The inept me

Yours truly is planning to apply for graduate studies in financial engineering (fall '06 admission). Been looking at tons of websites of graduate programs/schools. The outcome of the exercise was simply this: My credentials are simply not enough to get me an admit in any of the places that I want to go.

Some of universities have gone so far as to state that people of my qualification can't even apply. Case in point: UC Berkeley(Yeah, I dream BIG!!). They don't even accept applications of graduates from British styled university with any less than second upper degree classification. The shameless me went as far as mailing the ad comm people asking if they will look beyond this requirement if the applicant already has a Masters degree. But even they were to say yes, it'll simply be a waste of $175 application fee.

I thought I got away with all nonsense - bunking lectures, sitting in canteen A all day, doing just enough to pass the course, when I got my job. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Finally, I've decided to just apply to NTU only. NTU has a good enough program which includes a 8 week stint at Carnegie Mellon. I should have a decent shot at this if I manage to get a good GMAT score.

I wanted to piggyback on graduate studies as an opportunity to live and consequently work in a new country but looks like it's still going to be Singapore for a long time to come. Honestly, am already quite bored of Singapore. I want out.

Look Who's been hiding!

This week has been extremely unproductive. Have been mindlessly surfing the net in the office. But, as a result, I did uncover blogspots of a whole big gang of my batch mates n juniors who have been blogging away all these days. Obviously, given that I had quit that circle a long time ago, I didn't know.

It was quite interesting to look at this avatar of theirs. In almost every single blog, I was seeing a whole new person, someone totally different from the one I've known in living colors. At some point, I was even thinking, I didn't know this person could have opinions on matters like these. May be it's my vanity that prevented me from looking deep while at the university, but I was sure it wasn't just that. There was definitely a different self, an alter ego of sorts, talking there. There was a thought of leaving comments in blogs of guys I've known better but obviously, I guessed that when they read mine, they'll feel the same way too.

Are we all very same person in meat space and in the cyber space? Or is there a tendency to deviate.

eM has written on this same subject in this post of her's.

Of Italian interests & afternoon showers

My friends from R&D and I were returning after a good afternoon's meal when we spotted that Italian girl everyone had hots for. She worked in my building. R&D was right next to the canteen while mine was 10 mins walk from there. I started predicting how it's gonna start to rain and that if I followed her, I could maybe even offer to take her in my umbrella.

Extra fitting

Chill: But you don't have an umbrella!
Me(snatching his): Now I do!!

/Extra fitting

But, in actual fact, I did borrow his umbrella. And so, having gotten what I wanted, I bade the R&D wimps a strong Italian accented "Ciao!". I started following her while maintaining 10 paces between herself and me. By Jove! it started drizzling. I opened my umbrella (And no! I never ever had the guts to ask any girl if she wanted to share an umbrella, let alone a totally hot italian stranger!). I was curious see if she would run back to the canteen, afterall had barely walked a 100ft, or if she would walk on not minding the rain.

But neither of this happened, she coyly opened her petite luis vuitton bag and took out an umbrella - I could never guess that hand bag could have fitted one inside! Anyways, she was not walking to my office as I had predicted, she stopped at the main building on the way (yeah, we have 7 office buildings in that area) and I was left in the cold, with the rain getting heavier and another 100m to walk.

I was dressed down in a t-shirt blue jeans and my new n expensive Reebok running shoes. The wind, constantly changing direction, (or wait a minute, was it that I make a few left and right turns, not sure which was it right now) made sure I got completely soaked knees under. As I was about to enter my over air-conditioned office, I saw a few Italians with all their extra large umbrellas and weather-proof Gucci shoes smoking outside and laughing over something. I guess it must have been me. Maybe she called these guys up and told them about me. Damn you Reebok - so much for all the pores n the air cushion technology.

I'm thinking of suing Reebok for not warning about the pores and hence the unsuitability of the shoes in inclement weather. While my R&D friends are still investigating if my wrong usage of the umbrella was problem and not the shoes, few of my sympathetic Italian friends have already agreed to get me a pair of Gucci the next time they visit. Ofcourse, I am to keep away from all the Italian women.

Pet Projects

I registered today for taking the GMAT in August (08/08 to be precise). And now suddenly all that interest in solving the quant questions, cracking the RCs has disappeared. I was pouring through them 24-7 from various websites until yesterday. What happened? Well, now it's become a committment. Whether I like it or not, I'll have to be prepared to take the exam on a certain date (unless I feel rich enough to reschedule/cancel, which I don't). That has sort of awakened the rebel in me and wants me not want to do it with the same fervor and vigour that was there before.

I think this sort of difference in attitude/approach towards stuff that you do at your leisure and stuff that you have to do within a certain deadline is universal. And Google seems to have understood it better than any other corporation.

Check out this blog entry. It talks about the Google's 70-20-10 policy. Yeah, apparently Google encourages employees to spend 10% of their time working on stuff - pet projects that may or may not pan out, may or may not be useful, but that are sure fun to play around with. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a simply brilliant strategy. Recipe for success, I might add!