It Ain't the Last Time

This is an as-of-yet incomplete poem which I have been writing..... incomplete because I am unable to think of an appropriate ending ..... if some inspiration strikes you, please help me finish it ...........

There lived a pretty, old lady at the end of the lane,

Jack used to think her a little too vain,

And she wished Jack could just act his age,

40 years were time enough to get on the same page.

Jack was a bonfide crazy ass,

Mary had always been a cheerful lass,

and she just wished Jack could see the light,

get out of his stupor and learn to do what's right.

Both were friends from their teens to their twilight,

And whenever they spoke, it always ended in a fight;

But each saw through the other's furious mime,

coz It ain't the first time, It ain't the last time.

You can't really say they were the best of friends,

But they were always there for each other in the end.

He was her crutch when she had broken a leg,

She had dropped him home after his thirteenth peg.

Fate took her to places far and beyond,

while he stayed feeding the birds at the small pond;

Yet often it happened, while petting a meadowlark,

He found her standing at the other end of the park

Both were friends from their teens to their twilight,

And whenever they spoke, it always ended in a fight;

But each saw through the other's furious mime,

coz It ain't the first time, It ain't the last time.

What is that feeling which don't have a name,

You can't call it love, no....it ain't the same;

But they always felt the tug of an unspoken bond,

which brought them together, time and again, at the pond.

Mental Accounting

I came across this statement while reading 'Fooled by Randomness':

"Statistics have proved that people prefer to earn $60,000 knowing that others earn $50,000 than earn $70,000 when others are earning $80,000"

Let me offer my un-expert analysis of this statement.

The Argument
At face value, it appear that it is a stupid mental accounting error made by most people because surely it would make more sense to have more savings in the bank with the $70K package than to have the satisfaction of earning more at $60k.

However, I would like to point out that it does not matter whether you earn $70k or $60K or $5. You can't eat the money, and wear it as protection from the elements nor can you live in it. What matters more is the value associated with the money e.g. how much food will $100 buy you in each of the two cases.

Let me illustrate further. We don't not have a single international currency (the dollar or Euro is a re-hashed arrangement). So we have to make all calculations by factoring the exchange rate in. As such it is much easier to be a rupee billionaire in India that to be a dollar billionaire (The rupee vs. dollar exchange rate has varied wildly in the 38-52 range in the past decade). So it is better to have $100 in your pocket than Rs 100 (at least while you are in India)

By analogy, the actual value of the money you have is the purchasing power that it generates. Hence, I can conclude that $60K when everybody else is earning $50K will give me an upper hand in terms of purchasing power (i.e. simple barter value) than $70K in a $80K neighborhood. So the mental accounting fallacy derived in this case is a fallacious argument in itself i.e. there is no mental accounting error. This was my first impression, which I was forced to alter when I realized there is more to this problem than appears at first dig.

The Googly
The twist in the tale is that purchasing power in terms of price of goods is not affected only by the earning power of a small part of the population. The people in the statistical study probably had a fixed set of people (e.g. family, friends and co-workers) and not the average of the entire population. For example, a construction laborer will arrive at a much lower 'desirable' remuneration that say a Wall Street high flyer simply because he has benchmarked himself with respect to those who keep him company. And the overall purchasing power is a function not only of the differing remuneration but also the number of people belonging to each category.

So, the real mental accounting error is committed by benchmarking to the observable rather than exhaustive sample set. And what is even more amusing is that this mental delusion of superiority (wealthier than thou) is even resistant to hard observations (e.g. having to cut down on luxuries) and is revised only in extreme situations (not being able to make ends meet) where survival rather than favorable comparison becomes paramount

Conclusion
So, a mental accounting fallacy does exist in this situation; albeit a different one from what I thought initially.

Corollarily, I realized that defining others as the observable sample would have avoided this hazard and hence wording your conclusion is pretty important.

Final Admission Status

Here is the final result of all the MBA entrance exams I have given for the 2008-09 season.

NMAT and FMS are speed based exams and I do horribly on such exams. Hence as such I expected nothing from these.... :) .... so sleep lost.

The big bonus was of course XAT, which I really did not expect to do well in, but eventually got and converted five calls.

If only there was one way of transferring good performance, I would have transferred all marks to CAT and got (and hopefully converted) an IIM Ahmedabad call... or at least got a scholarship in IIM Calcutta (even a teeny-tiny one would make me happy). But one can't edit life, can one ...... :)

Had gone to the welcome meet organized by IIM Calcutta PGP2s yesterday. Met a lot of the people who I am gonna be spending next two years with. ...and frankly overwhelmed by the overall quality of the batch. My resume looks like toilet paper when you see theirs.

