Asif's Panju Blog

Check out our new B-School Blog

2006-09-21T13:19:00.000-07:00

http://owenbloggers.typepad.com/

This is the new blog that some of have put together at school.
If any of you are considering starting your MBA's this should give you a fairly good idea of what first semester looks/feels like!! Also, this also means one should seriously consider Owen School of Management at Vanderbilt.
Come on! Nashville is not what you may think...

Finally Here!

2006-08-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

So I'm finally done moving to Nashville. A year of preparation, anticipation etc. is finally bearing some fruition, I'm ready to start B-school!!! More on my move later.
The past two days have been spent in orientation, another 10 days of it to go! Day two has been especially tedious and long, sitting through 5 hours of ethics lectures, and another hour of listening to the honor council and honor code here at Vanderbilt. The honor code sure as hell put the fear of god in almost all of us it seems. As I was listening to it, I got to start reminiscing about my undergrad days. If this was strictly enforced (I think it was, probably we just never got caught?), I'd have been thrown out of school like in my second year!!!! Anyways, this time it would seem everyone will pretty much adhere to the code, which I suppose is a good thing. Back to ethics lecture... in spite of the tedium, I am glad it was a long drawn out boring lecture on something I could actuallly understand vs. a long drawn out boring lecture on Electrical Engineering learning about NAND gates. Wow, I can't believe I still remember that word! But I promised myself after undergrad that I'd never touch another EE book again, eight and a half years later, I have adhered to that promise. Anyway, I'm finally starting out what I had set out to do for all these years. Lets hope it all works out!!!!

Thought

2006-07-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

So earlier today, while driving down to my office, I put in a CD that I'd never really listened to before. It happened to be a compilations of old Bangla songs. The words of the song went something like this:

"Hoito kichui nahi pabo
Tobu o tomai ami duur hote bhalo beshe jabo
Hoito kichui nahi pabo"...

This literally means,
"Perhaps I will get nothing in return
But I will continue to love you from afar"

While I understand love is an ephemeral feeling, one that cannot be explained really. However, is unrequited love possible, forever? In the world we live in, especially here in the West, psychologists, friends and anyone else one might care to listen to when faced with such a situation would be to "get over it", heal and move on quickly. Opining and thinking about someone, and expressing those feelings, especially after the other party has decided to move on with their lives, would almost verge on psychotic behavior, from a societal stand-point. Yet, in the way our traditional South Asian culture works (or at least used to work), one would almost believe that it is possible to martyr one-self, and selflessly continue to want somebody even after they no longer would seem to care about you. Bollywood movies are filled with stories of people who continue to stymie themselves and their lives, just to be with the person they feel they love even though they may never get anything in return. Would this mean, that today we have just become more self-obsessed, more about instant gratification? Can one truly love somebody else even when doing so would be seemingly detrimental?

