A Dream Come True

Have you, as a child, had a vision and decided, then and there, that this is what you were going to be when you grew up? Of course you did and of course it was silly, stop deluding yourself. And of course, whether you like it or not, I'm going to tell you about mine.

I think Fair & Lovely was still new and widely marketed at that time. No, I'm not going to say I wanted to be like this pretty fair girl who lands an air hostess job in the ad. The pretty fair girl was an engineer! She was smartly dressed, wore a helmet and was looking up at a huge new construction, going over the drawings and ordering all the workers around. I wanted to be that girl. I mean, not fair and all, but you must get what I'm saying. Its important.

Oh well, I grew up. I majored in computer science. I realized my life was doomed to sitting in cubicles in air-conditioned rooms with smartly dressed managers ordering me around. My dream was shattered. A desperate attempt to change the course of my career again landed me in a job sitting in cubicles in air-conditioned rooms, this time in a different country. The dream remained beautiful by virtue of it being unfulfilled.

This new cubicle job of mine has this initial honeymoon period when I get to roam around visiting chemical plants in Asia. (Ok I'm trying hard to make it sound cool here, so the least you can do is be awed). Today, I went on my first plant visit. They gave me a pair of safety shoes before they took me on a tour. We have a power shutdown today, they said, the machines are not operating, so no need to wear a helmet. SO close.

When we were just about to leave, my mentor asked me if I had a good look around.

"Yes", I said, "but they couldn't tell me much about the plant being newly constructed."

"Oh then come with me, I'll explain it to you. Better get a helmet from the reception, since construction is going on."

I took out the drawings from my bag, looked up at the 5-storey-high plant from under my helmet, safety shoes on, nodded knowingly as things were being explained and tried asking a few intelligent questions. And at that moment, I was that Fair & Lovely girl. The vision that played in my head for over a decade now, had become reality. At that very moment, all the choices I made in my life up till now seemed perfect. I was that girl.

I was glad to return the helmet and shoes later. I mean, who'd want to stay in those when you can have the comfort of your cubicle in an air-conditioned room?

Home on a Holiday (Part 2) - Of Vows and Goodbyes

Oh well, I'm neither home nor on a holiday anymore. But a series can't be called one unless there are at least two parts in it. So I assure you that this will have all the characteristics of a mandatory sequel.

Hmmm.. Lemme think, I was at home for 3 whole blissful months. What stands out most? Of course, the wedding of one of my closest friends from IIMB, one Mr. Anand Raj Mani a.k.a. Armani, whose conversations with strangers typically start with "What makes you think I care" and end with "Ya right, you wish!", to his college sweetheart Jaya. I don't want to sound corny and break down into a fit of manic wails, so I'll just stop with saying it was one of the happiest weddings I had been to. Which is not saying much since all gult weddings typically involve a lot of dirt and gore. Oh I love weddings!

Alright, I figured that I cannot put THE END here since the post would be too short then. So let me talk about some other things. It was the time when we were all fresh out of college, not necessarily young (no offense to any groom) and looking forward to a whole new corporate world. And the short relapse to sharing rooms, waking each other and dressing up together, was like a 5-minute snooze before waking up. Another round of goodbye hugs. Some gifts (some well thought out and some, well, just bought). Some sugarcake-sucking. A little rain and a few stolen minutes with the precious few you didn't know when you'd meet next. Not to mention, loads of gossip. SO glad I attended this one. I still have a handful of controversial rumors to spread! I mean, I still have loads of ammo for starting conversations and trading 'information'.

So there, the post is now sufficiently long to put an end to it. The Home on a Holiday series shall barely.. er, sorely, be missed.

Home on a Holiday (Part 1) - Midnight Mango

Right. It's been precisely 2 months, 2 weeks and 6 days since I came home. Gosh! Can't believe it's been so long! And I precisely have 2 weeks left. After all the procrastination of 'blogging regularly', here goes my first entry (of hopefully at least a few) in the series.

I have an insomniac aunt staying with us for some time now. Every night, she keeps a banana on her bedside. When it's past midnight and she still hasn't fallen asleep, which is all the time, she gets up, walks around a bit, eats the banana and tries to sleep again. Today, there were no bananas at home.

I was lying down in bed, like just a while ago (it's 1 AM now, if you must know), chatting, facebooking, solitairing and all those useless things, when I finally felt sleepy and closed the laptop.

"Sweetheart, if it's not too much trouble, can you please get me some cut mango from the fridge? There were no bananas today."

Oh sure.

I felt like a darling Indian daughter-in-law. I quickly walked into the kitchen, imagining I'd put the mango pieces on a nice plate and get a nice fork and make it look so delicious that my aunt would fall asleep instantly. Except I couldn't find any cut mango in the refrigerator.

Of course. Mom doesn't like keeping cut mango in the fridge. No worries.

