How to BS your way through a presentation? A step by step guide

Disclaimer: After writing 18 columns with more than 15,000 words for The Week That Was I am kind of bored with it. So read the following at your own risk.

'How to BS your way through a presentation? A step by step guide' is the name under which I am planning to publish a book in the future and the following passage is just the executive summary of it.

“That was painful to hear”, “It was the most boring presentation I have ever listened to”, “Dude what was your topic?” If comments like these were passed after you complete your presentation then you are in the right place, after doing an in-depth research (which lasted exactly 30 seconds) I planned to help the poor souls. There are almost zillions of books in the library on topics like “Presenting To Win”, “How to stand in front of people and not get shoes thrown at you”...etc. but honestly, no one has time to read all those crap. So, let’s get cracking with it, shall we? Power point presentations are one of the greatest innovations by man, since fire. It helps you to hide your lack of knowledge and lets you to bluff your way through almost anything.

First and foremost thing to be a successful speaker/presenter is to have abundance of confidence; if you have it, then you need not worry about your body language or tone of your voice. Confidence has absolutely nothing to do with skill, ability or talent, if you were one of those kids in school who loved torturing insects to death, then you have got all the skills required to become a great speaker.

When facing a huge crowd just assume that everyone in-front of you as clueless Muppets wearing bright red shirts and fluorescent green pants. Confidence will ooze out of you automatically; care should be taken that you shouldn’t burst out laughing whilst imagining it. Do take care of your attire and makeup; if adequate attention is given to it, then you are halfway through. If you don’t believe me, then just listen to few blokes in blazers from NDTV and CNBC. You can be guaranteed that anyone who is dressed up in a proper business suit will utter nothing but nonsense.

Making eye contact is absolutely vital and this is the only chance for you to stare at the girl/guy of your dreams without being mistaken for a pervert. If there is no one like that in-front of you, then stare at the person whom you hate the most. You might have spent the entire night prior to your D-day, talking with your partner on the phone and if you are suddenly called on the stage to solve a case study or to talk about some strategy of your organisation, then you can bluff your way through. All you got to do is, memorize this table:

Column A	Column B
Re-engineer	Gap analysis
Cross-functional	Pain points
Move the needle	Knowledge transfer
Six-Sigma	Thoughtgap
Interactive	methodology
Leverage	deliverables
Spearhead	Low-hanging fruit
Streamline	Strategic architecture
Strategically re-align	Intellectual capital leakage
Populate	Moving forward
Future-proof	interface
Benchmark	Key performance indicators
Scaleable	Business silo
Functionally map	Synergies

Now choose any word from Column A and match it with any word from Column B and create a mega word. For example, “Future-proof strategic architecture”, “benchmark the pain points”...etc. You can mix them as many times as you want and sky is the limit. Imagine jumping into the middle of a conversation or a Group discussion with a line like this, “Guys, I think we need to thoughtmap the key deliverables and strategically re-align the key performance indicators to obtain synergies”.

No one will dare to ask you a question after a line like that; you can use these words as loosely as you can in your presentations too. It is often difficult to convince a huge gathering of people, the only way through which you can escape is by confusing them. Don’t waste your time trying to figure out what these words actually mean, even I don’t have a clue; just say things just for the sake of it. 

If you have absolutely no time to prepare the slides just download few random graphs and tables from web and include it in your slides. When you incorporate stuffs like these into your presentation the audience will be convinced that you have done your homework. The graph can be about the decline in beer sales for all you care but relate it with your topic. It does not what is there in the slide; it’s how you interpret it that matters. Don’t be scared to say the most ridiculous facts or obscure suggestions, if you have followed the previous steps carefully then you will be coming out with flying colours.

If you are narrating some theory then ensure that all the examples are something which no one has heard of. Always quote companies from tiny nations like Ghana, Nicaragua, and Libya than quoting your local ones because there are chances that you might get caught. If you don’t know how to begin a sentence then always start with “According to American Marketing Association, Gartner, Forrester....”. Make sure that you give out plenty of figures i.e. statistics, the more you quote, the better.

