Hectic week

Last week was very very hectic with full load of assignments. I missed one class too as I overslept. Again from tuesday we are gonna be busy for another week. First 2 weeks was apparently free in this term. Fortunately I have only one end term. I pity on people who have their end term on Jan-1st. While all will be partying they have to sit and study on 31st night. But again, after giving this many exams no one will give any damn to exams ( ofcourse with few exceptions here and there).

My Best Friend's wedding

She is my best friend from my childhood. Studied in the same school, then same college. But then later, I moved on to do engineering where as she finished her degree. But yes, finally landed with same degree again. She did her MBA too. Just two days back she got married. Things are getting changed. Now I can't expect the same special treatment from her. Her preferences will be changed for sure. She will become busy with her own responsibilities.

Anyways I wish you a happy married life dear.

“Search” wars continue

Today we had the Google PPT for Hyderabad based jobs. I just can’t stop appreciating Google for their innovative capability. Google is known for its innovations. I am sure there will be a huge debate about this if I start discussing about this. Some say Google just got its brand image so. Some say that’s true. Well.. I am not here to say what truth is. It’s just that perspectives are different.

I like Google for many reasons. One of the reasons may be because it challenged the big giant Microsoft. It’s not an easy thing. MSN currently trails yahoo and Google in the lucrative areas of online search. Microsoft had to get some hundreds of millions of users to use its web search services. The real problem with Microsoft is though they have a huge audience the engagement is very less. Somewhere I read that Microsoft gets about 450 million users a month. All that it needs to do is to increase the engagement of the existing users first. Similar to retailer’s strategy.

Term6

Term 6 has started last week. This time i have taken 2 finance subjects and 2 IT subjects. I couldn't get Mergers and acquisitions course for this term:-(. Just to compensate this i have taken another fin course "Investing in Private equity" which also has some part of mergers and acquisitions related stuff. And the other subject which i didn't get is "Financial statement analysis" for which i dont have any regret. Somehow I feel accounting is boring. I really didn't like the subject that much after the sampling. Looks there are lot of assignments this time compared to last term. But no mid terms and just one end term.

Hmm Just 2 terms ahead of D-week(placement week). Lot to be done for interview preparation. we formed into focus groups to discuss about the core term concepts, industry analysis, current affairs etc stuff. But prep hasn't been that concrete as of now. We had Mckinsey, A T kearney conducting some work shops regarding case interviews for last two days. The sessions were quite insightful.

Its the fifth anniversary celebration for ISB. Today we had ILS (ISB Leadership summit), the flagship event of the ISB, for which lot of eminent speakers were invited from different industries and had a great discussion about the main theme- The New India-Changing paradigms in Business Leadership. It was indeed a great show. Tomorrow we have some more events lined up from 3Pm to 10Pm.

Our Honourable Prime minister Dr. Manmohan singh is going to visit ISB for the inaugural ceremony of the Global logistics summit on 5th of this month. I am sure there will be lot of security in ISB and even we will be restricted to move around:-(. More on this later. ciao

Been a long time

It had been a long time since I visited this space. Before I wrote anything about term-5, it got over too. I didn't feel that much work load as I expected in term-5. But the only sad part was at the end of the term most of them were enjoying with just 1 or 2 end term exams where I ended up giving 4 end term exams.

Placement fever has already started in the campus. Few international companies started visiting. I too had my first interview in the campus. And for some companies, people started cribbing about the short lists. Somehow I hate cribbing or complaining about others. No one has any right to say/ask that why a particular guy or girl got short listed. Very funny!!! Why the hell should they crib about others. Rather than cribbing about others, why don't think what can be done to their resume to make more attractive.

From tomorrow term-6 is going to start. But I have a very bad start for this term. Unlike last time I got only 2 subjects this time. I don't really mind loosing for one of the bidded subjects. But if I don't get "Corporate control, Mergers and acquisitions" subject, this would be one thing I would regret about electives. Like an idiot I bidded very few points. Thats okey. Let me see what needs to be done. Chalo, catch you guys once I get all the 4 subjects. ciao

Most Uncommon Commonality

I always used to regret about few things like I could have done/learnt so many things in my childhood etc. But ofcourse being born and brought up in a small town I was not exposed to many things. And the few chances I got, not knowing the importance of extracurriculars I didn't get much into that. But after seeing certain people in ISB I feel really great or rather proud about certain things.

I have seen few people over here who don't have the most basic quality 'common sense'. They dont care about their behaviour, the way they talk to others etc etc. Among the few I noticed I felt very very annoyed about one person's behaviour. Ofcourse he didn't do any harm to me or he didn't say anything to me. It so happened that we as a group were listening to his presentation. Suddenly for one of the questions posed he indirectly addressed everyone as stupids (As if he is a dean lister). I am in the verge of saying "Mind your language". Then thought, who cares about this idiot's behaviour and left as such. I am in no way working along with him. But if I happen to listen the similar thing again, I am sure that I am going to SERIOUSLY WARN this idiot. What the hell he thinks about himself. I don't know how these people worked in their previous organizations. God bless him.

What if I face the same kind of person in my team in any company? I would have forgiven him may be for the first time and second time with a small warning and third time with a serious warning and there after ..........FIRE HIM(ofcourse provided I have that authority:-D). What if my boss is so???? God knows what I will do. When I said this incident to my friend, she was saying that "common sense is the most uncommon thing" in the people. Hmm Looks that's true.

God bless these kind of people to realize their stupidity atleast.

SAIT Tragedy

Officially we finished 50% of our MBA after giving SAIT (Strategic analysis of Information technology) exam (term4 subject) today.

