Manas Garg Speaks

A few hitherto unknown facts revealed in this post.

I wrote CAT this time. I got a 98.XX percentile and have an interview call from IIM Bangalore.

The time I wrote CAT, I thought that maybe this will be a good thing. MBA - will get to learn a lot, will get to experience a new world altogether.

But then as the interview dates comes closer, I am  convinced that this is not the right thing to do at the moment. An MBA at this stage will surely mean moving away from hardcore technology - which I’m crazy about. Two years away from technology, surrounded by people who dream nothing but of investment banks and consultancy firms will prove to be a brainwash. I’m not ready for it.

My observation after speaking with so many people has been that it is usually engineers who do not find engineering the most exciting thing in the world who move towards MBA - it is a great way to make a career shift. The prospects of going to a technology or software company after an MBA are not great - at least not from IIMs. And so MBA does not interest me. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Finally, I love my job. What could be a computer engineer’s bigger dream than to the first line of code in a  Microsoft product?

So I’m decided. No MBA - at least not in the near future. The big question is - should I go attend the interview? It will cost me 8k to go attend it, and all the trouble of the new airport at Hyderabad. Plus, the very next day, I have to make one of the most important presentations I’ve ever made.

Help me out - I’m tempted not to go for the interview. Any ideas?

Am writing this post using Windows Live Writer. It is a desktop application that can post for you to your blog – It corrects spelling, formats text just like an office application. The best part is that you can upload photos by drag drop, and it shows your post in your template even as you write it.

Let me hold the best for the last – it works out of the box even with WordPress and Blogger to name a few!

Check it out here!

People have been asking me why have I suddenly disappeared from the blogging circle entirely. I actually have - my last post was something like 2 weeks back!

I’m quite busy in office these days, and have taken up a new schedule where I get up by 6.30 in the morning and am in office by 8.30 :) Which also implies no staying up till crazy hours in the night. I am working on an exciting new project, and am learning a lot. I’ll write a post on work culture in my company and the kind of work I do soon. 

I took up the Art of Living course last week, and it was simply amazing. The best part was that it was not as if they were forcing you to accept some particular belief or ‘Guru’. The yoga was great, and I feel so much better now. I would urge you to take this course up whenever you can - after you do it you’ll realize that you should have done it a long time ago, just like I did!

I went on a company picnic to coorg, and had a great time. The resort we stayed in was just awesome. I got to stay in a private villa that had a private pool (all for myself :), jacuzzi and lots of other stuff. Won’t say that coorg was amazing, but out resort (Orange county) definitely was. In addition, these picnics help one be better friends with people in your team :) However, the resort was expensive (I’m not even sure if just ‘expensive’ describes how expensive it was), so no point going there on your own. Wait till your company takes you there! 

My post, a must have internet explorer add-on is getting a LOT of spam comments - I get upto 10 everyday :( Guess I’ll just disable the comments for that particular post.

This is all that is going on in my life - well almost :) What about you?

Though I’m not very religious, I like to visit temples. I visited the temple of Chilkur Balaji with my dear cousin Harsh today. It is located approximately 20 km from Mehadipatnam, Hyderabad.

The interesting thing about this temple is that among other things, people come here to pray for Visa. They say that God grants an early Visa to all those who pray here. So much that this temple is now fondly called Visa Balaji’s Temple :)

There was something else that struck both me and Harsh - even though there were thousands of people in the queues, there was no Hundi in the temple! No provision for you to donate money! Also, there was no provision of a VIP darsan, where the so called VIPs can skip the queues and get easy darsan. All were treated as equals in this temple.

I have never seen a temple that did not encourage donations before. I am quite impressed. Way to go, God! :)

Here is a page that gives a detailed description of this temple.

I came back late from office today - after 11 pm - had an unusually busy day.

I reached home and turned on my computer.

I launched Internet Explorer and prayed - Oh God! I don’t want my internet connection to work tonight.

It was working.

And here I am, at 1 a.m., dead tired, swollen eyes, but glued to the net. Can’t help it - I’m so badly addicted.

Read what I wrote about net addition two years back here. How things change!