Bansal told me that he had more apartments in Wadala that he could show me tomorrow. He asked me if I liked any of the ones I’d seen. I told him some were okay but I was not too impressed. He told me there was a super semi-furnished apartment near the Don Bosco Church that was perfect for me because I was a Christian.

I told him in no uncertain terms that I did not want to use my religion to get a place to live. He said I would get at least a thirty per cent discount on the rent from the landlord if I told them I was Christian.

I told him I was cool with it. I will get to see the flat tomorrow evening. I will wear my big brown crucifix just to be sure.

All in all a good start to my house hunting. I really like this Bansal guy. He is an honest, hard-working, dependable fellow.

22 May 2006

10.15 p.m.

I am sooooo tired. AND SOOOO HAPPY!

Abhijit called me to his cabin in the morning today and told me that he had some work for me. I cannot possibly describe the feeling. At that moment I knew our brief conversation two days ago—when I told him how much I was looking forward to working on a project—must have impressed him.

I told him that I was ready to handle any assignment. He asked me if I knew how to write Excel macros in Visual Basic. I told him that I was, to be very frank, a true master of the art of Excel macro programming. A slight exaggeration of course, but who needs expertise when you have the Internet!

So he asked Shailesh to give me one of the spare office laptops and then asked me to follow him to an empty cubicle next to … Jerry’s! Awesome! I bet Vineet never got this close to the country manager! He then closed the door behind me and pulled out a pen drive from his pocket. He told me how I was going to work on a top-secret spreadsheet model for a client in the financial services sector. The project was called ‘Copper Chimney’ internally and I was to refer to it only in those terms. Apparently, no one except Jerry, Abhijit and a couple of partners knew the true identity of the client.

Abhijit then explained how the model was being used to price a possible acquisition for the firm and had to be completed by the end of day. There was going to be a client presentation tomorrow morning. He then explained what he wanted me to do.

It sounded simple enough. I had to clean up the variables input page and then make a few buttons. The idea was to impress the client with our ‘scenario-building capabilities’.

I would create a set of boxes into which the client could suggest inputs. Abhijit would then click a few buttons and voila! the model would work out the acquisition price range. All in real time.