Due to some unfortunate circumstances this exam got postponed just 8 hrs before exam. That was a big tragedy. Most of the students spent a whole day preparing for this SAIT leaving very few hours to prepare for other subject, which was very very tough. (we will have 2 exams per day). This sudden postponement of exam has created a lot of hue and cry in the campus. And today morning 8:30... its SAIT exam time. We were given the papers sharp at 8:30AM. Just after a minute one student in the exam hall shouted "Arey some papers were missing in the question paper, Postpone the exam":-D. This was another tragedy. Half of the questions were missing in almost everyone's paper. Now whom to blame. We were to wait for half an hour in the exam hall for the remaining part of the paper...

SAIT exam actually got postponed because of unavailability of textbooks from which we are supposed to read the cases. But in the exam I hardly found any questions from the cases. Strange!!!! This tragedy led to an open meeting with the entire student body for letting all the students know the reasons behind the postponement and person(s) behind this. No wonder if this meeting lead to impeachment of any elected student body.

Honour code violation:-D

This is a revolutionary movie about a group of students who rise against the system. The means they used to achieve the goal will always be questioned. But not their motive.

Last day with the core section

Yesterday was the last day with our core section and core study groups. We all had a very nice time for the past 6 months. Its very tough to believe that almost 6 months has passed. We had a section T-shirt day yesterday. Here you can see couple of snaps of our section.



Bidding process is finished for 5th term. I could get all the subjects which I bidded for. I took 3 finance subjects and one IT subject for term5. I am sure workload will be high in term5, which is starting on 16th of october.

In another two days we are gonna be 50% MBA's. Two days??? Yes, its end term exams time. Chalo backto studies:-(

Section Parties

As this is the last core term and every section is going to get dissolved after this term, sections are busy in partying, going for some outings etc. Our section had two outings till now in this term. We all went to "Lageraho Munnabhai" movie and recently went to another outing. Unfortunately I missed both of them due to some reasons. We also celebrated formals day (Everyone in the section came in formals with proper business suit and other required accessories) and traditional day (Guys in proper traditional attire, gals in sarees and Chudidhars) in this term.

Today we all celebrated Dandiya Raas playing Dandiya till 2 Am That was really fun. Almost everyone of us played Dandiya. I never played Dandiya till today. First time in my life I played Dandiya and I really enjoyed it.

Just 5 days left for our End term exams. This time all are faff subjects. Guess what! I am planning to take Fin major. Credit goes to Professor Ramana Sonti. He is our current prof who is teaching Investment Analysis in this term.

Like puzzles

Do you like puzzles? Here is an interesting link for you then.

One of my friend has forwarded this link.

http://www.freestuffhotdeals.com/hacker/1.html
I took 17 minutes to hack this. Got strucked for 4 minutes at stupid 'ojofuffo'. Ofcourse this puzzle is not really that tough. I am sure one can finish this in around 10 minutes. Will post all answers after a while. Till then enjoy this.

Term 4 (sep 4th-Oct 6th)

Our last core term (Term4) started yesterday. As usual we have four subjects in this term and the subjects are:-

1. Investment analysis (INVA)
2. Government, Society and Business (GSB)
3. Management of organizations (MGTO)
4. Strategic analysis of Information technology (SAIT)

Except Investment anaysis rest three are qualitative subjects. Learning wise we will learn a lot in a very much broader view in this term. Though not much work in an academic point of view, we need to work harder for other things like ELP (Experiential Learning Program), PAEV (Planning an Enterpreneurial Venture), LDP (Leadership development program), Problem solving skills workshop (conducted by Mckinsey) , finance workshops etc etc. Every minute is valuable. Also in the last week of this term, we may need to bid for fifth term subjects.

This term is squeezed into 5 weeks rather than regular 6 weeks term. Looks some companies may come in mid october for placements too. But no concrete data available about that. Resume workshops, General sessions by CEO's (which are biased as preplacement talks) are starting in a much faster pace. Hope I handle all these without any stress. Let the force be with me.

Back after a long break

After a long time here am back to blogging. We finished our term3 and currently enjoying the term3 break with some ELP (Experiential Learning program) project stuff. I still haven't decided whether to take major in finance or not. Few alumni said that in their batch most of the people dropped their idea of specializing in finance after doing investment analysis subject in term4. Looks that is pretty tough. Our term4 is going to start from coming monday. The other 3 subjects we are gonna have this term is kind of qualitative stuff. I decided to keep my total effort in Investment analysis. If I can understand the concepts well and if I can score better in Investment analysis then for sure I will take Finance as my major. Otherwise I will just give up and balance my portfolio with some Leadership and change management and Enterpreneurship subjects.

Today we had a project (ELP) kickoff meeting. When we are discussing about the scope of the project with the CEO, he mentioned a lot of terms which we learnt all these days in our MBA. I am sure this project will help us in applying our MBA learnings and it will also enhance our skill base. We prepared project plan and discussed few things like how to go about it and other related stuff. We are supposed to finish the project by December-23rd. Hope we do our best in the project.

By the way I forgot to mention. I got scholarship very recently. When I shared this news with my dad he was very happy and I could see his happiness in his eyes very clearly. It is a real great feeling to see your parents feel great about you. I can give up anything in my life to see my dad in such a way. I know how I am brought up. Never in my life I can forget my roots.

Tough Gets going

Just today we got our midterms over. After writing exams almost every 15 days, today I didn't even feel like I gave my mid term exams. May be as it is said "when the going gets tough, the tough gets going". We almost got habitutated to the pressures and these exams. In the core terms we will have only study group. With just one study group I have seen so many conflicts rising in the groups for whatsoever reason.

From 5th term we are gonna have electives. So we may have to form our own study group and the study group varies with each subject. And apart from that we will have another group for the ELP project. So per term we may have 5 study groups. I really can't think of that situation how we are gonna finish our assignments when there will be more than one assignment.

This week we have so many assignments and I have interview for ELP project too. One of my friend came from banglore for just 2 days. One friend is leaving hyderabad. One friend is going to US.Few mails to reply. Uff so many things to do. Can't even afford to go outside of the campus to meet my friends. Just 2 more weeks for this term to get over. My god! I really couldn't believe this. I am sure by the time I come out of this shock our term4 will get started.