It is not necessary that statistics has to be accurate, so if you don’t have time to download them, then just make it up on the spot. For example, “74.6% of all people who read this stuff hate Ifthi” and “94% of all statistics are made up on the spot”. A well made up statistics can make your argument valid and interesting. If you know your audience well then meet a few of them in advance and offer to give them some sort of bribe (like a juice in the canteen or blackcurrant milkshake garnished with flies) to not ask any questions during presentation or let them ask pre-planned questions. By this way, you can escape the crucial question & answer session.

Despite following all these ideas if you are still struggling then you should take a sledge hammer and smash your head off. This article was written with a noble aim of doing service to the mankind, no animals were harmed in the making of this masterpiece.

The Week That Was-Edition 16

The Week That Was:

A lot of newspapers’ column inches have been wasted talking about the scams happening all around the country starting with 2G Spectrum, Aadarsh Building society, Yedayurappa...etc and I want to waste more of it by talking about it here. What a pathetic nation we live in, politicians are trying to loot money in all possible ways from Coffins (to Kargil heroes) to houses, as each week goes by we hit a new low. Well, in one way I admire Mr. Raja, the hero of 2G spectrum and I am unashamed to say he is my role model.  He is a maverick at work, you can cry all you want but not even a single Rupee can be recovered from his personal bank account and he has it in plenty. Crores and crores of rupees are there in his personal account and in the name of Ms. Fruity-language (total loss to government runs above Rs.150, 000 Crores).

If the Government does recover money from him, then I will chop my own hands and eat it with some Barbeque sauce or will watch Golmaal3 once again. Have you ever wondered how come the MPs and MLAs always wear shiny white shirts with no dark spots? If your answer is Ariel or Tide then I pity you, you really need to grow up. There is this friend of mine whose father makes a living by stitching clothes for one certain ex-minister who looted a lot of money through allocation of Spectrum. The ex-minister orders cloth material directly from the Textile mills and his father stitches it; you might be wondering what the big deal about it is? Well the thing is, he stitches 100shirts/month for him and it roughly works out to 1200 shirts per year and 3.28shirts per day. This spectrum guy never wears the same shirt twice, after wearing it once, he discards them. His tailor says that sometimes he changes up to 5 shirts a day depending on the number of meetings he has. What a way to spend your fortune, Amazing isn’t it?

There is only so much of money you can lock in Swiss banks and spend it in eating, it seems like he also pays 6000 bucks for practising Yoga in a certain Yoga hall.  Not really, I just got carried away; everything I mentioned is true except that bit about Yoga. And it’s a universal secret that Mr. Ex and his illegitimate GF spend their fortune in buying educational institutions and our man gifts it to her. Imagine the sort of conversation they might have, “Hey Sweetie, I bought an engineering college for you this week”. She replies, “Wow that is so sweet of you dear, but I would be delighted if you could buy me some B-schools too”. Ex: “Next week I am going to Salem, I will buy a couple”...and it continues. Well if you need to eradicate corruption then my suggestion is, investigate everyone who buys more than 2cash counting machines at once. Unless they are a Public Sector or an MNC no one would need more than 2cash counters, there was this College in Trichy which bought 10Cash counters in one go, wonder why?  Well they were bought out for Rs. 200 Crores (Spectrum money of course) and they needed quite a few machines to count the cash.

The guy who went to deliver these machines was delighted of course and it is nice to have few friends in the management of this College as a source, when I heard the news from them I was dumb struck. Well I am tired of cribbing about it and I believe I have wasted a lot of space, sorry. Moving away from the serious news, my mate drives a gas guzzling monster of a two-wheeler and I told him last week that he emits a lot of Carbon on his to and fro trips to college. Can someone please inform him that attending College is more important than saving planet earth? Bugger hasn’t come to College ever since and he takes Global warming quite seriously. We planned to plant few tree saplings in hostel to do our bit to reduce emissions, but there wasn’t any space at all, because almost all available space was planted with saplings by my batch mates. Obviously both of us were disappointed but my mate came up with a gem of an idea to kill 4tiny plants (by pouring concentrated H2SO4 on their roots) to plant 1tree sapling. “It ain’t wrong to kill 4plants to give life to 1tree sapling”, he reasons. After planting it, he had tears on his eyes and I felt a bit moved on seeing his concern for the environment.

