IITJEE - During & After

I, myself, am studying in BITS, Pilani. However, the IIT-JEE has left its footprints on my path of life. It's taught me many things & I can never erase that period from mind. Although I didn't get a rank good enough to get into any IIT, I have gained a lotsa invaluable experiences & learnt from a lotsa mistakes, which I am glad of, & wanna share with you'll.

     The MIT of India is a series of T-schools called the Indian Institutes of Technology, (or simply IITs) dotted on the national map at 7 places. To get into one of the few meaningful courses of the scores of redundant courses offered in these institutes (yes, in IITs), you have to be in the top 1000 or so of all the hundreds of thousands who take the JEE(Joint Entrance Exam, or simply Joint Effort for Existence). 

      I think you must have been rather irked reading about the lives of IITians, (& also their deaths). So, if you wish, I can provide you with a refreshing change talking about the pre-IIT-JEE period. But
before I take you on the odyssey towards the JEE, take a glance at the predominantly 3 types of non-IITians: 

WORSHIPPERS – Those under the misconception that "IIT is heaven & IITians are Gods". Nevertheless, their constant eulogizing can get on one's nerves sometimes.

PERSECUTORS – They are the "just missed IIT" types, in short, who will spend the rest of their academic life in vain, trying to reason out with themselves their failure& convince themselves how their college is better than IIT in some respects, as if they are thankful of not getting IIT.

ATHEISTS – Those who cant distinguish between IIT, IT, & ITI. A species to be as much ignored as their ignorance.

Now, the life of the pre-IITians. The grounding for IIT starts from the end of the mind-numbing 10th Boards. It mainly consists of countless hours of gruelling coaching, immersing yourself in corpulent books, cursing IIT every morning after seeing your figure getting podgier day by day due to lack of physical activity, keeping your attendance in colleges alarmingly low, inventing novel excuses for the same (also keeping track of the earlier ones lest you repeat them), preparing for weekly mock tests, & solving thousands of brain-racking problems in each of the hundreds of topics in each of the subjects(P, C & M). All these, 2 years long, (if you are lucky at the first attempt).

  So, why does the number of these nerds who take the exam, after enduring 2 years of absolutely assiduous training, reach about lacs? Aren't these teenagers nuts to slaughter their so-called "precious college life"? These attain knowledge mostly in their physics, chemistry & math. They are very familiar with finding x, or tackling intricate electric circuits, or understanding reaction mechanisms of chains of hydrocarbons… but they scarcely are sapient with latest gizmos, automobiles, in-vogue clothes, or bikes, which a teenage boy be normally would.
  The reality is these youngsters are, in fact, dudes, not duds, as they seem. They just want to grow from a dreamer to an achiever. A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline. A goal properly set is halfway reached. But again, a goal without a plan is just a wish. This does not mean one should cease to dream. The only way to make a dream come true is to wake up and live it. (Recapitulate the previous words slowly to grasp the idea)
  These serious aspirants of the JEE have one thing in common, but its not the PCM syllabi of JEE, it's their zeal & zest, their vim & vigour, their endeavour in life to "MAKE IT BIG".   You know, it seems like barmy when somebody studies day in & day out for 2 years in a row, but it actually isn't as difficult for him as is conspicuous to a layman's eye. This is because those types of
somebodies have a different perspective of life. They will do few things, but whatever they do, they want to make it big. And actually that is what the funda of life should be. "No matter what you do, but
make it big". Therein lies the real excitement, the real sense of success, the real passion that makes life worth living. Just visualize, wouldn't a brook lose its song if God removed all the
rocks? If you got this, you got it.  Look at success in this way: It can be the ability to go from one
failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. It might be viewed as a paradox, but its true, that you will agree, & for success, the starting material is "SELF-CONFIDENCE".
  Know what? People laugh at me because I'm different; & I laugh at them because they're all the same! This is self-confidence. You know, your self-confi becomes 2-fold after success, but then you even require some amount of self-confi in the course of your success. But the real test of
self-confi is actually failure. It should not decrease your self-confi, instead should also multiply it 2 times, simply because failure is a major symptom of success. And let  me tell you, this
self-confidence can't be obtained overnight; it has to be cultivated & nurtured. In the path of arming yourself with self-confi, you may have to, in fact, you definitely will have to face internal hindrances such as inferiority complex, covetousness, seclusion… but just believe in yourself, believe in what you are doing & do everything within your scruples….things will definitely go right.
      And then secondly, the material that you should make thick friends with & plead with it to accompany you in your journey towards your goal is "MOTIVATION".   You know, even thinking of JEE without any kind of inspiration within you is incongruous. It's like driving a car without petrol.
Motivation is the driving force for any success. The motivation could be anything that can influence you, before which your mind stops functioning & your heart wins over. Just keep your focus on that
motivation. It will automatically lead you to your goal. Automatic, in the sense, that you won't refrain from working hard, & your pressure will be somewhat relieved just by recalling your motivation time & again.

