The Lorem Ipsum Blog

Barnard, Isabel and Hunter

vasant — Wed, 18 May 2011 09:48:19 +0000

Read this awesome short story The fall of Edward Barnard by Somerset Maugham in the library recently. Its an awesome piece reflecting on what we consider as being successful and how time and perceptions changes those definitions as we move ahead in life. As we have different experiences, the very things which we considered essential now seem waste and vice versa.

Placements and L

vasant — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:45:41 +0000

Its third day of induction here and most of the talk here has focussed on the placements and how things are being changed so as to get the PGP-1′s ready for the summers in the least possible time and stuff like that both from the faculty side and the student council side. And yet some of the faculty has the temerity to claim that they don’t disclose the placement numbers because they are not in the RAT race. But still they have kept the option open just in case there numbers become good enough to declare at some point of time in future.

Ahh, maybe I never was a MBA worthy material and the %ile managed to fool the L guys.

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Written before, published after.

Indian to Moon

vasant — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:44:15 +0000

India has pledged 2.5 billion dollars for its man to moon mission. The question here is whether this is required. Is this a goal government should be pursuing if at all? With two thirds of children facing malnutrition, our villagers not having basic amenities like safe and clean drinking water, our cities lacking proper infrastructure and many more problems that need to be addressed more urgently, what will joining an elite moon travelling club give the country except maybe a few sound bites in international press. What is my concern here is that money could have been spent somewhere where it could have made a more lasting and larger impact on lives of a far larger number of people.

Nature or nurture?

vasant — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:16:05 +0000

Well this is a long going debate in the academic circles and there have been sharply divided views on both ends of the spectrum. But logic says that it has to be nurture. This is a topic about which I have very strong thoughts but I have never gotten around to expressing them. I also need to explore what the existing literature says about this. My belief is what we are and who we are is shaped by the experiences we have while growing up and the learnings we take out of them rather than what our brain is wired to do based on a DNA pattern. Just like the saying goes, “The society prepares the crime, the criminal just commits it.” The conditions for every action of a human being are created by the nature. This can also be seen to be true for most of the animals out there lending credence to the fact that its nature after all which decides everything. I know right now I am saying all this based on gut feelings and my own inferences but I know existing literature should overwhelmingly support my views. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings on this and I will share them later.

Observations from Tuesday, 10th August game at Lucknow club

vasant — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 02:39:32 +0000

Me and Rajat went for the game this Tuesday. It was a match point event. And we finished last. 22 boards. 5 zeros. 56 match points. 36.36% score. The joys of duplicate. Many surprising hands. Didn’t look like hand dealt at all. I was always very eager to bid and be the declarer or the dummy. It so happened that Rajat was never the declarer and I was declarer in 10 games. I probably overdid it as my fair share was 5-6 declarer games only out of 22. Most of the bad results are due to bad bidding. And rest was bad play. Need to learn much more. Five zeros in the score. Shows we played absolute worst on 5 boards. That can be reduced easily by bidding correctly.

