B School exams and half-assed Qs

The last weekend was SNAP and the week before was JMET. The hopes of a lakh flash on the result of these exams. JMET, an exam exclusively for engineers because of higher mathematics and SNAP for simplicity and lot of options in selecting colleges. But then some questions turned out to be half-assed and debatable esp in JMET.

2-3 Questions in the Logical Reasoning of JMET had no solutions at all. And then an entire Analytical Reasoning Passage had insufficient data to answer the given questions. These questions could easily eat upto 20-30 minutes of the given time without any reward. Check the questions out yourselves.

Q1. Manisha will eat the orange if Rajesh does not cook.
Based on the informtion given above which of the following will be true
(A) Manisha will not eat the orange if Rajesh cooks.
(B) If Manisha did not eat the orange, then Rajesh did cook.
(C) If Manisha ate the orange then Rajesh did not cook.
(D) If Rajesh does not cook, Manisha will eat the orange.

Q2. Consider the following set of three statements:
(i) There are three statements in this set.
(ii) Two of them are not true.
(iii)Your IQ will go up by 20 if you play game Z.
For these three statements to be consistent:
(A) Only statements (ii) and (iii) must be true.
(B) Statement (iii) may be true or false.
(C) Statement (ii) and (iii) must be false.
(D) Statement (iii) must be false.

A1. Answers are (B) and (D). Both match the conditions.
A2. No answer. Answer is Statement (ii) must be false and Statement (iii) must be true. I got stuck on this question for about ten minutes.

Analytical Reasoning Passage -

And then SNAP turned out to be equally confusing. Esp questions on find the odd one out.

Q1. Find the odd one out:
1. Latent
2. Natural
3. Inborn
4. Inherent

Q2. Find the one who plays the odd sport:
1. David Beckham
2. Michael Phelps
3. Martina Navaratilova
4. Prakash Padukone
-- depends on your judgement about what is odd sport.

Q3. Find the odd one out:
1. Pamper
2. Tide
3. Dove
4. Pantene
-- depends on your judgement again. Three of them are produced by one company but then three of them are used for washing purposes

Q4. Which of the word is closest in meaning to disinterested:
1. Unbiased
2. Not interested
3. Indifferent
-- check dictionary, two options show up to be the answer.

When we, the aspirants, prepare for an year, pay up lots of bucks for application forms and more bucks for applying to universities. The institues on their part must take care in setting up the question papers. Even the mocks of CL, TIME or IMS will have fewer mistakes.

On second thoughts, I believe the universities will not change the solution set anymore. They must have, like the IIMs made up a key and destroyed their workings. And will now use the key.

Hoping for the best of the results with fingers crossed...

Calvin in India

(character copyright - Bill Watterson)

Placing Man in the System

The one question that intrigues us more than any other question is the metaphysical ' Who are we? Why are we here? Are we real? ' . Answers to these questions are confounded and no concrete solution has yet been found.

But the derivatives of the question can be partly answered. For e.g. The questions after the formation of the first living organism. ' How had the complex human structure formed? How do we divide the living organisms into various categories? Which category do we belong to? ' The Greek legend Aristotle divided life into animals and plants and further divided animals into red blooded and other colored blood. But this was an abstract division in which the study of two heterogenous groups becomes too complicated. The precise division is the one in which the proper lineage of organisms can be followed i.e. we can chalk out our ancestors. So came the theory of dividing the organisms into phyla. These divisons provide the descendary of man or any other animal.

The division of phyla can explain questions like 'When did life come on land? Why are Whales closely related to us than the fish? How/Why has the embryo formed?' and so on.

(Coutesy - Isaac Asimov - The Human Body, Its Structure and Operations)

(Click on the image to enlarge)

An Irresistable Change

I am an ardent follower of some of the games in Olympics. I frequently browse various websites for latest Olympics updates. What enthralls me is how much the technology advanced.

