Transition of Thoughts

Weaving thoughts into words

Month: January 2010

CV – The two most important letters of a person’s life!

Curriculum Vitae (CV) for short is probably the most important document of a person’s life. Its a description of a person’s entire life in those two sheets of paper. The best part about the whole thing is the fact that all the people advise that the shorter the CV, the better it is for a person in terms of getting a job or helping a person get an idea about him / her. No one has time to go through sheets and sheets of paper to know more about a prospective candidate for a job.

A CV is like a passport to success for a person’s career. To bluntly state the fact, it can basically make or break a person’s life. Most of the companies for internships and placements at colleges or even those which take in applicants through direct applications go through the person’s CV to make the first round of eliminations. I am sure some may argue saying that a CV may not entirely be a true reflection of a person’s ability. But the fact is that in a country like ours with millions applying for only few hundred jobs a year, it does make sense to make the CV as the first round of elimination. People also make CVs for marriages especially in our country where girls are “shown” to the bridegrooms after he has gone through her CV.

That’s why whether we are at college or anywhere else, we are taught to make the CV in the best possible fashion. Even if we don’t have really good achievements or much to write about, whatever is written there should be amazing for a person to read; so amazing that he says “WOWWWWW!!! Maan we should take this guy..He is too good” even though one may not be as good as the person has projected to be. The distinguishing factors from some other candidate (like eg: working with an NGO) if highlighted properly would surely help a person stand in a good stead vis – a – vis another candidate. This is the reason many agencies and organizations and also online portals have come up which charge certain amounts to help a person make the right “eye – catching CV”. Its actually become a thriving and interesting business.

A person without a “good” CV is seriously like a fish without water. He / She maybe amazing in his / her communication skills or whatever stuff, but if he / she doesn’t have the kind of CV which makes the prospective employer interested in them, then that person is no good (to state it bluntly). So everyone’s success mantra today :-

Amazing CV = Amazing Job Opportunities = Amazing Money or = Amazing Marriages or where CVs are used

P.S. (CVs are not the be all and end all of everything though)

Indian Hockey – Can it rise like a phoenix from the ashes??

Can any of you(including me!!) reading this message tell the names of all the current players of the Indian Hockey team without looking out online? I doubt any of you would be able to name even 5-6 leave all. But similarly if I were to ask you the names of all the current players of the Indian Cricket team, I am sure each one of you will be able to rattle off all their names along with even the Ranji players name who may not have played even a single match for the country. So why is this happening? The problem lies on many counts.

To our generation, who haven’t seen the likes of Dhyan Chand and the glory of days of Moscow in 1980 when the country won 8 golds, its like a shock when one gets to hear such great things about a sport which is in shambles today. The politicisation of hockey is one of the worst reasons for its decline. The Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) now Hockey India (HI), has seen so much politics over the last two and a half decades that one’s starting to remember hockey in India for its politics rather than the players skills. KPS Gill has been the worst thing to happen to Indian Hockey ever. The politics he has played with a sport which is called the “National Sport of India” makes one disgusted to say the least.

The players complaints about poor food being served to the players and poor pay packages makes one feel really hurt. They are representing the nation on the world stage for god’s sake. The least the government can do is giving them proper food and money to sustain themselves. They are paid 25,000 for each tournament. Now that amounts to just a few thousand for each match. Compare that with lakhs cricketers earn with every four or six they hit. The irony is that the former is the NATIONAL SPORT. Is this the way one should treat a national sport?

You would wonder, how can a game where the country dominated the Olympics continously winning 6 Olympic Golds in a row from 1928 to 1956 see its present state? The basic fact lies at the grassroots level where cricket has such a great talent spotting and training structure which hockey lacks. Even in overall physical fitness and mental toughness the BCCI has done much more than the HI has. The Premier Hockey League (PHL) was started in 2005 to revive the viewer interest in this game. But seriously speaking has it managed to revive any interest in the game among the common public or the media (television and print)? I dont think so.

