Thanks Jih Shin, for the suggestions and also pointing out that you need to be a registered member to add a comment. I guess that put off casual viewers from actually writing anything.

I discovered another facet of the Indian personality today. We are usually kept isolated from the rest of Indian trainees, but today, we had a combined session talking about .... surprise surprise, the wonders of working for TCS.

Interesting nugget #1:

The attitude Indians take to their lessons is simply incredible. I'ld imagine my old lecturers in NUS would simply have a wonderful time here. The wheezy old geezers in my faculty would get a hernia just from the effort of keeping 50% of the audience conscious.

Here, everytime the lecturer asked a question, it would be followed by a chorus of answers, each person struggling to outdo the other in a super-sized version of fastest-finger-first.

Then I discovered interesting nugget #2.

They have a "herd mentality" which would put cows to shame. I noticed that the answers which were fired machine-gun style at the lecturer was essentially the same and came one slightly after the other. This theory was proved when a girl sitting beside me blurted out a short epithet which she bit off in mid-sentence after ripping her long shawl that had been accidentally caught under her chair. Unfortunately, the lecturer had just asked a question, and...hehe, 7 or 8 other people repeated the curse in the full form...before someone noticed there was something wrong with the "model answer".

Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I shout something hokkien everytime the lecturer asks a question? Nah...very malu to get sent home because of this.

Kids don't try this at home, this is for trained psychologists or pure psychos only!

***

The class had to come up with three large and famous companies and 3 reasons for why these companies were famous. As foreign guests, we could go first. Our group had a discussion and agreed that we wanted to pick 3 companies which would not be repeated to death by our herd of cows behind. Since the focus of our class discussions had been IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, we wanted to, as much as possible avoid picking US companies. We settled on Sony, Nokia and Nike.

It worked. The groups behind us almost to a man picked....surprise surprise IBM, Microsoft and HP. DUH with a capital 'D'. This is a real pity since I've been with quite a few of them and I KNOW they are bright fellows. They had to be, since Tata's recruitment policy in India was remarkably strict and they went through a battery of tests. Tata also trawled through untold millions of applicants to come up with la creme de la creme. Every last one them are probably the equivalent of first class honour students from the university they graduated from.

What followed was another cracker....

They showed us some Tata propaganda clips. Some we had seen before and some new ones. This particular clip was DEFINITELY new, I would've remembered it if I had seen it. I don't think I can quite do justice to the clip, but trust me, it was hilarious...and it wasn't meant to be. I'll try to get hold of it somewhere somehow, it's worth the trouble. It was an MTV style music video on how Tata was "global". The sight of our CEO wiggling his bottom, was erm....well faintly disturbing now that I think about it. Much to the lecturer's chagrin, the entire class started to snigger.

Of course the day wouldn't be complete without an encore from our elite band of snoozers. Abid again with his hand in his head, carefully turned away from the lecturer. Big Mac Connor stretched out at the back of the class, oblivious to the clearly amused Indians sitting beside us. I think I may have lost conscious for 2 minutes as well.

I really wonder what they think of us....

Then again, maybe I don't really want to know....