Did this really need a click?

This looks really funny. No idea why this man want to take a photograph when their faces are hardly seen. Any Guesses?

Bidding

Today we finished indicative bidding for the electives. I am in a major dilemma in selecting the specializations. I have three choices in which I need to pick 2. I am thinking about IT,Finance and Entrepreneurship. Considering the fact that I have around 3 years of experience looks it would be better if I select IT as one of my major. IT and finance combination will be good. But am I planning to shift to finance???No clue, but just keeping the option open about that as of now. I guess I may land up taking IT and finance. We need to take 6 subjects in one concentration if we have to specialize in it. In IT I could get only 4 interesting subjects. Need to analyse more. Even after analysing if I dont get the other 2, I am not going to take 2 extra IT subjects just for the heck of specialization.

After having a glance at all the subjects, I am getting a feel that ISB MBA is sort of Quant oriented. Apart from the subjects I should start working on other things like industry analysis, collecting information about companies and things like that. I just prepared some rough plan about this. Let me see if I can stick to that plan. Most people don't plan to fail. They fail to plan. Atleast I overcomed the first step.

I couldn't change my sleep cycle though we have morning classes this term. Just got habituated sleeping around 4AM. It is bit easier for me to get up by 7:45 or 8 AM than hitting the sack before 4AM. Till now managed to attend all classes. Anyways just 12 more days I should follow this morning schedule.

Ok chalo guys. Buenos noches Y Buen fin de semana.

Quite confused

In the very first week itself am feeling that Term3 is very hectic. Except Enterpreneurship, other 3 subjects look similar to me. Somehow landing up in calculating present values and net present values. Totally lost in the other 3 subjects. I need to figure this out in this week itself to avoid later repercussions :-D. Before we come out of term2 trauma, so many assignments lined up in term3. Thats life at ISB.

Finally marketing results of term1 are out. I didn't score well in marketing, but thats okey. I am pretty sure that I am not taking marketing as my major. I really can't see myself doing some conjoint analysis down the lane in my career. yet to finalise about electives. I should catch hold of some alumns regarding this. Let me see.

PS:I lost my mobile two days back. That was my brother's gift. So sort of feeling senti about that. Anyways no point in thinking about that right now. I could retain my same old number. Thanks to Airtel. :-)

Term3

From tomorrow term3 is going to start. This time we have morning classes . I am habituated to sleep late and get up late from past 7 years. I used to bunk my breakfast just to sleep for some more time in my engineering days. Even my previous company timings were very odd (1 PM to 10 PM). I got used sleeping at 3 or 4 Am in the morning and getting up by 9 or 10 in the morning. I can't blame anyone for this. Its all my mind set. I just have to make my mind to think that I am a early riser. Let me see if I can succeed. But for sure I am gonna miss atleast 1 or 2 classes this term.

In this term we have
1. Enterpreneurship
2. Managerial Accounting and Decision making
3. Operations management and
4. Corporate finance.

I need to decide about my major(s) also. I am not very keen in taking IT&Tech as my major. Being a techie and taking IT major doesn't make any sense.But yet to decide. Thinking about finance and enterpreneurship as of now. Also this is the right time to start preparing resumes and analysing industries. Most of our alumns suggested to do this right from Day 1. Anyways its never too late:-). Okey more later. Adios:-D

Likhthe Jao...Likhthe jao

Today our competitive strategy paper was in this way. I didn’t like the way the paper was set for this exam. As part of the competitive strategy course we studied 10 cases (Cola wars, Nucor Steel, Intel, Jollibee foods, Eli Lilly, Cisco, Dell, Walmart stores, Mckinsey and Johnson & Johnson). It is an open book exam. Basically this exam tested our written skills rather than the strategy concepts I guess. At the same time this is the first open book exam which most of us (or rather everyone) used books extensively.

Instead the paper should have been something like a case followed by few questions about case like key takeaways from the case or something of that sort. Anyways I am just glad that paper got over.

Two more to go for this term2 to get over. ;-)

Economics

Economics is one subject which really fascinated me from term-1. Even the professors for Eco were damn good. Prof. Rakesh Vohra from Kellogg and Prof. Krishna Kumar from Duke are simply superb. They both have their own styles of teaching. As part of the course we have seen the commanding heights documentary. This is the best documentary I have ever seen.

Starting from Micro economics which took us from demand and supply relationship at firm level, industry level ended with Macro Economics which took us till speculative attacks in the economy. Previously I used to read some articles about economy. But apart from the article I read I couldn’t sense more than that like the theory behind that. Now these frameworks helped me a lot in understanding so many concepts. Global economics covered lot of topics like fiscal policy, monetary policy, foreign exchange, PPP, reserves, credibility regime, inflation , deflation, exchange fluctuations, budget deficits and surpluses, reasons for slow down in the economy, productivity shocks, currency appreciations, depreciations etc .

Here is an interesting video talk by prestowitz (president of economic strategy institute) about the impact of the return of India and china.

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/358/

US may have to face some tough times if the growth in India and china continues in the same pace. According to few research papers US is heading towards bankruptcy. But Bush administration still says its budget deficit is just 2.3pc of GDP which is smaller than UK. And another threat to US is baby boomer generation is going to retire and the expenditure on health care goes up. They may have to balance the budget by increasing the taxes.

Here is another video (funny) which is done by columbia MBA students for their skit party. The person singing in the video is pretending to be Glenn Hubbard who was one of the leading candidates to be the Chair of the Federal Reserve, but the job was instead given to Ben Bernanke.

http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/everybreath/

PS: Entire 6 hour documentary of commanding heights can be viewed in the below link.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/hi/story/index.html

QuickTime needs to be installed for this. All Episodes (full 6 hour video) is available online to be watched for free.

