D-16 Drawing Blanks

This I believe is a persisting problem with me. Whenever an important exam approaches the posts on this blog start thinning. I did not have too many ideas for a post in the past two weeks. That is because I have not been reading too much besides the 'study material'(just hate what they call it) this October. And the next ten days are going to be spent poring over methods of capital appraisal, company finance, taxation(the UK tax system at that; stupid study material...) and preparing balance sheets and income statements. The worst part is, the material for the CT-2 paper of the Actuarial Science exams has been comprehensively revamped, so I don't have much scope to practise questions from past papers as the treatment of the accounting part is now drastically different as they have now adopted the International Financial Reporting Standards. What are they? I really do not know... I have been too lazy to learn more about them.

Add to that the agony of losing the Answers.com Creative Writing Challenge. That made me grumpy for the entire day(hrmpf!).

Anyway, I am already looking forward to the next one.

My college exams are in full swing. So what's so great? Well, for the first time in my life I am taking an 'open book' exam. Anyone who does not know his math, this blogger included, can open their notes, reference books, the 'chits' they might have made to copy from(do they do that for math too? How can anyone be so dumb?) to refer a question where one does not know the answers and copy! Like the rest of the class, for me too, the temptation is too hard to resist. There is always this sense of high you get when you break rules and know you can get away with it. In the paper I have to take tomorrow on groups and rings, I know my ass is up for a kick. I am not prepared at all. I have not touched it for a month, and now I think I have forgotten all theorems! But the better part is, I plan to cover lost ground in the Diwali vacations that begin from Thursday.

But I promise that after the turn of these exams, I will pay more attention to blogging and have at least one post up every week. But then again, who might be interested in what I write?

Hopefully millions. But that is a long way into the future. I am going to apply to The Times of India. Just to try my luck. You never know, I just might have been born under a star...

But the current job on hand is to get two bogies called CT-1 and CT-2 off my back.

And I am on it.

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All at Sea

"A wreck on shore is a beacon at sea."

One news that was doing the rounds yesterday was, that India's own tsunami warning system, the National Early Warning for Tsunami and Storm Surges in the Indian Ocean, is now ready for official deployment. The system will be inaugurated by the Minister or Science, technology and Earth Sciences, Kapil Sibbal on 15th October, 2007. It was quite important for the country to have its own tsunami warning system after the devastating tsunami of 26th December 2004 that claimed more than 10,000 lives in India and destroyed much of the coastal infrastructure in Tamil Nadu and the Andamans.

But apart from celebrating this achievement of the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, there are many issues to be looked at.

Many say the cost, reportedly Rs 1,250 million, is not at all justified. Instead they believe that India should be part of an integrated international effort to develop a global tsunami warning system and draw on the expertise of countries like Japan and the US. But I do not subscribe to this line of thinking. India should have its own tsunami warning system, because we will be in a better position to ascertain the danger to our coastline in the event of a tsunami. India has two island territories, the Andaman and Nicobar islands and the Lakshadweep islands. They are not well connected with the mainland so if a tsunami does strike, we will need to put out all stops for relief and rescue operations. The Andamans are quite close to the earthquake hotbed around Indonesia. We may not have enough time to react if we depend on information from other agencies. Our own system enables real time monitoring of the ocean bed, provided by the network of 12 bottom pressure recorders in the Indian Ocean and Tide Gauges along the coasts.

The system also allows to hypothesise and test hundreds of possible scenarios in the event of a tsunami and plan the next course of action. INCOIS has simulated 550 scenarios. This information can be shared with other international tsunami warning agencies and will help us to understand the phenomenon more.

But all said and done, the pertinent question is, how prepared we actually are on the ground?

Do we have a policy on rescue and relief operations after a natural calamity? Are the district officials in the coastal areas prepared to handle large scale evacuation if required? Are the locals trained in administrating first aid? What are we doing to impart education to people about tsunamis and other natural calamities and remove misconceptions? Do they conduct periodic drills? Have the people been asked to have their own contingency plans? Are all fishermen and their families covered under insurance guarantee schemes?

In June 2005, a rumour about an impending tsunami caused a stampede that killed 10 people in the Nehru Nagar slum in Juhu in Bombay.

So imagine, if a tsunami does strike... Answers, anyone?

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D-15 Core Technical Crap

October is here, and the monsoon has practically disappeared from Bombay. And I feel great about that. No more having to walk on slushy streets for at least a eight months. It also means work on the road and infrastructure projects like the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, suspended due to rains, will begin again. Though the atmosphere is quite pleasant and it will remain so for a few more days until the scorching October Heat takes over for another month or so before winter sets in.

But this post is not about Bombay's weather. I have to appear for the CT-1 paper of the Institute of Actuaries of India in the first week of November. I have begun solving past question papers. The wheel will have come full circle on 5th November, 2007. A year ago, I tanked that paper. I had prepared horribly for it, considering the kind of effort required, and I remember I was quite sure in my mind that there was no hope of clearing that paper, when I walked out of my house to take that exam that day. This time, I believe my preparation should yield results and hopefully I will see my name in the results when they come out. Flunking is not an option.

I do enjoy studying for those subjects but my confidence takes a nosedive when I go through those past examination papers. Maybe that is the problem. I believe when you go into an exam you know in your bones what the result will be. And for it to be a positive one, you need to take that confidence into the examination hall, which of course comes only with the efforts you have put in. So I want to prepare well, so when I walk into that examination hall that day, I would know I will be nailing it.

The real problem I guess is learning the art of studying in a way that I call as 'compactly'. By this I mean, one should be able to wrap up studying portions of the study material and pack them in the mind so well, that one should be able to produce them at will. But this obviously needs concentrated study and thinking about the concepts beyond the text. This reduces the time it takes to study the whole syllabus and spares time for practicing problems. I am not too happy with the way the study material for CT-2 has been prepared. I had a hair-splitting experience studying it. They have introduced a lot of terms and concepts way before you actually come to know what they mean in the latter chapters. And this makes it quite difficult to study. You need to keep going back because at first you don't understand anything and when you do get to learn the stuff in the latter chapters, you have to come back to understand the previous chapter and this blows up a lot of precious time. The last 6 chapters are absolutely trash and you don't learn anything by reading them in sequence. You have to read them together and the whole picture becomes clearer as you keep coming back.

I have recently added a new bookmark to my cell phone, the mobile edition of The Times of India. The great thing about it is that I get to read The Economic Times on the go, or even when I have a free lecture in class.

And I recently calculated that if all goes well, I will be able to complete solving Joseph Gallian's Contemporary Abstract Algebra up to the 18th chapter by the end of December. That will be great! I will be able to devote more time to Analysis after that.

Let's hope that all does go well!
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