The Great Debaters

The movie is based on a true story of the triumph of truth, the victory of belief and faith. Its a very good movie and the actors have done a commendable job. I don't even need to mention, Denzel Washington has done it again.
Life's challenges are never easy and although you may have started your journey with comrades, you depend and count on yourself, it doesn't matter if you have to tread the waters alone as long as you believe in what you are doing.
Two lines I picked up from the movie:
1. I do what I have to do - so that I can do what I want to do!
2. “Who is my judge?” “God is my judge.” “Why is God your judge?” “He decides whether I win or lose.” “And who are your opponents?” “I have no opponents … merely dissenting voices to the truth I speak.”

Nightcap in Canary wharf

Here I am agian, in Canary Wharf this time, came to see my friend. It has been a long day and a did quite a lot of sight seeing today.
I went to see the Queens House through the Greenwich foot tunnel also saw the Prime Meridian, meant to be a imaginary datum - the centre of time and space, hee haa not so imaginary for me anymore. It was fun but I just didnt have my camera along so no great pictures just good memories.
Its 7.30 pm and the plan is to go to central london now and witness the nightlife, when that happens is still unknown - my friend is fast aleep perhaps fueling up himself for another one of his sleepless weekends. Till we meet again and I have more stories to tell, bye.

A 2 min ride or an hour long trip??

Was just coming out of Sainsbury's, hmm too many bags to carry and although I am putting up pretty much at a walking distance I decided to board a bus to help my cause.
It was raining and dark so I started running towards the bus stop trying to get as little wet as possible. It was great I didn't have to wait long, the correct route bus was there, so I boarded handful of grocery bags and was off on a small ride towards home. I stood by the window to keep a check on where I need to de-board, unfortunately I couldn't see anything that resembled some land mark I was so used to. Yes by now I realized I had boarded the right bus from the wrong side of the road, but this wasn't a big worry just a big investment of time.
The world is round, what goes around comes around and so was this bus supposed, to I did reach my home but after a full trip of the bus to its last stop, back to where I had actually boarded the bus and finally to home sweet home.

Boxing Day!

Yes Christmas is over and what all you folks out there were waiting for is on...BOXING DAY (the time till you delay your shopping to save some bucks).
This was the first time I got a chance to witness one, most shops on the high street and in the malls had it on the right day, the day following Christmas, but then there were also the other lot...SALE SALE SALE thursday 7 am to 8 pm and those starting even before 5am to 7 pm. For God's sake this is the time in winter that you don't see the day light till 8am or even later.
Anyways money talks and talk it did and big time. I went for some window shopping myself, the Debenham's , M&S and what not. There was clothing for just £2 but believe me you wouldn't consider wearing one even if it were free, the real deal had offers too a couple of sterling off, so its not for you unless you are there to furnish out around a hundred bills. It was however a lot of fun to watch.
Then there was a queue outside NEXT, infact two - one for people to get in and one to get out. Can you believe it, people are paying to stand on the road wait for hours in queues for something they haven't even seen beforehand, but must be worth it cause the banner " upto 70% off on sale items" says so.
It was sort of funny, I don't know particularly why, but it must have been the men, women and even children being policed to pay.

Mirror Mirror!!

I can talk, will listen to anything and everything, but will not necessarily agree to whatever you have to say. By the way I dont even have to agree to everything until I dont understand it but I can live with it, knowing you are different, different from me and thats what makes you-YOU and not me.
Yes there are times I do agree to things and concepts I donot necessarily understand, religion for example. Probably I have a firm belief in it and thats the reason (is that logical I dont know! but thats me). I will question the rules, but to learn, to understand and not just because questioning everything has lately become a fashion, and the more you vocally question the more intellectual you are.
Discussions are good as long as they are productive-but whats productive? Is it making things fit into your line of thought or fitting your thinking into someone else's thinking?
I am different and please live with the fact-that you are too, not necessarily better than me or even worse, but just different. Yet when my point of view doesn't match yours, you think that I am wrong. Yes you love it when you learn something new, or just have a feeling that you can gain something from this person, and you are even more in heaven when you change people and they start to think like you. Yes its all very silver lined but its always about you and not me. If I don't change you don't like me, but what if I become you, and don't like you becuase of how I think you are-what no one should be.

I Killed Myself!