Frustration

2006-06-30T01:56:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had one of those days when nothing seems to go right? Occassionally, I seem to have a day, like today, when it seemed from the moment I woke up, I was destined to have a "bad day", it was almost like a premonition. You wake up late, get out of bed, and boom - you realize you forgot to pick up your clothes from the cleaners the previous day, so now you have nothing to wear to work! So, as it is you're running late, so you have to go through your stash of new shirts (since everything else is at the cleaners), and then open it up, and have to iron it. You suddenly realize that you forgot to charge the electric razor, so now you can't shave and have to use that old razor you have for emergencies, but because you have gotten so used to relying on the electric one, you don't have any shaving cream. So you try to make do (necessity is the mother of invention), and use soap instead, but then you nick yourself in like five different places. In the meantime, since you're already running late for your meetings this morning, your phone starts ringing off the hook. Finally, after fighting your laptop to shut down so you can take it to work with that presentation you've worked all night on, you make it out to your parking lot, only to realize you can't find your car, because you couldn't get your designated parking spot, as you came in late the previous night, and due to the really narrow space you were designated, you couldn't get your car into the spot after your neighbor had already parked and no other regular spots were available. As you try to make your way out of the apartment complex, the friggin' remote for the gate is not working, so you have to step out of the car and punch in the codes, and then realize your gas tank is running on empty. The phone is still ringing away, you're not even bothering to pick up after all, and that annoying voicemail thingy's just beeping away. Now, you make a dash to the gas station, praying the car won't stall before you get there. Finally make it there, and then decide you should take the feeder roads instead of the freeways because its shorter. Well lo and behold, you get stopped at every single signal. You're blood pressure's just rising and road rage is slowly but surely creeping in, and right then, you see a call coming in from your boss, now you can't ignore the call. So you take it, and guess what? Priorities have changed, the meeting is postponed because one of the major client's systems are all down, go into disaster recovery mode, and co-ordinate all efforts to bring client systems back up. Every minute is precious, the CIO at the client site calls and of course in no uncertain words reminds you that systems are down, and patient lives (and doctor's livelihoods) depend on these systems. So in your agitated state of mind, you remind yourself to remain calm, and explain to the customer that we're doing all that we possibly can to bring things back up quickly, and in your mind you're thinking, I'm not even in the office! The traffic lights are all still f*****g with you, and you're just going ballistic. The phone's still ringing, how peaceful life must have been before cell phones were invented. Just then one of your friends' calls you up, to get over life crisis, that has to go the back burner for now, I got enough crises of my own to resolve. You finally make it in to the office, assess your situation, get things cranking, whip up all your people into action, all the while fielding half agitated customer calls asking for explanations and ETA's. How do you get them that answer if you dont know it yourself? Just when you think things could not get possibly worse, and you realize you're still helpless, you call up the support vendors, and are told oops, customer has not re-signed maintenance contract, so will not be supported. That's when all your pent up frustration and anger comes out, because now you have your own whipping boy, the support vendor who's customer we are. So after a 15 minute shout out with the poor support guy (who is of course just following his guidelines), you decide to go over his head, and call up the top dog at said vendor's company, after much cajoling, some promises to make sure that I will do whatever it takes to make customer resign contracts, some empty threats on my part to take our business elsewhere, vendor top dog gives in, and agrees to provide support this one time for the sake of on-going relationships and to try to get the few carrots which I probably won't be able to deliver on but dangle his way anyway. Things finally start working late afternoon, and you're feeling good now, things just might work out your way. So you sit down to eat a much deserved lunch at 330PM, and the sandwich that you have just had delivered to your office, fall out of your hands and lands on the carpet...
(No I don't believe in the 5 second rule)

Anyway, such was my day today.

Is Corruption embedded in our culture?

2006-06-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

So, we all know that Bangladesh has perennially been designated as "the Most Corrupt" nation in the world. And every year that Transparency International (TI) comes up with this statistic, the government comes up with its own spin to counter this. Well atleast we're number one at something! Anyway, I came across what I thought was a very interesting article in last month's Forbes magazine. The article is titled "Reforming Tony Soprano's Morals". The article concluded that a certain amount of corruption is grounded in culture and immune to carrots and sticks. Since economists like to think that corrupt behavior can be changed through punishment and reward, and in that view there is no such thing as culture or corruption. Alter the legal incentives and, and law-abiding behavior will follow. An ideal test of this would be to bring people from all over the world to a place where they faced no legal constraints, then simply monitor their willingness to behave corruptly.
Accordingly, they studied the behavior of Diplomats at the United Nations who enjoyed diplomatic immunity from prosecution for parking violations until 2002, giving them an opportunity to observe which diplomats racked up the most parking tickets and which observed the law despite the lack of punishment. Unpaid parking violations by diplomats totaled 156,775 between 1998 and 2005. Forbes matched the data with the size of each UN mission, then pulled in data from the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) developed by TI. The results?
Scandanavian countries, which perennially rank among the least corrupt in the CPI index, had the fewest unpaid tickets. There just 12 from the 66 diplomats from Finland,, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Almost all these tickets went to one bad Finn.
Chad and Bangladesh (!!), at the bottom of the CPI, were among the worst offenders They got 1,243 and 1,319 tickets respectively, in spite of the fact that their UN missions were many times smaller than those of the Scandanavians!!! In fact, according to this article, there is a remarkable concordance between the number of unpaid violations and a country's corruption ranking. This would seemingly strongly suggest that one's background and experiences, what we might call culture, does indeed contribute to bad behavior? So the next question then becomes, whether these diplomats flouted the law immediately on arrival in New York and then perhaps absorbed local norms of obedience. Perhaps, they gradually converged with the local culture? Not so apparently! It was broadly true that these diplomats committed more violations the longer they stayed at the UN, and this increase was even faster for diplomats from corrupt countries. In 2002, after a Senate amendment went into effect, that gave New York city the right to tow the vehicles of delinquent diplomats and to recoup unpaid parking violations from U.S. foreign aid disbursements to offending nations, the rate of unpaid violations immediately dropped by 90%, however, postenforcement violations, were still highly correlated with national levels of corruption. So it would seem incentives matter, but so does culture.
Would this mean that local values would seem to undermine the efforts of reformers of economic and social institutions? Changing the law and enforcing it is helpful but by itself not sufficient to induce change in a corrupt country? So does all this point to the fact that corruption is now so embedded in our culture and thought processes, that eradicating it altogether will be a Herculean task indeed?

