Gyration...

Its amazing how life has a laugh at you in the best of moments... sometimes it happens tht things/people whom you hated in past come back to you.. and infact now there is no time for hatred and the fact is tht thing/person who has come back to you has made you happy! :-)

One of the critical things about living a bachelor's life, away from home, is that you need to have a lot of discipline... no one's gonna come and wake you up, no one's gonna wash your clothes, no one's gonna pamper with good food and that no one would really care if you are hungry or not ... in short - 'You are all by ur own self' ... Me, Rajan, Rakesh, Aditya and Saurabh are goin thru one of these disciplinary crisis out here in Abu Dhabi ... all of a sudden our cook has disappeared and finding food has been a pain offlate .. no no ... i dont mean you dont have restr's in Abu Dhabi, it means we have not left an undiscovered restr. in Abu Dhabi (atleast I am not much at difficulty bcuz i m a harcore non-vegetarian now) ... and hence food that we have been eating is repititive in nature ....

Now this repititiveness reminds me of something....about 4-5 years back when I was at home, enjoying life with my family, I used to bug my mom for making repititive things in lunch and dinner everyday and wud also come up wid innovative dishes for my mom to cook which would somtimes take hours...at that point in time I was one guy who used to believe that if i have money with me in near future i would go to all different hotels and never eat at home ... Know something; God listened to me ... here i am wid all the money in the world with all restr in Abu Dhabi and look I am already bored of eating outside .. :-) (this thing is very similar to that old story of a king who wants everything that he touches to be gold) ... now i think why did I wish for it in the first place ....

Another thing is that I was a very demanding foodie, I used to eat certain things and do away with others..I have had several fights wid my mom over food or certain vegetables which were made at home ... I always hated these 4 things (only gujju readers wud understand) .. 'Turia', 'Dudhi', 'Karela' and 'Mathia' ... and today afternoon when i went for lunch .. the gujju restrn here had 3 of the 4 things in vegetables....tht instantly reminded me of my mom ...ha ha .. the fights i use to have wid her when she used to make these at home ... i believe this thing happened puporsely to me today ... its like sm1 telling me ... Hey U Mr. Ardous... eat this or be hungry ! .. Yes it came back to me ... today I cudnt fight nebody... rather than being angry, I had a smile on my face ... rather than yelling at my mum ... I decided to call her then n there to sayi am sorry for the past ... and next time when I m home she can make nething n I wont complain...

Life is certainly a gyrating tale, I am a changed guy, I dont like restr nemore and wht more ..i am eating my most disliked food ever .... :-)


P.S: Any Abu Dhabi readers?! - please let us know if there's a cook willing to make food for us 5 !!

Been 6 months......

Its been 6 months in Abu Dhabi now ... and it seems no less than an eternity.... this particular time has been a mixed bag of memories; joy, mischief’s and a lot of doin nothing have all been a part of these 6 months in Abu Dhabi ....

so here's a snap shot of all happening's in Abu dhabi -

To start wid, about my work. In the last 6 months my organisation has undergone a sea change, twice the board members got changed, the CEO got fired ( ha ha ) n there's no CEO now ... my entire team left (now the team is jus 2 of us new chaps) ... ha ha .... the portfolio's that I created made loss :-( guess i am unlucky for my organisation ... sometimes its really funny ... we bet whose gonna leave next in the office ... and now a new thing is gonna start ... we'll celebrate people leaving our department ... ha ha ... means one party fixed for each month .... (how does one not be happy abt parties) .... and the most important thing of all - department deosnt have money to give salary hikes but surely has money to party ... So all in all ...work has been fun ... learning is one part... however office gossips and pleasure seeking has been the key things :-)


Now, the other part of life.... life apart from office .... aahh ... this has been a bit of a bore ... no new place is left for lunch or dinner ... no new place is left for roaming around ... no movie has gone unwacthed .... and bloody directors ...the movies havent been so good as well (barring NO SMOKING) .. every time u have to pay 30 dirhams for a bakwaas film... this is the max i have travelled in terms of kilometeres all my life ... however the trips have been between Dubai and Abu Dhabi ... ha ha .... degree's wise ... one more round the corner .... normal lunch - rice and fish ... normal dinner - chicken n roti ... normal time pass - watching movie on lappie, normal dinner talks - discussing PE ideas, normal outing- Dubai offcourse, normal cribs - office, normal inspiration - find a well paying job in india,

ya ya ..i knw ...this normal is a bit abnormal ;-)

We all here are constantly in need of some spice in life ... some have reverted to chatting on net - all around the world round the clock, some just sleeping .. me trying to write again .... and few of us have taken a wrong path of being to 'Concept Dances'.... ;-)

Chater Mater....