Its my turn to get tagged

I have been tagged by my friend Kishore . Now I need to finish these fill up the blanks and tag few people. Here I go:-

I am thinking who the hell has started this. I am thinking the upside of writing this is giving some time to introspect about self

I said Excellence is not a destination, it’s a journey

I want to gift a house to my parents and I want to see them well settled

I wish all my friends get settle in their lives.

I miss all my friends and my doggie.

I hear to my mind and heart

I wonder why some people make silly things into very big issues

I regret few things in life

I am a simple girl

I dance when I am alone and when i have absolutely nothing to do

I sing when am in a peak state of happiness (but make sure no one is around me :-D)

I cry when I feel low to just forget about things and to come to normal state. But I hardly cry. Even if I cry, I cry alone

I am not perfectionist.

I write anything that comes into my mind

I hate cheating someone or getting cheated by someone

I confuse always between left and right

I need a good job after my MBA at ISB

I should work hard to achieve my goals

I finish this post with this line.

I tag
rujuta
Vinay
Prathima
Nikhil
Chaitanya

MBA Jargons

I was just talking to one of my friends, who is working in Chicago. She was saying that she could see lot of change in my language in terms of using jargon. She says MBA is nothing but seeing the simple life in a complex view and making things unnecessarily complex. We had a healthy debate on this for almost 45 minutes. She might be true in saying that MBA’s use jargons a lot but yes, they don’t see simple things in a complex manner. In fact they make your life simple. I just said forget how people are seeing it. Ultimately we need the solution at the end of the day for any problem. Whatever may be the approach, at the end of the day we need an optimal solution. He/she who succeeds in this is the actual winner.

Few jargons:-

Incentive: - This is the most important thing for anyone for doing anything under the sky. Life just moves on with incentives. People may argue that there are many things in the world that just moves without incentive. But if you look at them carefully there will be some incentive. I know by now you might have started thinking about Non-profit organizations. They may not work for profit but yes, there is an incentive for them to work for fame or an incentive of self-satisfaction.

Trade-off:- Everyone might have done some trade-off before choosing anything. May be they might not have used the word trade-off but they might have did this in their day to day life. When we have two choices in our hand how do you think we choose one finally. We may do lot of trade-off between them, try to find out which gives us more incentive to go ahead, do some calculations if any, weigh the pros and cons of both and see the long run profitability and then we finally choose one.

Few more jargons like marginal, strategy, Core competencies, Competitive advantage, Optimize

The list goes on and on. I may come up with few more interesting jargons as I move further in my MBA.

Gone are the Days

Got up at 10:30 Am in the morning. Had a nice Aalu paratha. Then went to a movie. After that lunch in a restaurant with friends. Came back to home. Slept for another two hours. Then again went outside with friends. Had pani puri and chat. Still so much of time left in the day. Nothing much to work. Suddenly one of my friends called me up just to say “Good Morning Anu”. Got up from bed just to realize all that was a DREAM.

Sometimes Dreams will be good only if they remain as dreams. Do you guys think I can enjoy my life if that dream comes true? No way! I will just get bored with that life. May be for 2 days I may enjoy. But definitely not even if it is for one week.

I miss my childhood days. I miss my Engineering days. I miss those days I worked in my previous company. I am sure after one year I will say I miss those days at ISB.

Wondering what happened to me? Guess what!!!!! Today is my birthday. As per the tradition I got dunked last night. I really don't have any idea where I will be celebrating my next birthday. Yup ofcourse time will tell.

Those who wanted to apply to ISB can visit the below link to know more about the schedule and other details:
http://isb.edu/pgp/visit/admissions_important_schedule.asp

There was an interesting article ( "B-School: How different is ISB?" ) about ISB in Rediff. Check out the below link if u guys wanna read.
http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2006/jul/03isb.htm

Another article in rediff, which is an interview with the admission director of ISB:
http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/jul/04inter.htm

PS: Today is my Mom’s birthday too

Editor's Round Table at ISB

The students of the Indian School of Business, are organising a Mega event - the “Editors’ Round Table” being held on Saturday, July 1, 2006 at the ISB. The event will be held from 2:15 pm to 4:45 pm at the Khemka Auditorium.

The topic of discussion for the Round Table is:

Is the lack of political involvement amongst the youth a threat to economic growth?

We have invited interesting speakers for the Round Table and they are:
Alam Srinivas – Editor, Outlook Group
Kaveree Bamzai – Executive Editor, India Today
CRL Narasimhan - Associate Editor, The Hindu
Kumar Ketkar - Chief Editor, Indian Express Group
Niranjan Rajadhyaksha – Deputy Editor, Businessworld

In a world where professional preferences take precedence over political opinion, and political involvement is restricted to sporadic and half-hearted expressions of solidarity over individual issues - like the recent increase in reservation - the health of the Indian polity is seriously under threat. When political opinion can change the course of countries, it is disheartening to see the world's largest democracy lounge in political decadence; with the youth not doing much to change it. We hope to generate a healthy debate on this subject and sensitise the Indian youth to issues that have the power to influence our future. It will be a pleasure to have you participate in the interactive session during the Round Table.

If anyone interested in participating you can register at

www.isb.edu/RoundTable2006/register.html

Mumbai Dabbawalahs

Just two days back we had an interactive session with Mumbai Dabbawala association. They spoke about their clock-wise efficiency, low-cost operations. They are really experts at supply chain management. These people are really famous for their clockwise precision in supplying meals and were recently accorded a six sigma performance rating. They have only one error in 6 million deliveries.

What is that really so interesting about them?

Out of 5000 work-force very few understand English. They don't even understand the terms logistics, supply chain management etc. Delivering almost 2 lakh lunch boxes everyday using cycles and local trains and with perfect accuracy of time without using any technology is not the easy thing. Everyone is a share holder in the entire supply chain irrespective of the potential they have or the position they are in.