There were loads of surveys which I wanted to share with you guys but majority of them weren’t fit to be published in a student’s newsletter. So, visit Times of India website and scroll down to the Relationship section, they have got plenty of useful information. Some say reading newspaper everyday increases your knowledge, after reading the relationship section in TOI, I certainly agree. I happened to read quite a few books recently and here are some interesting facts, 70% of all Mergers and Acquisitions flop, Synergy is highly over-rated by CEOs were few facts from the book Billion Dollar Lessons. But the best book I ever read in my life is How to Lie, Cheat & Steal Your Way to the TOP, it is available in LRC. This is the most pragmatic book ever written about how to succeed in an organisation and so darn hilarious to read. To quote, “Employees are like violin strings; they perform at their best when screwed tightly”. But be careful when you pop into LRC, because there are 1001reasons to be kicked out of that place and have your ID card repossessed. Do not talk/text/cough/sneeze when inside, your mood should be similar to that of a person attending a funeral. Guantanamo bay has a friendlier atmosphere than this place.

There is a certain library at University of Sunderland where students are allowed to listen to music on headphones whilst reading books and a vending machine dishes out snacks. The logic behind it is, ‘even if students waste 10hours in library we just expect them to spend at least 1hour gaining knowledge’. As a result that place is always crowded and very lively but then, it is unrealistic to expect something of that sort here. But I do try my level best to gain some knowledge by spending as much time as possible in LRC. Just wave your hands at me if you see me (that is if I am not kicked out of course and manage to stay there for more than 5minutes). Until then, I will see you when I see you.

The Week That Was-Edition 15

The Week That Was:

How can you be reading this column with a happy face when you are yet to receive your exam results? I am telling you, you should be really worried, upset and depressed thinking about the possibility of a Re-Do. This comes from a man who has failed at least one paper in all the trimesters except the 2^nd, so you guys should be really worried and depressed. Well, if you believed the above lines and started to get really worried then you are not a regular reader of The Week That Was. Re-Do is an opportunity to gain a deep conceptual understanding of the subject, Re-Do makes your life meaningful and lets you stay focussed. Studying MBA without a Re-Do is like travelling in a ship without a compass. You will never get the adrenaline rush and excitement of clearing the paper in a Re-Do if you cleared all your papers in the first attempt, how can you call yourself a Manager when you haven’t faced defeat?

Regular readers would know that I got a Ph.D after I completed my 12^th, having consistently failed in more than 7subjects since LKG in all the exams in all classes (except the final exams of 10^th&12^th), my principal gave me Ph.D. Not really, Ph.D here stands for Passed high school with great Difficulty. So let us worry about more important things happening around the world starting with Obama’s visit to India last week. The US salesman was very generous in praising all aspects of India trying to woo the Indian investors and politicians alike. If I was in his town hall style meeting with students, I would have asked him questions about his drug abuse, hostel life, and work life balance after becoming a President than asking about Pakistan or his vision about future because he says things just for the sake of it. I don’t want to sound like Arindam Chaudhuri in criticising him but I think he was just too desperate to get more money from our pockets and stuff it in US coffers. Arindam Chaudhuri criticises things just for the sake of criticising and gain attention, he is such an attention seeking twat. The difference between him and God is that, God doesn’t think he is Arindam Chaudhuri.