Sony vs Apple

Sony’s CEO, Howard Stringer, gets his hackles up each time he encounters the question: Why is Apple gradually overshadowing the Japanese electronics giant? The creator of the iPods, MacBooks, iPhones and their accessories consistently delivers trendy gizmos & doodads that are user-friendly, while Sony sells music players, TVs, cams, computers and game consoles, appraisals of which are not so unanimous. Also, it has often been a common complaint among Sony users that even some Sony complementary products are not compatible with each other.

Apple's iTunes store has long made loading iPods a walk in the park, but Sony's consumer electronics and PlayStations have only recently started to amalgamate their offerings with those of the company's movie studio and music label. That's one plausible reason why Sony's products earn relatively narrow profit margins compared with the huge margins that Apple's gadgets command.

So Stringer went straight to the root. Three years ago, he hired Tim Schaaff, a top understudy of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and made him the senior vice-president for software development in Sony. Although Schaaff's job description required him to spend most of his time in California, he's so integral to Stringer's plan to re-establish Sony that he has a direct reporting line to the CEO. Schaaff's responsibilities have outgrown his position, and today he also has a hand in product design, licensing, planning, and engineering. "When we brought Tim aboard, it was an acknowledgement that we needed someone whose experience crosses multiple borders," Stringer says.

    Schaaff doesn't come across as an agent of change. The 48 something Dartmouth grad constantly avoids the press. When he speaks, he does it very cautiously as if he’s addressing a mass rally. But at Apple, Schaaff showed a knack for translating geeky ideas into killer products. The self-made software engineer supervises development of Apple's QuickTime video-streaming format, which serves as the foundation of iTunes, the iPod, and the iPhone.

    Stringer is clearly hoping Schaaff can copy-paste Apple's Silicon Valley entrepreneurial culture into Sony. When the Welsh-born Stringer became Sony's first non-Japanese CEO in early 2005, he pledged to make the company "cool again." While Schaaff has made important strides toward that goal, Sony clearly needs to inject some zing into its products. After a four-year renovation, Sony is still careworn to get its market position back that Apple has snatched. And now, as consumers all over the world, especially Americans who were notorious for being spendthrifts, have transformed into tightfisted squirrels, they’re even less likely to buy the expensive gizmos Sony plans to unveil over the coming months. Schaaff’s integrated plan included selling Bravia televisions that connect to the net and download the latest Batman movie, Walkman phones that offer tunes from Sony artists such as Robbie Williams, and e-book devices that ask if you want to purchase that new John Grisham thriller. But looking at the global slump, one wouldn’t mind trying out the cheaper Chinese lookalikes of Sony. And for fun products, Apple’s the trademark. So, Sony has to think out of the box & make something that it can boast of being the only exclusive “Sony thing”. Just reminding us “It’s a Sony” worked earlier, but now the modern consumer has come out of being faithful to a particular brand lifelong & instead trying his hands at different brands that are cheaper and more cost-effective.

    Buck up Sony & make yourself “It’s only Sony”!

 

Present Day Ostriches

A bunch of beauties comes to an ice-cream parlour in the university, buys cones, goes down the corridor of the market, giggling. They think nothing of their action of licking cones in public. They are unaware of the prying eyes of the public around them. They think, like the poor misguided ostrich, with its head in the sand, that they are invisible.

    There is yet another class. To this belong verbal vandals who, from the safety and coziness of their car, fling foul words on ladies and gentlemen of their parents age. Cars are an extension of their homes, their personal refuges where they feel protected and invisible. Home provides liberty, public places restrain.

    The mobile phone plays a similar role for these ostriches of modern society. They use it as their life-line linking them to their social and business support network. It is emotional, too. The boy who whispers in cell phone is using it as his heart-link. So is the girl! Both think like the ostrich. When boys and girls speak on mobile, they think they are talking only to the listener at the other end. They become so engrossed in their conversation that the presence of the person next to them matters not — even when he is sarcastically smiling! Why do we show this indifference to people around us? Is it because we think that others are non-people? 

The reason is related to the isolation and anonymity of the modern crowded urban life. The more the people, the less we know them! We deal with this by pretending that the crowd is not there. We mentally shut it out. Thus, cocooned in our mental space, we hold hands, hug, kiss in parks, lick cones, eat hot-dogs, drown drinks, insult elders and whisper intimacies in mobile phones while in full public glare. 
 
We are becoming a world of headless ostriches!

Eternal Love

I feel you in the morning

When at first I awake

Your thought is with me

With each decision I make

You'd been around forever

Since the first breath I took

Now I have to go on alone

But for love, I need not look

'Cause by what you bestowed

In our short time together

Will last in my heart

Forever and ever

Although you've left

And now walk above

I'm never alone

I'm wrapped in your love

Everything I have, still am alone

But feel peace that your love continues on

What was taught to me, will be taught to mine

Cause you live on in me even after you've gone.