Missing Delhi !!

Woh tikki ki khushboo woh gobar ki chappar…
ek Rail ka dibba aur meri phislee ek chappal …
ek doodh ki thaili aur padosi ka paper …
Red light ke peeche chipa ek inspector…
Ghoos mein deye hue dassi aur chiller
Road pe baithe naai aur tailor …
Raah dekhu aur sochun mere dost reh reh kar
mere chappal par phir ho mere desh ka kheechad …

Adios to Days at AIM !

I wrote the following email to my batchmates as a signoff from the MBA. As i get back to normal life i feel this deserves to be bookmarked for being a significant event in mylife.

- X -

My time at AIM would definitely join in my memories as the best time I have had studying… though the "studying" part a lot of you would disagree that I did any. I wish you all the very best, please do keep in touch ( I don't mind your spamming my mailbox as long as you don't subscribe to stupid portals using my email address). Hope you all have a wonderful life ahead, Good luck to all those in search of jobs, if you become a entrepreneur.. may you always make more than your cost of equity & if you work for someone I hope you are always on the right side of the performance & pay curves. If you can emulate the AIM Prof, you can be hired for running concentration camps to torture Prisoners of war and to interrogate spies.

Thanks to everyone for making my stay at AIM special, my can group for studying instead of me & other can groups for making my can group look better. Thanks to all those who wrote the first set of MRRs, all MBA batches have been inspired by your vision till date. Thanks also to those who had fat signatures, because of you I never had to sign against my name… your signature covered for both of our presence in the attendance sheet. Thanks also to the AC operators who promoted the sharing and caring amongst students by allowing the common cold to become really common in the dorm. A special thanks to the host country for their hospitality, if you happen to meet the owner of Rustans / Ministop / KFC / McDonalds please convey my deepest regard to them, life would have been something else without them.

You may send/receive spam to/from prashantbatra.mail@gmail.com, block it while you still have time. India number - 91 – 99xxxxx93 , I am using my mom's mobile so please do forward stupid jokes at this number. Someone please create a database (again for this) or educate me to use and existing one please.

Finally, I must admit I am not missing any of you individually but do miss all of you as a collective bunch… I guess what I am indicating is that don't come running to me when you see this email but do write off and on.

Cheers,
Catbert

And what a day it was :)

As I start office on a Sunday in Dubai 2 days after my birthday. About 180 odd emails wishing me a happy birthday and awaiting my response. I thought of ways by which I could answer everyone in detail and that brings me to blogger. Thanks everyone, I am very happy & feel heavily blessedJ, yes thanks to the gifts, I feel rich again :).

Presenting to you... The birthday FAQs...
I give you answers to questions you have asked me, will ask me or never wanted to ask me on my birthday.

Q1) Happy Birthday dear, what plans for the day eh!
Thanks so much for your wishes. I & Somya (my sweet, beautiful, lovely & adorable wife) planned to spend the day out of the house. So here's what we did.
-Cake cutting in candle light @ 00.00hrs.
-Movie & Lunch with a famous movie star and a good friend (Mr Mathews – I think he played Neo in Matrix ;) or was it Mr Anderson?).
-The star to the Christmas tree was the Dinner which was at romantic cruise on the Dubai Creek.
It truly was a Wow. (Pictures available on demand @ pay per viewJ)

Q2) Hmmm… So…. How old am I now…?
You ask this every year, seriously how did you pass your math tests? I was born in 1980, so that makes me 18 right! No, I am not sending you my passport copy for validation and if you think I am lying, keep guessing ;).

Q3) And what else, whats up these days?
I am in Wipro Dubai finishing my summers, the last 8 months and next 6 months will be spent in Manila doing my MBA @ AIM (http://www.wsgsb.aim.edu.ph/). I decided to take a 16 month vacation in Manila and the only place I was getting would allow me to stay if I pretend to be a serious person who spent some time each day in air conditioned classrooms. The MBA ends in Dec this year (hopefully) and I will be one more entrant to the club of overqualified, underpaid yuppies.

Q4) What gifts did I receive?
I am assuming you are looking for benchmark data here to see what you should send. Cash is readily accepted. You can also send gold biscuits if you are too materialistic. If you are my banker, thanks I will forget the loans.

Q5) Wondering If I remember your birthday?
I have put a part of my brain on the internet and connected it to a website. Trust me I would love to be part of your special day, Please click on this and fill your birth date this is a personal reminder and its perfectly safe to put it here (if you haven’t done it yet). http://www.birthdayalarm.com/dob/5373697a2568310b363

If you forgot to wish me, dude I am hoping you will send me a bigger gift to compensate ;). It was a great day and we celebrated life yet again. To me each day is special(taken from a flop movie), be it Sunday or Tuesday (Monday could debated on). I am happy to have friends that surround me on my special day. Btw I remember your birthday and am the first one to wish you. Here are my wishes for the yr 2008-09 in advance.