Instead of worrying about global affairs and wasting time we should be rather worried about the Queen of Britain launching her profile on Facebook. Queen Elizabeth at the age of 84 opened her profile in the social networking site to stay in-touch with her fans so she could update them about her daily activities. Well, majority of her activities are spent on a wheel chair so it ain’t that interesting to be honest, I would rather follow Kim Kardashian or Eminem for a bit of fun than a granny. Not many times in my life have I applauded the Police department but I am now for killing the jerk, who kidnapped and murdered 2kids from Coimbatore. Animals like him should be stoned to death or killed in an encounter than putting him in jail, so the Police did the right thing, well done gentlemen. I am sure all of you would have read about the 2engineering graduates who kidnapped a kid for a ransom of 1crore. Surprising fact is that one of the kidnappers was an MBA from UK.

This is what happens when all the management text books consistently bang on about Shareholder Wealth maximisation; this guy misunderstood the concepts so he tried to maximize his wealth by Kidnapping. Idiots didn’t even realise how stupid they were. If earning money is your ultimate aim then you can earn it in an exciting way without harming others. I have got loads of such exciting ideas to do business but none of them are legal in at least 170nations of the UN. I am looking for a Venture Capitalist or an Angel Investor who would like to support start ups in regions like Afghanistan, Cuba, Amsterdam or Mexico. These ideas don’t harm anybody and believes in Customer Romancing and Customer Delight, 90% of profits generated goes to CSR and rest 10% will be reinvested in the business. The CSR aims to give a better life to a poor individual named Ifthi who lives in United States of Trichy. Vision: To legalise the illegal. So come, Invest and together we shall grow.

If you hate someone from the bottom of your heart, the best way to punish him is by giving him a ticket to Golmaal3. It is such a sad movie and tries too hard to make you laugh but their effort falls flat on its face, pathetic storyline with pathetic screenplay. A research conducted in Britain among 4500 women revealed that shopping burns more calories than working out in the gym, so ladies, if you want to stay fit, go shopping. But another research revealed that majority of men cheat on their wives/girlfriends when their partner is out shopping, so shopping is a double edged sword mind. There is this software called Bull-Fighter made by Deloitte which analyses the amount of BS written in any article or passage, all you got to do is Copy-Paste the words and it will analyse and tell you how much of BS is written. I tried it by posting one of my previous columns of The Week That Was and the software calculated that it contains 95% of BS and only 5% of truth. Further research revealed that the 5% of truth is actually the following statement “Ifthikar Ahmed, 2^nd Year MBA” if that statement was taken out then you can be assured that it is 100% BS. I am planning to get a Six-Sigma certification for my consistency in maintaining the level of BS, so if you want to help me then see me. I will see you when I see you.

The Week That Was-Edition 14

The Week That Was

It has been ages since I wrote anything and I have been lying low for a while. The reason for it is no rocket science, asking me to write “The Week That Was” with no internet connection is like asking Usian Bolt to run 400metres wearing a Lungi and tying his arms behind the back, it’s a tough ask indeed. Not only that, loads of things I used to write repeatedly have had a complete overhaul, the hostel food for example, the weapons of mass of destruction i.e. the parottas have been scrapped from the menu and now it is replaced by amazing Maggi Noodles. So is there anything Ifthi can write apart from moaning about the hostel food or about some other useless stuff? Well I think I can, so I started working as a freelance writer these days and people have hired me to write things like apology letters and flirty love letters. I had enough of freelancing, so I thought I should bore a majority of people instead of boring one at a time and as a result you are reading thisJ.

The police in Mexico were trying to arrest a gang of smugglers at their backyard but the plan got backfired because of a parrot. The parrot betrayed the police by shouting “Run, run the cat is coming” when they surrounded the place. The bird was obviously a pet of the gang and had been given sufficient training, so the gang escaped. The police got pissed because of this and they didn’t want to return to the station empty handed, so they arrested the bird instead. Cops everywhere are really stupid, take the case of Kashmir, the army men have shot many women and children during the riots and this in-turn aggravates a lot of people and thus we have unrest in the region for more than 3decades. Whilst I am no James Bond in detecting terror, I would definitely know for sure that a 14 year old lad with a Cricket bat is certainly not a terrorist and I wouldn’t blow the head of a 56 year old granny either. If you really want some shooting practice, you could do it harmlessly like we did by shooting balloons or shooting at the picture of Vijay. There lies the solution; the world should be ruled by people with an MBA degree and every problem in the world can be solved within 2minutes.

