mere funde

You know how there are moments in class you would probably never forget about. Well, this was one of them. At first I thought I would post it on the ISB Students’ Blog, but then figured it would be slightly inappropriate for that.

Anyway, we have this absolutely amazing professor, Louis Thomas, who teaches us Economics of Strategy, and was trying to explain how commitment works. It was then when he came up with this example. And after that I haven’t been able to think of a better one. Hats off to you Louis! And Meatloaf makes it even more memorable.

PS: For those who were wondering what baseball was doing in the song, read this. And the song is Paradise by the dashboard lights.

The past week has been super hectic, even by ISB standards. I attended an equivalent of at least 18 classes (2 hours each). Read so many cases and papers that my head hurt. And was showered by as much information as can be humanly digested, and then some more.

ISB and Wharton hosted, perhaps a first, joint course on Healthcare Innovation in India. Attended by 30 participants each from ISB and Wharton the course was compressed over two and a half days and talked about all aspects of the healthcare sector in India, from lifesciences to delivery, and from insurance to social investment funds. It was like a crash course, just a little faster.

Though the course was a lot of fun, it was very demanding too, and I spent the entire day today going through motions and somehow dragging myself through it. Almost know how zombies move around.

And have a dunking to attend to at midnight – so no sleep before that. With the placement season coming up, blogging will be sparse, unless of course I get one quickly

PS: Cricket is a wonderful sport. I connected so much with a South African exchange student, talking almost only about cricket. And he was as avid a follower as anyone else, and ’twas a nice long chat with him

So I thought that I would do a customary year end review of the year that passed by in, what seemed, like a flash!

Professionally it was a mixed one. I was selected for a conference and I could not attend it due to visa issues. I took a sabbatical to complete the MBA. A lot of people from the team I was a part of have since quit, and it would be almost like joining a new place. The job search here at ISB has not started in earnest, but the things are looking positive so far and I think it will be a good 2010 for all of us on that front.

The biggest news was the ISB admit. After a lot of consideration, I decided that I wanted to join, and boy am I glad. The time here so far has been brilliant. Met a lot of new folks, made some life long friends, and learnt a lot of new stuff. In between the hectic schedule, also found a lot of time to party!! I know I will carry some fond memories from here even though I have spent very little time here. Special mention here for my study groupies – Kirti, Malavika, Megha, and Sunil – you guys were awesome. Almost forgot my quaddies here – Sam, Avin, and Raj – keep rocking!!

Another big change was that a lot of close friends decided to join the dark side to get married. Misra and Parul, Sudeep and Divs, Yatharth and Akanksha, and Kaustubh and Shubbu jumped on the marriage bandwagon. Congratulations and best of luck all of ya!! A few others are joining it in 2010 and the trend seems to be on the upswing

One major upside of all the marriages was meeting all the friends after a long time and loads of fun was had. Misra’s wedding trip was one I will never forget all my life!! The look on Sudeep’s face when Thax flew down for his wedding was another priceless moment.

As Misra RTed one of his friends -

Beginning of the decade – Started college, making new friends and aspiring for a great job! End of the decade, still doing the same! Life comes a full circle.

Happy New Year people!! May it bring joy, happiness, and health to you and your loved ones!!

There has been a lot of nonsense written about why India does not deserve to be the best test team in the ICC Rankings. Example here. There have been a lot of rebuttals as well. Example here. This post is yet another rebuttal of the same.

Let’s look at batting for a while. In the past three years, starting 01 Jan 2007, five of the top ten run scorers in the Test format, excluding runs scored against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, and WI, have been from India. SL, SA, Australia, England, and WI have one each in the top 10. Not too bad I would say. Even the great Ricky Ponting is on the 15th step, which really makes you wonder why no one calls him over the hill anymore, but I digress. A team that has the best batsmen of the last three years must have something in it.

Now for the bowling. The list is much more evenly distributed this this. Three of the top ten bowlers, with same filters as above, are from India, with SA claiming another three, Australia two, and England and SL one each. Though bowling still remains a concern for the Indians, it is no better for the other teams. SA is arguably the strongest in this department, but then with Steyn injured and Ntini fading quickly, they might not enjoy the same status for long.

The thing to note is that this data is for a three year period, and not for a one off year. So its not really a flash in the pan, but rather some sustained good performances by the Indian team. During this period, India has played an almost equal number of tests home (15) and away (14), so there is no real home advantage for the team.

I know that statistics don’t really tell everything, but they do tell you a few things, and what it does tell here is that India really has been a world’s best team for the past couple of years, even though SA are right on their tails.

All data from Cricinfo’s Statsguru. Batting and Bowling.

Has been a long time since I wrote anything. Have been just too tied up with loads of stuff to think about writing. The sleep cycle has gone for a toss, and I don’t at times know what day of the week it is. The rescheduling of classes has just made the task that much more difficult.

