The other side of the fence.

It’s sometimes scary to come to terms with reality. The same batch-mates who at any given time could rattle off 13 different alternatives to segment a female population are found discussing the plight of Indian Aviation industry and related dysfunctional government reforms. Although the conversation soon steers off to the air hostesses where the ‘gyaan’ comes in handy but still, the change amazes you.

You have a humbling phase of growing out of a 4*4 crucible into a better semblance of a house – rubber slippers to leather shoes – from a dad’s ATM dependent guy to the Allen Solly Friday man. You find yourself responsible for works you wouldn’t have dreamt of doing  till the age of thirty (and I am not referring to the morning tea). And you like it. At least for a while.

Certain things however, are immune to change. People still live on their college pet names, find it hard to convince the parents that “they know what they are doing with their lives” and still emote a spartan sense of pride in claiming that Maggi was the best thing that could have happened to the human race.

So while I put to test my Linear Regression Model which helps me predict competitive bid pricing for Main line advertisements with 4 KPIs as dependent variables and other cool shit which you won’t have a clue of (which makes it even cooler), I jot down some random thoughts, useless learnings and general sense which may amuse help you in one way or the none.

• I hope that by the time you graduate from college, you relax your email ids off their superhero status. Make sure that your CVs does not read – for example – [Vedang Singh : cool.iceman.88@xmail.com* ]; thus summarizing your birth year, attitude and chat zone  preference. (* the mail client has been suppressed for security reasons)

• Like a good old Samaritan, you should learn the art of evading heavy jargon laden confrontations and scooping them to a friend to the left who is busy scoring his Minesweeper high -

Boss: So Rohit, with the Yahoo – Bing merger, what do you think would be the new CPC levels for the erstwhile Yahoo dominated markets, given that the Ad Exchanges wouldn’t totally align themselves to the Bing Policy at once?

Yours Truly: <gulp> <this is not fair God!> Uhm, Sir, at which point I must tell you that Aditya and I were discussing the same things and he had gone ahead and downloaded some relevant data from the ad center to study the patterns. <point finger at the guy and his computer screen> <sit down in a dignified manner>

The poor meat: <struggles – stammers – stutters >

Show down!

• There are colleagues and there are bosses and then there are the HRs. And they are godsend. Imagine how Christopher Columbus might have felt discovering America (sans the Red Indians) after a long hard toil among the sweltering fellow sailors. Now close your eyes. Internalize. You would feel the same – every time you crane your neck out of your cubicle across the lesser mortals to the lands of the HRs.

• I am no corporate oldie. Neither was I a college prodigy. So, expecting some sincere nuggets of wisdom here would be as hopeful as expecting to see Osama Bin Laden, in his full capabilities, marching down the Washington streets with white roses and dove flags. But still, for whatever it is worth, know that you would rarely be able to associate your dreams, opinions and ideas with another set of crowd – hoping that some of them would come along and stupefy themselves into believing that they are a part of something historic or big! But you could do that in bits and parts in college. Which makes the whole experience lasting and for the lack of better word, magical!

Have fun.

PS – Wrote it sometime back for Bakarz’ edition, but for some reason the magazine did not get through – anyways!