Karma Part II

2006-06-01T14:59:00.000-07:00

On the subject of blind dates from my earlier blog, a couple of my friends mentioned that the way I structured the whole thing made me look "cheap". This is an interesting topic of discussion especially from a guy perspective. Now I am perfectly cognizant of the fact that we live in a world where men and women are considered equals in every facet of our lives, it is also a theory that I subscribe to and firmly believe in. However, this one aspect - dating, this particular notion of equality seemingly does not hold. In our efforts to be chivalrous, it would seem we men are at a slight disadvantage. We're expected to hold the doors, act gentlemanly and on top of that foot the bill in any dating circumstances. No self respecting man would even entertain the idea of letting his date pick up the tab at the end of the night, even if she were to insist on going dutch. Of course, most women on the other hand will offer to go dutch, but almost never can be expected to nor will offer to pay the whole bill. There is a little bit of dichotomy there, and for whatever reason most of us men have accepted this status quo fairly happily. Now mind you, I have heard women complain plenty of times about guys that they have gone out with, who they will refer to as "cheap" because they did not entertain them as, how shall we put it, as lavishly as they would have liked. Now in the case of my experience from last weekend, why is it that I was expected to pay for someone else's indulgences at my expense, especially someone I did not even like that much to begin with and did not know at all? In a world where we are supposed to be equal, I should have been able to stand up at the end of the meal, look at the bill, split it at least down the middle or more correctly, since I had maybe eaten and drank a tenth of the entire bill, paid for my part and been able to walk out with my head held high, right? hmmm... I guess we're not as "equal" as we like to think we are?

Karma's a b***h

2006-05-23T23:48:00.000-07:00

So the other day, I went out had a "blind date". She seemed real nice when we talked, we even seemed to connect on some level. So we decided to meet Saturday afternoon, at this restaurant, one of these really ritzy places here in San Diego. Now I must admit, the place was awesome. But, before I get to the place... Anyway, I pick up my "date", mind you I had just wanted to have a nice, quiet, fun dinner. So immediately there... after picking her up, was the shocker. All my enthusiasm was sapped in a matter of seconds on meeting this person. However, me being the nice guy, decided to at least give it a shot, in spite of my shallowness, figured what the heck, since I had committed to going to this place, I'll just follow through, what's the worst that can possibly happen? So she orders herself a drink, and then we order some appetizers. Well, we start on the appetizers, she eats up more or less both the appetizers, of course my own appetite is slowly going down the drain, as I start contemplating the bill that is quickly hitting the stratosphere, now she's not only eating off her own plate, but finishes up the remainder of the food on mine! The drinks keep coming, I'm stuck on my first one still at this point. A little later, I finish up my drink, go to the restroom, to plan and strategize. I come back, she's ordered a bottle of wine, and another drink for me! Now to dinner. I'm thinking in my mind, how do I at least bring this to a feasible bill. Well, shocker, she orders a $55 entree!!!! And a salad on top of that... Hate to say this, but she scraped her salad so that even if you turned the salad bowl over, not a single crouton would have dropped out. By this time, of course she's pretty tipsy, so decides to get into a conversation about how I'm not being a good date, how I'm not appreciating her, and not being very complimentary. To top it off, she tells me how much she'd love to see me again, and how come I'm not telling her that I would like to do the same! Well, I have to come up with a diplomatic answer at this point. I send a text message to one of friends, asking advice on how I can get out of this self-created mess, my friend writes me back and I quote "just hang in there, be a gentleman and keep up the pretense and then leave on a good note". Dude, you suck for that advice... yeah you know who you are! Anyway, end result, I am left with a $320 bill... The redeeming factor? I have now found San Diego's premiere restaurant with the coolest view.

