Continuing my article about American Service, I am hereby going to show few observations. I know these views are biased, but still I want to show these views, because I am literally pissed right now. American economy can be clustered into 2 parts. 1 the very small scale economy, like the shops in downtowns. Second, the real big industries, like Walmart, AT&T etc. Small scale shops are run by *dumb* people. And Big scale shops are run by *crooks*. And those who are not in either category, are employees. Of course, exceptions are there to all these categories. I am going to emphasizes upon few points below:
(more…)
I was taking hair cut on the auspicious occasion of Oct 27. As usual I started talking with the guy giving me hair cut. And of course the talk started to cover breadth. The best part about talking to people with not-so-brainy jobs is that you get to talk in breadth. Talking in depth consumes lot of energy. Anyways, we were talking about different types of therapy. And he said that he takes light therapy. He has problems because of the dull West Lafayette. And I think its not too wrong. The sky is always covered with the dull clouds here. And not many animals to see. So, basically you have to be creative enough to bring out colors here. This all reminded me of Onion’s poem : (more…)
So, I needed to buy a mobile. Those who have seen me working know that mobile is an essential part of my life. Involvement in different things bring importance of connectivity. And anyways, a mobile gives pretty security to family people as well. Anyways, so since many of friends had AT&T, I thought of buying the same. AT&T seems to have biggest coverage as well, and rates weren’t bad either. So, I went to the AT&T shop. The store had iphones on display. I used them for few minutes. And believe me, I fell in love. Apple makes awesome products. So, I asked the guy if I can buy the iphone, not that I was about to buy but I wanted that option open. I know thats a sick idea but iphone really had a very nice impression on me. The guy was like, you can buy iphone only in first 4 months of your 2 year contract or the last 4 years. (I had to buy the 2 year contract for getting post paid). And I thought wow, why the last 4 months is in option. First 4 months make sense, but why last 4 months. I asked the same question to the guy at store. And he replied with full confidence and will pride that he knew the answer. He said that this is how the contract between Apple and AT&T is. And I was like, WTF, of course thats the contract, but why is it like this. And that guy didn’t have a clue. That guy is selling the product and he probably never cared and probably was never told by his manager why things are working that way. Seriously, where is the desire to understand things? This is what Einstein was indicating when he said “Its surprising that curiousity survived formal education”.
(more…)
This is rather a late post. I am at Purdue now. Arrived here on 12th of August. A few glitches ( 0)The taxi driver charged me 300$ for a ride from JFK to LGA, 1) we didn’t get the apartment on the first day, thanks to Vikas and Himanshu to letting me stay in their house, 2) buying big things like mattress, table is a big deal. The walmart here doesn’t deliver things, and thats the only place here to buy things from. ) but otherwise it was fine. I *think* we are more or less settled now. I am sharing a 3 bed-room apartment with Ankit Jain, and Sourabh Dongoankar. Both are in ECE department, so we don’t discuss acads when we are together. 
(more…)
Last week I went to Hyderabad to this “IIT Hire Meet” of Microsoft. It sort of sucked. They called all IIT students hired by Microsoft Indian Development Center. Yes, they had hired me as well. In December when placements started in IITK, Microsoft was the first CS company to hire students. I didn’t plan to sit for their first exam, but my friend woke me and asked me to take the test for the sake of practice. I did that. Though I was sure I wouldn’t get selected (considering that I had a bad fight (about Open Source community infringing some patents) with them just 1 months back when they came here for Microsoft Day, and the same HR lady came for placements as well.). Anyways Arun called me (otherwise I wasn’t very keen to know the result) and informed that I have cleared first round. The next round was just after 15 minutes and I didn’t have clothes and hadn’t had bath. That was a fun day. I was finally selected. I was 1 of the 4 selected from UG students. I then wanted to join Microsoft. I think it would have been cool to have an experience to see them working. And anyways since I am fan of some of their products it would have been cooler.
(more…)
So, I got to know about this from nareshov’s blog post. I tried it, all I needed was answering 20 easy and fast question… and here is the result :
(more…)
That was so bad from my side. We (the interns at VT from India) were supposed to send our boarding passes and bills to Naren for the reimbursement of the flights we took for the to ‘n fro journey to US. Me and Kshitiz sent it together so it will cost us less. We simply didn’t think of Manu. Me, Kshitiz and Manu are from same School. I remember I wanted to ask Manu if he wants to send his documents with us, which will decrease his cost as well but it just slipped from my mind. And then when Manu got to know about it he asked us that we should had at least asked him, he would had sent his documents with ours. It hurted me so much. It’s not that I do not talk to Manu usually. We rather talk to each other daily now a days. It’s so rude from my side that I did that.
Sorry Manu…..
.