The few funny comments made by Raghunath Medge (Association President) and Gangaram Talekar in the presentation are

"We didn't even know the six sigma certification given to us. When we were told about it, we wondered what metal sigma was, gold or silver,"

"When we got a call from London that Prince Charles would like to meet us during his visit in Mumbai, we said he could meet us at Churchgate station at 11.10 am as we could not disrupt our regular operations,"

"I don't understand terms like logistics, supply chain or time accuracy...I just know my work is to deliver lunch boxes on time,"

The presentation was very humorous and inspiring. There is lot to learn from these guys. A long way to go. Hats off to Dabbawalahs for their dedicated work.

Here are the few newspaper clippings which covered about Mumbai Dabbawalah's presentation:

Now slowly these dabbawalah's are also becoming tech savvy. They recently launched an SMS service to expnd its customer base.

que pasa?

Buenos dias (Gud Morning) . Wondering what is this. Some of you might have figured out by now. Yes, I am learning the spanish language. Basically I love learning languages.(That doesn't mean that i know many languages). I know telugu, English, Bit of Hindi, Bit of tamil, Lil Bit of malayalam. In my previous company there are people from different regions like West bengal, orissa. From them I used to learn few words and reiterate those words. I used to have lot of fun talking to them with the very few words I know, in their respective languages. Of course I miss all that now. Anyways am learning spanish to compensate that. I guess I took a good decision to learn the spanish language. Many of my friends asked me where the hell I get time to learn languages. 4 hrs in the weekend is ofcourse a big chunk of time. But I felt, out of the hectic schedule and the trauma we face, this kind of course gives us some pleasure and fun. Trust me guys! Its really fun. But yes even this course has mid-term and end-term:-D

This term is quite hectic than term1. Markstrat is taking almost half of the term2's time. We are supposed to take 7 decisions for markstrat. Till now we finished only first decision. BTW our firm is performing pretty good in the markstrat world and we stand 3rd in the entire markstrat world of 90 firms (As of now). Hope we continue the same for the coming periods too.

Till term1 we used to have assignment deadlines by morning 8 or 8:45. So most of us used to finish the assignments by 2 or 3 in the morning and submit them at that odd hours. But yesterday we have got the DMOP assignment deadline at 12AM. I have seen many people catching their assignments and running at 11:59PM. LRC was totally crowded with the people waiting for their prints at the LRC printer. Check the snap of the log of the LRC printer. This is just the sample.
Loads of work to do. :-(
Adios. Hasta luego (Bye. See you later)

PS: Que pasa? means Wassup?
Markstrat decisions is nothing like fixing some key values to your product attributes, allocating some R&D Budget, allocating the sales force, distribution channels, targeting the proper segments, fixing the price, deciding on production of number of units for each brand etc etc.

Markstrat & Lemonade

Markstrat is the simulation of the real business phenomenon particularly the strategic marketing phenomenon. We were divided into groups and each group represents a firm. E ach firm faces a competitive environment in which four other firms operate similarly. We have to make strategic decisions like brand portfolio, product design, distribution, pricing, advertising, salesforce, Segmentation& positioning strategy, R&D etc under uncertainity. We were given certain budget and we have to allocate the budget intelligently or rather i should say strategically. In the process of this simulation, we have to make 7 decisions about our product characteristics, budget allocation etc stuff.

I am sure this will be pretty interesting as this is just the simulation of real market. Every group will be eager to see the firm's results at the end of the period (after every decision) and the profits/losses they make. But this is gonna take most of the term2's time.

I remember playing Lemonade game few months back which is also just a simulation of real market. But there are no competitors in that game. Its just a monopoly. My highest profit was some $143. If you guys wanna play that game follow the link:
http://schools.nycenet.edu/d75/his/shack/games/
lemonade/lemonade.html

You will have complete control of the inventory, supplies, pricing, quality etc. Based on the weather, price you charge and the quality of your product your product gets sold. Believe me this is really an interesting game. When i played the game for the first time I could just make some $35 I think. See whether there is a budding enterpreneur in you. Report back your profits if possible:-)

Term2

From tomorrow our term2 starts. Good thing about term2 is our classes will be in the afternoon. I am sure most of our section guys crib about this term's class timings as the classes immediately start after the lunch. May be with two cups of tea in the two breaks I can overcome sleep.

Four subjects in this term are:-

1. Competitive strategy (CSTR)
2. Marketing Decision making(MKDM)
3. Decision models and optimization (DMOP)
4.Global Economics.(GLEC)

I am sure I enjoy the subject Global Economics. From the size of the coursepack of competitive strategy, i can say that we are gonna learn many things about strategy, competitive advantage, strategic moves etc. We need to do 10 cases for this subject. One thing which really pricks me is all the 10 cases are american cases. They could have added few Indian cases in the study. Anyways no one is stopping me to read the extra case right! (But where the hell i get time to read. Newazzz for sure i will manage myself to read. Lemme see).

And in the Marketing decision making, I think the markstrat will be interesting. This will be as interesting as the marketing management of term1. And the last subject for the term- Decision models and optimization. Looks this is Quant oriented subject with some statistics involved. Till now i didn't even look at the index of this subject. Getting scared by seeing the size of the coursepack itself.

Just few hours back I came to the campus. Need to read one case and few pages from the course pack for CSTR. Feeling sleepy, but..... can't help. Will try to finish the case atleast for now.

End of the Beginning

Today is the last day for term1 and we have our term1 exams on coming monday and tuesday. Yes! 2 subjects per day. We learnt a lot in this short period. All the 4 subjects are helpful and we can use this knowledge in real time scenarios. I will try to give the gist of all the 4 subjects.

Marketing:- All we learnt in this subject is, how to market your product, which customers to target, what is the right time to launch your product, how you will be able to differentiate your product, At what price you should sell your product. what is the customer life time value, What is the economic value for your prodcut etc etc. In short marketing is all about serving the consumer needs in a mutual beneficial manner. We did 4 cases in marketing which covered all the main topics of marketing. Ofcourse still there is lot more to learn in marketing.

