I'm probably what they call a man of four quarters

Born to parents from the North, South and Middle of India, I was brought up in the East and West. I figure I got the macro view on life. For much of my time, I said "I'm learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life...Procrastinating and rationalizing". In Bombay, whilst sitting in the classroom, I was often heard to be muttering that "reality continues to ruin my life" and that (to my parents eternal frustration, especially at the parent-teacher meetings) "I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone's expectations"- in other words "I liked things better when I didn't understand them". Then of course, I went through a phase when "Life's disappointments are harder to take when you don't know any swear words". Finally, until the last 2 years of my life, a common refrain heard in my presence was "as a math atheist, I should be excused from this", which just makes my current location all the more ironic.

A blast from the past

Born on 7th February 1977, in Bombay, I lived in India till I was thirteen. During that time, I

• Ate copious amounts of papad, washed down with Thumbs-Up
• Got trampled on the beach by a horse buggy whilst going for a walk
• destroyed (only partially mind you...) a wall in my grandparents house
• Watched endless re-runs of old American comedies, along with the obligatory A-Team and Knight Rider
• Saw videos of the 1983 World Cup victory on a repeated basis
• Played cross-batted cricket with a rubber ball on the top of a car park
• Frolicked on an empty beach, swam in an empty sea, and gazed into a full night sky
• Played tennis on cow dung courts
• Read hordes of comics

If one picture epitomised my childhood, this was it. This is a public admission that I had a ball in the days when grades were unimportant..........and large rimmed glasses in fashion....

Then one year, following an Indian summer filled with the joys of  an excruciating course of "intermediate French even though I knew no French" at the Alliance Francaise, and James Bond movies (I haven't thanked my grandparents enough even to this day for watching each film with me), I moved to England. The memories whilst at Dulwich College were rather different. The initial years were coloured by

• Afternoons running madly after a hockey ball on a sub-zero Saturday afternoon
• Playing cricket in the sleet (even to this day I can remember being unable to do up my zipper having visited the little boys' room on a sleet-covered pitch in Harrow)
• Practicing the guitar on most weekday evenings (though my mother will contest this.....)
• Trudging to Safeways on the Weekends carrying one grocery bag too many
• Rushing round the London stores in December trying to buy gifts for the family- especially those thermals and Brazil nuts...............
• The feeling of isolation when returning from India in January......
• ........the growing sense of comfort in England

Then I ran off to Oxford in 1995 to try and be a decent historian. My father persuaded me to try a subject called Economics on the side, and I decided that it couldn't hurt. Oh boy was I sooooo wrong (at least at first....). Oxford was quite a shock at first. Here I was prepared for the experiences of the sixties, and what I got was the nineties. The first day was a shock

• I had an essay with a reading list of 20 books sitting in my pigeon hole (mailbox of all you others!)
• Met a functional Woody Allen, who contrary to what he says, is actually an Indian
• Was introduced to the Florey Building (1st year student housing that was actually a secret spaceship-disguised-as-a-car park)

The rest, as they say, is history. The place really was all it was cranked up to be

• Summer afternoons wandering the cricket outfield, occasionally fielding a ball
• Chilly evenings sitting out in the quad- usually fielding an alcoholic beverage
• Days spent in the Radcliffe Camera observing women wandering by whilst trying not to freeze, make some cursory notes, and not fall sound asleep
• Running like a headless chicken round the libraries trying to secure that vital article/chapter
• Trying to remember to leave the bin out so the scout wouldn't find you in your boxers
• Schlepping in and out of my accommodation 100 times a year with all my gear
• Punting on the Thames, being punted on the Thames, watching other people almost fall in whilst punting on the Thames (especially one chap called Humper who decided that his pole was better suited to fighting a thicket near Magdalen College deer park than paddling the punt)
• Spending the first day of term with my parents at the pizza joint near Cowley Road
• That blissful 3 weeks that followed Finals when time was of no essence, the sun always shone, I got passages from Suitable Boy thrown at me by one Kamakshya Trivedi, and the evenings stretched on and on

That was followed by 2 years on the Economics MPhil. The entering class of 30 was inflated to 50. Rumour has it that one half of the admissions committee didn't know what the other half did- one more case of Oxford taking literally the saying that what the left side of the brain doesn't know about the right, doesn't hurt either. I still maintain that I was part of the list of madmen mistakenly admitted. Whatever the case, it was one interesting social scene........ We worked hard but also partied hard. I made some damn good friends along the way and learnt a bit too............

