Wednesday 28 December, 2005

Yeh hai meri kahani

Yeh hai meri kahani
Khamosh zindagani
Sannata keh raha hain
Kyon zulm seh raha hain

Ek dastaan purani,
Tanhaye ki zubani
Har zakhm khil raha hain
Kuch mujhse keh raha hain

(Take Off!)
[
Chubte kante yaadon ke
Daaman se chunta hoon
Girtee deewaron ke
Aanchal mein zinda hoon
]

Bas yeh meri kahani
Benishan nishaani
Ek dard beh raha hain
Kuch mujhse keh raha

(Take Off!)
[
Chubte kante yaadon ke
Daaman se chunta hoon
Girtee deewaron ke
Aanchal mein zinda hoon
]

(Male voice reciting poetry)

Ab na koi paas hain
Phir bhi aehsas hain
Syahiyon mein uljhi padi
Jeene ki ek aas hain
Yaadon ka jungle yeh dil
Kaanton se jalkar yeh dil

Chubte kante yaadon ke
Daaman se chunta hoon
Girtee deewaron ke
Aanchal mein zinda hoon…

The Below Average Student's Guide to Cracking the CAT

Was browsin' throu pagalguy when i came across this rather interesting write-up by this wannabe third person writer.. Interestin' tips ....
As they say : All's welcome in a journey that's 'Mine'

CAT 2006 : Anuj's Commin Baby ... He's all yours !


Below Average Student's Guide to Cracking the CAT


Here’s a survivor’s guide to cracking the CAT. In this article, Neo2000 tells you all you need to know about scoring well in the Mock CAT's, the big CAT, and all that follows.

Originally I was going to title this “The average student’s guide to cracking the CAT” .Then I realized I wasn’t average. This could hardly be called a guide. And I hadn't even cracked the CAT. So I modified the title. I was going to rip-off Five Point Someone’ s opening line and modify it to read “I am pretty sure lots of other people could write this better if only they’d get off their asses. They didn’t. I did.


However, there is plenty you can do if you want to start early.


1) If you notice, more often than not, the Verbal section seems to be horror of most students. So, start reading. If you don’t already, there’s no time like now. Get rid of that vernacular paper. Take in The Hindu, on weekdays and the Economic Times on weekends. Read the editorials. Chuck that SportsStar in favour of a good B (Business for the uninitiated) magazine . Read the books mentioned in this. Read, Read and then Read some more. Did you know that PG himself read over 2000 books before his 12th. He exhausted his local library doing that. Believe me, it shows. How many of you even have a membership to a library??

2) Improve your academic performance. Now is never too late to start. Academics play an important role to some extent, so it helps.

3) Go out and make a difference. Join a social service community. Click here to know more

4) Do some all round improvement. Get into shape, work out, learn to play a musical instrument, improve your relationship with God/Parents/Family members/Friends……. When things get tough these are the people who’ll be there.

5) Make friends with Google.

6) Practice for Group Discussions and interviews. Improve your communication skills

Discipline yourself. Pace yourself. Draw up a flexible timetable. Contrary to what most people think, a time-table needn't bind you down. Instead it gives you the time to do what you really want without letting you take your eyes off your goal. For instance, when I started prep, I used to wake up at 4 in the morning, study till 5:40 or so and then get ready for class at 6:30. Class finished by 8 and I had to rush back home to grab my bag, a quick bite and run for the college bus. Now my college was an hour and a half away which I spent in sleeping. My classmate on the other had, spent his time reading the editorials which we would then discuss on the trip back home. My VA skills, if I may say so myself , are rather strong so we'd discuss the topic and I'd help him with grammar and correction of sentences. My friend's QA was strong so he'd help me out with that

Form a study group. You are competing with over 1.5lakh students, so your group will just be a sample of what to expect. Make sure your group members are the serious sort-- not the types who run off to watch a movie after every mock. Well ok, they needn't be that serious too because it’s important to relax and enjoy the whole experience of preparing but its also important not to get carried away. A study group is very handy when it comes to taking sectional tests, mocks, FLT’s et al. Compare your scores with theirs. Find out what questions they attempted in QA that you didn’t and why they attempted them. Find out the approach and if there's a way of doing them that you didn’t know about. Check those errors in VA. Find out what the easy sets in DI were.