Its Diwali time again and this is the first Diwali I have been away from home and the feeling is like a batsman whose got out on 99... haha.....



Its amazing how things change, life takes u places which u never dreamt off, u wanna go back to the place whr u came from but can't... Mine is a similar case ... Though I havent seen more films in my life as much I have seen in the Abu dhabi theatre's (some times two awful films as well) .. not travelled so much ever before ...(here trips are to Dubai ..300 Km in toto both ways...3 times a week min) and also never had so much of a free time in my working life as mush as i m having here ... enjoying freedom of doing wht i want whenever I want to ... haha....



Given all this; life is still sad, I am away from home, away from family, loving parents, naughty friends and so much more.... Every day i get up to go for my office, I wonder if it was mumbai and i had to reach the railway station, board a train which is full of sticky people (surprisingly even that nowadays seems good) ... getting bored in office sometimes I wonder I was sitting in a nariman point office which overlooked the sea (water has a soothing effect on me) .. this happens everyday .... and then comes a salary slip and my inner self tells me ... this place isnt tht bad either ...hahaha....Paisa kya kya nahi karvata.....



Hence, I believe, life has become chater mater these days.... a bit sweet n a bit sour.. :) ...

misss missss mumbai ...

Its amazing how somethings have a soothing affect on u as a person ... wht i mean here is whrsoever u stay in the world and no matter how happy u r ... ur home is the place where u'll find peace...

Its been around one and a half years now that I have been living away from home ... firstly for my MBA and later for my job .. and life away from home has been good so far ... however everytime I am home I dont feel like going away again ... this time its no different... I have been home for the past 15 days now and life has been simply amazing ... its only on 4 occassions out of 15 tht I have had chance to njoy dinner with my parents ..rest all have been wid friends ..some of whom i knew and some of whom i got to knw during my stay here...there's so much to catch up on and time obviously is short... also people in mumbai are usually busy ( i dont knw why .. probably i was as busy when i used to work here in mumbai)

However late it has been at night, i have always found company of people in crowded buses and trains on my way back home ... i always knew mumbai never sleeps and the belief has jus redeemed itself... this is wht u miss when u r away from mumbai (probably India one may guess) ..people talk abt all sorts of things... right from the water problems to TV commercials... my frnds do have a loads to tell me as well ... some of whom have got married now .. n r jealous of me ..lol... some of whom are still waiting to get married .. some of whom are not finding enuff time to njoy life bcuz of a demading job ... and some of whom r happy not doing ne job at the moment (I.T fellows...ha ha ha ...)

Its been so good catching up wid all of them that everytime my Blackberry gives a buzz ..i go sad reminiscent of the fact that I have to go back to my job away from Mumbai and how much i'll miss it ...

It's been long .....

'Sometimes you wanna leave yourself a footnote and find out, wht you have done is written a whole chapter' ....

I know what this phrase means today .... my academic journey so far can be best summarised by this phrase above.

Well I wanted to write myself a footnote as well ... that was being a Chartered Accountant ...thts wht my parents wanted me to be ... and while boarding the 6.26 am slow train from Borivali every day during the second yr Bcom .. i used to wonder when this ordeal is gonna end ... bcuz it was a bit crazy those days ... day began at 5.30 am and ended close to 11pm at night ... i used to hate that ...bcuz it meant tht I cudnt follow many of my other interest(s) .. i wudnt be able to watch cricket !! .. no nothing...

Things did go well n i was a C.A (thankfully) ... but as i already said CA was more of a Compulsion than Choice..i didnt wanna continue wid its practice or nething related to tht ... i found paper work so boring .... so i decided to study further ..(n parents didnt mind bcuz i was jus 21 then)....I did a few other things like C.S (again tht didnt excite me), CFM - my first real knowledge came frm tht particular course....tht gave me a briefing on everything i wanted to knw ...n ya most importantly it helped me crack the ICICI treasury interview ....