Since the time, KPS Gill was shown the door, India has performed creditably even winning the prestigious Azlan Shah Cup in 2009 and also winning the Asia Cup. But does it matter to anyone? They still lack the basic practice facilities, don’t get the credit for the performance from the media and over and above that aren’t even paid their basic salaries. Who would want to get into a game like this where a person cannot even earn enough money to sustain oneself.

The lesser said about the state of women’s hockey in India, the better. Even women’s cricket is in a better condition. Its an irony that despite not being able to give the salaries to the Indian players, AK Mattoo (President of Hockey India) has said that they will give the Indian team 1 crore each if they win the World Cup. So from where Mr Mattoo are you going to get that kind of money? Are you going to rob a bank? And above all this he has the guts to say that the players play for money and not the country. Dude get a life! Without money who will want to play. He drives Corollas and Mercedez and travels first class on flights but interestingly doesn’t have the money to pay the players. This happens only in Indian sports!

Some recommendations which a person called Anand Krishna has suggested which I agree with are listed here “http://anandkrishna.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/buck-de-india-say-our-hockey-players/”

HI can create a contract system so that players have a basic sense of financial security. This would at least make the players feel secure that they have something to look after their families. If raising funds is the problem, well, perhaps it is time to create an IPL for hockey, comprising players from India and the other main hockey playing nations like Germany, Australia, Spain, Pakistan, Holland, Malaysia, South Korea, New Zealand etc. Schedule it for a different period of time so that even TV channels are happy to cough up moolah for obtaining rights to live entertainment. And given that a hockey match takes less time than even a T20 match, one can have two matches every day.

Is anyone listening? Does HI have the will power to do such large scale changes? Thats a question only time will tell.

Perhaps even Bollywood did not think that they can spin a dream around the Indian men’s hockey team. Which is why the movie “Chak de India” celebrates the success of the Indian women’s hockey team.

Social Networking Sites – They have transformed the way we communicate!

Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, hi5, Friendster, MySpace…I am sure there must be very few of us who would not be having an account at the moment in any of these. The minority of you who don’t would surely feel embarrassed to say that in front of people. Its not a crime which you guys have done. But it’s just that “social networking sites” have become the buzzword today. Kids as young as in 6th and 7th std have started using them frequently. So did you ever wonder what are they how  did they start?

Social networks have become very famous especially over the last few years across the world because of their affordances and reach. They focus on building a social relationship among people who share interests and activities. A social network generally consists of a profile of the user, his/her social links and different kinds of additional services.

According to a recent survey, among the people who join a social network, more than 74% of them use it to message friends. A very high percentage of people also use social networks to upload photos as well listen to music. Uploading videos, installing applications, blogging, dating are some of the other activities which people engage in on social networking sites.

The first social network “SixDegrees.com” was launched in 1997. It allowed the users to create their own profiles, create their friend lists and subsequently surf the friend lists. These features existed separately much before in dating sites and other community sites like Classmates.com. AIM and ICQ support buddy lists of friends which were otherwise not visible to others. But SixDegrees.com was the first one to combine all these features into one.

SixDegrees.com attracted millions of users but it failed to be sustainable as a business.The problems which were identified with it included the fact that it was well ahead of its time and also that many users were uninterested in meeting strangers.

From 1997 to 2001, a number of community tools began supporting various combinations of profiles and friends. AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente allowed users to create personal, professional, and dating profiles.

The next wave of social networks began when Ryze was started in 2001 to help people leverage their business networks. The people behind Ryze, Tribe.net, LinkedIn, and Friendster were intertwined professionally and personally. In the end, only LinkedIn among them went on to become a very powerful business service. Friendster became one of the biggest disappointments in the Internet history. Orkut, Facebook, Ning, YouTube, Twitter and almost 20 other social networks were launched during the period from 2003-06.

Some facts about different social networking sites:

My Space was bought by News Corporation for US $500mn in July 2005. The 100th millionth account was opened in 2006. A deal of US $900mn struck with Google Ads has helped it a long way in generating $2.17 per member per year from advertising that is spotlight ads and banners.