My proposed solution for the Kashmir border issue is, we should call the MBAs from both the nations and ask them to calculate the border using Linear Programming or some Approximation method. They would spend 2hours calculating the initial basic feasible solution and would agree unanimously to reject the entire issue when they think about the opportunity cost of using the money in buying shares and compounding it. Thus all the Kashmiris would turn into stock brokers consoling each other when the market takes a nose dive instead of pelting stones at military vehicles. As far as the lunatic army men who shoot old ladies, they should be punished severely because they humiliate the entire nation in front of the world. I would punish them by giving two options: “Either you should take 1kg of Chilli powder and shove it up your nostrils/eyes or you should download a 2MB file from the Wifi at campus”. If they refuse to do it, their head should be blown in public just like they did to the innocent women.

Thanks to Mr. Suresh Kalmadi who proved to the entire world that we are a nation of 1billion people who are not capable of building few decent stadiums all because of his greed. You know something is wrong when someone is spending Rs. 28000 crores for conducting a Games event. In my opinion Common Wealth is conducted to boost the private wealth of few millionaires and who on earth needs to see few thin lads from Africa running around in circles? Here is a perfect example of grapevine gone wrong and how not to begin a conversation. I said “Hey pretty girl” to a midget and it went around saying to anyone and everyone it meets saying “Ifthi said I look gorgeous, Ifthi said I am fabulous, Ifthi said I am awesome blah blah”. I know I have a bad taste but certainly not to the extent of fantasising over a midget, now how would I use the same communication channel to say “you actually look like Bugs Bunny”? That rabbit from Looney tunes talks a lot and is highly irritating at times. I do love Scooby doo and Tom & Jerry and if I ever get a chance to work with MGM studios I would create an episode were Tom beats the hell out of Jerry just for a laugh.

The Week That Was, well what a journey it was in the past one year and it has been an amazing roller coaster ride with loads of fun. I love writing for Atulya so much that I became obsessed with writing; so far it has been so good. I obviously would love to write in each and every edition of Atulya, but I certainly don’t want to cheat the readers of it by not giving any news. Whilst I don’t write anything informative, majority of the information I try to quote are something which you probably would have never read (this week being an exception). Caution: Don’t try to imitate the way I write, its highly injurious to Mind Body and Atulya. I would try to write as and when I possibly can, till then I would see you when(ever I possibly can) I see you.

The Week That Was-Edition 13

The Week That Was  (28/08/2010)                                                                  

What a week it was, I am sure everyone in the campus had great fun last week. Events like WOW are one of a kind and those who participated in it and would have got so many valuable lessons; at least I did when I was in 1^st year.  I really feel sorry for the MP’s who got a meagre pay rise after so many struggles; the Congress government is really focussing on the pressing issues of today’s world. Almost 88 MP’s including Sonia, Rahul Gandhi, Mulayam Singh Yadav, L K Advani and Lalu Prasad have not asked even a single question during the question hour in the Lok Sabha for the last 1year, I am sure being a MP must be really tough. The idiots are wasting too much money on the Commonwealth games, till date the government (central &state) has spent Rs. 28,000crores. Who on earth needs Common Wealth? I would like to take the javelin used by the athletes and shove it up the backside of Mr. Suresh Kalmadi and his colleagues.  A recent survey by University of Oxford revealed that there are more poor people in eight Indian states than in the 26 poorest African countries combined. One useless man is called a disgrace, two become a law and three or more become a congress.

