch(not my favorite meal of the week though), I returned to my room to find that it was locked. An array of hope for the peaceful activities such as reading the paper, internet surfing, chatting with friends online, checking the email and so on. Sunday mornings or (afternoons) are meant for “ME” time. No miscellaneous activity, no long boring conversations of simple exchange of pleasantries, no work. AAH, beautiful. So I got in my room, went around doing some Facebooking(yes, it’s a verb now), and simultaneous watching of some action movie(multitasking is the trade of the day), and even went out for an hour to do some constructive work with friends on a case study. After a while I come back to my room only to find that my room-mate is again hand in glove with his (our) lady friend, discussing some important aspects of some project. The funny part is, the project was a video recording and the audio playback was quite amusing. This was the indication for my power nap going away, slipping like sand through my fingers, a painful realization for all afternoon nap lovers. Some may find it queer that even after waking up at around noon, I wish to have a power nap around 3 in the afternoon, but then they need to understand the relevance of a Sunday afternoon. I quietly step out to my neighbor’s room who is now a close friend and sulk over the gross injustice to me. I complain of the alien creatures occupying my land, one where mostly there is quiet, peace, mostly there is blissful silence. I love that environment. My friend smirks and offers me to sit in his room and do something while he is busy working on the laptop. But my need to sleep overpowered my hesitation to be in my room. So this time I was determined not to get discouraged by company in my room. I assured myself that despite external presence and funny noises in the background, I would be able to get a nap. My room-mate holds proof of the fact that I can sleep in the most noisy of the circumstances, but today for some reason I was heading for a surprise. I politely exchanged greetings and pleasantries with her and put in my earplugs. Turned the audio on full volume and started the Eminem album in shuffle mode. The full volume can’t hurt my ear, or so I thought, since I play the song on full while on my jog, but for some reason, when you are lying on your bed, the full volume hurts your ear(audio entertainment industry should write it on their manual, but on second thought, who reads those??). As soon as I turn down the volume just to reduce it to bearable levels, I hear pieces of conversation of absolutely no interest to me, on the contrary, of annoying nature. I hear high pitched laughter; I hear some audio recordings of her voice being played back on the computer. All in all, I am unable to drown external sounds without turning up my music volume which in turn starts hurting my ear. So I get up after lying for about 10 minutes and walk in to my neighbor’s room, only to complain that I can’t sleep. He consoles me by saying that I can kill time by watching some more episodes of some series, and then he quietly gets back to watching Big Bang Theory. I get back to my room; start to watch Criminal Minds, a renowned thriller series, but then again the background audio proved to be a distraction. I can’t find this interesting enough so I go back to my neighbor and complain again. He starts laughing. Not at me, but at Penny, the beautiful girl next door in Big Bang Theory. He looks at me and pauses the episode momentarily. I ask him which episodes is he watching, and he tells me about the initial episodes. And then suddenly I am reminded of the latest Big Bang Theory (BBT) episodes that I have not yet seen. So I quickly get back to my room and start watching those new episodes and this time, I am not disturbed by any distractions in my room. My colleagues continue work in the background, and I devoted to the series am loving BBT. Occasionally I notice that THEY are distracted by my laughter that I am desperately trying to keep in check. I didn’t want to be the distraction, but BBT is too hilarious to think different. So I take my laptop away and continue watching BBT in my neighbor’s room who is also in his own world watching BBT. This goes on for an hour and when I return to my room at around 5:30PM, I find them still working on the project. So I go grab a bite since by 5:30 PM my stomach is growling again. Well it had been growling since 4PM, but I could not get anything to eat before 5:30PM. I return only to find that the work seems to go on forever, and my roommate still working with our lady friend. I go to my neighbor again and this time I am really sleep, so I crash on his bed while he has gone away to grab a bite. While leaving, he locks me in since he had planned not to wake me up if he is back and tells me that I should give him a call if I need to get out and he isn’t around. With my mind drifting into sleep, and in no mood for any conversation, I reply to him with an affirmative response. At around 7PM when I get up after about an hour of sleep, I realize that I am stuck locked in his room and unable to get out. I call up my friend who happens to be at least 10 minutes away. I grab the opportunity to get as much more sleep as I can. By about 7:15, I go back to my room to still find my room-mate working with our friend (oh dear God, how long does this project take to get over??). I quietly put on my running shoes with a minimum of conversation with the pair and step out for my jog. The only trouble, since I had just woken up from my sleep, I was not really able to gather the energy that I needed for my run. So I strolled, walked slowly, and after about 30min, was able to take a run. My mind still imagining how my Sunday would have gone had I had it all to myself? Of course like every other Sunday, clocking close to 10 hours of sleep, occasionally getting up to curse the fact that the day would be over in a few hours to start a whole new week. Why do people have Monday morning blues when Sundays can be termed as Sunday reds? I am sure people would love to hate the only day of the week when realization hits that the weekend is almost over. Funny how our mind drifts to even the oddest questions while on solitary run. Finally by around 8:15, I was back and realized that the work was done since the duo were gathering their stuff and our lady friend was getting ready to head out….ADIOS AMIGOs.!!!!!!