The problem with blogs

2006-03-17T15:41:00.000-08:00

How come everyone's blog is looking so much cooler than mine lately, I'm even running out of ideas! This blog rat race has got to stop. O wait, I have not updated in 3 months! hmmmm... ok maybe tomorrow.

Back to Life... Back to Reality...

2006-01-25T09:25:00.000-08:00

So I am finally back from Dhaka. Been recuperating from my long trip the past couple of days. Dhaka was refreshing to say the least. And now I no longer feel like doing any work here for my day job! Absolutely negative motivation. Will be posting my Dhaka experience shortly. Suffice to say, Bangladesh has changed a lot since I last went there 10 years ago, plenty of positive changes, and a few areas that need some major rectification....

Why Are We here?

2005-12-18T22:58:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking for a while about what each of our purpose in life is. After all, there are two inevitabilities of life, birth and death. And then there is everything else in between. As I sit here on this chilly California evening, I've been doing a lot of reflecting on where my life has been, where I am headed etc. Lately, I've taken to asking some of my friends the same question. What is our goal? Some of my friends that I've met here recently, who have moved to the US after having grown up back home in Bangladesh, they say they are comfortable with the status quo here. Their individual goal is to make a comfortable living, achieve some semblance of the American dream, keep their jobs, get promoted, marriage, kids, buy a house etc. I repeatedly ask them why it is that after growing up in Bangladesh, they would not want to take their innate talents back home and work towards making a change. No question each of these people certainly do not lack motivation or ambition in life. They did make it through the best colleges in Bangladesh for their undergraduate education, and were able to come to the US based on sheer talent to get through graduate schools here, and then start their careers. Would these people not be the ones ultimately who would be best suited to taking back these talents to the home country? Compared to them, I have had a fairly privileged life, everything was pretty much chalked out for me in terms of where I would be headed. I was fortunate that I never had to struggle financially or emotionally as a student, with everything being handed over to my on a silver platter by my parents. The only thing expected from me was to study hard to make it through college. Also the fact that I never actually lived in Bangladesh, and therefore have always looked at it from an outsider's perspective, always thinking about the innate resilience and talents of our own people, the opportunities that can be grasped, the idea that perhaps the first part of my life was made easier so I could have to struggle, sacrifice to do better for the country? Some people strive to achieve wealth, power and privilege. What is the point of all that if one does not leave a legacy behind...? Something that says that you made a difference in even one person's life other than your own? That, is my goal and hopefully that is why I am here.

The race begins now

2005-11-23T09:54:00.000-08:00

We're on buddy! The race begins now Wednesday 956AM, PST.

America the Beautiful

2005-11-21T10:53:00.000-08:00

Took my mom out sight seeing yesterday. We went up to Mount Soledad and Point Loma Lighthouse. From the top of Mount Soledad you get the most beautiful view of San Diego, the beach on one side, La Jolla, downtown San Diego on the other, even Mexico! I truly live in 'America's most liveable city'. Quite a change I must say from the other places I've lived at. Starting from Rochester, NY, where we were inundated with six feet of snow, 9 months of the year. I remember the spring break where me and my roomates were stuck in our house (which was ubiqutously called the 'Embassy') for an entire week, and finally had to shovel through the snow in our front yard before we finally got 'free'! And then off to Tennesse, which I suppose was not too bad, if you consider my two year exile in Arkansas...
Anyway, back to San Diego. I have to say one thing, one cannot beat the weather here. We're almost in December, and its still 70 degrees outside, sunny, and beaches are still accessible. My mom totally loves the scenery and weather here. In all the time I've spent here, it has probably rained maybe like 2 days total.
Now if only housing were more affordable!

