Chronicles of Gautam

Gmail has added a theme feature . Its great. This is what my gmail looks like now :)

So did I bell the CAT? Unfortunately, no. DI&LR pretty much sucked for me, where I am getting only 17/100 and the expected cut-off is 32-35 for 95%. Math was ok, getting 37/100, expected cut-off being 32 for 95%. And Eng was pretty good, getting 72/82/82 (CL,TIME,IMS) out of 160 which will be pretty close to 100% (expected cut off is 47-49 for 95%). So My total is 126/136/136 (CL/TIME/IMS). Which should be around 98-98.9% according to CL. But sadly, no calls :( It would have been good to get some experience in GD/PI had I got a call. And who knows, I might even have got admission in an IIM! Sigh.

Tomorrow I will be taking the CAT. For the uninitiated, the CAT is an acronym for the Common Entrance Test, clearing which might open a path leading to admissions in the coveted IIMs. Like lakhs of others, between 10:30 am to 1pm, I will be ploughing through excruciating passages in English, trying to comprehend the tangled and hidden meanings and inferences in them. I will be solving problems in Math like what is the remainder when 21^(21^21(..(21 times) is divided by 25. (BTW, the answer is 21) . And I will be trying to establish conclusively whose father is whose son and whose aunt is whose sister as an exercise in Logical reasoning. The CAT is not a test of what it seems to be at first. Nobody cares whether you can sucessfully find out the remainder when some x is divided by y. You have calculators to do that. I sincerely believe even the author of the passage will not be able to answer the questions that are asked on her work. Rather, the CAT is a test of how you prioritize you...

I know it has been a long time since my last post, and even now I am just going to quickly publish some updates of what is happening in my life. 1. I totally cracked this SimCat - cleared all sections with overall percentile of 99.85, and a national rank of 24 :D. I just hope I can do as well if not better on the third Sunday of November. 2. I really liked Rashmi Bansal's " Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish ". It is a compilation of 25 success stories of IIM A alumni's who have made it big on their own. Reading it kinda puts the keeda of entrepreneurship in the mind and also inspires to do well in CAT - see earlier point. :) 3. I bought the book "The Complete Reference - Linux" (see photo). I am learning a lot about Linux and am really happy about it. It burnt a Rs 525 sized hole in my pocket though. I was actually planning to buy "Brisingr ", the third book in the Inheritance Trilogy by Christopher Paolini, but then realised that Linux is more important ...

White and Brown Tigers. Majestic . Butterfly Park. Picturesq ue . Elephants. Cute . Zebra. Arrogant . I have some stupid problem in Firefox where I am unable to upload pics to blogger. So I had to use IE to create this post :( Current favourite track: "Paigham" from Lakeer.

On Saturday I visited Banerghatta National Park, and on the way riding on the cheapest public transport I have ever used in my life. I traveled in BMTC's Vayu Vajra bus, from Majestic to Banerghatta (A distance of at least 15 kms ), with AC and all, for a mere Rs. 1. It turns our the BMTC had a scheme for 4 days to sell all AC bus tickets for Rs 1, in an attempt to divert the public's travel preferences from private transport to public. I am not sure that's going to work, nobody in the bus (filled with giggly school girls and awed adults) seemed interested to continue once the fare returned to their normal astronomical selves. The National Park is really worth visiting once at least. It has a Grand safari where one can see lions, tigers, white tigers, bears etc. They also have a unique butterfly park and information centre. The zoo is also good and the animals seemed to be well taken care of. I'll be posting some pics in a later post. I saw the movie 'Memen...

One of my friends had the following status message on Gtalk: "I had to google for the meaning of JFGI, and the irony of it was overwhelming." It indeed is.