Domain Maximus

People been busy almost 21 hours a day over the last few days. Please hold on a while… Placement and other activities taking up the entire day… so I just dont want to write up some half-baked crap and post it…

So hold and peace.

P.S. Had the freaky experience of my life today. Saw a guy in a dorm going to take a shower. He was carrying soap and a big bottle of shampoo. Thing was… he was perfectly bald…

No sooner had the stratosphere healed the hole ripped in it by Beckham’s penalty, and France goes out with a whimper to that footballing giant Greece. I am quite happy for Greece of course. They deserved to win, and I hope they continue their brilliant performance. This will be another golden page in their footballing heritage. Which makes it a total of three golden pages.

Tottenham Hotspurs who get the french coach this season wont be too thrilled. If the bugger cant beat Greece with all those Zidane, Henry types I dont particularly see the Spurs beating Man U with anything less than a lead pipe.

And man were the French off course, off target and all that. I mean look at the shit that happened in the match…

Le Snap No. 1



Zidane: “EH!!! What ze f@#$ is Trezeguet doing…?”

Le Snap No. 2



Zidane: “Trezeguet you bastaird.. stop singing “Aaja Mahiya” and find ze footbawl…”

Everyone hates consultants. Most of my friends hate them, the guys who write jokes in Reader’s Digest hate them and most of all my professors hate them. Which is ironic, cause I think an MBA just makes you more of a consultant than anything else. Sometimes, after a class, half of me wants to just ask for a refund and run away to a place without consultants or powerpoint presentations. The other half wants to go the the mess for lunch with everyone else. The discussion in class sometimes get so full of it its nauseating…

Prof: So how do you model the distribution system?

Marketing Group no. 52: Sir we use an intertemporal model coupled with a priority based resource alloction system. That should take care of the uncertainties in procurement parameters and unstable economic fallouts. Basically it is an attempt to demystify consumer supplier interface modalities.

Prof: Good… but what about scalability?

MG No. 52: Oh for that after six months we implement a paradigm shift.

Prof: Excellent…

Now you see where the problem starts from. The source of all those jokes on MBAs and consultants. People should just call a spade a spade. In an ideal world case discussions would be soo much simpler

Prof: Good morning. So under these circumstances what should the CEO of Eyewash Consulting do?

Class: Quit

Prof: Good. Class dismissed.

Rapid business education without all the crap. What scares me is if the same consult jargon was to percolate into our schools and our children… The images are scary…

Teacher: So what do you think Robert the Bruce did when he saw the spider?

Student: The spider has brought to the table models of sustained impetus and has disambiguated the protagonist’s mental status quo. The arachnid has shown what a unwavering commitement to core competencies can do to the organization. Robert should expedite assimilation of similar best practices. Leveraging completely the power beneath his resource capabilities, will, at the end of the day, drive greater value into the penetration proposition.

Mind you those are words I hear everyday in class. I walk around so disoriented and lost after that, you’d think I was a french footballer.

Dammit. Dammit. England loses out again on penalties. I felt terrible, why can’t those limeys win anything. Must be exponentially worse to be english. They have no footage of England winning anything in colour. Felt so low after the game. I didnt speak to anyone, kept seeing images of penalties being missed, Rooney’s career going up in smoke etc. etc. Felt suicidial even. But there were eggs in the mess in the morning for breakfast and I am ok now.

Its almost an year to the day I was done with my week long appointment with a dentist. A nice guy in Abu Dhabi. Dad thought I should get all my cavities filled in before I joined IIMA. As soon as I was done with my first session I knew one thing for sure. Dentists are as faithful to the Hippocratic Oath as Keanu Reeves is to the acting profession. Especially the part:

“I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.”

Me: (Sudden outburst of noise due to pain, not unlike noises emanating from Business German classes, a little louder…)

Dentist: Sorry the drill hit your gum…

Me: Business German contd.

Dentist: I am not being too deletrious or mischievous I hope???

On my list of people who cause most pain Dentists are right up there. A shade below Human Resources. (Dear HR professionals, its not that I have stereotypes of you people and trash you all because of that. No, its because all of you suck.) In that one week of appointments I had everything in his office smaller than 4 feet long shoved in my mouth.

Me: Ith thath a mirror?

Dentist: Yeah I use it to aim the drill…

Me: (Business German)

Dentist: Its not a very good mirror…

Everyone knows xrays are bad for them. But no the dentist, he shoots them at my face. The one I went to had an instantaneous developement software thing. So he would fire at will till he got it right. By then end I felt like a microwave dinner. And then he used a lot of new fangled equipment. A mouth laser and a vibration something-de-somethingalyzer. The vibration thing was cool. He enters an electrode into your root and then passes a current that makes you shivver like a winter in Munnar in undies. Very disorienting.

“Have…. to…. remove…. cavity….”

But the worst part is just lying there in the chair. Unprotected. Terrified. As vulnerable and defenceless as a mallu in Pondicherry with a credit card. Every nerve ending in your body ends in your mouth for an hour. I guess part of the pain is psychological.