Its time for the term1 exams and all teachers had been giving their final recommendations about what to do and what not to do in the papers.
Then the chief of staff..Alexander the great! had so much stuff to talk about but unfortunately it was all somehow related to.....what if you fail?? and what can be done-the procedures and processes, so much so that I came to know, there are opportunities where in the university will consider massaging your results if you have been in a mishap (ill, accident etc) and it limited your ability to perform to your potential.
This all was somehow very amusing to me, and I started making fun of what the COS had said, and how everyone should now look to get a doctors note which can prove you have medical condition and so you don't have to work hard in your exams.
The joke was short lived and I was soon to become a candidate for the case. I caught a very bad cold and to make things even worse started self medication. My friend has this stock of every medicine a human can need, so I turned up at his vault and picked what I thought would best suffice my needs and get me fit soon (some medicine and some sort of lemon tea).
I took the medicines after dinner but soon felt very sleepy (I was thinking the medicine had started working already), so I slept early only to discover next morning that I don't have any energy left in me...the ghosts were coming back to life, I felt so week as one would after climbing a mountain. I have heard that cold has these effects but to such extremes, I could never have imagined. As one may guess now, I couldn't do anything the whole day, was confused most of the time, having conversations and forgetting the plot in the middle of it. I was scared!!!
In the evening I decided to talk to my doctor sister about whats happening to me and to my embarrassment soon discovered that the lemon tea was not tea but another form of the medicine that I had already taken.....turns out I had overdosed myself with antipyratics and sedatives....Ohhh will I really need a doctors prescription now? will i be able to sit the exams? I was so drowsy that I didn't know if I would wake up next morning ....yes I can laugh about it now. The instructions to my flat mate were clear, call me in the morning...if I dont answer please break open the door....
Now here I am all fine (well sort of..the cold is there but I am conscious atleast)...

A Fresh Head Ache!!

"you are the only one, I have seen since morning who doesn't look stressed", my irish friend on the MBA cohort tells me as I was returning back from the groccer with a bag full of stuff to eat over the weekend. Now this is something I wasn't certainly feeling inside and definitely not even expecting to be told. Not that I was stressed or something, but I did have a headache which isn't still going away. Many of my friends have this ailment these days, especially as the exam dates are coming closer, generally due to sleep deprevation (most people have 3 hour nights and the rest is day for them). My reasons were different, it seems I have been oversleeping this entire week, yes!! over sleeping, not 4 or 5 hours when I average is 3, but a full 10-11 hrs and I have this special marketier friend who just told me that, this is precisely the reason for my headache...

But let me tell you straight headache or no headache I can't live with less than 8 hours of sleep and thats my sense of self, my self identity (thats how we are supposed to speak in Organisation Behaviour terms).

First Night Out In UK

This had been coming for a few weeks now but none of us had been pushing the plans ahead until yesterday.
My friends and more importantly Dinner-Mates (from the plain logistics of where we are) had decided that we need more canned food to sustain us until the end of our Term 1 exams, so all of us had been suggesting the idea that we should go to FolesHill to buy some inventories. FolesHill particularly not because we have a love of that place, but because its the only nearby place from where we can buy any decent food that we are used to (rice, cooked canned vegetables not boiled stuff that is so easily available from Tesco or Costcutter).
I had been reluctant initially, don't ask me why, because I don't know myself-just didn't feel like. Anyways I realized soon enough that my friends wanted to go and my hesitation would have been an obstacle since there was a lot to buy and not many hands to carry the stuff. So I pushed ahead with the idea of the trip to FolesHill and it was all decided in 15 mins.
The idea of the trip was nothing more than buying groceries, but new plans started to merge with it, and yeah they turned out to be rather welcome. Dinner at a restaurant and a movie at the cinema, yes we went to the cinema with all the bags.
I had expected that Om Shanti Om (the Indian movie) would be a complete time pass and lots of fun- yes I was wrong! It was emotionally very overwhelming, I was taken back in time and soon forgot where I was. Sharukh Khan's acting was brilliant and so was the new actresses', I can't remember if I have seen a better performance from him till date. The desperation in the scenes and the struggle was brilliantly performed, I could feel the pain, the struggle within me.
The movie turned out to be a mixture- a mixture of humour, emotion, thrill and yes horror.
We returned back at around 12.30 in the night and yeah, the trip was well worth the time and money spent.

Good Day After A Tough Week

Yesterday was the dooms day, the day to present our analysis of samsung as a success story. It was a marketing analysis assignment and although we as a team had full seven weeks to research and analyse the subject, not much progress had been made till week 6. This was the time we decided that 10 people was just too big a team to have a focused approach to the assignment, so we decided to split into two teams of 5. Yes a bit too late for such a straightforward decision which could have probably been taken long time ago.
The tensions were high and we didn't have a clear idea of how the presentation would be like, yes until the morning of the dooms day. We practised our first real presentation at 8.30AM yesterday, yes just 1.5 hrs prior to the actual thing.
I was impressed with a couple of presentations in terms of content and delivery. Although one presentation was very flashy and graphical but somehow the idea didnt come across as brilliantly for me.
Our presentation was simple and to the point (thats the feedback we got) I would have however wanted to have more graphics in it. Yes one thing worth noting was, we were the only group who finished in the allowed time frame.
I will like to believe that we did a good job, from the position we had put ourselves in.