Cheers!!
Catbert

About a year ago....

Well I decided to cut the crap and to get going on wasting a few more bytes over the internet. If you are from the office i work please at stop reading this, the boss monitors the reports regularly!!

After about 8 months of sleeping on a sponge bed and looking outside Dorm room 401 I have finally landed myself outside the AIM campus. The first phase of my MBA is over and I am now doing an internship in Dubai.

Life in Dubai has been full of surprises. Its been a 2 weeks and i haven't seen any camels. The day i got down i got into a cab and people were talking to me in hindi. Well there must be a lot of indians here I thought, and yes it turns out yet again we are a majority of the population.
People back home need to start taking family planning seriously man.

I am not complaining too hard on this one though, makes my life easier. I never feel like a foreigner in any place i go to. I can get my Roti and Daal absolutely anytime I want to eat. Plus the cabbie speaks me mother tongue. I get to play cricket almost whenever i want so ya on second thoughts, guys back home keep up the good work and forget what i said earlier.

If you are planning to stay here, better invest in a tread mill, the only place where you can get a free home delivery for a can of coke. I must admit the place can spoil you and the water you drink adds pounds around your waist.

Dubai remains till date Bollywoods favorite Don hideout and its tall buildings the perfect den for plans to take over the world. For now i have to settle with planning my internship and the only don in sight is my boss!

There is so much more to talk about this place but work is worship and u dont pay me to write yet! take care and keep those comments coming.

I AM BACK!

I havent been writting for sometime... even though I promised satun i will regularly...

your prayers expired today...

I am BAKC... back i.e. :)

Cheers!

Festive Wishes....

Here's wishing all of you and your families happiness, wealth and prosperity in all the years that follow.

May all of you win if you play cards,
may you not get a hang over if you get drunk,
may you have a happy, clean and pollution free dipawali.

Njoy!

Wedding Bells

** All my comments are intended to make this blog a little humorous. I respect marriage as an institution. Most of whats coming up is made up, so please don’t relate it to me. Cause if you do, I am in deep trouble and if you are not strong enough so are you. **


Weddings are full of fun, laughter and happy memories. However they carry with them a decent amount of running around depending on who you are at the wedding. The run is of various types. I'll classify this for you. Its from my recent experiences at the activities at joining 2 souls as 1.

In broad categories your role assuming you are a male as a participant of a wedding ceremony or arrangement are listed below.

You as an Organizer–
Let us assume the case when your beloved brother falls in love. Now unless you yourself had a crush on the lady he chose, which by the way is another chapter, you take the role of an organizer. Your basic responsibilities are arranging for relatives to talk, you also become the next pin down the drain and you end up getting talked about more than the groom. To top it you feel embarrassed when you are introduced to a girl and left alone and all you think you have to tell her somehow is that you are engaged :).

I have a religious mom who is known for the demonstration she led across Church Street against alcohol advertisements. I also happen to have a set of drunkards who supposedly are my best pals so I also end up starting a “bar in the car” business.

As a Guest–
One of your friends @ college decides to get married. Your role as the popular guy in college becomes to arrange for everyone to agree to give a combined gift. The run around starts in conducting a poll on what to gift to gift:). After endless debates and researches on the possible gifts, we finally have suggestions “lets just hand them cash, let them decide what they want”. And then when no one turns up you have to do the explaining… pretending that everyone was dying to come but there was a earthquake all around the car they sat in and that the earth took them fifty feet under, that’s why they couldn’t reach or call ;).

Oops Wrong wedding–
This happens when you visit a wedding of a distant relative you have never seen in your life. After you have had dinner and you hand over the gift you realize that your relative is getting married in the adjacent hall… and this is just some innocent throat getting slit.
I am sure all of us have been guest to such weddings at some point in life and some of us stayed back at the wedding to continue our glare at the “Chick in red” in hope of her phone number :) and others just for the better food.

Your own wedding –
ha ha!! God save you. You are engaging yourself in a run around for life… Trust me it’s not worth it… Btw I am getting married soon. You’ll get your invitation soon. Make sure u make it to the correct hall. Cash is welcome as a gift as long as it's in plenty ;)

Again there may be many more... and that why we have a comments section...

Rana and Kiran congrats on your wedding... It was a fabulous to see you two getting married. Jyothi and Karthik … congrats to you two too... though your D-Day is this weekend... wishes from me and the internet in advance.

Hope life brings joys to you and all.

May all the couples who got married or will get married live happily. I also forward my condolence to the neighbors who will now on witness the banging of vessels lot more often esp at odd hours.

Cheers to the institution of marriage @ life!