 Recently I read that all schools in US and UK are trying to ban Ipods in classrooms, I don’t understand the logic behind this unless they think Eminem is going to rap all the answers to the students in the examination hall. Talking about examinations, it’s a shame that 5judges were caught cheating by the AP government during the LLM exams. Those losers didn’t even take a bit of paper; they were too greedy to take the entire book to the examination hall, which clown selected them as a judge in the first place? I am sure the exam hall would have had a supervisor like me, during the prelims for WOW, I was accused of being involved in too many malpractices, I deny all allegations and I request CBI to investigate the issue.  I was thinking twice about writing this week’s column because I couldn’t get any access to any of the online newspapers I refer frequently, thanks to the pathetic Wi-Fi. I had to sit and read more than 7newspapers digging for information, I would like to rename it as Si-Fi (Signal-less Fidelity). At least it isn’t as bad as the Chinese roads, the Vehicles, mostly lorries bound for Beijing, are in a queue for about 100km (62 miles) because of heavy traffic, road works and breakdowns and it takes 9days to cross that area. Imagine going to your neighbouring city with enough food and clothes to cover you for a fortnight, it must be really crazy out there I guess.

A British Airways pilot scared the crap out of all the passengers by pressing a wrong button, triggering an announcement that the aircraft was about to make an emergency landing on water. Imagine a female voice saying “We are about to make an emergency landing, please don’t panic” when in reality the idiotic pilot was in fact playing with the buttons. The British police are on a massive hunt to find a 50year old woman who dumped a 4year old cat into a dust bin. They say it’s a cruel action and the offender must be punished, I wonder how the police department in England have time for such trivial pursuits. In India the rapists, child molesters, Anderson’s and Ramalinga Raju’s walk freely on the roads without being scared of anything. Last time when I went home, I met a good friend of mine who is extremely talented. I say he is extremely talented because he studied his B.E. for 5years because he had so many arrears, obviously he didn’t get placed in any college and guess what he is doing right now? He joined as a lecturer in the very same college he studied; the college is located in Trichy. When he told about his teaching pedagogy I nearly collapsed, he said he divides the entire class into 20teams and lets them teach the entire syllabus through presentations.

So I was least surprised when I read the following news,  As per the study of over 40,000 technical graduates conducted by assessment technology company Aspiring Minds, just 18 per cent of the fresh technical graduates surveyed, possessed right skills to be eligible for jobs in IT services companies. The state of our education system is appalling, when was the last time we read about an Indian University making a cutting edge technological innovation? Universities in UK and USA make so many innovations because their education system is pragmatic and they spend very little time on memorising non sense theories. I am sure everyone here must have read stuffs like Theoretical Geometry, Trigonometry...etc are you using any of it right now? What about the endless lessons about how fertile the Nile region is in Geography? There are just 3kinds of students in India, those who can count and those who can’t and 4 out of every 3 students have a tough time understanding fractionsJ. Enough about education, there are loads of questions which I need answer for, Is it true that cannibals won’t eat clowns because they taste funny? Do they use sterilized needles for lethal injections? If Harry Potter is so magical then why couldn’t he cure his own sight? Ifthi is in pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, please join his quest. That’s it for this week ladies and ladies (I don’t give a damn about the Un-Gentlemen, hehe), I will see you when I see you.

The Week That Was-Edition 12

The Week That Was (19/08/2010)-----------à My birthday J J

Hey friends, I hope u all had a great weekend, it is nice to see you all reading yet another column of mine. Some say they learn nothing out of it, I don’t claim to facilitate any knowledge anyway, so if you are expecting to gain knowledge then you are in the wrong section matey.  My mate says I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind, I am not sure about that one, but it must be true I guess. The other day someone asked me “what is one thing that you would gain by pursuing an MBA?” I thought long and hard about what happened in my life and my friends’ life and told him “You will break up with your girlfriend by the end of first year”. That is a hypotheses which needs a lot of testing using various statistics, talking about Stats, here is something interesting, Los Angeles teachers union has called for a massive boycott of Los Angeles Times over the paper's publication of articles that used student test scores to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers. The paper conducted various statistics to analyse the effectiveness of the teachers in classrooms, apparently teachers who teach statistics are protesting that “Statistics can’t be relied to arrive at any conclusions”, I love the Obama government for giving them the taste of their own medicine.