Blogs

2005-11-17T16:10:00.000-08:00

I didn't realize blogs were this addictive, both reading and updating. Ever since I started this blog thingy, everything I do somehow I keep harking back to how I can relate that back to my blog! Does that classify as OCD? So now I got so much subject matter to cover, so many ideas and thoughts stuck in my head, its all forming this huge vortex and engulfing me from all sides. I can't seem to concentrate on anything else, all day long I dream about blog. Like OMG! How do professional writers survive?
The filp side of this is that writing a blog, which is opening myself up to posterity and exposing my thoughts for millions to see, I have to ensure that what I write atleast makes some sense to me. I never realized writing a blog would be so much hard work!!!!

Dil Mein Kuch Hone Laga...

2005-11-15T16:16:00.000-08:00

So a good friend of mine is suffering from an issue. He feels that he's somehow immune to heartache. He's the romantic type, looking to meet someone that somehow makes his heart quiver, give him the hibbijibies, and make it such that all he does is think about that person. Up until recently this has not happened to him.
And then, he meets somebody the other day, and now he's saying he feels a pain in his chest, his heart feels heavy and all he can do is day dream! Wait a second, why would you intentionally want to bring about such a calamity upon yourself? Isn't that like the worst feeling you can have when you feel so utterly powerless and helpless, cannot concentrate on anything in particular and all day long all you do is either stare at the phone or constantly checking emails and text messages hoping and waiting?

Work, people and everything else in between

2005-11-14T10:33:00.000-08:00

My job entails dealing with people (way too many sometimes). Somehow, everyone seems to think I'm supposed to have all the answers regardless of whether I am directly responsible for something or not. The other day, I had a meeting with the Marketing Director of one my clients, at one of their customer's office. I was supposed to be there as a backup, to kind of walk the customer through any technical issues or glitches but mostly to iron out outstanding problems. For some reason, everytime her customer would as a question, the marketer would just turn directly towards me, and give me that look like "yeah how is this done?" At first it didn't strike me as to why this kept bothering me, then I realized that the marketer is supposed to work with me as a team, and if I don't have the answer immediately, she's not supposed to drill me too in front of her customer. So in the big marketing meeting I had with the customer's entire marketing group, where I had 15 women bitching, complaining and haranguing me practically, I decided it was time to resolve this particular issue. Well first I had to make sure that all the marketers' were sufficiently calmed down (I bs pretty good sometimes, even I make myself proud at those time!). Anyway, I just laid it on the line that in the future if we're at a customer site, and if there is an issue that the marketer doesn't know how to resolve and obviously if I know the answer I will give it to them immediately. However, if I don't they're not to dog me in front of the customer, and moreover they cannot start questioning me publicly with things like ETA etc. I'm not sure this went over all too well with a couple of the marketers', they're those people who always want to look good and take CYA to the extreme! But I got the point across regardless.
A side note though, one of the marketers (the hottest one of the lot at that!) did call me later on and she said she liked the way I stood up for myself. Too bad she's married. :(

The Stigma of Divorce..

2005-11-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

So I was a bit apprehensive regarding whether to put my life out there in the public domain for all to see, but I figured while taking a shower this morning what the hell, this is the whole point of a blog in the first place. I have always been pretty upfront about my personal life, but I'm beginning to realize that our culture is kind of subversive and everything you might say or do is couched in innuendos and nuances. And I realized that it is not always that easy to be as open as one might want to be. Till now, I've treated the idea of my divorce as sort of a joke, whenever someone has brought out the topic of marriage or asked me why I'm not married, I'd point to something I'd notice about a married couple around me and say "... and that is why I am no longer married". This way I got to get the point across that I'm divorced and I'd then couch it with some statement like well how many times do people get to test drive something like this. I realize it makes me sound kinda callous but it helped divert the topic away from questions that more curious people might ask as to the why's and how's.
So anyway, this past week someone tried to hook me up. At the time, I don't think they were aware of my marital status and it was nice to know that people were looking out for me. However, once the stealth initial introduction was completed, pressure started mounting on the go-between person to figure out what my initial reaction was. I kept putting off giving him a direct answer by keeping on repeating the mantra that there was something I needed to tell him. Suddenly, I found myself feeling overly self conscious, as if I had committed this grand felony and I just didn't know how I could relay this information back to all the parties involved. On the other hand, I felt that I did need to get the girls' family know before we proceeded any futher that I'd been married previously.
So last night at a dinner, once again, I was asked the same question, what did I think and did I feel sufficiently interested in getting to know the girl better etc. And I had to resort to the best way I could think of at that moment, I told him talk to my mom! Anyway, my mom did talk to them and let them know the issue. I think that chapter will now be closed.
Two things arose from this whole situation. One, the fact that I'd suddenly been downgraded to the level of a second hand used good, since surely now that the girl's family is aware of the fact that I am divorced they will no longer be willing to proceed where just a few minutes prior they'd been very much interested. The second more important issue was how when it really mattered, I found myself so reluctant and found it so difficult to just say what I knew must be told.