ICICI was the biggest turning point of life so far... i had never seen an organization, its people ..so aggressive in my life ever before .. everything was so fast, things didnt happen they were made to happen n fast .... it gave u inspiration ... i dont knw for wht .. but it told u impliedly tht u had to be good to be there long ....

Treasury really helped me decide wht I wanted to do all my life ... wht wud excite a bore like me ... it was 'Get up every morning and decide where the world goes next' ..hmm .. so i started looking at people who wud do tht evry day and understand wht do they knw which i dont ... one thing i became aware of, at tht time was tht I needed to broaden my information quadrant.. knw n understand things in a broader perspective .. and then i decided to do MBA .. and since, by then i knew tht money is most exciting of all things in the world.. i decided to do CFA as well ...

17th August 2007 marked i was a C.A., C.S., CFM, FRM, CFA and an MBA (CFA being the last one)... nah i m not crazy nor m i a nerd ...nor did i ever plan it in the 6.26am train... i m jus a average guy who works a lil bit more ... ... jus took whtever came my way ... ya one thing i did right was not being afraid to take things up.... who dares wins isnt it !!

Nostalgia eh.....

Time travels faster than light .. how true ..

Similar was a case of my MBA ... never realised when it started and when did it end ... was jus happy it did end ... (sigh) ....

Suddenly, today I happened to find out that my Lappie has jus about of 15 GB's of space left... so I decided to delete some of the not so neccessary things in it ... Now, since the MBA is done with; you dont require all the educational stuff nemore ...and hence I clicked on the 'Courses' folder on the 'C' drive .... and therein was a list of all courses I had taken up in the MBA ... The list started with 'ACF' and ended with 'Valuations' (name of the courses) ... So now the deletion started ... I double clicked the ACF folder ... and amongst notes I found 4 assignments which my grp had done for ACF ... I double clicked assignment 1 ... Texas High Speed Rail corp ... and it reminded me of the day my group mates sat in an empty room doing it .... then I click on assignment 2 .. hey its MW petro ... ah ...the one I completed at 4 am on the submission day ... huh ..it was some genius ...i distinctly remember I had done smthng the prof had challenged no one could do ... he he ...had a big argument in class tht day wid the finance prof (a 1000 ppl told me to calm down on IP tht day)... Looked thru the 3rd assignment and then the 4th .... I also remember that despite everything I topped tht subject .. my grp got the max marks in grp works.... so I decided not to delete nething from tht folder ...

In every folder; i clicked on the assignments, the notes I made in class (some ppl thought I used to chat in class .. lol ).... all had some memories ... I cudnt delete ne single one of those folders ... nor a single thing in those folders.......they all have loads of memories in them .. they remind me of days n nights I used to sit n break my head over things... they bring back all those moments I spent in my MBA ... Every day is so clear in my mind today .. the assignments/notes acted as a point of refernce for things I had forgotten ...

There is that folder called 'Dic-Dic' in my 'C' drive .... Dic-Dic is named after ADIC ... tht was the only interview I was gonna sit for in the entire placements... it has the best of data ever avaliable about markets .. infact on my interview day .. i knew where each particular stock market was, what were the rates for G-7 currencies.. wht the credit market in U.S was headed ... possibly everything one wud wish to knw abt finance still lies in tht folder .... There are folders which I made for friend(s ) ..carrying info abt tht job they were applyin to .. there are folders of a terrific SGP ... similary of a super dissertation (though the case was ..the evaluators never understood wht they were) ...

How could I delete all of this .... I can't ... m not that gutsy ... wht i realised is that how precious this data is for me .. n i need to take a back-up instead of deleting smthng frm it ...

There are things, people I would wish to forget abt from my MBA days .... however there are many good things that happened to me that I would wanna take ahead with me ....

Time travels fast and its important u leave behind traces to know where you have come from ... bcuz tht always helps u figure out where u are headed next ....

Silly me ... was trying to delete that part of my life away ... !!

Who holds wins....

Caveat: If you are already bored of finance ..dont read this blog !!

Suprisingly, BSE Sensex is about to make a move towards one more historic land-mark. Yes, the land-mark being 16000!! .. pretty amazing isnt it .... I can only imagine the euphoria in every borkers office in mumbai rite now ... the season of gujjubhai's 'Mal Laoo' has made a come back .. those mad punching of orders, those constantly ringing phones, those khaman's and dhokla's and those beer parties in the night..I am sure its not less than an unrestrained rush of emotions every trader/every investor is goin thru at the moment...