Girls, drinking beer is bad for you. A study by Harvard Medical School has found that drinking beer regularly may raise the risk of psoriasis by over 70% in women. The doctors conducted a study on 82,869 women who drink more than 3beers a week to arrive at this conclusion; however there is good news for you. They also found no association between the disease and light beer, red wine, white wine or liquor. So ladies if you are planning to booze then make sure the drink you have is not a beer, because I care for you. I not only care about women, I also care about the environment and I am delighted to inform that your car could also have peg of Whisky everyday giving you company on lonely nights. Scientists at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland have found a way to manufacture biofuel from the by-products of whisky, they say it can reduce carbon emissions and it is also sustainable, because, whisky powered cars doesn’t require massive forest-trashing unlike other biofuels. So the more you drink, the more environmentally friendly you will become, so please save the planet by drinking Whisky.

I am sick of reading endless articles and reports about how bad smoking is to you and others around you, here is a woman who defied all logics. Britain's ‘oldest smoker’ Winnie Langley, who puffed more than 170,000 cigarettes for over 95 years, has died a month short of her 103rd birthday, may her soul Rest In Peace. This Granny started smoking at the age of 7 after World War-I started and made headlines at her 100th birthday after being photographed lighting a cigarette with a candle. She used to smoke five Cigarettes a day but recently reduced it to 1Cigarette day as she was unable to afford Cigarettes due to the credit crunch. What we can learn from this is, as long as you are enjoying your life by boozing and smoking like this Granny, we will live longer. What was all the fuss about the Srilankan bowler bowling a no ball to deny Sehwag a century? What he did was perfectly within the rules of the game and the Indian media made a mountain out of a mole hill because they didn’t have better news to report on.

Ramalinga Raju got a bail for paying a paltry sum of 40lakhs, it wouldn’t have hurt his bank balance much considering the fact that he looted more than 14000crores of the Shareholder’s money. Whilst the Indian police beat the crap out of a pickpocket for stealing 100bucks, gentleman like Raju walk freely with full police protection, I would love to learn the nuances of the business world from Satyam’s sister concern ISB, Hyderabad, mastering the art of BS will help you to earn millions and you can give lectures about ethical business practices and CSR during your leisure time. Sticking with burglary, a fat burglar in Britain tried to break into a house through the bathroom window, due to his bulky frame he got struck for 6hours and the owner of the house rang the fire department to rescue him. He was obviously an idiot for trying things beyond his means and is now eating low-fat Sandwiches at the London Jail. India will move to the fourth position for the number of corporate jets owned by the business tycoons by the end of next year. The Indian business Tycoons have ordered for 157 jets worth around a billion dollars, who said India is poor?

I just realised that everything I have written above would be considered offensive by the followers of PMK party led by Ramadoss, if you are such a person then I would like to meet you in-person to learn about Diving so I could get an Olympic Gold medal for my country. Because I have not done anything worthwhile for the past 21years of my life and after turning 22 last Thursday, I am on a mission to dedicate myself to my adopted nation Holland (watch Harold&Kumar-2, you will know why). Just to finish things off, Love is like an exploding Cigarette which we smoke willingly, or you could say it’s like trying to kiss a burning Charcoal (more such BS can be found in my Facebook profile, just search for Ifthikar Ahmed), so friends stay safe by not visiting my profile. I will see you when I see you.

The Week That Was-Edition 11

The Week That Was (12/08/2010)

Many were asking me the reason for the lack of any news in last week’s column, well all credit goes to the wireless-router less-internetless service at the campus. Someone has stolen all the routers from all class rooms, so can someone please inform that gentleman that the wifi simply can’t function without a router? It’s funny when someone blames you for not checking the Moodle every day when there is no net connectivity either at campus or in hostel; it’s like blaming a blind guy for not seeing the rainbow. The fees paid for wifi is as effective as the money allocated to rent treadmills for the Commonwealth games. Apparently Indian Government has spent Rs.9.5lakhs to rent treadmills so that the players could maintain their fitness, the last time I checked, even the top of the range treadmill in the world costs just Rs. 4.5lakh to purchase it outright and I don’t understand what sort of maniac would pay 9.5 lakhs to rent a SINGLE treadmill? You could buy the entire state of Bihar with that sort of money for God’s sake.