We bid out parting greetings. And finally I came to peace in my own room. “ROOM SWEET ROOM”
Monday, December 5, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
How we landed a restaurant owner in his own soup.
It all started with some of my friend and I discussing some project and at 3:15AM I suggested that we go down for a bite at the night mess. Two of my friends (Anshul and Sumar) quickly picked up some cash and got ready, but when we got to the mess, we got to know that the mess/canteen had run out of all eatables by that hour. We got the idea to explore open place outside the campus to grab a bite at 3:30AM, and the one suggestion that came from the security guard at the gate was Medu Mess near IIT. An auto driver told us that it would be open in the next few minutes, and so began our trip to the Famous Medu Mess. The one we were told about by our seniors. The one which is a legend since it is the only source of decent food at such odd hours of the day.
Little did we realize that it is located in some interior corner of some locality. Initially we were under the impression that the auto driver is taking us to some secluded location and we would be ripped off, since there was no source of light to indicate the existence of a mess or any sort of eating place. He took us through routes that I had no clue about. Finally we stopped in front of a few shops with their shutters closed and a lamp post with barely enough illumination. When we asked the auto drive where the mess was, he pointed to a dark alley narrowly lying between two adjacent shops. Somewhere inside that alley was the Medu mess. At the first glance you would easily miss the alley, but then the auto driver seemed to know what he was talking about. Personally, I was not too sure about his intentions. When we got to know that the mess would be opened at around 4AM, we had to kill another 20 minutes. We tried to chat about the weird stuff that we saw at 3:40AM when almost whole city is sleeping. We saw poultry that was just brought in for a butcher's shop , the stray cat that took a liking for Anshul, the huge houses in the neighborhood and the distant cars that were visible. Anshul even shot a video of how the chicken was offloaded from the truck swearing about how we sell our souls when we eat non-vegetarian food referring to the cruel treatment of the poultry. It was Sumar who reminded Anshul that he himself was a hard core non-vegetarian and wouldn’t even give all this a second thought the next morning.