Bollywood...

2005-11-11T14:27:00.000-08:00

Since my move to San Diego, I've been watching a lot of Hindi Movies. Perhaps this has been exacerbated by the fact that during my two year hiatus down in Arkansas, I rarely got to watch any. Maybe its just me getting older and suddenly feeling all 'desified'. I've been noticing that I can somehow identify with some of these desi emotions too. Strange!!! I guess one can take the boy out of the country but can't take the country out of the boy. One other interesting thing to note here is that the quality of Hindi movies have dramatically improved too, okay maybe not dramatically but it has definitely shown an upward trend. Most noticable about these movies these days is the cinematography. They also seem to have become less predictable. A few years back you could start watching a movie anywhere in the middle and still catchup and also figure out the basic storyline and the ending. That is not always the case these days. The other thing was the way these movies are picking up subject matter from various Hollywood movies, incorporating them into a the hindi movie, masalafying it a little bit, and then to top it off, not even giving credit to the original! Well done Bollywood directors, for a great work of stealth(?!) plagiarism. Well I guess Indian audiences need their staple of westernized stories broken down to them bollywood style. I read somewhere that a few years back when India opened up its film industry so that Hollywood movies could be seen in theaters, Jurassic Park was a great hit. And Schindler's list just bombed! The explanation for this was that desi audiences could not relate to Schindler's list as it didn't fit into any of the regular genres (ok there was drama!) but no songs!
A typical Hindi movie of course will have to include all the basic genres and pay heed to every possible human emotion. Perhaps that is why they're so long. I remember my first ever Hollywood movie that I watched on video, of course sans commercials. The movie was over in like 90 minutes, and I was like ok what do I do now for the next 90 minutes, because I'd budgeted 3 hours for the movie! And I was only 5 at that time! I thought my goodness what a ripoff!!!!

Today

2005-11-10T14:54:00.000-08:00

So I went to meet my shrink today. Okay time to backup a little bit here...
I've been seeing this shrink at the recommendation of my Primary Care Physician. The Primary care said that I needed to talk to a therapist to work out my situational depression issues (at least thats what she termed it as), caused by my frequent moves etc. Anyway, so I have been talking to the shrink. It was therapeutic to the extent that I got to just talk non-stop about myself with someone just listening and not questioning me or judging. Ok maybe judging but who cares about that, she gets paid to listen. So today I go there, and the shrink goes, well I thought we were done. And I'm like what'd you mean? And she goes, well from our previous session it seemed like you'd worked out your issues. And I was like yeah I realize that, and its what I told you, what the heck did I pay you all this money for if you're gonna just regurgitate my own diagnosis back to me. So once again I ranted for an hour and then I asked her for her suggestions as to what I need to do. And she gave me a whole set of suggestions, which were so generalized I was like okay whatever. So I came out of it and cancelled the remainder of my sessions with her. Actually the main reason I ended up going today was because I had tried cancelling my session yesterday and when I called in, the receptionist said since I hadn't given 24 hours notice, I would have to pay $50. So I was like wait if I go, I only pay my $20 co-pay and so I decided to just go to the meeting. Bottom line, I guess I'm back to being mentally healthy again!!!!!

First Entry

2005-11-07T17:08:00.000-08:00

So everyone's been trying this blog thingy lately... I guess I better get on with the times and start one of my own. Therefore here goes...