JFDI!

Yes you heard that right JFDI, not I am not swearing by any means, but thats my latest mantra to survival. It's quarter past midnight and I am trying to make the ends meet, bear in mind there is a great force pulling the ends even further away from each other, no prizes for guessing, yes I am talking about the size and volume of the assignments these guys give in here at the MBA. There must be some kind of agenda here (I don't buy it but I have to live it), burn the metal red hot and you will get the finest steel that will stand the test of time, and if it breaks (yes there are those cases too), it was pretty much not worth it in the first place.

The idea is to squeeze a two years intensive course into one year, and add some fancy activites to keep you busy everytime, so that at the end of the day, you dont have a clue of what happened. Its the fast paced MBA, paced so fast, that its gone even before you get into your comfort zone, but comfort isn't the idea is it? As Nicholas Bate (must meet guy...the Strategic Edge link, thats him) said and I quote, "love challenges not comfort", yes we might very well do that now...since I dont see any comfort anywhere near me, so rather than nagging about the share volume of everything expected, one might very well Just F...... Do It.

One Faith One World!

At last I have some time to reflect upon the past week that has been. O yes its been hectic, and I have had my good share of frustrations and what now times.
It is Ramzan ul Mubarak and for those of who don't know, one doesn't get to eat/drink anything for dawn to dusk, but thats just a part of the deal. This is the one time in the whole wide world when every believer has the same goals follows a common practice, and bows to the command of his master, his lord.
Ok lets not get into the technicalities, Warwick university has this chaplaincy for the believers; and believe me or not, the mosque forms the biggest part of it. No that doesn't mean it's huge, infact it's a small hall meant for prayers, students from all across the university, collect at the time of IFTAR (fast breaking) and discuss all sorts of things, yes! everyone gets plenty to eat as well (its free, and the contributions are absolutely voluntary).
Personally I like this a lot, at least I get to eat dinner, otherwise I am so lazy, I would rather starve than cook.
I came across students from different nationalities, there are the Arabs, the Chinese looking (Malasians, Indonasians, Koreans), Africans and o yes a lot of Pakistanis (I am yet to meet an Indian there). I come from Kashmir, on the present Indian side, I even met a couple of Kashmiri's from across the other side, it was a nice feeling, I learn't that I am the 3rd person from Kashmir ever to study there and the second to be on an MBA in this university or at least that is what I was told.
I don't know anyone here but you suddenly have so many brothers and people you know and feel a part of as soon as you step inside...the Mosque.

First Day At Uni

Well infact I came to this place once earlier also, but today it seems all so different, maybe because I know there is no going back home this time, yes for 1 year that is. Thats alright, I am fine don't worry.
Actually I am sitting on top of my Flat Building, no no not on the roof, the room allotted to me is here.
When I was given the key I felt I have been among the late arrivals and so didn't get a room on the ground floor, but hey thats not it, this flat is empty- yes EMPTY! as an old church, and what is left of it is me, yes Me Myself and again no Irene.
It would be an asset as days go by and people look for peace and privacy and try to concentrate upon their studies but until then you wont hear about any new characters in this blogger's tales.

Purchase Hickups

Its been a really terrible experience!
I placed an order with the call centre of the much spoken about Dell on 31st Aug 2007 and a gentleman from an Indian with a wanna get british accent got me into making the purchase, he was good to talk to initially that is. Becuase of the hurry I was in, to get my hands on my new laptop, the delivery date he promised, 17th Sep 2007 seemed quite acceptable to me. Days went, soon weeks; the online order status was still in Pre-Production getting me a little concerned. Ok! I got in touch with them, yes I had to initiate approaching them, for they didn't do it as is mentioned on thier website (ethics are process management is for banners and ads only...to tough to practice). Turns out, there is expected to be a delay in my order, the expected shipment date has jumped to 25th Sep 2007, but thats ok I guess.....turns out it isn't OK anymore, 16th and I get an e-mail from some so called Sales Expert or just wanna-be one, telling me and I quote, "the delilvery in no case will now be made on 17th Sep 2007 and we will contact you after the end of business tomorrow". Yes! that call never came, and I had to take the initiative and give them some stuff from my vocabulary (you know what I mean).
The Sales manager calls me this time and gives all sorts of excuses, he has this new piece of information for me...."the product will now be ready no earlier than second week of october and thats not a date I can promise you. Please dont waste your time and money if you think you can sue us, out Terms n Conditions have some bla bla bla".
Martaa kya na kartaa...I am mad, sad and in a mood thats really bad...can't do much about it, can I? Will have to settle with cancelling the order, and be bullied haaaaaah....(sigh)

The Spiral Road...