I started tracking markets from 6700 levels (it was August 2005) if I remember correctly...and in 2 years time it has zoomed to the current levels... despite 3 major setbacks mid-way the markets have made a come-back rite frm the wall, if I may say so... and amazingly its not the story of the markets alone.. its a story abt India !!, an emerging economy (if tht word still applies) which has been tranformed by its people....

There have been a lots of theories about markets...some do work actually ..others dont .. however one theory which has never been wrong (even if you factor in inflation) is the long-only investing .... You will find millions of traders who chop n churn their portfolio's .. there are millions of investment advisers who recommend trading rather than investing .. infact I, being from the alternatives side of the business, am a tactical trader as well ... for me the game is two-alpha ... and its purely a short window for me ... 3 months is an awful lot of time...

Though what I write next is contrary to what I do, fact is a fact after all.... Short horizon investing never helps ... two fundamental reasons being - firstly a normal investor doesnt have access to superior information - secondly a normal investor cant sit on his pc all day analysing how a pair is gonna perform; given the speed of convergence - its a high end thing after all ... and thts wht people like me are here for ;) .. These are people who are already fed up of life and computer screen amazes them ..so they have screens at their home as well .. they dont sleep bcuz they will miss a news flash ...

Investors who have tried acting smart have always failed ... no body ever made a fortune jus trading ... u need to invest long and thts the only fact abt the markets... I dont intend to demean traders who trade on technicals, hedge fund managers who trade on algorithms ... those guys are nerds and tht business is all together different .. they want their alpha and are happy with it... whereas a normal investor like me needs Beta+Alpha ... which is only possible in a long-only investing... Look at ne equity market in the world .. and you will find that only long-only investing has added value in the long term....

The moral of the story is if u wanna invest ..invest long term ... greed never pays !! ... Who holds always wins ... and a win be big or small its a win afterall ... To continue with Indian e.g. when I went to my brokers office this time I was in mumbai .. i saw the entire old bunch of traders missing... new traders had replaced the old ones ... suprisingly the same people who called my broker earlier still called !!


(ok the last sentence was the punch line ... ah u didnt get it?)

Who told you so ....

Things have changed ..and so should we ...

I am sure every1 has heard of this phrase - 'Slow and steady wins the race'... the story being of a Rabbit and a Tortoise... This story was so revelant when I was a small kid ... may be 15 yrs back this made complete sense ... now my answer to ppl who say this is - 'u must be kiddin me'..

People who still say this have missed an important point ... we all learn from our mistakes and surely the rabbits have too... no longer a rabbit sleeps while he's in a race ... and essentially now the race has turned into a Rabbit race rather than a conventional Rabbit-tortoise race...

If you have guessed wht gonna follow read on for confirmation and if havent followed it yet well read on ...

What I mean by 'Rabit' are people who know how to run fast (not literally) but those who wanna achieve a goal early ... probably look for one more goal after they have achieved their first, second, third..... Look around urselves and you will find rabits today run all organisations, they decide where the world go next, people look at them in awe ..y? ..before they are fast, they are aggressive, they know whr to go next even before they have reached a planned destination.... everything go as per plans because they knw every possible exit out of every roadblock tht comes in their way ... The rabit today has learned when to get up and start running again ..well before the tortoise even crossed him ... and as i mentioned earlier world's today a competing place for all rabits .. tortoise's have been outpaced long before and chances of there recovery are next to nothing....

So wht does a rabbit have that a tortoise doesnt .... first of all they have a high degree of self motivation, secondly they have a plan in place even before the problem was created ... they know whts coming next even before it was pronouced on them - its called 'Negative Inertia'... Tortoise on the other hand is a patient being and likes to go steady without being bothered by much of the things arnd ... he is jus happy to be slow !!

The choice now is wht you wanna be ....

One way to look at it is why be a rabbit ..bcuz at the end of it only one rabbit is gonna win out of many rabbits ... in true sense only a few ppl wud be successful n rest wud have to follow...

Take ur pick !! ...wanna die fighting or wait till it comes to you..

If you are not a rabbit think again ... try n be that before its too late !! .. or as they say in Arabic .. life is 'KHALLAS'

Make a pick !!

Once my primary school teacher told all of my class a story ... it was about two kids ...