Tech Crunch is a group – edited blog of technology start – ups that is particularly the Web 2.0 sector. Its image advertisements generate US $12,000 per month while the job listings, sponsorships and advertising help bring in US $200,000. Tech Crunch is valued at US $100mn.

LinkedIn is the most famous professional networking site in the world and is valued at about US $1bn. Its revenue for 2008 was US $100mn. 1/4th of its revenue comes from advertisements while rest comes from the freemium tiered model.

Flickr was bought by Yahoo for US 40mn in 2005. Most of its revenue comes from its freemium tiered model as well as revenue share for user – generated content. It is a site wherein users can share, exchange and put their photographs.

Facebook is the most visited social networking site in the world. It was started in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. Its projected revenue for 2009 is US $550mn which includes earnings from brand ads, Facebook’s ad deal with Microsoft, sale of virtual goods, self-service ads and also the different apps created by developers on Facebook.

Twitter is one of the world’s fastest growing social networking sites. In 2009, it had a monthly growth rate of 1382%. It is a combined social network and micro-blogging service that enables users to send and receive messages known as tweets and due to this it is often called the “SMS of the Internet”. Twitter has received a funding of about US $62mn till now.

The most famous social networking sites in India are surprisingly Orkut (84%), Ibibo (25%), Fropper (22%) Bigadda (Reliance owned 20%), Facebook (18%), Bharat Student (15%) and Linkedin (10%) in that order. This shows that even though Facebook and Twitter are the most famous across the world in terms of the number of members and monthly views, Orkut and other local networks hold sway in the country. This comes down to the basic point of how well they have been able to connect to the local audience.

The most important issue which the different social networking sites are facing today is the monetization of their businesses. The greatest revenue earner for them is advertising but its not yielding as much revenue as they would like to have. Therefore other methods like subscription, the freemium tiered model; virtual goods (like Facebook) and even affiliate model are used. The revenue of Facebook for 2009 is expected to be US$ 500 million but its valuation is in billions. Therefore Mark Zuckerberg has to sooner rather than later take measures to make Facebook realize this.

Most of the social networking sites such as Twitter, Orkut, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube etc are just a few years old. Their initial strategy has been to build a very large database of people which they have been very successful in doing. At present, they are in the phase of devising different strategies to increase their revenue. The way they are going I am sure they wouldn’t have a problem in making this a reality.

 

Movie Review – 3 Idiots

At the outset I would like to make one thing clear to the readers – I am a hard core fan of Chetan Bhagat…So those of you who wouldn’t like to hear any negativity against anyone who has maligned him in the last few days or months or whatever please stop here itself!!!

First of all I would like to thank Mr Chetan Bhagat for giving us a novel called “Five Point Someone (FPS)” which everyone in the present generation would surely identify with! Chetan,  You made India read like never before and I sincerely salute you for that!

What a start to the 2010!  Watched 3 Idiots (an adaptation of FPS) on 1st at E-Square finally. This is one movie which cannot be described in mere words or any special kinds of adjectives. Words like amazing, fantastic, stupendous, marvelous, too good and whatever fall short in telling us how good the movie really is. This isn’t merely a movie but an experience one would remember a long time after one has left the hall.

This movie is a journey, a journey of three friends, of what all they go through the four years at college be it love, ragging, fights, fun, drinking, flunking exams, taking the teachers cases everything. Though the movie has been changed from the book at many places, but the underlying theme remains the same.

Three students – Aamir Khan as Ranchoddass Shyamaldas Chanchad (Rancho), Sharman Joshi as Raju Rastogi and Madhavan as Farhan Qureishi embark on a journey of life. The film starts of with Farhan Querishi stopping an Air India plane by faking a heart attack because he wants to meet Rancho and Sharman going with him in just a shirt and no pants. The movie thus moves on with constantly moving between the present and a flashback of them as students at the Imperial Engineering College (ICE) – based on the present day IITs.

