Lucky you! I flunked the Account Lead Psychometry...again! Your accounts are now safe. Anyway, that's enough about me. If YOU want to take it up sometime in the future, I've designed this forerunner.....so, you're invited to take the Mock Psychometry to prepare you for the real thing.
It's in 3 parts: Analytical skills, Numerical skills, and English.
Part I - Analytical Skills
1. Peter is Jane's husband's brother's nephew's grandfather.
Jill is Peter's wife's aunt's sister's step-mother (who is Jane, a.k.a. Cinderella's step-mom)
Question: a) Who is Peter to Jill?
b)More importantly, who are you to any of them?
2. Some mice are cats. All cats are donkeys. Therefore:
a) Cats are donkeys with Down's syndrome.
b) We have a strange menagerie here.
c) Mice are people too.
Think, you dunce. If you don't answer these, you'll never know when, for example, NEBMED is slipping out of TAT and you need to add more people on it.
Part II - Numerical Skills
1. A frog is in a 300-foot deep, 40-foot wide well and he's trying to get out. He jumps up 5 inches in an hour and slips back 1 foot. He started doing this in the 19th century. Question: How old will you be when the frog (or his fossil) gets out?
2. X bought a bike for Rs. 800 inclusive of 20% sales tax. He rode it for 45 days at 40 km per hour, 100 km a day. Calculate:
a) How much gas will he need to get himself to the moon on his bike?
b) How many days will he take? Convert to hours.
c) What percentage of his life will he spend doing this? Draw a graph.
d) How much money will he need? In paise and cents only.
Solve this to fine-tune your time zone calculations which will enable you to time your escape when the stats start popping.
Part III - English
1. Grammar:
a) I is fine.
b) What is the singular of mouses?
Question: Are this correct? (brownie points for "singular of mouses")
2. Punctuate correctly: How many legs do a cow have!!!
3. Subject-Verb Agreement:
Why is it wrong to say "I am dead tomorrow"?
a) Because I are still alive tomorrow.
b) Because I is dead yesterday itself.
c) Nothing's wrong - rest in peace.
d) Because I'm going to kill you NOW.
This section will help you communicate better with the Yanks.
About the Test
The psychometry is designed to help determine whether you're good at managing people, your time, and yourself. It's not an IQ test (though the last time I flunked, the testing personnel came all the way to the office to tell me I have the creative intelligence of a retard ant). Go for it, you have nothing to lose except your ego, but that's nothing a good night's sleep (and a shot of cocaine) can't fix.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Rajkumar and Ramanna
Fourteen years ago, when we moved into the house we're currently staying in, Ramanna was a pushcart vendor from whom we bought vegetables like everyone else on the street. Through the decade, as things that I never dreamed of became accessible to us, Ramanna became a choice we could eliminate. In 14 years, a lot has changed for us. Our lifestyle has definitely improved, we have choice - with everything. Nothing has changed for Ramanna. He's still a pushcart vendor (with fewer customers) and he's not very hopeful of giving a better life to his children - something that every parent yearns to do. The years sit heavily on Ramanna.
A mob vandalized a Sweet Chariot outlet near my house when Rajkumar died. I wonder if Ramanna's son was part of that mob. He was a Rajkumar fan.
I'm trying very hard to convince myself that if he did it, it was out of senseless grief for his hero - how senseless is this violence, I tell myself very loudly; just like the lakhs of unemployed youth in this city's underbelly who see no hope in their future, came out on the streets and for 2days held that face of the city hostage, which usually keeps this face of the city firmly tucked behind its glamour.
But Guilt is a tough customer - it refuses to be convinced.
A mob vandalized a Sweet Chariot outlet near my house when Rajkumar died. I wonder if Ramanna's son was part of that mob. He was a Rajkumar fan.
I'm trying very hard to convince myself that if he did it, it was out of senseless grief for his hero - how senseless is this violence, I tell myself very loudly; just like the lakhs of unemployed youth in this city's underbelly who see no hope in their future, came out on the streets and for 2days held that face of the city hostage, which usually keeps this face of the city firmly tucked behind its glamour.
But Guilt is a tough customer - it refuses to be convinced.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
At what cost?
One thing that the technology revolution in communication has done is to give everyone access to everyone else's mind. To me, that's one of the greatest achievements in mankind's history. We hear so much about the "global village" (which is now somewhat of a dated cliche -it's given way to Thomas Friedman's "the world is flat"), but most of that talk addresses the tangible - there are more things to buy, there are more things to do in your leisure, there are more places you can afford to see, but I think the real revolution is this intangible - there are more minds to know and only a mind can spark an idea.
We know now, especially here in India that with the right education and opportunity, our talent can compete with the best in the world. It's become possible to know this because every new industry or trade that has been brought into India from the West has sourced local employment to run their profitable outfits. Now, we're being respected - for our minds, for our merit. That's a very hard-won respect - it's easy to respect wealth, it's easy to respect fame, it's very very easy to respect good looks - but to have none of all this and to earn respect through sheer merit is very tough and it's something that we can take great pride in.