Both kids started to learn alphabets; the first kid learned the alphabets and moved on to study numbers from 1 to 10. The second kid learned the alphabets n did it well... and on the exam day..the first kid scored 8/10 and the second kid scored 10/10. Ya the exam was on alphabets... interesting isnt it ...whom wud you consider better? who is more intelligent? who is smarter and who is not? ...

The universe is divided into these two kind of people ... some people do differently things...some stick to wht they do ...n tht's the only thing they do n surely they do it well .....

The important thing for every one is of us to pick amongst these two categories ... the answer to above questions is tht both the kids are intelligent..both are smarter... only thing is tht they have chosen different paths for themselves.....and both wud do well if they stick to wht they do...

I met one very successful fund marketing officer today ... and one first thoughts I came to conclusion tht this guy is good ..y doesnt he manage a fund of his own .. y does he come n sell some1 else ... probably the answer to tht question was tht 2nd kid .. who does wht he does n tries to do tht well ... he doesnt wanna go ahead..he is happy where he is ...

Essentially we need to decide wht makes us happy ... U cant do everything under the sun and someday the 1st kid wud have to stop ... however he wud have enjoyed many different things he's seen on his way ...

I wudnt say which one of them is better ... I wud say I am the first one ... bcuz I believe to appreciate the good u need to knw whts better ....

Ample time ....

Hmm... wht does one do when he has ample time at disposal ??? .... the question being on my mind since last thrusday ....

The concept of 8 hour working is really bad and believe me India is much better..cuz u spend most of the time in office n dont have to bother abt being boundless... I am trying my best to implement tht concept in my new hat here..however the max i am able to do in 10 hours in office ...

Imagine u get up every morning..make your breakfast .. go to office... work ... come back at 6pm.. roam in the same mall everyday ..same place .. same shps ..how boring is tht !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Life mei change kahan hai.... for a hopping rabit like me this is too slow a life ... essentially the thing is not abt being slow or fast ... i jus dont wanna be left behind working less when the fellow investment bankers around the globe are working 80 hours a week .. hardwork always pays n i m not working hard here ....

Now when u have ample time you can do two things with the time u have ... either in can go find urself a gf or if u dont wanna get bugged by silly talks the best thing u can do is start reading a book ... and given tht i m a good boy ..i have decided to do the latter....

Now since i have decided to read up something ... y not clinch one more degree ... aise bhi padhai aur aise bhi padhai .... thts a good idea isnt it !!

So i have decided to pursue one more course ... CAIA .... the big thing in the Hedge fund industry ...

CAIA here i come baby.....

Thank you for being there always .... my dear books !!!!!!!

It's N-1 again !!

'Desire is the root cause of sorrow' - ye it is ... however, how does one move ahead in life if there are no desires or no unfulfilled ambitions !! ...

So here's me with one more desire (if you read my previous blogs ..I have already mentioned..i m a 'Yeh Dil Maange more' guy). I work presently in somthing known as Alternative Investments, many aren't aware of what exactly this peice of shit is. So let me brief a bit on it ... Alternative Investments is an investing sophistication, where numbers rule the world, the belief being ..there's nothing in this world numbers can't define .. in a histrionic terms - 'Investing is a number driven martix'..and thats actually true.....

When I finished my MBA, I had little idea I will be working in an Alternative Assets(AA) department. Now, though I always wanted to be close to figures ( I love sexy figures too), AA was a pleasant surprise. My life, now, revolves around figures ... at the end of a working day all I have done is mazed several figures on a spreadsheet and said 'WOW' .. thats crazy stuff. Good part about the job is that I use very bit of my brain analyzing Asset classes world over ..all tiny little parts of my acedemic sense.. and it also helps in creating a duality within myself .. for e.g. one part of the brain says Chineese Stock market would fall given a P/E of 35, the other part of the brain says .. how can chineese stock fall .. the one year deposit rate in China is less than the inflation.. and I am right both the times...

This is all I love about my job...

Now, the not so loved part of my job..

Often I have to meet with different Hedge Funds managers from across the globe, every time I meet them, I come out as a 'Inferiority-Complex' driven individual (which I obviously dont like)...let me tell you why this happens...On one side of the table is me and on the other side of the table is a guy who's done Phd. in physics, was working with french space agencies, now is a part of a quantitative Hedge fund and to add insult to injury is a graduate from MIT; and if this doesnt lower your spirits; nothing can, has also done CFA. I happen to meet one today ...