A little while later a few of our other colleges also turned up to grab a bite. These colleagues who are from South India told us about the awesome South Indian food that the Medu mess serves. Within the few min after that, a police patrol jeep drove down the road narrow street towards us. We were all under the assumption that this was just another routine patrol and nothing really to be concerned about, but when the jeep stopped its engine right in front of the mess, we were confused. One of the police men started asking my south Indian friends some questions, while Anshul, Sumar and I were standing a bit away from the jeep. Unfortunately my curiosity got the better of me and I poked my head closer to the place of conversation. My colleagues called out to me and asked me to help in the translation considering that language barrier between the cop and my colleagues from south India. My colleague seemed uncomfortable and I thought to myself, "is this cop business really happening?" I wasn’t expecting all this to be the result of a bunch of hungry students in the middle of the night/dawn. I walked up to them as casually as possible, but in my head I said, “Oh, shit, why did I have to feel hungry at such odd hours? And even if I did feel hungry, why did I come over the most secluded streets. Little did I realize that at 4AM, virtually all streets were secluded", so my thought process was obviously overwhelmed by the sequence of events this night. When I walked up to my colleagues to ask if there was any trouble, I was least expecting the conversation I was about to have. The cop seemed to be irritated or probably just wanted to show who the boss was. I had no doubt about that part for sure. He asked if anyone knew how to speak Hindi or Marathi and I told him I knew Hindi. He asked me what time I eat food. At first I was confused, I thought he was asking about some why we were there, so I told him that we were hungry and were “Studying” so wanted to grab a bite. A few more questions from him and my responses around our forthcoming exams seemed to convince him enough to get him off our back. The next thing we realize that the cops are beating on the door of the Medu mess and talking to the meek fellow who comes out. Poor chap who hadn’t even opened his shop for business got in trouble for operating at hours outside the permitted timing. The chap was taken inside the police jeep and had a “Conversation”. The auto drive gave us a hint to get back in the auto and keep our heads down. He said, “You guys won’t be getting anything to eat for quite a while from this place today, until the chap sorts out this matter of course”.
We obeyed the saviors of the moment and followed his lead. Within seconds we had hit the street to head back to the college campus. A little while later we crossed a police check post and Sumar noticed a policeman on a bike right behind us. He told us that this time we were in some serious trouble. But just then the bike zoomed past us and we took a breadth of air to our starved lungs. At 4:40AM when we landed back in the campus, we paid the auto drive 100 bucks and concluded that the night was quite an epic one. Not only did we shell out 100 bucks, dodged nosy cops, and sleepy like hell, we were back to square one, being hungry.
PS: pardon my typos or any other errors. at 5:30AM, I am a bit sleepy to notice how my english is structured.
Little did we realize that it is located in some interior corner of some locality. Initially we were under the impression that the auto driver is taking us to some secluded location and we would be ripped off, since there was no source of light to indicate the existence of a mess or any sort of eating place. He took us through routes that I had no clue about. Finally we stopped in front of a few shops with their shutters closed and a lamp post with barely enough illumination. When we asked the auto drive where the mess was, he pointed to a dark alley narrowly lying between two adjacent shops. Somewhere inside that alley was the Medu mess. At the first glance you would easily miss the alley, but then the auto driver seemed to know what he was talking about. Personally, I was not too sure about his intentions. When we got to know that the mess would be opened at around 4AM, we had to kill another 20 minutes. We tried to chat about the weird stuff that we saw at 3:40AM when almost whole city is sleeping. We saw poultry that was just brought in for a butcher's shop , the stray cat that took a liking for Anshul, the huge houses in the neighborhood and the distant cars that were visible. Anshul even shot a video of how the chicken was offloaded from the truck swearing about how we sell our souls when we eat non-vegetarian food referring to the cruel treatment of the poultry. It was Sumar who reminded Anshul that he himself was a hard core non-vegetarian and wouldn’t even give all this a second thought the next morning.
