Between Bangalore and Barcelona

[distantpoles]

Beautiful Sitges and not so beautiful Barcelona

I can't believe I didn't take you Sitges while you were here. It is a beautiful little town 30 minutes train ride from Barcelona. I hadn't realised how easy it is to get there. Had I known, I would have definitely taken you there, but next time, for sure! It had winding and narrow alleys like in Venice and ups and downs like in Santorini. It has quite an active dining/ drinking scene. Cost of living seems to be significantly lower than in Barcelona. It was beautiful to just walk around and enjoy the good weather today. I used my T-10 ticket to get to Sitges, however, when I tried to use the same ticket to get out of the Sants station on my way back, I was not allowed to get out. When we asked the inspector there, he said that we could not travel in Zone 4 with a T-10 ticket, which we were unaware of. He asked us to pay 100 Euros as a fine. Then after much haggling, he brought it down to 50 Euros and then finally to 50 Euros for all of us put together (Helena, Anna and me). When we realised he was asking for a bribe, we put our put down and said we could not pay that much. He said he'd call the police and we said that we could wait for the police. We stood around for 30-40 minutes after which time we decided to plonk ourselves at a nearby bench. Seeing that we weren't going to give in (since there was no police coming anyway), he asked us to pay 6.15 Euros per person for which we'd get a ticket. We paid and and got out. As we walked out of the station, some guys in a car hooted at us three. All of a sudden, I didn't miss India at all. 

[distantpoles]

Irrational counters to rational arguments

You sometimes make these rational arguments which I cannot accept simply because they are orthogonal to my views and the only way I know how to counter them is by being irrational and saying I want no conversation with you for a while. Why can't you just for once pamper me when I need it the most in life? I have been coughing my lungs out for the last few days, bleeding down there, PMSing and all you can do is throw rational arguments at me? This is just brutal. I hope you are happy for winning this argument.

[distantpoles]

Placements

Why is it that whenever we discuss your placements we end up fighting? Why is it that whenever we discuss placements you think I'm not interested, and am not adding value? Why is it that whatever gyaan I give you find inadequate? When you come to me with a problem the best I can do is to solve it my way! You'll be getting inferior output if I try to silver it any other way, since you'll in that case only be getting the projection of my best contribution on the axis that you are looking for help. Instead if you come to me with an open mind rather than preconceived notions of how I'll help you I think you can get much better value from such conversations!!

[distantpoles]

Why I prefer to have my CV edited by an ex.

You accuse me of threatening to end our relationship ever so frequently and you know what, you are right. I threaten. It's my way of trying to keep you on line. While you're constantly in doubt of whether I will be with you or not, you put me under constant pressure wondering if you're taking this relationship for granted or not. Just so you don't take it for granted, I try to artificially induce instability by my threats. Unfortunately, it's turned out to be a wolf wolf story and you don't care about my threats any more and I am not confused anymore - I know you take this relationship for granted. Both of us are needy of each other in different ways - I want academic support and you need emotional support. The support increases the farther you are from the person by virtue of hyperbolic discounting of our value for something in the past, present and the future and this explains why we have a healthy long distance relationship. By the same general rule, it's a lot easier for me to get my exs to edit my CVs and CLs must faster than you do. 

[distantpoles]

Lack of integrity

I discovered my biggest flaw today. Not that I needed anyone to point it out but the fact that someone did actually made me feel a lot worse. I know how you are quite public about ADHD but I have no rights to talk about it as if it were my own problem with random strangers. I realise that being in B-school is like sending an email. Once you've sent the message there's no getting it back. It's done. The damage is done. So, yes, I told Joao and David in a conversation about ill effects of Prozac that I know about the side effects very well because you were on it. Joao thought it was so insensitive and ill mannered of me to do that and I agree with him. I don't know why I cannot build a concrete wall around my feelings and my personal life so I can protect it from such exposure/ criticism. I sincerely apologise for doing what I did, Karu. I am a lousy secret keeper and I lack integrity but do you think you have it in your heart to forgive me and work with me to improve the person that i am? 

[distantpoles]

Missing you!!

Been missing you like crazy ever since I came back. I seem to have changed completely since then. I don't know what it is but I see the world differently now.

The trip has drawn me out in some way, and made me deeply unsatisfied with the way life is going, and makes me want to change stuff and make things better

Before I came I had accepted life as it is here and was very happy in my little well. And now that I've been rudely shocked out of it I'm deeply dissatisfied and that's been weighing down on me like crazy :(

[distantpoles]

Flaneur. That's the word that Nassim Nicholas Taleb uses for someone who wanders about without plans. He divided all travelers into tourists and flaneurs - tourists have a fixed schedule which they stick to and live by. Flaneurs make up their schedule as they go along. For a while now I've wanted to travel like a flaneur - which is why last few trips I've never made plans for within a city. But things didn't particularly work out. This time in Amsterdam though I'm actually living like a flaneur. Apart from my ticket to Barcelona and hotel room nothing is booked. I have no plans. So I'm just roaming about without schedules, without worries. I took a tram yesterday, saw a place that looked pretty and just got off. Then I saw a pretty street. And just started walking that way. Ended up being a fairly long walk! Totally enjoyed it. Then randomly entered a cafe and had coffee. Then went for a random walk. And then dinner. I wish we can do flaneur-y activities on our forthcoming vacations also. We can change leader change everyday.