And this happened in Toledo, Ohio. Fast food fan Melodi Dushane was clearly not 'lovin' it' after she was told she couldn't have her favourite snack (McNuggets) - because it was still breakfast. The lady leaned through the drive-thru window and punched two of the staffs; she pretended to leave in her car but hurled a bottle through the restaurant's window before speeding off. She was sentenced to 60days in prison and was ordered to pay McDonalds for the damaged windows; the staffs were left with a broken nose of course. Those guys who are planning to work part time in Toledo be careful, because Customer Romancing doesn’t work a lot of times so you might as well learn some Kung Fu. Another funny thing happened in the land of US and A, A guy took his girlfriend to a Baseball game on a date. The batter hit the ball into the crowd and our Romeo in order to impress his new date, tried catching the ball. He failed miserably and the ball hit his girlfriend on the arm and it resulted in visible bruises, well the lesson to be learned is, don’t try to do something extraordinary because often it ends up being too ordinary. I would have loved to listen to their post match conversation on their way home.

Spanish Government spent 590m Euros ($775m) in the production of electric cars aiming to have at least 250,000 cars in circulation by 2014. After the production began and the REVE cars hit the market only 16cars were sold till date (one car last year and 15this year), the manufacturer of REVE cars was a Norwegian firm ironically named as Think. I firmly believe that people at Think really need to think about the pathetic electric cars they have produced, I think the sales forecast was done by an enthusiastic MBA guy from a dodgy b-school, I am sure he would have got a 10S in Forecasting during his college days. An 18year old Nurse from Britain named Stacey Bywater won a lotto jackpot of £1million (approximately 8Crores) and my mate is glued to the yellow pages of Yorkshire County trying to get her landline number, he claims he just wants to congratulate her, but I don’t believe him.

.After India won one test match every Cricket fan was going gaga and the Indian team flipped really bad for less than 90runs against New Zealand. I don’t understand these Cricket fans, how can they spend 5days in a week watching a so-called game which results in a draw and an entire working day on a One Day match? Anyone who spends an entire day of his life for following a sport should be hanged. I think watching paint dry is more entertaining than watching Cricket. What a week it was to see Manchester United thrash Chelsea 3-1 and win the Community Shield, the red devils were simply irresistible and if they play like this for the rest of the season then I am sure the premier league title will be ours this season. Eating Pea is bad for you, Ron Sveden a resident of Massachusetts was rushed to hospital with a collapsed lung, the doctors were surprised when they found a pea plant (1.25cm in size) growing on his lung in the X-ray. The Docs believe that Mr Sveden ate the pea at some point, but it "went down the wrong way" and sprouted. The plant was operated and removed and the Docs had a sense of humour by giving a plate full of peas to the patient as a post operative meal.

The US government has proved that it really has no brains yet again, it has sentenced the Chef of Osama Bin Laden for 14 years in jail. Ibrahim al-Qosi admitted running a kitchen in Bin Laden's compound while being aware that al-Qaeda was a terrorist organisation, his crimes include cooking Chicken Biriyani with Mutton Shawarma every Sunday for Mr. Bin Laden. I am trying to contact the FBI since I read the news because I know about another Chef who is still working closely with Osama, I am willing to share the whereabouts of the person so that they could arrest him and punish him. Finally, few of my mates are pursuing their Ph.d in NIT-Trichy and XIME, they informed me that there are some dodgy national journals (with ISBN numbers of course) which will publish absolutely anything you give them as long as you pay Rs.1000-1500. My mates have used this to publish more than5articles each in national level management journals. Now don’t ask me the names of those Journals because I believe in something called Professional Ethics. By the way, can anyone please lend me a non-refundable sum of Rs. 1500? I need it for some personal reasons. Well that’s it for this week; I will see you when I see you.