Small example which we noticed while we are doing our assignment in a group room. There were different markers in the room. On one marker it is written as "Please replace the cap after use". On other marker it is written something like "It can sustain for more than 24 hours without cap". This is nothing but product differentiation right :-)

Micro Economics:- This subject is very interesting. Ofcourse lot of calculus involved in the first half. The main topics we discussed here is Opportunity cost, Marginal costs, Consumer and producer surplus, Monopoly, Oligopoly, Game theory. Generally when we have two options, we choose the option which gives more profit. But while calculating the cost, we never consider the cost we are foregoing by not choosing the other option. That is nothing but opportunity cost.

For Eg: Cost of our education at ISB is 13+1.5+1+miscellaneous = 16 lakhs. What is the cost of not coming to ISB. Our usual salary. On average 5 lakhs(p.a). So the total cost of MBA at ISB is around 21 lakhs. My God!!!!

I cannot explain you all the concepts here. But believe me this subject is really interesting particularly the last concept Game theory.

Financial Accounting:- This subject covered all the basic concepts of accounting, like the 3 financila statements, depreciations, amortizations, depletions, Stocks, Inventory, Bonds,Leases etc stuff. I don't need to tell the importance of accounting in the real life. Without accounting its tough to survive.

Still am not confident in this subject. I guess i need to work hard in this.

Statistics:- Though this subject initially was very confusing (atleast to me) now am able to understand this subject well. It is all about sampling, regressions etc stuff. Statistics helps a lot when we need to estimate or predict, or how to pick up the samples, how to do regression analysis on the samples, how to analyse the results etc.

But don't you think we are bombarded with too much stuff. As I said before, if we are able to finish everything on time, including pre-reads, post reads etc then there is no need to worry at all. Or atleast if one can listen well and concentrate in the class lectures then its fine.

Apart from academics what all we learnt in this short duration:

1. Getting ready in 5-7 minutes. I mean to say getting up from bed at 8:35 and being there in the class by 8:45.
2. Finishing the work perfectly (bug free code i mean) in the11th hour.
3. Taking the photograph of the notes rather than writing it.
4. Giving good excuses if we fail in any work.
5. Sleeping in the class by keeping laptops open or by keeping cap (As Mr. G do in the class usually).
...
....
Lot more to write.

For now I will end it here, as i need to do lot in accounting.

Only two lists

Today we got the Eco midterm marks. So many surprises, disappointments etc etc in the campus. Everyone started sharing their marks and comparing with others. Highest mark is 45 and lowest is 8. Mean is 24.2715 (yes 4 decimal accuracy) and median is 24. Even the standard deviation is given. It is 7.38484 (5 decimal accuracy).

People who got above 35 are 12% of the class. Might be the dean listers. What about the rest of the batch. Black listers!!! So if someone is not in the dean list(<35) then there is no difference between a guy who got 34 and who got 20. Is it so??? For now, I can't agree with this. May be not much difference between 34 and 30. But certainly there is a huge difference between 34 and 12 right??? Ofcourse MBA is not just getting a good CGPA. It is all about how well you are able to equip with the tools and frameworks and how well you can apply them in the real scenarios.

I don't want to reveal my marks to my parents and make them scared. I just pray god that they should not enquire my marks. Let me see if I can do better in my end term. Chalo anu padaaii karo.

Split Personality!!!!

After giving the mid term exams, don't know what really happened to me. One of my friend is saying that i had split personality. When the mid term exams got over, everyone (excluding the muggu club members) is glad just because they are over and all started partying, enjoying,cribbing about Eco paper etc etc. I really don't know what happened to me. I just came back to room and seriously opened the accounting book and started reading. No No I am not a maggu club member. Might be the mid term repercussion. :-? And all of a sudden I started giving gyan to my friend it seems.

I will be more glad if the same split personality stay with me till this term get over. Hardly 13 days for term exams. I don't want to screw my end term exams. But anyways great lesson learnt from the mid term. Lot of assignments to be done this week, which are due by wednesday 8:45 Am. Ok chalo then back to work:-)

PS: BTW I changed my blog lil bit. I added some music also. I know this music is lil boring. But not getting time to collect some pleasant music. Once I get that I will update my blog. Now don't ask me where the heck you are getting time to update the blog :-D

Mid-Term Fever

Before everyone of us started thinking about the term1 start and its subjects, half of the term already got over. Coming friday we have the mid term exams. Fortunately/unfortunately we have mid term exams for only 2 subjects (Eco and stats). Now all the 422 students joined the maggu club and the membership holds good until this friday evening. Now we started thinking the impact of assignments. Yes,Assignments do help us.

Statistics looks confusing or may be i am feeling so. People who don't know anything about statistics looks relaxed. People who know everything about stats also looks relaxed. People (like me) who knows certain concepts are in deeper trouble trying to figure out how to calculate p-value, what is the use of t-statistic and z-statistic. We are trying to figure out what to write the cheat sheet even :-D

Economics is too much of quantitative stuff mainly calculus. But the concepts are interesting. It is an open book exam. But just think, given just 90 minutes time, where the hell you get time to open the book and search for a problem. Here again the problem is, the more examples we work out the more confident we feel. But how to define "more examples". How many problems one need to work out. We statisticians deals only with numbers. :-D

Exams are very common here at ISB. Just imagine one's life with full of pre-reads, post-reads, assignments, club meetings, group meetings, backlogs, mid-term exams, end-term exams, parties, hangovers and last but not the least ..filling the excel sheets:-D. And all this just within a year (Huh!).I am pretty sure that everyone of us enjoys every moment at ISB.

After learning too much of statistics, I just feel like defining the null hypothesis about myself. Yeah! U heard right! It's about me.

H0: Anu doesn't know statistics -Null ypothesis
Ha: Anu knows statistics well. -Alternate hypothesis

Will let you guys know whether to accept/reject the null hypothesis after the mid term exam.