For a country that has spent a large amount of time watching from the sidelines and cheering only timidly and rarely, a ringside view can be a heady experience, and if you're actually getting into the ring itself...well, you can't be woozy on your feet for one thing. You cannot also ever afford to take your eyes off, for to do that is to regress which is not only stupid but also dangerous.
That's exactly what we're doing by even entertaining the thought of reservation based on caste. When you begin to even think that quality just maybe tweaked a bit, that's when you're staring danger in the face. The IIMs and IITs are India's face in the world's economy. These institutions' products have got a foot in the door of the global economy. Admission into these institutes on any grounds other than merit will ensure that the door is slammed on India's face....and foot.
The caste system is India's shame. It's also India's reality. Historically, the upper castes had access to a world that was denied to their counterparts in the lower rungs of the caste heirarchy which led to class hatred and kept some sections perpetually in the fringes. It's noble to try and correct that injustice. Reservation, however, is definitely not the solution. The caste system is a social issue - it cannot and must never be allowed into the country's econonmic chapter; by dragging our social dirty linen into a flat world, all we can hope to accomplish is to turn the spotlight on our shame.
The administration's business is to provide cheap or free education and scholarships to all these sections of society - good quality education, but nothing more. Everything else should be achieved solely on merit. Everyone should be allowed to compete and must be made capable of competing - it's the only way a nation can progress, by never ever letting merit take the back seat to anything. When we accommodate people based not on merit but on caste, are we not giving federal sanction to the caste system? What happens to such people? They will not only earn the wrath and hatred of thier fellowmen, they will also never be able to respect themselves - it's demeaning to a human being to tell him that he's unfit to compete with the best, so he's being patronized. It's not helping the individual, the institution, or the nation. What happens to merit itself? Nothing can kill a man's spirit faster than knowing that his mind, no matter how brilliant it is, is not respected.
A brilliant mind without takers is a dangerous mind. If it is allowed to roam free in a society that doesn't respect it, it will gravitate towards other like-minded rejected brilliance; if its fire is greater than its despair, it will find a way to work within the system or if it can so afford, will leave the system and go wherever its spirit can be restored; if its despair is greater than its fire, it will wreak havoc in the society that has caged and denied it - and a genius's havoc cannot be undone by the mediocre to which it has been forced to bow.
We know now, especially here in India that with the right education and opportunity, our talent can compete with the best in the world. It's become possible to know this because every new industry or trade that has been brought into India from the West has sourced local employment to run their profitable outfits. Now, we're being respected - for our minds, for our merit. That's a very hard-won respect - it's easy to respect wealth, it's easy to respect fame, it's very very easy to respect good looks - but to have none of all this and to earn respect through sheer merit is very tough and it's something that we can take great pride in.
For a country that has spent a large amount of time watching from the sidelines and cheering only timidly and rarely, a ringside view can be a heady experience, and if you're actually getting into the ring itself...well, you can't be woozy on your feet for one thing. You cannot also ever afford to take your eyes off, for to do that is to regress which is not only stupid but also dangerous.
That's exactly what we're doing by even entertaining the thought of reservation based on caste. When you begin to even think that quality just maybe tweaked a bit, that's when you're staring danger in the face. The IIMs and IITs are India's face in the world's economy. These institutions' products have got a foot in the door of the global economy. Admission into these institutes on any grounds other than merit will ensure that the door is slammed on India's face....and foot.
The caste system is India's shame. It's also India's reality. Historically, the upper castes had access to a world that was denied to their counterparts in the lower rungs of the caste heirarchy which led to class hatred and kept some sections perpetually in the fringes. It's noble to try and correct that injustice. Reservation, however, is definitely not the solution. The caste system is a social issue - it cannot and must never be allowed into the country's econonmic chapter; by dragging our social dirty linen into a flat world, all we can hope to accomplish is to turn the spotlight on our shame.
The administration's business is to provide cheap or free education and scholarships to all these sections of society - good quality education, but nothing more. Everything else should be achieved solely on merit. Everyone should be allowed to compete and must be made capable of competing - it's the only way a nation can progress, by never ever letting merit take the back seat to anything. When we accommodate people based not on merit but on caste, are we not giving federal sanction to the caste system? What happens to such people? They will not only earn the wrath and hatred of thier fellowmen, they will also never be able to respect themselves - it's demeaning to a human being to tell him that he's unfit to compete with the best, so he's being patronized. It's not helping the individual, the institution, or the nation. What happens to merit itself? Nothing can kill a man's spirit faster than knowing that his mind, no matter how brilliant it is, is not respected.
A brilliant mind without takers is a dangerous mind. If it is allowed to roam free in a society that doesn't respect it, it will gravitate towards other like-minded rejected brilliance; if its fire is greater than its despair, it will find a way to work within the system or if it can so afford, will leave the system and go wherever its spirit can be restored; if its despair is greater than its fire, it will wreak havoc in the society that has caged and denied it - and a genius's havoc cannot be undone by the mediocre to which it has been forced to bow.
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