Google has this project for which the tag-line is "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants". Given the competition, every little thing helps. Go ahead, find your Giants.


Majority of you who go for coaching will mostly go 3 times a week, say Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Right now, the mocks haven’t started yet, so that means you have 3-4 study sessions before the next class. STUDY!! Four sessions is a lot!!

Let's say you were taught numbers on Monday morning. On Monday evening, study what you were taught and solve the problems from the material. Tuesday morning and evening, solve the problems from whichever book you've picked up. Wednesday morning, have a dekko at the topic that's going to be taught (don’t most institute's give you a schedule of sorts??). Above all, make sure you become really thorough with what you are studying. For e.g. all of us know the area of a triangle. Off the top of your head, can you tell me how many such formulae are there? Learn to analyse. It'll be very helpful when it comes to D.I.

Whatcha waiting for?? Go crack that CAT

Saturday 24 December, 2005

Celebrate Life

Celebrate Life : Your Way !

"It's only when I learnt that I was dying did I learn to live" … goes Abhishek Bachchan's famous line in the lately released flick 'Bluffmaster'…
Boman Irani asks him : how many days can you recollect in your life of 30 years ?
To which Bachchan Jr. replies : 30 days …. & enlightenment dawns upon him…

There's an ancient saying that states " Live as if there was no tomorrow. Dream as if you will live forever".

Morrie in the bestselling non-fiction 'Tuesdays woth Morrie' quotes " Mitch, To learn to live, you must learn to die first"

If you join the dots in the aforesaid statements, you will realize that they all talk about the shallow lives that we derive fulfillment from… As we progress into the depths of the article, I shall repeatedly try and convey the same message through different analogies. The essence being that I wish to eliminate the mediocrity in our lives.

In my MBA coaching class' my English Prof. made this remarkable statement. He had mutually decided with his wife that he will never put forth the excuse 'I do not have time' ever in his lifetime. He has successfully accomplished this pact for the last 30 years. In a profession that demands an unrelenting time commitment he believes that there is always time to do that extra…


That makes me touch the subject of Magic Moments : How many of us in our last 16-20 years have lived lives with enough magic moments.. You could literally end up counting them on your fingers. I know a lot of people who in their pressing, dead-line driven lives make way for magic moments with utmost regularity. Treks to the Himalayas, back-packing expeditions, photography excursions, teaching the underprivileged children …. The list goes on. They are people who invariably live beyond themselves and yes they're all highly successful.

Following the herd : We live in a society that makes us follow rather than lead. Morrie again makes a profound statement to his student Mitch " Mitch, my son, Our culture makes you believe and follow a lot of things that are not right. Now's when you stand up and say ' I don't give a damn'. So many of our careers, our lives, our professions are dominated by our peers, media and the mass. We're all trapped in a world where we are forced to bow down to the rule and not the reality

My mother tells me ' Son, I don't know how these 53 years of my life have passed away … but I want you to be able to remember and cherish each day of your life as if it were you last'.

So in this year that awaits us let's pray to the Lord to give us the strength, the power and the belief to 'Live a Lifetime in every HeartBeat'

Friday 23 December, 2005

Wannabe-Wannabe

The human specie is a wannabe ... a wannabe trying to create a self-contained identity, a wannabe trying to break an identity, a wannabe who wishes to shape his/her identity. And then you have another set of species who're wannabe wannabe. A stage so nascent that they're finding ways to find a way in life... And yet everyone falls in the wannabe trap without being able to be the wannabe-wannabe. A phase of life so essential, so beautiful ... The feeling of being lost, vagabondish, no direction .. finding ways to find The Way & when you find The Way you're The Wannabe on your way to become The One.
Wannabe-Wannabe : I'd call it the beginning of the beginning...
Welcome to the World of a Wannabe-Wannabe... Welcome to the world of Anuj Gosalia