Ajai Karthikeyan is Invictus

The word entrepreneur is often used to talk about a person who runs their own business. For the most part (and most of the people who will end up reading this), this involves someone working on their startup. It also refers to the guy who just opened up his burger shop on the corner. I have been using this word often but usually imply a some what different meaning. So, I did some digging and was shocked by what I found.

Lets start with what wikipedia has to say:

Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur, which is a French word meaning “one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods”.

Surprisingly enough, that is exactly what I believe an entrepreneur  to be. First and foremost, an entrepreneur is an innovator. Without innovation, the world becomes stagnant. An entrepreneur must also apply business acumen (an innovator without business acumen is just an inventor or a researcher). The world runs on money. Everyone wants some. Startups want to make money. Investors want to make money. Non-profits want to make money (to help others). Fortune 500 companies want to make money. But all of these companied share one thing in common.

They all have room for entrepreneurs – people who innovate and change things. They break the rules. People who understand that a good thing is only a good thing when it can be turned into a viable business. These people are dedicated to what they do. They love what they are doing. They will stay up all night working on their projects not because of deadlines but because they enjoy what they do.

So, what is an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is an innovator with business acumen who is dedicated and loves what they are doing and hopes to be economically successful!

Randomly decided to take a look at what classes I will be taking in the Fall and while I was at it, I decided to put pen to paper to figure out what classes I will need to take over the next 3 semesters till I graduate. I have 38 – 43 credits left to go [The reason for the variable range is because I am hoping to get transfer credit for a 4 credit lab science and 1 of my classes is a state of confusion as to whether it will be 2 or 3 credits].

This comes to a maximum of 13 classes to go (my lucky number by the way). I am planning to take 4 in the Fall, 5 in the Spring and 4 more the following Fall. This led me to do some interesting “What-If” planning. The main question was, what if I get a full time job offer? Wouldn’t I want to get out [a term often used by Tech students instead of the word graduate] of Tech sooner. At the same time, what if I land an amazing internship for the Summer of 2011 (like the one I landed this summer )?

So, the idea I came up with was that I need to take a light load my last semester here (12-13 credits) and make sure that the classes will be offered in both the Summer and Fall of 2011. This means that I will not need to decide on my date of graduation till Early May of 2011 by which time, I need to decide whether I will be taking class over the summer or working. The solution was actually pretty simple. I actually found 6 classes (Probability and Statistics, Algorithms, Digital Design Lab, Social Psychology, Senior Design and my remaining Lab Science) that are being offered in both the Summer and the Fall. Of these, due to Pre-requisite/load balancing reasons, I will definitely be taking Prob/Stat, Algorithms and the Lab Science during my graduating term. Which leaves me with 3 classes [Senior Design, Digital Design Lab and Social Psychology] of which I will need to pick 2 for the Spring 0f 2011 and 1 for that last semester, which is great cause anyone who know about registering for classes at Tech will know plans rarely go according to plan due to time conflicts. The ability to pick and choose from those 3 will give me that flexibility.

Our Assistant Dean, Tom Pilsch always tells us that we students need to have a plan towards graduation. Well, I can say I’ve one upped that and have 2 plans for graduation .

What can throw a spanner in this wonderful plan? 2 things! Firstly, OSCAR scheduling. Even with all the flex room I’ve put into this plan, the odds are that there will be some weird time conflict. I am not too concerned about this as usually it is possible to work with the administration on this specially at the time of graduation. The second spanner thrower is me flunking out of one of these classes. It has been known to happen before… Multiple Times… [Calculus 3, I'm looking at you just so you know] and my luck, I still have to take Calc 3. GRR. O well, the pressure should motivate me to pass THAT class this time around.

Funny things that are going to happen? 2 things once again! Firstly, OSCAR might get confused in the Spring when I start registering for the exact same classes for both the Summer and Fall [do keep in mind that I will be dropping all those classes for one of those semesters before the term starts]. That will just be amusing. Secondly, career fairs in the fall will be interesting cause I will be carrying with be 3 different resumes; 1 for Summer internship, 1 for Summer graduation/Full time and 1 for Fall graduation/Full time + I have been planning on taking copies of the updated [soon to be] Visual Resume.

Should be an interesting year or two ahead of me. But for now, I have only one focus ladies and gentlemen: Being the uber awesome summer intern at Turner. One thing at a time people

People often ask my how the right way to say my name is. My usual response is that there is actually no right way. This goes into some thing deeper that pronunciation but into what exactly a name. A name is often an identifier given to a person. Anyone who has met me might remember that I always introduce myself with the lines “My name is Ajai” or “I go by Ajai” or “My friends call me Ajai” (With whatever convoluted pronunciation of Ajai I happen to be using at that time) or something along those lines. I never use the line “I am Ajai”.

The reason for this is simple. My name is not who I am! When asked who I am, I can not answer that question in 2 syllables. My being is much more complex in nature and the best way to answer the question, “Who are you?” is to get to know me. Shakespeare got the point pretty well a couple hundred years back.

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

- Juliet from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Now, to answer the question of how to pronounce my name, there is NO RIGHT WAY! There is not right way because I say there is no right way. I use a lot of different pronunciations of my name cause I am a very different person and am comfortable with having people call me different things. Most of my friends call me AJ (as in the letters A and J). I have gone by Ahai (the spanish pronunciation of the j) for a couple days too. Honestly, I don’t care. I’m ok with being called “Oii there” if you have a proper Aussie accent and can do a goo job with the Oii. Go ahead and call me Invictus (the name of this blog) for all I care, it actually means the same thing as Ajai though in a different ancient language (Latin and Sanskrit respectively).

But for those of you who still want to know what the right way to say my name is, I have a consolation prize: The original way to say my name. I was named by my parents who speak Tamil and my name is a Tamil name. I have spent the last couple hours figuring out how to write my name in Tamil and then transliterating that to IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). In Tamil, my name is written as,

That when translated to the IPA comes to be [ʌd͡ʒaɪ], which consists of 3 distinct parts:

• ʌ – The starting sound which is the sound made by the ‘u’ in the word plus.
• d͡ʒ – The sound for the j in my name which is the sound made by the ‘j’ in the word jump.
• aɪ – The ending of my name which is the sound made by ‘gh’ in the word high.

There you go. I’ve thoroughly analyzed it and have laid it bare for all of you to see (well, more like say ). If you still are not sure how to say the name, start with the uhhh sound you make when you uhmmm in the middle of a conversation and end with the jai from the song jai ho from Slumdog Millionaire.

Stumbled into this on the iTunes App Store page for Opera Mini. What you need to note is the bright blue text that says “You must be at least 17 years old to download this game” which is followed by the reason “Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes”.

To start of, the first thing thats wrong should probably be the fact that the Web Browser is not a game. I’m not going to get into how they found Mature/Suggestive Themes on the internet (god knows there are a lot of those) but shouldn’t Safari have these same warnings?

Update: This is just an observation I made. I am not going anti-apple here and am not an Apple Critic. This post was supposed to fall under the humorous mixup category.

And another video by the same people who made the last one