PS: Cheat sheet is the A4 size paper which will be allowed to take with us in the exam. You can write anything under the sky in that paper.

GSB elections & SPAM

I am not sure who will win in our GSB elections, but we poor souls are ending with so much of SPAM in the mail boxes.

The funny thing is someone sending a spam mail saying that please don't send spam :-) . Even after so much of spam I can show you atleast 20 people who even doesn't know the nominees. This tells how the guys are campaigning. Or to put in other words, those 20 ppl category doesn't care what is going on in the campus apart from the acads :-D. Might be muggu club members.
But the surprising thing is, so many people are making things complicated and unnecessary issues. I guess all this problems will be solved if the nominess themselves take care and start their effective campaigning.

The basic qualities what everyone expects from a GSB president is, he/she should be someone who is easily approachable. Since he/she will be representing the ISB student body, he/she should have the knack of getting things done, good conflict resolution skills, decision making skills etc etc. Just to say in a simpler words he/she should be a perfect leader. But in the short duration, how can we judge whether a particular person is so and so. Thats where we voters should develop good judgement skills. :-D. Hope this GSB elections will go smoothly without any conflicts (unlike the real time elections).

Coming to the academic front, as I said in my previous post, we have submitted the ECO assignment, just an hour back. In accounting Quiz most of us scored 83 out of 83. Cool!

So far So good

Two weeks already passed away in term1. Mid term exams are around and GSB elections are also around. By end of next week we might be giving farewell to some of our faculty who has come from wharton and columbia universities. This week fortunately we have only one assignment and one quiz. But the Eco assignment is tough compared to the previous one (atleast to me). I really get frightened by listening that some guys already finished their eco assignment. How the hell they could do so fast. Why am i not able to be in the same pace.

Typically most of our assignments start like this.

1. Download the PDF document from the blackboard on thursday night.
2. Have a glance at it.
3. Call up friends and enquire if they have started.
4. Chitchat with them in the intercom.
5. Gossip about all stupid stuff in the world
6. Check emails
7. Log on to Yahoo messenger to see if ne friends are online
8. As it is just thursday attending some party going on in one of the student village or ending up watching a DVD
9. Again call up friends and enquire how the assignment is (tough/easy)
10. Refresh the mailbox (If at all mailbox gets life, it will kick u for refreshing it that many times)
11. Turning the newspaper in and out.
12. Going to sleep early on thursday thinking of doing assignment on friday
13. Finally starting the assignment on friday evening/night
14. Asking about the assignment status to whomsoever you meet.
15. Attending the group meeting on saturday to finish the assignment.
16. Finally submitting the assignment on sunday night.

But there are really smart people whose smart way of doing the assignment is :

1. Download the PDF immediately after the class.
2. Start the assignment and end it by thursday night.
3. Attending the party in the Student village and cursing themselves for wasting time.
4. Heading towards LRC to work out more problems.

In out first Eco assignment, our group scored full marks. As the weightage of Eco assignment is taken as 100% (Best of the two) + 50% (other assignment), its a kind of relief to our group. But the pool over here is best of the best. So to be in line with them, we too need to struggle. ok chalo then let me finish the eco assignment by the end of the day atleast.

PS: GSB- Graduate Student Board. The student reps of this team will meet with the heads of the PGP team after every term and any issues will be taken to the PGP unit thru GSB.

Important info for prospective students:-Looks ISB is not considering GRE scores from this year.

Assignments

Everyone looks very relaxed in the campus after submitting the marketing assignment on Jones Blair case. Here is just a snap which we took while we are submitting the hard copy of the assignment. Some groups finished this assignment much before. Might be they are too smart. I really can find four types of people here.

Type-1.. Hard working guys and will always lock themselves in the library or either in their rooms. Am sure these people wanted to get into the dean's list and wanted to crack the consulting jobs. God bless them.

Type-2... Smart enough, but keeps on boasting that they studied that, this and starts frightening others. These guys are really over confident and feels that as if they can crack nething under the sky. Who knows, these people may shift slowly to type-1 or type-2. They might be committing false positive or false negative error. They can only find out this if they are perfect in statistics.

Type-3.. These guys don't know what is happening around. confused types and will understand their potential only after term-1 results. Struggle hard to manage their time and think of doing everything, but ends with doing nothing. They just wait for weekend to come, so that they can finish all the backlogs. But weekend comes and goes increasing the qty of backlogs.

Type-4. Just trying to figure out themselves in whic type they can fit in. Thats me :-D

I think i should atleast learn from others. Chalo time to open Eco book.

Dunking!!!!

We had a party fund left over in the last hyd meet. We celebrated the birthday of K today with that fund. Poor fellow, got birthday bumps. Funny thing is he started shouting before getting the bumps. And he is more eager to get dunked. It seems he didn't even take the bath as he very well know that he will get dunked. :-D. After the cake cutting and all, we took him to the pool and dunked him. Even i got dunked today for the first time. Slowly we started dunking everyone nearby at the pool.

This dunking is one of the many things, which is carried away as a tradition from our alumns. Birthday guy/girl has to get dunked in the pool. And most of the times other poor souls like me also get dunked. But believe me guys, its really fun :-). Big party going on in our village. I was there for half an hour or so. I was soooo amazed by one of the guy's dance. He is standing in the same place, just moving his feet and dancing so good. I was really agaped.Damn! Now am feeling hungry. Hmmm. Managed to get some bread pieces roasted in butter. Hope it satiates my hunger. Newazzz am gonna get up late tomorrow. Lemme read the marketing case and then sleep. Economics assignment is almost done except the final decorations. Accounting tho hogaya and most of us got 60 out of 60. Yet to do the marketing assignment. I just read the first para. Will try to analyse it now. Oops its already 1:50. Never mind. Its never too late. Gudnite!

First Official weekend

Haila! First weekend. Surprising thing is here weekend starts by thursday itself. But what is the use. Loads of work to do. Need to revise the last week's classes. When in the class, I feel like I understood everything. But when I try to recollect I could only see stars moving in my head.