Board No.	Match Points	Play Mode	Observations
1.	2	Declarer	Vulnerable 3 down, my mistake, didn’t check the vulnerability before bidding or vulnerable 2 down, doubled. My bad anyways.
2.	1.5	Defender	Game was there for taking. Some people couldn’t bid it. We gave away an overtrick. So that’s bad for us.
3.	2	Declarer	Went down one trick vulnerable, probably overbid.
4.	3	Defender	Normal game, only one team bid game and went down heavy.
5.	1	Declarer	On four of the tables, the board was passed. We bid something and went down one. Passers got better score.
6.	3.5	Defender	A par score. Opponents bid a part score and made. On some tables over declared and went down.
7.	4.5	Defender	One of the better results. Opponents bid a part score and made. Some tables they over bid, were doubled and went down heavy.
8.	6.5	Defender	Best result. Opponents didn’t bid game which was there for taking.
9.	2	Defender	Opponents bid a part score and made. Other tables they overbid and went down.
10.	6.5	Declarer	Slam duck. Weird hand. Only one loser. Turned out to be a real loser. Weird bidding. Had the partner flabbergasted. 1C-2C-6C. Best idea would have been to do Blackwood. Seven clubs, 6 diamonds, only club ace missing.
11.	1.5	Declarer	Went down one. Don’t remember due to game play or stretch bidding.
12.	0	Defender	Bad play. Most other tables they went down one trick. Bad defender play.
13.	4	Declarer	Par score. Okay stuff. One table bid in NT so went over.
14.	0	Declarer	Again bad bidding on my part. Very weak hand. Should have let them play. Another reason to remember scoring completely so as to know the trade off.
15.	0	Declarer	Stretch bidding. Probably overbid and went down.
16.	5	Declarer	Bid 3, made 6. Someone bid that slam somehow.
17.	5.5	Declarer	Bid a part score and made comfortably.
18.	1	Defender	Gave away an overtrick probably.
19.	5	Defender	Opponents bid a part score and made.
20.	0	Defender	Opponents bid a small one and made big. Tried the smart play to take them down but was unsuccessful.
21.	1.5	Defender	Opponents bid part score. Looks like we gave away a trick.
22.	0	Defender	Gave away an overtrick or two. And they played NT.

Bridge Journey: The Restart

vasant — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:05:10 +0000

Restart began when I was able to find 5-6 willing players in hell in fourth term. Shivkumar was interested for a long time. Rajat wanted to learn as everyone in his family plays. The rest were mostly bored guys like Harsh, Kunal and Yogesh who would play anything you are willing to teach them. It helped that I had some prior playing experience from my K days and my old partner has just brought up the topic of getting on with the game again. So I was anyways interested in learning the bidding proper and improve my game play to take it to the next level. I found out this website, Karen’s bridge where the standard bidding convention was explained in easy terms and there was a bidding cheat sheet that listed many of the basic bidding stuff that was there. The website is very good as per me to start learning bidding. I got 5 printouts of the cheat sheet that we shared amongst ourselves and thus began the journey. It has been good so far. In the course of reading and discussing with Divesh, we decided that we will discuss the various bidding options amongst us so that we both learn the same things and are able to combine well together. It has been an exciting journey so far. There are a lot of very intelligent bidding sequences that get you to the correct contract in correct hand that are just so beautiful and amazing. Me and Harsh went to the Friday’s IMP event in Lucknow Club. The old folks there welcomed us and some of the were quite enthusiastic. They pointed out our mistakes and I believe it will be a good learning experience if we are able to go there more often. Academic constraints on part of others rendered it impossible to go to today’s tournament in Gomti Nagar. It would have been a good experience and might have provided us more rush to start working harder on the game ourselves.

Can Nitish do a Naveen?

vasant — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 01:18:04 +0000

This is a post I started writing about 4 months ago but then got too lazy to complete it. Going by the recent events in Bihar, this has become a topic about which everyone has got a view but anyways I will finish this now.

After having delivered on some of his promises in the last 5 years and doing something as opposed to the Laloo-Rabri’s regime doing nothing, Nitish Kumar has got an image of being a good chief minister and is likely to improve his performance. Nitish needs another term to build on his successes and deliver long lasting changes and bringing some semblance of economic revival to Bihar. Most of the growth of the last five years has come because of government spending and private investment is still very low. Before that picks up, investors need to be assured that whatever Nitish is doing is long term and this is what the voters in Bihar also want and will support. A question that arises here just before the elections kick in is whether Nitish should look at alternatives politically. The options before him are:

continue with BJP

go alone

team up with congress, and

go alone now and team up with congress after the elections.

Its high time Nitish considered his options seriously and finalized a strategy sooner rather than later. By the looks of it it seems that Nitish has finalized a strategy and is moving towards going alone. According to me at this point of time, going alone might not be in the best interests if Nitish and JD(U). Nitish is still not assured of Muslim votes so much that he can chuck out BJP and go all alone. He still doesn’t have the votes to pull it off alone and most probably he never will. Naveen was a different case as his father has ruled the state for three terms I think and the opposition was non existent. BJP was facing severe problems there and they were real problems. Congress at that point of time was a non-starter there. That’s what helped Naveen pull off the coup so successfully.