A little while later a few of our other colleges also turned up to grab a bite. These colleagues who are from South India told us about the awesome South Indian food that the Medu mess serves. Within the few min after that, a police patrol jeep drove down the road narrow street towards us. We were all under the assumption that this was just another routine patrol and nothing really to be concerned about, but when the jeep stopped its engine right in front of the mess, we were confused. One of the police men started asking my south Indian friends some questions, while Anshul, Sumar and I were standing a bit away from the jeep. Unfortunately my curiosity got the better of me and I poked my head closer to the place of conversation. My colleagues called out to me and asked me to help in the translation considering that language barrier between the cop and my colleagues from south India. My colleague seemed uncomfortable and I thought to myself, "is this cop business really happening?" I wasn’t expecting all this to be the result of a bunch of hungry students in the middle of the night/dawn. I walked up to them as casually as possible, but in my head I said, “Oh, shit, why did I have to feel hungry at such odd hours? And even if I did feel hungry, why did I come over the most secluded streets. Little did I realize that at 4AM, virtually all streets were secluded", so my thought process was obviously overwhelmed by the sequence of events this night. When I walked up to my colleagues to ask if there was any trouble, I was least expecting the conversation I was about to have. The cop seemed to be irritated or probably just wanted to show who the boss was. I had no doubt about that part for sure. He asked if anyone knew how to speak Hindi or Marathi and I told him I knew Hindi. He asked me what time I eat food. At first I was confused, I thought he was asking about some why we were there, so I told him that we were hungry and were “Studying” so wanted to grab a bite. A few more questions from him and my responses around our forthcoming exams seemed to convince him enough to get him off our back. The next thing we realize that the cops are beating on the door of the Medu mess and talking to the meek fellow who comes out. Poor chap who hadn’t even opened his shop for business got in trouble for operating at hours outside the permitted timing. The chap was taken inside the police jeep and had a “Conversation”. The auto drive gave us a hint to get back in the auto and keep our heads down. He said, “You guys won’t be getting anything to eat for quite a while from this place today, until the chap sorts out this matter of course”.
We obeyed the saviors of the moment and followed his lead. Within seconds we had hit the street to head back to the college campus. A little while later we crossed a police check post and Sumar noticed a policeman on a bike right behind us. He told us that this time we were in some serious trouble. But just then the bike zoomed past us and we took a breadth of air to our starved lungs. At 4:40AM when we landed back in the campus, we paid the auto drive 100 bucks and concluded that the night was quite an epic one. Not only did we shell out 100 bucks, dodged nosy cops, and sleepy like hell, we were back to square one, being hungry.
PS: pardon my typos or any other errors. at 5:30AM, I am a bit sleepy to notice how my english is structured.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Managerial Hangover with Financial instability
Management is all about handling complicated situations (or in my case, certain complicated questions) and then set the results in order for the layman to understand. Depending upon the result to my financial accounting paper, I might get an answer of how good a manager I am or alternatively, would get to know how good a story teller I am.
In financial accounting, we are required to identify what kind of transactions should be placed in direct expenses; you need to also understand that there are different types of loans/debts. The only official loan I know is the one I get from the bank, and who would have thought that it would be categorized under other categories. The other two loans/debts that I know are the ones that I get from my friends, and the loan that I get from my dad, well primarily to pay off my first loan. The advantage that I have in the second type of loan is, my dad doesn’t try to blackmail me through denial of invitation to group parties.
How about looking at the picture in another way: the money I get from my friends is more of debt one that I have to definitely pay off irrespective of my personal balance sheet, where the liability factor definitely outweighs the asset factor. These people don’t listen to the fact that my cash in bank and cash in hand are next to zero and my net worth is only based on fixed assets such as the car that I bought last year and still don’t have with me in this city and hence is immovable fixed asset. Additionally, I try to gather goodwill as an asset, though right now I don’t remember if it goes under asset or liability, pardon my memory, it has suffered some shock and awe today.
As against the actual Profit and Loss account, which contains terms such as outstanding wages, my personal balance sheet mostly contains outstanding payments to mess and outstanding payments to the Dhobi. My profit takes place mostly when there is a treat awarded by colleagues and I mostly hope for a provision of bad debt from their end when it comes to my turn to treat them.
Coming back to my financial accounting papers, I was glad that I understood the first few lines of the paper which read, “Financial accounting paper for First year students, 3 hours duration, 60 marks and so on”, but after all that it was in German or Japanese with some numbers thrown in for fun. So obviously I thought that this must be a mistake, this can’t be the exam that I need to write. I had studied hard for it. I had studied one full night for this subject. Compared to the attention that I have paid in the class and the studies I have put in other subjects, this was one of the subjects that I had spent a lot of time for. Once again, ONE FULL NIGHT, of course I also grabbed a 7 hour sleep right after the midnight snack, but then that is beside the point. And I finally decided to raise my hand to ask the faculty member if he had made a mistake distributing the question paper (they are bound to make such mistakes, obviously!!). But as I was about to raise my hand, I deciphered, another line which read, “Take suitable assumptions wherever necessary”. This got me thinking, what kind of assumptions are we talking about? So began the exercise at which I am a pro.