So many scenes and incidents like the speech scene, the ‘Joy Lobo’ character, the ‘Chatur Ramalingam (an award worthy performance by Omi Vaidya)’ character and his amazing speech (My god that scene is probably the funniest scene I have ever scene in Hindi cinema srsly!!! I laughed my guts out..so much that I almost ended up crying:P), the Viru Sahastrabudhhe aka Virus (another award worthy performance by Boman Irani) character, the scenes where Aamir Khan criticizes learning by rote, encourages learning something new by talking about “PreRajulization” and FarhanNitrate, how students are forced to take extreme measures such as suicide because of marks and the parents expectations, the heart – warming camaraderie and bond of friendship between Farhan, Rancho and Raju (Moh, Arun, Giri – It really reminded me of you guys…U ROCK!!!) and many more has given this movie a cult status.

The most amazing thing about this movie is the fact that even though it is about three college going students, the way it has depicted all the human emotions – be it love, hate, fun, sadness everything in such a beautiful way is what has touched a chord with the audience of this nation. From the word go, it promises entertainment and never does it stray from its path. What strikes a chord with me along with thousands of others across the nation is the fact that it talks about why the education system in this nation is in a mess today despite us having millions of great brains, good colleges, good teachers and whatever. The problem lies in the fact that learning by rote is encouraged with least importance given to understanding concepts. There is no link between the academia and the industry. Students end up mugging one night before the exam and vomiting the next day in the paper and forget everything the following day (I am in the same boat…After doing B.Tech Biotechnology, I really wonder whether I really know anything…cuz application of our technical knowledge in the practical world wasn’t ever taught). The way Aamir Khan explains this with the “PreRajulization” and “FarhanNitrate” concept is a treat to watch. The way the parents force their children to become engineers or doctors when they are born has been shown really well in the movie as it still happens even today. The students are put under so much pressure and stress that they end up taking their lives. While in VIT, over 4 years I had heard of many suicides. So I can only imagine what percentage of students in IITs would end their lives in such a way. Some of the famous phrases include “All izz Well” and “Kabil bano, success jhak maar ke peeche aa jayegi. Kareena is really good in the small role which she has in the movie. Her scene where she talks about the names of the different Gujarat food items is hilarious.

One of the greatest things I loved in this movie as well as the book was the friendship between the three. The way they make cunning plans to irritate teachers, care for each other so much so that they dared to go to Virus’s office just to get the question paper for Raju so that he could pass to support his family, their jokes, their discussion on stupid issues, their talk about the education system all in all their amazing camaraderie reminds me of my times at VIT. Though Giri, Moh, Arun and me were never like them in terms of doing daring stuff like this. But our friendship was something which surely defined my 4 years there. And this more than reminded me of them. YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST SRSLY!!! (I hope none of my other friends would take this in a wrong way cuz all you guys are sweet…Thanks soooo much…just dat this movie reminded me of them…)

The film’s soundtrack is composed by Shantanu Moitra with lyrics penned by Swanand Kirkire. The picturization of all the songs along with their placement in the movie is really good. My personal favourites are Behti Hawa, Give me Some Sunshine and Jaane Denge with Behti Hawa being the best. I used to love Behti Hawa even before watching the movie because the lyrics and the way Shantanu and Shaan sang, it really reminded me of my days at VIT. After watching the movie and the amazing picturization, I love it even more. The cinematography is brilliant to say the least. The stunning locales of Himachal and Ladakh have been spectacularly shown on the celluloid.