• Spend mornings queuing at the AMT coffee "hut" along with half the MPhil Class
• Sitting in a probability class listening to "this variable meeting that variable to get this variable"
• Happy hour at the Duke of Cambridge
• Study groups at 7am to try and finish off time series homework
• Applications for summer internships
• Free dinner at corporate presentations at the Randolph
• The joys of flavoured filter coffee at 2am
• Student politics.............
• .........how to be political

The next phase was the Investment banking scene. This was memorable- but not necessarily always for the right reasons !! All in all, I met some great people, came out of it with some lasting friendships, and became far more philosophical about life.  

I am currently glued to my swivel chair trying desperately to figure out how to solve Bayes Formula to get a posterior that's in the form of a t-distribution. Later on, the pleasure of fighting C syntax as I go through a programming "trial by fire" awaits.

So I guess the natural question that arises is why? Why leave a job? Why do stats? Why go back to living in scummy dorms? Why (and this is an obvious answer) go back to getting discounted $10 tickets to the Philadelphia Philharmonic?

The short answer is that whilst in the banking sector, I got interested in financial statistics. Those hours spent producing company profiles finally seem to have paid off. During the process of trying to flog Reuters et al. a zillion and one financial software companies, my interest in banking flagged while my interest in the profiled companies rose (The Riccardian Equivalence model applied to human interest................) Along the way, I figured a change of career was in order if I didn't want my brain to atrophy and that I needed stronger quantitative skills to follow through my interest in finance. So, as all things in the world rotate with the earth and the sun always rises, and the bombs continually explode............. my application was sent in to the Wharton School to do a PhD in statistics.

The next logical question is why not finance. The answer is: my interests include trying to model population movements (the old theme of migration popping up once again), and I think a statistical foundation allows one to pursue a wider range of interests later on.

The cynical eyepiece: The take home points so far from the last 4 months in Wharton

1. Remember that all American apartments come unfurnished, and dorms nearly-unfurnished
2. The one certainty is that Bureaucracy rules the USA
3. "Have a nice day now" should be said to every customer over the phone, regardless of what the call was about
4. NEVER, EVER lose your Penn Card on the weekend....and if you do......it's a few days of hell followed by a $5 loss
5. Always get to 30th Street station 40 mins before going to NYC. The bright people at SEPTA figured that one automated machine was needed for the daily hordes traveling the Northeast Corridor
6. When going to Philadelphia Airport, expect the politeness level to plumb the depths of acceptability, and the interaction to simulate a visit to your friendly detention centre
7. Wawa's (or as we say here Wuhwaaazz) meatball sandwiches at 2am along with a Mountain Dew and chocolate milk, is what satisfaction is all about
8. Eating from the food trucks is what hell is all about (and a potentially very fat belly.........)
9. Using the gym at 12am is really not that mad
10. Eating 2 large stacks of pancakes smothered in maple syrup whilst drinking 10 cups of coffee
11. The ability to get from ones bed to the gym to the department to the food joint in a cumulative time of 10 mins, is not so hard
12. Eating at the $5.99 Indian buffet should be restricted to once a week
13. Eating at the $6.99 fortune-cookie laden Beijing should be restricted to twice a week
14. Try and re-enter the workspace more than 10 hours before the semester begins
15. Never fly Gulf Air
16. Never stop at Abu Dhabi