I began developing new theories and formulas. The Einstein (or who ever is the equivalent to Einstein in terms of Finance) inside me awoke and I devised that liability and assets are equal and are interchangeable. I put values of expenses under profit and certain receivables under loss. Didn’t the line say, “take assumptions where ever necessary”?
Fortunately I was not the only one, and after the exam today, some people were desperate for a lot of liquidity, the one that drowns sorrows and is served in bars, and not the one that improves your cash and bank status. I had asked them to get me some liquidity too, though I would have been grateful for either of the two forms. Let me go out and see if there is a shop open at mid night anywhere close. Stay tuned to read more about how the Einstein of Finance proves himself in marketing. Trust me, that is another subject where customer understanding and selling of goods and services will take on a whole new different dimension.
In financial accounting, we are required to identify what kind of transactions should be placed in direct expenses; you need to also understand that there are different types of loans/debts. The only official loan I know is the one I get from the bank, and who would have thought that it would be categorized under other categories. The other two loans/debts that I know are the ones that I get from my friends, and the loan that I get from my dad, well primarily to pay off my first loan. The advantage that I have in the second type of loan is, my dad doesn’t try to blackmail me through denial of invitation to group parties.
How about looking at the picture in another way: the money I get from my friends is more of debt one that I have to definitely pay off irrespective of my personal balance sheet, where the liability factor definitely outweighs the asset factor. These people don’t listen to the fact that my cash in bank and cash in hand are next to zero and my net worth is only based on fixed assets such as the car that I bought last year and still don’t have with me in this city and hence is immovable fixed asset. Additionally, I try to gather goodwill as an asset, though right now I don’t remember if it goes under asset or liability, pardon my memory, it has suffered some shock and awe today.
As against the actual Profit and Loss account, which contains terms such as outstanding wages, my personal balance sheet mostly contains outstanding payments to mess and outstanding payments to the Dhobi. My profit takes place mostly when there is a treat awarded by colleagues and I mostly hope for a provision of bad debt from their end when it comes to my turn to treat them.
Coming back to my financial accounting papers, I was glad that I understood the first few lines of the paper which read, “Financial accounting paper for First year students, 3 hours duration, 60 marks and so on”, but after all that it was in German or Japanese with some numbers thrown in for fun. So obviously I thought that this must be a mistake, this can’t be the exam that I need to write. I had studied hard for it. I had studied one full night for this subject. Compared to the attention that I have paid in the class and the studies I have put in other subjects, this was one of the subjects that I had spent a lot of time for. Once again, ONE FULL NIGHT, of course I also grabbed a 7 hour sleep right after the midnight snack, but then that is beside the point. And I finally decided to raise my hand to ask the faculty member if he had made a mistake distributing the question paper (they are bound to make such mistakes, obviously!!). But as I was about to raise my hand, I deciphered, another line which read, “Take suitable assumptions wherever necessary”. This got me thinking, what kind of assumptions are we talking about? So began the exercise at which I am a pro.
I began developing new theories and formulas. The Einstein (or who ever is the equivalent to Einstein in terms of Finance) inside me awoke and I devised that liability and assets are equal and are interchangeable. I put values of expenses under profit and certain receivables under loss. Didn’t the line say, “take assumptions where ever necessary”?
Fortunately I was not the only one, and after the exam today, some people were desperate for a lot of liquidity, the one that drowns sorrows and is served in bars, and not the one that improves your cash and bank status. I had asked them to get me some liquidity too, though I would have been grateful for either of the two forms. Let me go out and see if there is a shop open at mid night anywhere close. Stay tuned to read more about how the Einstein of Finance proves himself in marketing. Trust me, that is another subject where customer understanding and selling of goods and services will take on a whole new different dimension.