Few years back when I had my hands on making my first website, all I did was built it using native html, later i ventured into areas of server side scripting like jsp and php. At the end of my b-tech I had experience in programming in Jsp, Php, Html, Css, Ajax and Javascript. Ajax was then the latest technology I knew. A year after my b-tech i worked in tech m in ASP .Net, building a website for a networking company. We used Asp. Net 2.0 and some basic technologies.

Though i am equipped with so many technologies, today I feel like an isolated man. Such has been the change in the web development technologies. Change is an inherent feature of man kind. It is change that has brought man kind to these levels of development. Over the past few years the transient has become even more transient. The countries which have embraced change are today the most developed countries. To keep the article simple, I am concentrating only on technological aspects, and not on cultural or social effects of such changes, which are beyond my ken.

As I was saying web development in this year and a half has advanced to great heights. Take Asp. Net for example, today we get to here new terms like LINQ, XAML, Silverlight, Expression Studio and so on. What's the use of so many technologies? Ten years back all we did on web sites was build static pages. Then came server side scripting, which caused a revolution, we could now retrieve data from the users. Then we got technologies like Ajax and rss feeds. Users could build there own customized pages and retrieve the latest new on the fly without even refreshing a page. Till yesterday, we had to merge multiple technologies by multiple vendors to build a website. For ex. to build a highly interactive website, we needed to learn HTML, Javascript, a server side language, sql, flash programming and the list goes on. With the latest Microsoft products it is no longer required. Now Xaml makes us program in xml, sound crazy right. Linq makes us write sql in .Net languages and Silverlight is coding flash using .net technologies. Everything integrated into Microsoft.

Some developments are such that you can create a website and include a third party tool in the website without making any changes to your code. So now the web page is an integration of your work, feeds from other sites and tools from other sites. These tools run on their servers :-). So here you are running your pages on somebody's web server and running tools of another server in your pages. Dynamic? No it's a dynamite.

At this junture I just want to clear a common misconception. As more and more technologies come through, the amount we code doesn't increase it reduces significantly, we get to build better applications at minimum complexity. What makes us retard from such advancements is our resistance to change.

For us, Indians, to advance in time we need change and we need expedite change. I mentioned ASP. Net and my ignorance. What about Java? I haven't got my eye on java since 3 years. Today whatever the java programmers speak sound more Chinese to my ears.

Companies like Tech M and Yalamanchili should look forward in bringing a change in their work environment and integrate thought process into their curriculum. Along with that, the weekly updates and lectures on the latest tools in web development should be made available. Encourage thought, appreciate experiments, bring a change.

Note:

I said i had been developing in .Net, yet I felt isolated at the same time because the technologies we used in tech m were a year or two older. So many new technologies got formed in the meanwhile that you get a feeling of a prehistoric man.

My Dad

(My sweet little sister wrote this poem on my dad. I liked it a lot as it is funny and has wonderful rhymings, an art I could not master.)

Neither a jog, nor a walk,
yet never fails to miss a mysore pak.
A connoiseur of sweets, unlimited snacks and limited vegetables,
how my mom copes with it should become a fable!!

Never have I seen him weak, to elders he is humble and meek,
listens to them, their advices he seeks, yet remains lazy every day of every week.

A hardworker at office, always at work,
A lazy man at home, always at sleep,
Sofa and he are an inseperable entities,
from breakfast to dinner, even during calamities.

A man who believes in equality,
he works and so should the t.v.
His office hours are its rest hours,
his rest hours,its office.
His camp days are it's holidays,
his holidays it's overtime.

Yet his faults make him a man,
for otherwise he's a perfect human,
handsome and thorough gentleman,
forever my superman.

A man of dignity and honour,
sometimes gregarious and sometimes a loner.

A dad when he pampers me,
A friend when he listens to me,
A psychologist when he analyses me,
A hitler when he scolds me!

One for all and all for one,
Loved by each and everyone.
A man down-to-earth,
of such people there is a dearth.

Neither Mahatma, nor Lincoln,
For eternity he is my idol.

