1) The AC at DOMS
2) The yes sir, 5 minute sir, please sir man of Tifanys
3) Poonam Badam Milk
4) DC++
5) Bandwidth on weekends (through illegal proxy settings)
6) The constant cribbing of my friends
7) The crazy monkeys
8 ) Midnight Counter-strike

and what I won’t
1) The extreme heat of the city
2) The mess food
3) Examination grades
4) The hostel loo
5) MBA bull****
6) The cribbing of the rickshaw drivers
7) The (pathetically slow) hostel net

As long as there are more things to miss, there’s always a reason to go back to IIT. Btw what will you miss?

This incident took place when I was travelling from Chennai to Mumbai by train. A vendor was selling an assortment of food items including potato wafers, chips and other eatables. As is the style in Indian trains, he was continuously shouting out what he was selling. This mainly included, “Wafers… kurkure…”.

But as soon as he came near our berth, where four of us guys were sitting, he immediately started shouting out “…cigarettes, gutkha, Manikchand…” How’s that for effective customer segmentation? Not that we bought anything from him, but on average this strategy would definitely help him garner more sales. Who says you need an MBA from a B-school to be an effective seller?

One of my favourite ads is the Priceless series by Mastercard. This is where they list down a few expenses and then as the punchline, deliver something which cannot be measured in money. It conjures up a beautiful combination of pride and emotion for the viewer. Here’s my own version of the ad if ever the Indian Railways decided to follow that format..

Read more…

Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, “Fooled by randomness” writes, “It is said that science evolves from funeral to funeral. After the LTCM collapse, a new financial economist will emerge, who will integrate such knowledge into his science. He will be resisted by the older ones, but, again, they will be much closer to their funeral date than he.”

One and only one funeral comes to mind now – the sub-prime crisis, the latest funeral in a long list of never-ending deaths. Update: Here comes the next crisis in line.

P.S. On a related note, MBAs did not cause the sub-prime crisis. We are just not that intelligent.