'So you follow a bayesian process' was my question .. 'We not only follow a bayesian process .. we also optimize based on factors..wht we do is calculate Correlations on a moving average basis with half Alpha values' was the reply ... I thought I should shoot myself there ...he he ... I have met 6 managers in 15 days time and they all have left me baffled ....

The bad thing about this job is that there are things which are going above my head ... and I dont like that to happen to me (believe me, you cant even laugh at urself)...

I have very soon realised that there are these immensely(grammatical error allowed) Brillianttttt people in this world and unfortunately, as of now, I am not a part of that group.


So here's the desire ... now I need to learn everything possible under the sun concerned with Alternatives ... to be as good as people who have understand figures better than me ... to learn how to beat them in their own court ... to make figures talk...

I thought not many desires were left unfulfilled, gusess what 'N' has increased and I am one short of it ...............

All's well that ends well !!

Finally the MBA has come to end ... and after a good stint abroad I am back home to some masti and padhai (again) before I make a move to Abu Dhabi.

The whole MBA thing was a roller coaster ride ... thankfully it had lot more 'ups' than 'downs' and ended peacefully with not much of a noise. As I have mentioned in my previous blogs, MBA is not abt padhai or gyaan ..its all abt people you are with and what kindda influences those people have on you. And thts y this blog ...

In the 2 part of my MBA (this is a recency bias) I had these 3 people in my life whom I wouldnt want to thank (bcuz 'thnks' is too small an adjective) .... they being Umesh Ubriani, Sohan D'Souza and Rohini Sureka.

I first met Sohan on my first day at SPJCM, when I had arrived to Dubai wid no allocation of a room in the infamous blue villa and Sohan suggested I should be his room mate (That was the only best thing that happened at SPJCM) .... later on Umesh joined that room and later it carried on in Singapore wid us 3 being roommates again. Being my roommates Sohan and Umesh always stood by me, they listened to all my bull shit frustrating talks, gave me good company on the mid-night pleasure walks, the economy shakin dinner meals and a lot more ... I cant really imagine how i wud have survived those last 6 monhts of the MBA without these two by my side ... they made our room a pleasure to go back to...

The third person being Rohi ..a kid at heart ...who had a dog as her soft toy (actually some1 had fooled her ..selling a dog pronouning it as a lion ..which she readily believed..he he ). Rohi by herself is a very confused person ... but listens to all one has to say .. gives her opinion ..and doesnt want u to follow that ..which is the best part .... Rohi incidently became my finance grp member and that was also one good part abt singapore ... the usual boring me had a jovial person by my side who use to irritate me a lot !! ... however i thoroughly enjoyed her company.. she also like Umesh and Sohan wud listen to my bull shit at the end of the day and wudnt complain abt it :) .. likewise i also wud listen to her part of the story ..lol

These 3 people are special to me and I jus hope we stay in touch forever ...

And they all fall apart ......

There are about 10 days left for my MBA to get over and by this time the ticket bookings, shipping books, last minute exodus to places left to vist have started to be in limelight and studies are on the back burner.

For many of us this is gonna be the last time we are in a B-school, for some of us who aspire higher goals in life - may be this is jus an intermediate stop over - however, whatever this be, none other time in our life's we would be able to see ourself as 'kids' enjoying ourselves at a B-school ...

Unlike a school/college, a B-school is a place where you meet people who come from different background, different walks of life, who bring with themselves something you didnt have in yourself and thereby offer you loads of learning - whether good or bad is immaterial. Essentially a B-School is never about the technical knowledge you gain, its about people around you and what you learn from them. The point being, you learn more about people than you do about ur stuff, and may be thats y MBA's become good managers... About myself I would say has been a similar case -- if someone was to ask me what all did you learn in this MBA -- I would say - "I Agreed to Disagree" and this line sums it all up for me at this B-School.

Also unlike a school/college, a B-school doesnt help you gain too many friends, may be because of one's pre-concieved dogma's, however it certainly helps you build a lots of acquiantances. Whether it be a friend or an acquiantance, a person when leaves you ... your heart go out to that person - You wish him all the best for his future endeavors and hope to see him one more time in your life ... similar is the case with me ...

Soon a day shall come when all 129 students (including me) of my B-School shall fall apart ... all goin their way ... trying to achieve their own goals ... trying to touch their sky ... I wish them all the best !! ... world is a small place and we always meet twice ... aur dosto Zindagi Rahi toh phir milenge -- Rab Raakha !!

