Pertinent Observations

23 Sep

Elite institutions and mental illness

At the Aditya Birla scholarship function last night, I met an old professor, who happened to remember me. We were exchanging emails today and he happened to ask me about one of my classmates, who passed away last year. In reply to him I went off on a long rant about the incidence of mental [...]

14 Dec

MENSA

Vinod Ganesh is popularly known as MENSA, in Chennai quizzing and other circles. He attained his MENSA membership sometime in 2003-04. The exam (yeah, since it’s a high IQ society, you need to pass an exam to join) was sometime in late 2003 or early 2004, and the results arrived during Saarang 2004. Thinking back, [...]

02 Dec

Card Games

So the other day, while playing rummy with the members of the in-law family, I figured why I suck so much at some card games despite having played them quite regularly when I was a kid. Back then, in family gatherings, it was common for the host to come up with a couple of packs [...]

26 May

Dropping out

Less than a semester into my undergrad (Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras) I wanted to drop out, and start work. I didn’t want to be an “engineer”. I didn’t know why I’d to spend all my Thursday and Friday afternoons filing away at some piece of iron in the [...]

06 Jan

Coding

Back when I was in school (11th/12th) I think I was an awesome coder. I think I was especially good at what they called as “logic coding”, i.e. coming up with algos. I used to experiment quite a bit (as much was possible with TurboC) and had a lot of fun too. I remember doing [...]

06 Feb

Pat

I’m not sure if I’d prepared this as an answer to a potential interview question but if I were asked if there was one part of my life which I’d’ve chosen to live differently, I’d probably pick my four years at IIT Madras. In many respects, it represents some kind of a void in my [...]

31 Jan

The Swarovski Earrings

On Friday evening I tweeted: Louis philippe best white shirt – rs X1 Swarovski crystal earrings – rs X2 Dinner at taj west end – rs X3 Proposal accepted – priceless Now I must confess that there was a lie. Which I tried to mask by using variables for the various values. Of course, at [...]

13 Sep

The Loot

So I executed the book binge yesterday. In two phases – first at the “main” Landmark at the Forum and then at the “other” Landmark at Swagath Garuda Mall. Technically the binge is incomplete since I still have another Rs.600 to spend but it’s unlikely I’ll be spending that off soon, so for all practical [...]

30 Dec

Location matters

The other day in my office we were discussing recruitment. I pointed out that placements this year in the IITs have been particularly screwed. We haven’t decided if we can wait till July for the new recruits to join, but if we agree that it’s ok, we might recruit from IIT. Given our size and [...]

16 Dec

Shoes

I bought these Adidas sneakers earlier this year. Maybe in February. I ddn’t really need a pair of sneakers back then – my old Nikes were just fine, but I thought some retail therapy might help cure my NED, and hence the new sneakers. The therapy’s effects were short-lived. I got back to my then-ground [...]

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