As for Nitish, the best scenario could be that all the four parties in Bihar, JD(U), Congress, BJP and RJD fight alone, and somehow Nitish getting enough votes to cobble together a government with Independents which is highly unlikely. The other scenario could be Nitish goes with Congress post polls and forms a coalition with both extending support to each other at center and state level respectively which will be good for both parties as well as the state but this is a very optimistic scenario.

Going by the current trends however, Nitish would do well to stay with BJP. In the current scenario, he can muscle BJP and get a larger share of seats to contest which will be better for future break off. Also the caste equations which govern the voting patterns in elections in Bihar haven’t change that much, and Muslims are as likely to vote for Nitish as for the Congress-RJD combine. So going after votes which may not materialize, leaving behind the assured votes maybe a mistake. Yes, it can be so that Congress eats into a chunk of BJP’s votes into the state but I don’t see any work done by Congress in Bihar to stage a revival and sticking with RJD will continue to be a sore point for Congress in this elections too.

So in the end we should see the current formulations continue in Bihar for some more time at least.

I know this is a very generalist post and there are no numbers to prove my vague theories. From the next time I might try to put in more effort an dback my theories with some numbers at least.

Ravan: Not a review

vasant — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 03:33:53 +0000

I watched Mani Ratnam’s latest flick, Ravan yesterday night. Its just another normal Bollywood flick, except for the good music and cinematography. I had expected better from Mani Ratnam. But this post will not focus on Mani Ratnam or Ravan.

The focus is failure of Bollywood to create real villains till now. While there have been character’s who have mesmerized audiences with their performances in negative roles, Bollywood has failed to create a negative role whom all the people come out of the screening hating and those among them who like the dark arts appreciating a master of the art executing the Devil’s agenda. All of Bollywood’s negative roles invariably end up getting transformed, realizing their follies and begging for forgiveness or end up doing a good deed to undo all their hard work earlier in the day. Even when the epitome of villains in India, Gabbar aka Amjad Khan is doing all those things like cleaning up the Thakur family, he is given a motive of justifiable feelings of revenge against the police officer who puts him behind the bars. In this context, even in Ravan, Vira’s motive for revenge was shown to be vengenance for the atrocities committed against her sister or prior to that his people in general and in the ends he falls for the feminine charms and ends up getting himself killed. What in the Devil’s name was the need to issue a character certificate for Mahua?

To close it, there have been some movies with some real villains over the years in Bollywood also, but the real devilish twist is missing or is not so continuous. I will update the post later on with some negative performances that I liked in Bollywood as and when I remember them.

Sojaa Re! One Billion dolts

vasant — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 03:56:00 +0000

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Clash of IIM’s

vasant — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:31:21 +0000

Two of the IIM’s vying for me to such an extent that they have scheduled interviews on the same day, same location and all. Indore gets a headstart of 1 hour starting from 8:30 AM.

Couldn’t these institutes get together and come up with a solution that will prevent these things. With the IIM’s declaring that they will go online from next year, couldn’t they use some of the IT infrastructure that would be coming into place to manage a small thing as this. And I am not alone. Very many people have got clashing schedules this year. I might be the only one who won’t try for a change. I might just get lucky and manage to attend both at the cost of one this way. The administration process as a whole is ridiculous but they get away with it because there are about 300,000 people trying to get into those institutes, or at least filling the forms every year. Can’t they have a common interview panel and a defined set of criteria to choose students. But I guess they dont have to try because the numbers are in their favor. Also the way they pick students, they are already picking those that will succeed. I mean if they hold the admission and convocation together, it won’t make much difference to either the people going in or the companies recruiting they. They just intend to give them a free and cozy place to stay for a couple of years so that they can extract their pound of flesh later. Or maybe they do add some value and the day I realize that will be the day I start preparing for the interviews in earnest.

Just saw their schedules today. See for youself.

Indore Interview schedule

Calcutta Interview schedule