[distantpoles]

So far, yet so near

You're in Netherlands, so far from Barcelona but it feels like you're so close.  Just being in Europe, getting a taste of how pretty looking everything in this continent is and being in a land so far away from being prosecuted by looks and judgement unlike in India must be exhilarating! There is something so romantic about living here and having you around makes it a bit more special for me. I'm so happy that you're exploring Amsterdam all by yourself (of course, I'd like it better if I were with you). The photos are magical. Can't wait to hold you and be held.

[distantpoles]

Selection bias and recency bias and fear

The last time it rained in Bangalore it got quite bad. I was out on my motorcycle and got stuck. When I drove back in the rain I saw fallen trees and later heard of monster traffic jams and card being washed away. So when it started raining this evening at nine I assumed it would be similarly bad and started getting worried. I had forgotten that what happened last week was an extremely improbable event and it was unlikely to happen again today. But recency bias struck! I had also forgotten that you can have normal rains in Bangalore - where it rains and people get wet and life goes on as usual. It's quite funny how the mind works!

[distantpoles]

Why it's harder to make friends as you grow older

I just found the answer to one of the most pressing questions of my life reading through my 'Decision Analysis' notes. We tend to miscalculate the long-term impact of decisions that will have an influence many years from now. To rationalise why it is harder to make friendships as we grow older, we must discount the quality of relationship with friends years from now at a much higher discount rate. This simply means we have to invest much more in relationships now than we ever did before as we have lesser time with people we meet beyond our school/ university years and we're expecting similar quality. 

[distantpoles]

These NRIs and their Indian food cravings!!

[distantpoles]

Three life lessons

"You're doing an MBA so you learn to say no" - Jan Simon

"When you start trusting something, your brain learns faster" - Jan Simon

"An intersection of Strategy and Business Development is possible only in a growing start up. This will place you on a path to becoming a CEO someday." - Marie-Caroline

[distantpoles]

Distance makes the heart grow fonder

As I read your last 3 posts (feeling guilty for having been missing from this space), I miss you so much that I don't even have the strength to hold back my tears. I feel closer to you than ever before. I sometimes wish I'd done my MBA starting 2012 as planned earlier so we would never have to go through everything we've been through so far. I realise we're fighting bigger things (solitude) than each other, which actually brings us where we are today. I cannot wait to see you. 

[distantpoles]

Hosa baTTe for Maha Navami

When I was a kid, my mother used to insist that I buy new clothes for Maha Navami. Actually, this extended to much beyond the time when I was a kid - you remember that blue shirt I'd worn the first time I met you? It was part of a set of four I'd bought two days earlier, when my mother gave me two thousand rupees asking me to buy new shirts for Maha Navami.

Now I haven't bought any new clothes today, and I presume neither have you. But then I thought this blog of ours deserves new clothes for Maha Navami, and hence changed the theme! I hope you like it. If not, change it today itself! 

[distantpoles]

Casting a spell with thread

There is a (horrible) book called Casting a Spell, written by Vedam Jaishankar about Karnataka bowlers. The description of one of them, EAS Prasanna, often talks about how he made the ball hang in the air, "as if suspended by a thread". 

This post, however, has nothing to do with cricket. It has, however, everything to do with a salon, and haircuts. 

I had gone to Green Trends this morning for a haircut. I'm sitting there, with my spectacles taken off, as my hair is being cut, watching the mirror in front of me to see what else is happening in the salon. 

A lady is in the chair behind mine, and there is another lady standing over her, moving her hands in front of the seated lady's face. To my unspectacled eyes, it looks like the standing lady is casting a spell on the seated lady! 

Soon, another lady appears and takes the seat next to this seated lady's seat. And another salon employee appears after that, and repeats the procedure - casting a spell on this new lady. In a couple of minutes, though, the new lady stands up and walks away (maybe the spell didn't work?). And then I see this thin white line draped across the salon employee's shirt. And then it hits me. 

These women were getting their eyebrows threaded. If you can't see the thread, the movement of the hands of the person threading looks like they are trying to cast a spell! 

[distantpoles]

Dasara holidays

One of the reasons I went freelance three years back was so that I could define my own holidays and not be guided by a company's "three weeks per year" limit. I longed for those summer and Dasara holidays we'd get back in school, and wanted to recreate them. 

Now, even though I'll be working a fair bit during my trip to Barcelona, I just realised that I'll be gone from India between Dasara and Deepavali - the time when schools normally close for their holidays! I had some tough meetings yesterday and today, and now, after they're done and telling my clients that I'll be gone till Deepavali, I feel like a schoolkid who has just finished his half yearly exams and has now got holidays! 

I almost want to gang up my school friends and go play cricket this afternoon to celebrate the beginning of the holidays! 

[distantpoles]

Capital Markets - The secret holders

I was introduced to the organisation structure of Investment Banking by Prof. Jan Simons (who prefers to be just called Jan) this afternoon in his Capital Markets class. While sales and trading can be high adrenaline stuff and M&A with more potential for networking, I found one part of this organisation very very interesting - Capital Markets. They sit hiding inside the Chinese Wall and they get the best of both worlds but can't give either away. It's like they hold all the secrets in the world and know exactly which way the world is spinning. With great power, comes great responsibility. So, you know, but you can't say. I would imagine if not by the money, they would surely get a rush out of the amount of information they hold on to!