There are things which seem larger than life. Things that appear a lot more intense and magnified than they really are. Dental pain being one of them. Along with “Salary commensurate with Industry Standards”, “Full and Final Settlement” and “Urban available single women”. (I thought of a nice cute HR analogy here… but after a comment asking for some sympathy I think they are due some. Come on even they are normal people. They may not be too bright. They may not make it to Mensa as neither will a chicken sandwich. But they deserve a break.)

But for me the last straw was when this happened:

Doctor: So where is he going to study

Dad: The All India Institute of Management Ahmedabad… (My dad always says it like that… I’m not complaining, he pays the fees see…)

Doctor: What?

Dad: IIMA, he is going to do his MBA (with some pride…)

Doctor:… (thoughtful silence)…(still thinking)…(in the silence of the room we can hear every neuron firing)… Never heard of it but there is a good Dental College in Ahmedabad… you should go there if you have any further trouble…

Dad: Er… ok doctor.

When we left the office my dad was spewing many oaths. None of them Hippocratic.

People there are two things I never do… sleep during a football match, especially a high scoring one… and not eat to my hearts content at a McDonalds. I did both yesterday. Harrowing long days with tons of things to do…

So please excuse… will put up a post by evening… or lunch time…

Till then.. Andrew Womack.

Come on dont crib… atleast I gave you something interesting to read…

Next post… the wonders of rising early in the morning…

So many many things to do today. Placements meeting in the evening, Euro football, meeting with a prof at 6 in the morning tomorrow, the fresh batch coming in…

My back is aching from all the walking around… my feet are oblong blocks of pain after basketball yday. No breakfast or lunch today, now french class in twenty minutes, theres a birthday at 12, some reports due to the placement team by midnight…

Good god… I half feel like going around calling everyone a c@#$!!!

Thank god for small blessings like the link above.

p.s. Yippee Domain Maximus just made 50000 hits. Praise the lord!!!

I was walking back to my room from class when I saw it peeking out from under the door. Yellow paper, green and red lettering and, from a distance, the increasingly clear background image of… god forbid… a pizza. UGH. It was yet another Dominoes flyer.

One of the greatest evils of contemporary marketing and advertisement has to be food publicity. How many times must the poor unsuspecting consumer be mislead by pictures of overly-topped pizzas, on-the-verge-of-exploding burgers and digitally enhanced chocolate bars? Ever seen those ads where they insist their latest sweet offering will melt in your mouth? Provided your running a 105 degree fever that is.

What I want to know is this. How come the guy who cooked the stuff you have on your pictures never works in any of your outlets? Your flyer clearly mentions that its freshly baked with a generous topping of mushroom. I feel good. Mushroom. I love mushrooms. So I order the super galactic buttered mushroom extravaganza.

There was a deathly silence when the box was opened. There was a sliver each of mushroom on five of the six slices. The other one was sticking to the roof of the box, hanging on for its dear mushrooomy life. Inside I have a sudden sinking feeling. I hate every food publicising company in the world. It was as if there was this guy in a pizza delivery suit and a southern accent speaking to me:

“I want to say one thing to the pizza buying people, I’m going to say this again. I did not reduce mushroom topping on that pizza, the super galactic buttered mushroom extravaganza. I never told anybody to save mushroom. Not a single time. Never. These allegations are false and I need to go back to work for the pizza people.”

It doesnt stop at food only though. Ever seen board game covers? The imported ones or indian made foreign ones. Ahh look the entire family is having the time of their lives. They dont go camping, or to a park or museum. No easily misled world, they just sit at home in colour coordinated clothes and play “Rrapchick” all day long. I have bought so many board games as a child. I have fallen for every board game cover scam in the business. “For all ages from 10 to 100″, “Hours of endless fun for the entire family”, “Develops academic skills and strategy”.

I believed all that when I bought “Risk”. “Conquer the world, outwit your opponents”. Yeah yeah, bring it on. After spending two weeks learning the rules I discovered it takes more time to finish a game of Risk than melting that chocolate thing in your mouth. I played two full games before my younger brother said I could actually conquer the world in that time if I tried. And with little more than small green plastic dice. And yes it will develop your academic skills, if you had the IQ of a masala dosa to start with. Endless fun?? Mindless nincompoopery was more like it. Dammit. Scammed yet again.

“The Fandango family erupts in joy and academic understanding after another masterful Risk move by the oldest son. He is flanked on the left by his sister and on the right by a potted plant. After winning the game Jason mentioned: Risk is my favorite board game. The game got nasty, even violent. Christina grabbed my arm; I slapped her hand; she slapped my face.”