Wimbledon - Fingers Crossed

Those were the most tensed moments of my life. I was watching the television with the pillow pressed to my chest, so hard that I could feel my heart throb into the cushion. It was Pete Sampras playing against the great Boris Becker in the 1995 finals. After two hours of power plays, great serve and volley, Sampras pulls off his third consecutive Wimbledon victory. "Hooray! He did it again."

I got acquainted with the game of tennis in the year 1993. The first match I saw was between Sampras and Jim Courier, where Sampras came back from two sets down to wrap the match. Since then, for the next nine years I hardly missed any of his grand slam matches. Pistol Pete was my childhood hero. I cheered each of his seven championships on the grass courts of Wimbledon. Wimbledon’s a place where champions are born and the baton gets passed from one champion to another. The baton passed from Bjorn Borg to John McEnroe, from McEnroe to Boris Becker, from Becker to Pete Sampras and now from Sampras to Roger Federer.

WIMBLEDON 2008

The oldest of all grand slams and the greatest, Wimbledon gets mixed reactions from players. Few feel comfortable and win with ease and the rest never get to understand the surface. But this year the top 3 players are all ready for it. Wimbledon was never so close in the past decade. True, ‘Killer Calm’ has won the championship for a record five consecutive times but he is no longer the indomitable. ‘The Ape Man’ has just devastated him and had him embarrassed in lop sided French Open final. And then the Ape Man pulls off victories over ‘The Other A-Rod’ and ‘Djoker’ in immediate grass open tournament, which he had never done before.

The tennis legend Bjorn Borg has choosen Ape Man to be the Wimbledon Champion. I agree with him. I appreciate Killer Calm, but then I am an ardent fan of Pistol Pete and I want his 7 time championship record to hold. I believe that the Ape Man and Djoker are emissaries sent by Illuvatar on a mission to destroy Killer Calm. And so far this year they have stuck to their tasks.

As the tournament is about to begin I have my fingers crossed.

Legend:

Pete Sampras – Pistol Pete - 7 time winner

Bjorn Borg – 5 time winner

Boris Becker – 3 time winner

Roger Federer – Killer Calm – 5 time winner

Rafael Nadal – The Ape Man - 2 time finalist

Djokovic – Djoker - 2007 Semi Finalist

Andy Roddick - The Other A-Rod - 2 time finalist

Super-flation

Scene at the Market

The effervescence of the mangoes got my olfactory senses into a trance and pulled me towards the fruit vendor. The mangoes were assorted neatly depending on the shades of yellow and green and their sizes. I wanted the one’s that were fluorescent and medium sized.

“Bhaiya, Aam kitne me de rahe ho”, I asked the shop keeper in my not so fluent hindi.

“char sau, ek dozen”

“char sau”, I asked in agape. I tucked the basket in my arms and walked away without a second glance. Now my neurons were in a trance. I can never convince myself of buying a mango for 30 bucks.

From that day onwards I satiate my taste buds with an adulterated mango juice that costs just six rupees. The only mangoes that I had eaten so far this season are the one’s my college friend Kumar had got from his town. He bought them from a local fruit vendor. And as the story goes some of those mangoes from his town are exported to places like Pune for 200 bucks and they are sold here for 300 - 400 rupees.

I remember studying market segmentation in my college courses. Most products target people belonging to a particular age groups or demography or financial status. I never really remember placing mangoes in any of those groups. They are supposed to belong to all the groups. But today, they no longer belong to my group.

Fossil Fuels

Petrol was never cheap. At least in my life time. I grew, India’s GDP grew, but the growth of petrol rates surpassed us. The issue of petrol can change governments but the issue is always seen as an issue with no solution. There are good times and then there are bad times too.

“Man, why this rush?”, I asked a stranger at the petrol pump. There were more than a hundred waiting in line for petrol.

“Kal, se petrol ka dham, bad rahi hai”

Ya, I had read it in the morning paper. The rates of petrol were increasing by five rupees and diesel by three rupees the next day.

“How many litres are you planning to pour into that bike”, I asked him curiously.

