My Happiest moment in Life : A personal Diary: Part 2

Our calculation was on target and within 30 mins of me reaching there I was given a call to enter into the interview room. It was a 1-1 interview and one Sridhar was there to decide my fate. I was wearing my fav. sky blue shirt , new one ( wore only for the 2 previous interviews) and a cream color pant, a rather unusual combination, thats what everyone thought. But the black pant had been not so lucky for me. I had decided to take the interview my way and the first question" Tell me about yourself" just made things easier for me. After the initial braggings about education and all I went to my favorite topic of paper presentation in IIT Delhi and ended there for Sridhar to pick from there . I was lucky for this trick to work out and hence, began my explanation of my paper where I was in full form.(must be, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this blog)

On software and languages side, I played safe this time saying I do not know any of them. After about 20 minutes of mostly me talking and he listening he seemed impressed and told me to go on for the HR interview , which meant that I had cleared the "technical" interview. Officially I was informed that I had cleared outside by another gentleman from IBM whose name I did not know. Then after waiting for around 30 mins , I was called for the HR interview, there a very stern Balasubramanian was waiting for me. I tried to be as friendly as possible with him. But he was all the same. He asked " you look tired. It is a long time for you". I replied back " It is the same for you sir" . Then began my HR interview. I had questions on my role model which I had put as the Australian Cricket team of 2003. I had questions on 5 uses of pen apart from writing. Again I tried to use my sense of humour to lighten the mood but to no avail. I had questions on my career ambitions and where do I see myself after 5 years. This is where I thought I had blew if off yet again. I replied back " I do not set myself any goals in terms of position and money. I just want to grow with the company. I will look for challenges at every juncture". To which the question was " What if there are no challenges?". A very tricky one indeed. I tried to manage it with some excuses like I will ask for challenging role and that I will fight for it . He was stern on his stand that there are no challenges. The million dollar question. I played a gamble. I replied " In that case I will quit IBM and look for somewhere else sir". His reaction did not tell me anything. He was a thorough professional. On that note my HR interview was also over after 20-25 minutes of what I will say grilling.

Then it was a wait forever, for the results to come. After interviewing full 47 short listed candidates which went on till about 12 midnight, results were finally announced t 1.40 am. All of us, including friends of those who attended waited with out heart in our mouth. Finally , the HR came out with a list. He announced that they had selected 19 of us. Good news! I thought. Then he began announcing the names. And my classmate's name came . I thought I had screwed it up again based on our logic of only one production guy being selected among every two. But still I was praying and waiting. 16th name was announced " Natraj M" and here I was.... Didn't know how to celebrate I just did a punch in air and then ran out. Followed by our class PRs and other friends who were all happy as we had 2 on 2 in IBM. The late night call to my parents by my friend will not be forgotten by them for the lifetime , I am sure. Rest of the night was spent talking and trying to digest the truth. The truth that I had got placed in IBM. And I spent another sleepless night.

Bangalore : Rediscovered!

On Rajyotsava day, I was served with true delicacy of the real Bangalore and its life. I went for a quiz to Malleswaram, the area which supposed to be the older Bangalore (I would say the truer one ). It had a typical small city feeling about it. No big flats, No big malls, not every third restaurant was a place where you burn half of your day's pay for a meal,(there were not much of hotels also), not a place where every guy and girl dress as if they are going to de-throne Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai respectively, not every 9 in 10 people on streets where 20 something's and the best of it a smoother and better traffic . It was the older and the traditional Bangalore at display. A nice place for dinner, New Krishna Bhawan , a place established since 1954 , where you can find all Mangalore style dosas and stuff, which you won't find in any other part of Bangalore. But as soon as I finished my dinner and went on to catch an auto, I was brought to the reality that I am still in Bangalore when more than half a dozen autowallas refused to come to Majestic. Once I reached Majestic, I was completely brought back to reality , mad rush, mad traffic blah blah blah... all which have now become a part and parcel of Bangalore life.

Dravid's omission: Pains me

Way back in my TCS placement interview to the question of who is my favorite cricketer I had answered Rahul Dravid and it is shocking to see him out of the Indian team now. Though my answer in the TCS interview was just to sound different than the usual Sachin Tendulkar, I have to confess that Dravid has been one of the pillars of Indian cricket in recent times. How can we forget the contributions he has made to the famous Australian tour when we managed to salvage some pride or the Calcutta test against Australia where India won the game after being made to follow on, which changed the approach of follow on forever(Now teams don't ask teams to follow on ). How can we forget the role he played in 2003 world cup directly with the runs he scored and indirectly with him donning the double role of wicket keeper batsman so that India could play the extra batsman. I am not a vivid supporter of historical statistics and I don't argue that he should be kept in the team based on his previous performances. But replacing him for someone like Sehwag is what pains me. Sehwag's form is known to all. Dravid has an impressive record against Pakistan. Can Indian selectors be brave enough to leave him out of the Australian tour? Then why this step motherly treatment towards him ?

Google: The BEST!

Working at Google.. Have a look..No doubt people dream of working in Google.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOZhbOhEunY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd6BPhJjYL4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YA9QWceEfE

Democracy: Facts

Be it the reservation row or the Ram sethu row or the nuclear deal row, One wonders whether the policies and actions taken by the Govt. truly represents the mood and opinion of the entire country. Being the largest democracy in the world ideally it should. Here is some mathematics to show how wrong we are if we answer in affirmation to the above question.

Elections are held in constituencies where , lets say on an average 10 contestants from various different parties contest. Lets say the winner gets 30 % of the votes and is elected as a MP/MLA. Now just extrapolating this situation to all the constituencies we get a house of say 500 members each member with 30 % votes from his/her constituency. Now to form a Govt. a party needs majority that is more than 50 % members in the house which is 251 in our case. So the % fo votes for this so called majority is 251/500 X 30/100=15.06%.

Hence, the party having "majority" in a house has typically the support of only 15% of the people who have cast their votes and they in turn choose a leader of their own to run the country/state.


So what's the point? How do we solve this? I am of the belief that the leader of the Govt. say PM/CM must be chosen directly by the people and not by other members who were chosen by people. Along with the ballot box/EVM for chosing the local constituency member there should be anothet box/EVM to choose the PM/CM of their choice and this should be taken into account for choosing the PM/CM. Also, the total % of votes for a particular political party should be taken into consideration for choosing the ruling party.