The only enduring board game we had at home was Scrabble. That we played a lot. We still do with friends at a cafe near FR in Ahmedabad. And thats a game which normally has nothing on the wrapper or box. An honest board game. Theres nothing quite like wrapping up a good game of scrabble with a high scoring word like “quazxynopia” accompanied by a generous swig of Cafe Barbarossa. Cafe Barbarossa is a full bodied espresso based coffee with generous splashes of Tiramisu and caramelised coconut shavings. They say its the fave coffee of the year and everyone from Sao Paulo to Rio De Janeiro is hooked to it. I can’t wait to try it out. The photo on the menu is soooo irresistable…

Hello people. Kindly excuse the erratic update schedule of the blog. An MBA is proving to be a greater hindrance than I thought. So bear with me and daily columns should happen, albeit not always in the mornings…

The dance party yesterday was a rousing success. Great turn out, great enthusiasm and much dancing. And more importantly “Bin Tere Sanam” played 4 times or so. I’ve played that infectious thing 40 odd times this week. I hope thats not a disease. My neighbour thinks I’m losing it and should visit the counsellor here.

The counsellor has those questionnaires with all those questions. (What a stupendously redundant sentence. I noticed as soon as I was done typing it. I could have edited it. But it was so stupid I had to leave it in. Goes well with the general climate of the blog.) And at the end of some marathon ticking of check boxes it gives you a profile of your mental well being. A rather cheerful friend of mine got the freaking surprise of his life after a session with the counsellor.

He was expecting to get one of those “be more confident” or “a little more agression is all you need” type feedback things. The counsellor had no such subtle intentions. My pal was told that he had had a disturbed childhood and now suffers from a split personality. He is now inconsolable and finds deeper meanings in the fact that he has chosen both finance and marketing courses.

Partha wanted to know who I was supporting in Euro 2004. Football. The beautiful game. I come from a rather footer crazy family. My earliest sporting memories are of watching some world cup or the other. Names like Rossi and Maradona. And we have some soccer pedigree too. Dad and uncle played for their universities and for a few local clubs. When I was in school, even during the most hopeless of examinations, we used to get breaks to watch football on TV.

Nothing bonds the men of the family like watching footer at 3 or 4 in the morning literally huddled around the TV. We weren’t allowed to play the volume high. (You don’t argue with my grandmom. She has an iron hold on the daily menu at home. If she heard as much as a whimper it was cold rice, dal and pickle. We are mallu. “Death before vegetarianism” is our state motto.) Well there was one female cousin who was an avid footer fan. But she once switched channels mid-match to check a cricket score. She was never allowed near the TV during a match thence. (“Football over everything except Biryani” is the other state motto.)

If you walk into any village in Kerala, especially the north parts, during an international tournament, you will be forgiven for thinking you were in some international fair. Every house will have its alignments clearly visible. There will actually be Brazilian and Argentine flags hung outside. For the duration of the tournament some village nooks and corners are renamed “Baggio Nagar” and “Ronaldo Puram”. You dont walk into a tea shop and talk football till you clearly knew who was the local favorite.

People while ignorant of most international events and news, are on top of the football pages.

Q: “Who is the coach of the Brazilian team?”

A: “Simble maashe. Werner Luxemburgo”

Q: “Who plays left back for England?”

A: “Depends. If they are playing 4-2-4 it is Cambell other wise….”

Q: “Where was the Berlin Wall built?”

A: “Allepey?”

Shocking. And offices and shops are open only as long as watching the match is possible. Employees think nothing of coming early and going on strike immediately so they can go home before 5 to catch the match. Even the electricity board is in the act. If its an important match the “temporary load shedding” power cuts (which have been on for over 10 years I think) is put on hold.

Indeed I wish I was in Kerala right now for Euro 2004. Theres nothing like walking around town in the evening listening to the opinions everyone has about the matches. Dont be surprised if you walk into Shaharban Hotel on the main road and hear the paratha-maker shower obscenities on the Germans for not playing a sweeper and taking it to goal difference.

England is my team. Though I daresay France may win it again. But I do hope Beckham and team face them in the finals. There is talk of projecting the match in a big screen at a plaza in the institute main building. Yummy.

By the way today was my second day of the LEM course. Lectures in Entrepreneurial Motivation. Taken by an alumnus its been fascinating so far. The prof plays real tough to make you reject job offers and hit the entrepreneurial track. I’ve decided to hit out on my own after college anyhow. But it is great to hear support and encouragement coming from the mouth of a guy who risked it all 25 years ago and today sits on a 1000 crore plus empire.

Currently working on investing in a retail project and possibly running it a year from now. Finger crossed. (Have no fear, the book will happen…)

And guys I need your comments on another thought. I really really feel like kicking off an “ad concept”/copywrite/”thinktank” type firm sometime on campus itself. Run it from my room using a website and stuff. With the help of a few friends, maybe even the blog, thinking of pitching for some small work from companies and aquaintances. Who knows… if it clicks it may have a future, it it doesn’t… well I’ll try again then…

Hmm… I think I will work on it. Think of a name maybe. You guys… I am depending on you all…

Yawn its been a long night, with much introspection and considerable football. Portugal and Greece have made it through, while Spain goes back home emptyhanded yet again. They had a lot of chances and didn’t make a single one count. Wonder what the paratha-maker would have to say of that…