“Five”

‘Five liters. That going to save him just 25 rupees for waiting patiently for 30 minutes. What will he get for 25 rupees. He can’t even buy a mango.’

The raise in the prices of Natural gas and petrol has created a lot of hubbub. Inflation touched a decade high of 8.2%. The opposition sympathized for the people. They blamed the UPA. Dr. Manmohan Singh empathized for his children urging the states to bare the pain instead. Now what’s the solution to contain the sky rocketing prices. Sadly, neither the opposition nor the UPA have one. While the opposition is busying blaming the congress government for getting the country into this situation, Manmohan Singh is having premonitions that the future is going to better.

Blaming the UPA government completely is being a little harsh towards them. The government on its part has tried all the principles of macro economics in the last six months to curb inflation. It had increased the CRR (Cash Reserve Ratio) and lending rates (though Dr. Chidambaram had increased the tax bracket getting people to spend more, it is a long forgotten issue). But, when the issue is food shortage and global crisis in fossil fuel limiting the money flow hardly works. We eat food to live and all the engines we made drink petrol to run. Food was always a basic need and we made petrol too into a basic necessity.

Possible Solution

India needs to start developing alternate technologies. More R and D into Solar power, vegetable oil fuels ( I wrote an article on that) would certainly help by decreasing our dependency on the Gulf. And for the food shortage, I had a wacko thought of having layered farming (I have no clue how to implement that). But certainly more funding towards research is required in agriculture and in irrigation. And the government should urge people to grow vegetable crops in the backyard or balconies.

We are too scared to invest in Research for two reasons. Indians have a tendency towards short term gains. If we invest in something, we want results and profit’s to show up the next day. We were never known to accept failure with pride. Most researches are always long shot targets and they succeed rarely. This is one reason why we buy white papers from other countries. And the second reason is a derivative of the first one. For the government to stand it should show people what it had done in it ruling period of 4-5 years. And since research involves lot of money and time, it certainly does not fortify the position of the government. I hope some day we overcome these fears, be a little less greedy and invest in R and D.

Note (19th June):

1. I am not completely against the rise in prices. Indeed the prices we pay for rice, wheat and other basic commodities is quite low. I haven't got a problem in paying a rupee or two extra per kg of the commodity (Read 'Farmers deserve a better deal' an article by Chidambaram). The problem is that though commodities are sold at rupees x per kg by the farmers, the consumers end up paying 5 fold (5x) because of the multiple distributors .

2. The increase in petrol and food prices has accounted for 8.75% inflation. But the most shocking event for me is that the auto charges have been raised to Rs.8 per km from Rs.6 per km in Pune. Thats 33% increase. The soothing factor is that I am shifting to Vizag in a week's time.

My Unsuccessful Marriage

The romance started on one fine summer morning in 2006. I heard a lot about her even before I met her for the first time. At the first glance she looked fine, though not an eye candy. But somehow I liked her, she was certainly better than previous one I had and she was my last hope for a long time relationship. I stood in the Sun nervously and waited the whole day for having a chat with her. We met twice on that day and seem to feel comfortable. And by the evening I came to know that she had accepted me as her partner. I was jubilant. That evening our marriage got fixed for August 2007.

She had two pre-conditions before our marriage. One was that she wished to test my skill for the first two months after we get married. I am a potent person and I was confident for the first test. And since she has come from a conventional family she was a bit wary about my trust towards her. So she wanted me to sign a prenup. It said that if I divorced her before two years I had to pay one time alimony of 1 lakh. It might sound less. But getting the divorce agreement takes 2 months. I was positive about all this. I thought that we will be married for years together. So I agreed for her conditions. In, august 2007, we tied the knot. But the ironical thing is that she was the one who tied the mangalsutra around my neck.

I was 22 and she was 21. So the first two months were really exciting. We had unveiled a lot of mysterious and came to understand each other better. In these two months, I proved my skills and she acknowledged me by saying that I was the best. We spent the entire day together, but it passed in a whisker. It was at this time that she started growing plump. But I didn't care; I was blinded by our romance.