However, it is in times like this that some totally unexpected thing happens and pleasantly surprises you. One such thing was the surprise thrown for Nikhil (batchmate) and his wife for their wedding. Complete baarat with ghodi and band baaja. Totally loved it. Sohel and Sarosh – kick ass work folks!!

More details on ISBWeblog.

If you thought that the search engine wars were settled, with Yahoo! laying down arms, you couldn’t be farther from the truth. Rupert Murdoch reignited the battle saying that he could de-index the WSJ and other content providers from Google. Now Microsoft (MS) has gone a step ahead and offered New Corp money to provide exclusive content for Bing.

Will this lead to more such players providing exclusive content on certain search engines? Personally, I don’t think so. Google won’t take this lying down, and given that it retains a large share of web searches, more content providers would want to be listed on Google (for lower money) than Bing. Ultimately we might have two major search engines with one having more content than the other – which one would it be is anyone’s guess. MS has a lot of money to throw at the search business but Google is no slouch itself. If they end up paying a lot, they are only going to hurt themselves. Also, I am not sure if MS would fight as much for search, which is still a small part there entire biz, unlike Google.

While it is not inconceivable that the search engines might have to pay the content providers some money, I do not foresee it being a huge amount. Search still remains, along with social networking, the killer application of the internet.

Whatever may be the outcome, MS has thrown the gauntlet and I bet Google is just about to respond!!

What is common to Dravid, Riquelme, and Sergio Leone? A sense of perfect timing.

If you watch Dravid bat you would realize that he plays the ball like he has all the time in the world. Let alone his defensive ones, even his scoring shots are played with elegance that are on a different plane than those around him. His hooks and pulls are not hurried, unlike other Indian batsmen. There is clam and equanimity in his style of playing.

Riquelme played with a charm not seen for almost a decade. In a fast paced modern game, he was a throw back to the times where skill mattered more than speed. He controlled the ball and created opportunities others could not sense. From a post on the Guardian,

In many ways, he is the closest thing football has to a quarterback, the most influential and glamorous position in American sport. The quarterback is the creator, the player who invents the game as he goes along. If it means passing back or sideways, in order to progress, so be it. Because what Riquelme has, above all else, is patience, the very quality Leo Beenhakker, the veteran Dutch coach of Trinidad & Tobago, says England, so hurried and committed to the long ball, palpably lack.

If you watch a Sergio Leone movie, you will understand that long movies are not boring. A 10 minute shoot out scene with only one bullet being fired is as fast and tense as the Matrix II bike chase scene! A long drawn shot of Eastwood staring at Van Cleef can be very interesting. It seems like the entire world has slowed down, and you can now focus on the action in the middle.

Slow is not always boring. Slow can be elegance. Slow can be precision. Slow can be like symphony!

Whenever Google launches a product there is a huge brouhaha over in the blogosphere (There. I used the stupid word.) and people go nuts about how it is going to be the next big thing. I am not the clean one and am as much to blame as any one else for being a fanboy. However, when Google launched the free legal case law I was hardly excited.

I was transported back to the days when I was so happy at the launch of Google Patents that I almost predicted doom for patent database providers. Heck, I even sent them an email with features I thought would have been easy to implement.

Little did I know that it would turn out to be some time pass project for some one bored of regular work at Google. Sure the tool is great, but the limited coverage and search make it almost useless, when Google, using its immense technological prowess could have brought patents to everyone with very little incremental work. But then I guess the team that worked on it got shifted to some more important stuff and the project now sits there like a tool which I use only to read patents – and not search them. What a waste I tell you!!

Sleep in peace Lexis Nexis – there is no battle brewing on your home turf!

For the past couple of days, I have been totally hooked on to the performances on Coke Studio, and the concept itself. Go check it out.

One that I really like is Titliyaan by Strings.

दिल था खिलौना, चलो टूट गया
क्या कहें
कोई साथी था, जिसे चाहा था
वोही लूट गया, क्या कहें

I sometimes wonder if we will ever be able to get rid of “free riders“. At least on two occasions here at ISB, a team member has shirked responsibility and contributed nothing to an assignment. Nada.

Then someone in the group suggests reporting the incident to the ASA, and somehow we decide against it. Once I was against it, because the past record of the team member was good. After all we are humans and are allowed to make one mistake.

This time, I wanted to report the matter and others suggested that we drop the matter. It might cost the person the course grade and eventually might hurt placements. Is it too large a punishment? Should we have behaved differently?

I guess a part of the problem is that such incidents are not reported too often, and when they are, the culprits are generally made examples of. This prevents others from reporting them any more. Is the solution to deal with the offence differently? Maybe instead of effecting the grades you could have some other punishment. Like wearing a t-shirt saying “I am a douche bag and don’t do my work!” for a day or so. Or some public service like preparing a course summary alone and sending it to everyone – and grade that instead of the said assignment.