Yeh dil maange more ....

Life's been an interesting journey so far ....

When i was in junior Kg ..i remember i got 23rd rank ... (class consisted 25 kids) .. and after coming out of the class i said to my mom tht i need "Enegry" (energy is the name of the drink Amul produced ..dont knw if they still produce it) ... mom said u definitely need some energy and i got my energy when i got back home (this energy means when mom beats like hell .. hahaha ) ... I learnt my first lesson tht day .. if i dont score good mom's not gonna like it... so tht day chottu Hiral decided tht this should never happen and tht i shud get a toy whensoever ne result is annouced ... well by the time i was in 1st standard i was the best student in my school ...

Its amazing how tht day has influenced ... how can i remember tht day so distinctively in my senses ....

Mom I thank you for that beating ... the nine and thirteen ka table ... all the maths check points u taught me ... telling me how a bank account works at 9 ... we had 3 bank accounts and my first official assignment was to mentally tabulate all deposits and withdrawals and remember the closing balance in each of those accounts ... phew ..all that the age of 9 ... the bank teller's used to be surprised when i use to tell him the account balance after a particular transaction ... infact i forgot to take calculator for my final CA accounting paper .. didnt matter .. by tht time i was convinced brain is equivalent if not better than a calculator....

Its amazing how parents can influence you .. dad sent me to our broker to collect contract notes on stocks dad bought and sold ... honestly i took me enormous to figure out tht statement ... but eventually i figured it out ... I'll now be an investment banker dealing with stocks all my life ... doesnt make me afraid one bit .. been there done that .....

When I passed CA foundation, my dad promised me a pair of Rayban's ... however the bet got deffered to buying something else (more in value terms) if i passed my Inter CA in first attempt ... so tht too i did ... now dad told me "Oh y not defer it further" .. the bet finally was a Raymonds suit if i clear my Final CA in first attempt ... i did tht too ... now dad tell's me ..oh u r a CA u can buy one for urself ... hahahahaha...

The focal point is never be convinced by what u r or what u have achieved ...cuz there's smthng better ahead .... jus keep walking .. never stop ... two of these instances and many more like them make my life ...

Thanks Mom and Dad ... u taught this important thing ... "Yeh Dil maange more..... " ... "Never to give up" .... "Never to say i m done" ... if this is not an investment banking lesson....wht is it?? .. I read in an article that you are born to be investment banker ... i would say no; you are made an investment banker ....probably ma & pa taught me to be an investment banker all my life ....

I'll walk out of my B School in a few days time... will be an Investment Banker and once an I-Banker always an I-Banker... all thanks to my parents... Thanks god for giving me such wonderful parents ... I am a very difficult kid and they manage me well !! I love them both !!

Freshers party!!

One of the days to remember in the entire GMBA journey was surely this one.... the day we seniors gave a our freshers a peek-a-boo into our other than academic interest...

I will remember this day for a different reason though .... the day gave me a chance to catch up with my old self ..which somehow i cudnt manage for long given the hussle-bussle of studies and other things... only a few people know me as HIRAL ... others i must say have a selective perception abt me ... :) ( hopefully this day wud have changed a few perceptions)..

This day i remembered the day i first stood up on the college podium to act .... it was the Economics class (Prof Kamaraj) ... I played a TV repoter who was trying to make people understand how population explosion can result in negative productivity!! ...well tht was 1997...freshers party's was in 2007 .... 10 years ... many things have happened in my life during these 10 years .... however i never acted as much as i cud ... no regrets ..u give up something to gain something else....

Though i wud say I have never danced apart frm Ganapati celebrations, friends wedding and a few other ocassions ;), this was one day where i cudnt stop myself from doin all weird dancing ... in the entire series of my dance performance only 4 sequences were actually choreographed...rest all was god knws wht ... however i think i did my co-dancers proud... :))

Some of my bacthmates came up to me and asked me "Why did u do tht?" (i.e. the skit and dance) .. well i must say i acted selfish!! ... It wasnt for any juniors..it wasnt for any of the other batchmates or for nebody for tht matter... IT WAS JUST FOR MYSELF !! .. I just felt like goin back to myself, enjoying the fun and zeal acting and dancing brings to me!!

It was one of those unforgetful days of life .... party'ed a lot ..n joy'ed a lot ...