On the third month of our smooth relationship, things started to break apart. She wanted me to stay with her throughout the day. I had to do all her chores by sitting at one place. The food she made tasted like rotten vegetables over raw meat. I was not allowed into the house without the mangalsutra. I also came to know that for every rupee that I give her, she returned me just 10 paise. She took the rest 90% for her own purposes. Purposes unknown, maybe she is spending on cosmetics or on a paramour lover. I just couldn't take all this. For the next six months I was depressed, my blood pressure increased, and I had countless sleepless nights. For the first time, I got frightened of marriages. With my health deteriorating, my parents got more concerned than ever. Though they were skeptic for a few months, they later told me to go for an official divorce. I agreed with them, so that people won’t be blaming me in the future for this broken relationship.

Our official divorce is scheduled on 27th June 2008. She wasn’t reluctant. I think she must have already found her future groom. But 27^th is the day when I will become a bachelor again. I will go back to my parent’s place and I have no desire to look for new brides in the near future.

Nokku Coolie - “We don’t Work, but you still pay”

Bribery always existed in the Indian system (It is actually an universal phenomenon). We have to bribe people at different levels to get our work done or to get our deal across the table. We have accepted it into our system. Nowadays a new practice has started in Kerala under the name “Nokku Coolie”. This is a practice where the worker unions charge you labor costs without doing the work. I had recently come across this practice in an article (May 6-12 Outlook Magazine) where the head-load workers charged the Vikram Sarabhai Space Research Organization for the machinery that was brought in. Machinery that would weigh in tons and cannot even carried by the laborer.

Initially Nokku Coolie was considered as a sort of compensation for the opportunity lost due to automation coming in, but now it is a daily practice in Kerala. It was only recently that the government got concerned with this ludicrous practice. I have read a blog by SR Nair where he praises the beauty of this practice and calls it smart work . But I somehow feel that this practice will eventually curtail the growth of the state (No offence to SR Nair, its his view, and his article is well crafted). Many cashew-processing companies have already shifted their operations from Kerala to Tamil Nadu where the wage levels are low. In one of the case, the government had an overhead cost of Rs.3000 per laborer for installing turbines, each weighing 80 tons with the help of a crane in a windmill farm. The above two examples tells us the negative impact of such a practice. All this leads us to one question. What is the exact purpose of labor unions? Are they doing the right thing by charging Nokku Coolie?

Labor unions existed as early as the eighteenth century with their objective as protecting their members by providing them various benefits. Benefits like better wages, working environment, working hours, medical insurance etc. And it has been observed over the years that an union member gets a higher pay then his contemporary non union member because of the political strength that vests in the hands of the unions. For e.g. A Canadian Labour Union member earns $5 more per hour ( www.canadianlabour.ca ).

With this background on the purpose of labor unions, let us look into the second question. Are they doing the right thing? Labour unions have always been accused of benefiting the inside workers when compared to the unemployed. A second criticism is that labor unions play a monopoly and has the same negative effects as any other monopolies I.e. raising prices and decreasing efficiency. The Nokku Coolie is clearly an example of the second case. The monopoly that is created by the worker unions in Kerala has lead to increase in operations cost, in turn increasing the production cost and leading to a decrease in efficiency. As it is having a negative effect on the economy, I shall hold that Nokku Coolie isn’t the correct practice.

And now the inevitable question arises. What is the alternate source of income for these workers? And this is where we reach a dead lock. If I knew the solution or indeed if the government knew the immediate solution, Nokku Coolie would have never existed. A long term solution might be that whenever there are new manual labor intensive jobs available, the government might give these people a priority on hiring. But, will any worker be willing to leave this haven of “no work, but get paid”. I leave this task of convincing people and get them working to Pinarayi (CPI-M leader) and the CM of Kerala, V.S. Achuthanandan.

IPL - Is it the trigger for hooliganism in India

The Indian Premier league got off to a dream start. It was perhaps the best inauguration events the cricketing world had ever witnessed. And the fireworks for the event were provided from Brandon Mc Cullum’s bat, as he blasted off sixes to all parts of the ground.