The recent credit controversy has brought a lot of unwanted or wanted publicity for the movie depending on how one looks at it. The supposed agreement between Chetan Bhagat and Vidhu Vinod Chopra was that in the rolling credits, his name would appear as “Based on a novel by Chetan Bhagat”. The problem arose when Chetan Bhagat found that the makers were claiming that the story is original which wasn’t right as many facts are based on the book. He was shocked to hear that. He wrote 3-4 blogs over the last 4 days over this issue on his website which attracted a plethora of comments over this whole issue. The main fact which I too don’t agree with is that how can the makers claim that the movie is just about 2-5% based on the book. Though I cant claim that the movie is 2% or 90% based on the book, the underlying theme that is the story of the three friends, the ragging incident, the main protagonist wanting to change the education system and him falling in love with the director’s daughter, the ragging theme, Raju’s family being poor, them studying at an engineering college and not a medical college or arts college and many more scenes are all based on the book. So it’s really difficult for me to comprehend as to how the makers of the movie can claim it to be an original story. This just resembles a plain case of intellectual property violation

Here I have put a comment on the Chetan Blog by a person named Prodigal Nemo who is somewhat of an IP expert

ProdigalNemo says:

January 2, 2010 at 1:52 pm

In UNITED STATES “Copyright confers the following constitutional “exclusive Right” of “Authors” to their works includes the rights “to do and to authorize any of the following”:
(1) reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords, as when a novelist authorizes a publisher to reproduce a book or composers authorize recordings of their musical compositions;
(2) create derivative works, such as a screenplay based on a preexisting magazine story;
(3) distribute copies of the work to the public, as when a software manufacturer authorizes a wholesaler to market floppy diskettes containing a copyrighted program;
(4) perform the work publicly, as when a playwright or songwriter authorizes a production of a play or the broadcast of a song;
(5) display the work publicly, as when a magazine authorizes displays of its copyrighted images on multiple computer screens;
(6) in the case of sound recordings, perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.” [COPYRIGHT LAW: A Practitioner’s Guide;Release No. 8, September 2006; by Bruce P. Keller & Jeffrey P. Cunard]

Therefore based on point number (2) above, at MAX, they can produce derivative work such as adapted screenplay. However, in this case what they have done is (a) ‘coppied’ 70-80% of Chetan’s work from the book (which is fine if they wanted to adapt it to screenplay); (b) Write a ‘fresh’ story copying 70-80% from Chetan’s book which is credited to Abhijat Joshi and Rajkumar Hirani (this is grave crime);and (c) ‘creating a original screenplay’ based on point (b) which is credited to Abhijat Joshi and Vidhi Vinod Chopra (this is ‘crime de la crime’).

As as result, Chetan was not given his due credit as an original story writer, which they should have. At max Abhijat Joshi, Raju Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra could have been credited with ‘co-story writers’ (provided Chetan agrees to this too) and for ‘adapted screenplay’.

I m commenting on this in my capacity as I’m Intellectual Property professional.

Kudos to you Chetan. I read your book in Jan 2006 and it was so interesting that I read it in one go.

ProdigalNemo

And what the hell does bloody VIDHU VINOD CHOPRA think of himself??????? What the hell did he try to prove by shouting at the media person the other day?? This just shows his monstrous crappy behavior..Abhijit Joshi is I agree a good scriptwriter but how the hell can they call it is his original story???? Mr Aamir Khan has told Vidhu Chopra and Hirani to file a case against Bhagat for making false statements. How can he talk about this when he hasn’t even read the book? He’s seriously making a fool of himself by making such mindless, baseless and senseless statements.

YOU CAN FOOL SOME PEOPLE ALL THE TIME BUT NOT ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME

Indians are not fools. People may think that Chetan needs money and fame and is publicity hungry and what not. But tell me one thing, what does a guy who already is the greatest English language author in the history of the nation in terms of the number of books sold, writes columns in newspapers, is moving to movie script writing want in terms of publicity. I seriously don’t understand. Millions have read FPS and the truth is out that a lot of the movie is based on it and that’s it.

In the end I would like to say, in Taran Adarsh’s words “Do yourself and your family a favour – Go for 3 idiots!! It’s emotional, it’s entertaining, it’s enlightening. The film has tremendous youth appeal and feel-good factor”. It ranks up there as one of the bestest movies I have seen since I was born.

Rating – 5 / 5 (Yes it deserves that every bit!!)

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