Its no more about your 9 to 9 local shop...

The "24 Hour Clock " is here.

It is important for businesses to remain competitive in the global economy, and the fact that less expensive skill sources exist, means you need to exploit them, Outsourcing is the Golden Key to the modern world where growth and comparative competitive advantage is the Mantra.
Existence of a less-costly means of production; This suggets that value associated with the factors of production has also fallen since its available cheaply somewhere else. Not just lower costs, Outsourcing has benefits for the economy whole economy: it is the Domestic Shareholders, Investors and the Consumers that reap the benefits. It not only reduces costs but can be adopted to avoid organizational problems that don't seem to be resolvable by internal re-organisation.

The Global Market is more free than ever before, with every country consolidating on its comparitive advantages. Money finds its own way, as a rule/law it will move towards the master where it is proves most effective and profitable.

Outsourcing does kill the low-skill domestic jobs but at the same time helps in creation of high-skill job market and thus leads the economy towards a specialized and high-skill human resource, assuming that the training and education system become more supportive to face this challenge.

Life is not fair, its survival of the fittest, the more you can adapt the better are you chances, Change is around the next bend and life is a spiral road.

The name of the game is CHESS

Yes CHESS!
A competitive game played between two players, believed to have its origins in India, yet not so popular in its home, guess what! Its more about brains than brawns. Anyways I am not here to discuss the history or poularity of the game, its not my cup of tea, TEA?? milk would be a better alternative for me-its mild.
Ok lets cut out the bla bla...I have been exposed to a lot of chess lately more than ever before, NO! I am not learning the game but my mate has a thing for it. Let me profile him a bit for you..hes an IT techie; and when I say Techie, I dont mean like the thousands we have now a days, flocking around..hes the real deal. Hes married, has a child, works nearly 12 hours a day and yet has time for chess, YES he has - the time you and me would be relaxing (TV, music, and lots of other stuff but Chess? naah!). Trust me it used to bother me initially but I learn that it was relaxation for him (realxation can you belive it by making your mind work after a long and asking day).
I had the chance to go to a Tourni (I use this term for a tournament on a small scale) with him, he had been looking forward to this for a while, it was the first time I was to experience this game being played at a professional level. For the 36 tables that were laid out (72 players that is) I could see more than 15 kids (of the age group to 7 to 12). The way these kids played; I ain't sure anymore if I should use the word KID for them. I had expected a quick exchange of armour at each table the way I would do it when I would play the game, if ever, once in a blue moon. Ahh I was disappointed, the game was slow, very slow (there are the BLIZZ-fast paced variants of the game too-this wasn't one of those), I wasn't to witness any exchanges for the first 1o minutes atleast, not that none was available - the way a layman like myself would see it, at least 5 points each side were ready to jump off the board.
I learnt its not just about the number of points you have on the board (that does make a difference sometimes however), but also the logistics (the position your points are on and the area of influence they have). There are even computer programs (not plain games but high end algorithm) that are available to challenge the human intellect, Chessmaster is one, Fritz is the most competant available these days with an average of 30 million moves calculated per second- can you believe.
Makes me wonder about the capabilities of the human mind and the power of imagination we have and where it can take us.

A Foreign Land?

Its been two months since I have been living in this foreign country, England or if you prefer, inglend. To tell you the truth as I see it, its not so foreign in terms of landscape as in people, considering where I come from (Kashmir Vale for those of you who don't know) , there is the obvious colour difference; shouldn't suggest that Kashmir's indigenous people are anywhere on the darker side, infact, move towards the countryside and you see English men and women all around, in face at least if not in language.

There has been so much migration/immigration, not just here, but everywhere on a Global level that is to say, there is a cultural mix everywhere you go. People indigenous and those coming in from elsewhere, adopt from and adapt to a range of choices as it suits them. The mix is so complex that it is hard to differenciate the indigenous from the immigrant, makes me think! The indigenous must have been an immigrant at one point in time, so its just a question of time and space for people to qualify for these adjectives. Remember America, the land of the immigrants yet so averse to immigration now.

Tread back a few years, ok may be some million years, to Hazrat Aadam (Mr Adam) and Hazrat Hawa (Ms EVE) don't we come from a single source as relatives in blood, yet we have become so seperated by the concept....COUNTRY. What is Country, Motherland, Fatherland...maybe names that unite people in oneness, or does it divide them into groups and sections? Take a close look at the globe dont the pieces that we see just fit in together?

My memory failed me!

I have been trying to recall my earlier blog name from the depths of my subconscious, where it it is fast asleep. Its been a couple of hours now, so here I am with a fresh one..

I think I am better off writing in the NOW than in the THEN untill I find my old blog...yes I don't quit easily, but thats another story altogether...