With the perfect start, cricket crazy fans, and the opulent clubs, the question arises. Will IPL lead to hooliganism?

Hooliganism is not a new concept for the Indian cricket fans. Its signs were first seen in 1967 at a Calcutta Test match. In the last two cricket world cups 2003 and 2007 we witnessed fans routing the player’s homes and burning their effigies. Stone-throwing, bottle-throwing, acts of vandalism are the ways of reaction put up by us, Indians on the verge of defeat. But all, this are the superficial levels of hooliganism and that too at the test and one-day level of cricket. It is no where near to the violence and havoc displayed by the English Premier league fans. Unlike EPL, the one day games (8 hrs) and the test matches curtail the amount of people viewing the sport.

The timings of the IPL (three hours of play), the opulent clubs and players from various countries are so much similar to the EPL. But twenty-twenty being a new format of the cricket game has mixed reactions from the audience. There is a bifurcation in the feelings of the people, some feel that it is less cricket and more of an entertainment, and others feel that it is modern day cricket. And as for IPL, part of the audience has come to watch Shah Rukh Khan, part of the audience to be a part of the hype, and the rest to watch the sport.

Only time can tell how well we can relate to both the twenty-twenty format and the IPL teams. The day one feels that he is an integral part of the his/her home team, that is the day that the first steps of hooliganism shall rise. And India being a home for a vast number of software professionals can further instigate hooliganism. (Most of the hooligans in the EPL are software professionals, who for a change from their boring work opt hooliganism)

And as I write this blog, the team on whom I laid the bet on has already registered 2 wins in 2 games. Hurray! Chennai Super kings.

Run your vehicle on Vegetable Oil

I didn’t know how I missed it. I was ignorant till yesterday, and all this time I believed that we cannot run our bikes and cars on vegetables. I heard of biogas that is used for cooking, and seldom heard about biodiesel, and didn’t know its use. I had a belief that when food gives our body the energy to perform, it can give energy to the vehicles also, and it proved right. A quick search on the net revealed quite an amount of information on this topic.

Is it feasible to run on vegetable oil?

Yes, it is feasible.

Rudolf Diesel invented internal combustion engine made it run on peanut oil, in the view that the farmers then could make their own fuel in their farms (Survival Blog.com).

(Conversion - a little bit of engineering ;))

In the present day scenario, we need to convert our standard diesel/petrol engines to run on vegetable oil. The reason for conversion is that of the difference between viscosity levels. Vegetable oil at normal temperature is thick and needs to be heated up to 160-170 degrees to make it as thin as diesel. Do we have it to heat it at our homes before we drive? Nope. An alternative tank is needed with a heating device for the vegetable oil. So we run our cars on diesel initially, then when the temperature reaches 170 degrees, we switch the tank. And zoom! We are running on vegetable oil.

Is it cost effective?

A liter of vegetable oil will cost you much more than a liter of diesel. Then why spend so much (1000 pounds in Britain – Guardian UK) to convert you vehicle to run on vegetable oil. The reason is that, we can use waste vegetable oil or straight vegetable oil that has been used and wasted in hotels. This is a much cheaper source and can reduce our diesel costs by a lot.

Economics-

I believe that the soaring prices of the fossil fuels due to the supply and demand gap can be met by using vegetable oil as a fuel. It can save a lot of money. But SVO vehicles need to be curtailed to be used by only a few people. Unlike oil we cannot produce such massive quantities of used vegetable oil everyday. Even a few people switching to vegetable oil might improve the market equilibrium for oil resources (Note: The fuel issue is more political than the affect by market forces).

Today, in India the market equilibrium for fuel might be achieved at Rs.100. But the government ceils the price of fuel at Rs.50. At this price people are ready to buy more but there is a deficiency in supply. This deficiency can be reduced by using vegetable oil to meet the demands. (Produce shortages - Samuelson and Nordhaus, Economics)