Thankfully, all illusions of 'Swayam Mahant' (I am great) have been washed away and I will not struggle too hard once I get there as I will not have much to prove. I see that people like me are already stereotyped 'wildcard' entries and hence it is best to play the underdog and shoot as if u have nothing to lose.

Even if I graduate at the bottom of my class, it will still be IIM C, yaar!

Cheers! To the formidable trials and tribulations ahead............

Kasab vs Bhagat Singh

Yeah, I know, to 99.9999999999% Indians, this comparison in itself will sound revolting and people will start sharpening their pitch forks and their arsenal of choicest Hindi expletives. But this post is not to compare the activities or ideology of Kasab vis-à-vis Bhagat Singh, but to compare contemporary setup with its Raj-equivalent.

As one has been reminded by the very many variants of Bhagat Singh's story, which concurrently immortalized him on celluloid and have forgotten him since; Bhagat Singh's and his accomplices used harmless smoke bombs just to create a stir in the assembly and actually courted arrest by surrendering their weapons. Their modus operandi was that the ensuing trial would surely be covered by large dailies and that would be more publicity for their cause than a few million pamphlets could muster in a million years.

In contrast, Kasab and his coterie came with the sole intention of pulling off the most outrageous hit-and–run plan ever in the history of international terrorism. He was the only fateful gun-slinger to be caught alive, the rest having been granted a quick death, far superior than their nefarious deeds deserved.

People say that by trying Kasab, India is making a mistake. I think not. A widely-read Arab daily pointed out that the sign of a well formed judicial system is that it is able to keep beyond emotion and impulse and let justice take it’s slow, remorseless course. But is this compliment well directed? I differ here, again.

Justice must not only be done but also seen to be done. India could have used the Kasab trial to keep pricking the world with this thorn, reminding it of the atrocities it had been subject to, largely thanks to powers like the US and China donning kid gloves with Pakistan (in addition to India’s own magnificent ineptness). Pakistan’s degeneration, with the Swat and NWPF cave-ins, has created an image of victimhood, a curtain behind which the Pakistan establishment has only been too grateful to hide. India could have used the trial to rip this curtain apart and refocus attention on the root cause, Pakistan’s perpetual denial.

Instead, what has unfolded so far is a rather sad comedy of errors. The first defense lawyer who represented Kasab was also found to be standing for one of the terror attack victims and was summarily forced to leave. The second lawyer, a trustee of a number of Islamic institutions in Mumbai and one who has a track record of defending gangsters and bomb blast accused, tried to convince the court that Kasab was a suckling infant and should be given biscuits with milk rather than the death penalty. When the court saw through this, the Urdu charge sheet ploy was played. And the saga continue as we speak.

Another country would have stage-managed this trial and got the right leverage, but not India. India is called a successful experiment in democracy. It reminds me of a saying, “Success is about going from failure to failure without getting discouraged”. The Kasab trial is out to prove this.

SoftTimes and Tide waits for no man .....

In case you have noticed that I have not posted editorials and quiz snippets from SoftTimes in a long time and wonder if the global 'slowdown' (another post coming up on 'slowdown') has claimed another victim, lemme assure you that it is not the case..... :)

I have not been posting for these for sometime since I am mentally preparing myself for the fact that soon the day will come when I will no longer be the editor of SoftTimes. I have already spoken about drafting in a couple of new members in the team to take my place, and the editorial duty will be passed on to the group as a whole, with people taking turns to write the edit.

The team is yet to be apprised of the churn in the offing. I wait before divulging this information for two reasons. One, some from the team will panic as there were very few members who has the inclination to manage the editorial duty in the first place. Second, I don't want the change of guard to be a long drawn one, I don't want to see a SoftTimes in my mailbox which I have played no role in creating. On my last day, my mail account will be terminated and I will be 'Out of Circulation' for SoftTimes.

I am mentally preparing for the transition. Just that, I am going to miss ST a lot. it gave me a chance to boss people around, look condescendingly at a poorly drafted article and regularly dodge brickbats for the a variety of reasons .'Quiz was too difficult', '**** article had a spelling mistake', 'The Joke section wasn't funny', 'See ..... ST came to my inbox at 5:31 PM' (officially, we must release it by 5.30PM every Friday) ...... am going to miss these pick up lines.

Thank you SoftTimes ........ come June, I will no longer be a part of you..... but ST will be a part of me for a long time to come ........