I saw my mom effortlessly peel and cut mangoes everyday every summer since time immemorial. At this point, I am compelled to say, at the risk of diluting the suspense in the story, how the hell does she do it??

So I took the mango, the peeler, the knife and the plate, told myself, piece of cake. Or mango, whatever suits you, and started to peel. The first two tries, the peeler just slipped off without much incident. To the mango. But since I'm human and humans apparently by default have this built-in capability thing of learning or some such, I managed to peel once. And twice. And a few more times after that.

When I was half done (PHEW!), I thought that would do. Half a mango is a lot. And I cut it. The mango looked so yum I had to eat a couple of pieces myself. The plate looked very empty so I was spreading the pieces around a bit when my aunt came looking for me.

Really? Been that long?

"Oh honey I'm so sorry, weren't there mango pieces in the fridge? You could've just told me!"

"No problem, it was nothing atha! Here", and a big darling Indian daughter-in-law smile. Oh I've been watching too much Kyon Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi type stuff on TV these days. Damn.

So gist of the story is, cutting mangoes is not as easy as it looks! Especially at midnight. Try it yourself if you don't believe me. Seriously.

Ramblings

Is not expecting, pessimism? That was AmChak’s gtalk status and well, all it takes is a little cue to start wondering... This is a pointless post. As are all of them anyway.

The little joys of life are not such big a deal from a different perspective. Age is not just a number. There is no point “sighing like a furnace” because if we turned back time, we’d all make the same choices all over again. If you’re not smart, you can still get away with creative. Your best friends may always have something more exciting or someone more important in their lives. Love may not be blind. The most dependable person in your life, your anchor, mentor and role model, may not understand or not care so much after all. Things fall apart. God is possibly not fair, and you might not even be the one he’s unfair to. All the sacrifices you made may not even be worth it. You can never tell if you’re popular, or infamous, or plain irksome. Is it confidence or over-optimism? Or simple showing off? Money could buy you everything. And yet, life goes on. It’s easy to delude oneself into believing one is happy. And loved. And wanted. Because for most, life is what happens from an outsider’s point of view, and the self doesn’t really care so much.

Oh well, pessimism can be a highly rewarding way of life.

Exams and Taxes

In an efficient closed university without barriers to entry and barriers to learning, the Exam-Preparation Curve is backward-bending and exams, in general, lead to inefficient outcomes.

There are very few instances in life when you actually get to apply what you learn in the classroom to pressing practical problems. At least in mine. So it is not absolutely nonsense when I write in all my applications and cover letters and about-me passages that my sole purpose in life is to apply classroom theories to real-life problems. I just wish sometimes that I could be more creative at least..

But anyway, the reason for this sudden enthusiasm is that one of those few instances occurred very recently in my life (Amen), thanks to an amazingly theoretical course called Public Economics (or rather, the end of it). If you are able to simplify life to two people (easy if you're in love) and two commodities (easy if you're Gandhi) and selfish motive (easy if you're not Gandhi) and free communication (easy if you're not me), you have aced the course. Sometimes you might have to include the government for tax collection and dissipation purposes. But all this is irrelevant. If you want to understand what I'm saying, you need to understand two rules first:

1. Labour Supply Curve is "backward-bending" - as wage rate reduces, the workers work more to earn the same total wage. But as per-hour wages reduce further, they actually work less since they value an hour's leisure more than the wage they receive by working.

2. Taxes, in general, are inefficient. Because they are distortionary. Because they change one's behavior. That is theory. Add to it the Ramsay Rule - well if you have to tax, do it as efficiently as possible. Tax the ones whose behavior cannot be changed, more.

By analogy, consider a student (Stud) studying for an exam. The more there is for Stud to study, the more he studies. But beyond a threshold amount of study Stud has to study, he will give up and not study. Thus Exam-Preparation Curve (EPC) is backward-bending.

Secondly, if there was no exam, Stud would study even less. So the exam is changing Stud's study patterns. Thus, the exam is distortionary. Implies, exams are inefficient. Apply to this the Ramsay rule (very apt since Ram is what we repeatedly say when the EPC begins to bend backward). Assume there is another student (Very-stud) who is always prepared for the exam. The efficiency rule dictates that Very-stud should have more exams than Stud.

However, just like how the efficiency-vs-equity conflict makes it imperative to have distortionary taxes, the learning for learning's sake-vs-learning for earning's sake conflict makes exams indispensable. The real world has more than two people (you can't be blindly in love for very long) and more than two commodities (well, one has one's needs) and selfish motive and no free communication (I get charged to call you, thank you very much dear Vodafone, now you even ask me for identity proof). But again, all this is irrelevant. The two rules above still hold. Thus, distortionary taxes are still inefficient, as are exams.

I am Stud, therefore I need no exams.

If I were Very-stud, I would still need no exams.

Two Pretty Syllables

This is just so amazing I had to share it!

Pretty - Katie Makkai