Will try to finish atleast two assignments by friday night and will revise all the 4 subjects in the weekend. Managerial Economics questions are really funny and sounds interesting. We need to calculate the economic profit for sanjay leela bansali if he considers aiswarya rai in his new movie "Devdas Part II -- Terror in Bengal." Just wondering if sanjay leela bansali calculates the economic profit if he ever need to consider aiswarya in his movie :-D
Accounting mey i feel like it is all about how intelligently you balance the balance sheet. Ofcourse there is more than that. Just kidding.
Marketing is the class which is really interesting as we always discuss the real time cases. In fact the faculty makes the class more interesting by showing some videos in the class.
Statistics- Dunno exactly what is going on. I am totally in a baffled state. I need to work more on this subject this weekend.

Almost half of the ISB students can be seen outside the campus. As I stayed in hyderabad from past three years, visited all the famous sites and nothing much left to see in the city. But I can always accompany my friends ofcourse. Managed to get tickets for the movie "pink panther" for tomorrow's evening show at PVR.

Actual Roller coaster ride started

Term1 started from today. (Term1-> 1st May to 11th June). The subjects for term1 are as follows:-

1. Financial Accounting inDecision making-FADM
2. Marketing management=MKTG
3. Statistical methods for Management Decisions-SMMD
4. Managerial Economics-MGEC

We just have 2 classes per day (2hrs per class). But we have lot of pre-reads and post reads for each subject. The total schedule for term1 is given like number of assignmets to be done, deadlines for submitting the assignments etc.

Today we had acctng and Marketing classes. Day started with accounting class. Accounting class is not that interesting. Marketing class is very good as there was some case discussion about FedEx. Asim Ansari (Columbia Prof) is very good. Just to break the ice he started the class with a small joke.

An intelligent CEO of one company wanted to know about his staff and he slowly visits each department one by one.

First he visits the engineering department and asks " what is 2+2"? Then the immediate answer from the engineering dept was 4.000000. CEO feels Woww, 6 decimals. Perfect.

Then he moves to marketing department and asks the same question. Then he gets the answer "2+2 is 4. But if we make it to 3.99 then we can get more value". CEO gets impressed.

Then he moves to human resources team and asks the same question. He gets the answer "Sir, actually it is 4. but with good team work we can make it to 5".

Finally he moves to accouting department and poses the same question. U know what happened? Ne guesses?????

Ok Ok i will tell. Don't stretch. Accounting manager immediately closes the door and asks the CEO "Which number you want me to keep?" :-D :-D

While discussing the FedEx case, class participation is marvelous. Few of my section student's friends themseleves were working in FedEx and they have lot of inside data apart from the case. Ofcourse prof didn't allow the inside data, as we are supposed to go with the data provided.

After the case discussion, adverisement effects and all, we got to see the actual ads by FedEx. There was one hilarious ad by FedEx. You can check out that ad in the following link:

http://www.fedex.com/us/about/unitedstates/
advertising/tvads/mbawm.html

Yesterday someone was saying that the answer to FedEx case was 43!!!!! I just got shocked and ran into my quad and checked the book to verify whether i missed anything in my analysis. That was real shocking? How can anyone can come up with a solution for a case. Its a case, not the math problem to work out.

But after listening to two classes, what I could make out is-attending any class without pre-read is mere waste and in turn it will lead us to confusion. Hope I finish all the pre-reads before attending any class.

PS: Take the ad in a positive sense.

Finance=Logic+CommonSense+Stretch

The one good decision I have taken is enrolling only in accounting pre-term. Today we had the last pre-term class on accounting. Just 4 classes and looks we learnt a lot in accounting. But still not confident enough. Prof was too good. For now the subject looks very interesting. But there is lot of confusion too.

The thumb rule one has to remember in accounting is:

Debit is "what comes in"
Credit is "What goes out".

Now I have got some brief idea about journal, ledger etc. Can I prepare a balance sheet on my own. Hmmm, may be..but not that confident. Can I understand the transactions happened by seeing the balance sheet. hmmm :-? may be.

Now the confusing part is " When there is an expense, that means we are spending some money and they are going out" Then why do we say expense is debited and income is credited. This is where we hve to stretch more.

Thats why finance = logic + commonsense + stretch. :-)

Term1 is gonna begin from Monday. The seating arrangement is decided and affixed on the lecture theaters for each section. Still need to finish the reading of marketing management case.
will try to finish it by this night. So that I can go out to city tomorrow.

First class at ISB

Today I had the experience of first class at ISB. It’s a pre-term on Accounting. It is marvelous. I don’t really have words to explain. Faculty member Mubeen Rafat is too good. Since Accounting was new to most of us (IT guys and gals), so much of class participation. So many questions, so many doubts, from almost everyone in the class. Lot of questions like:

What is an asset?
Who will audit?
Who will pick the auditors?
What if auditors give wrong results?
How will cash become an asset since it didn’t incur any expenditure?
Whether salary is an asset or liability? Etc etc

In the class when mubeen was telling the example like “when we get 100/- from the stake holder and if we could generate 20/- as a profit from that….then one student asked a question like “how will the assets and liabilities get balanced now, as there is some profit generated. (Ofcourse it is a very basic question, but think in the perspective of the student who is very very new to accounting). Then immediately she answered “the extra generated profit 20/- becomes an asset and we are liable to share with the share holders too. So 20/- is to be written in the asset side to balance assets and liabilities. Then one guy immediately asked “Just for the heck of balancing I should write 20 in the assets side?” :-):-).There was one more interesting question. “If the company goes for bankruptcy, how can we show the company money in terms of shareholder’s own property?

But believe me, class was really really interesting or rather I should say interactive. 2 hrs just flew away.

Hmmm. Backlogs started. We are supposed to read the case before attending the Marketing class. Almost 150 pages to read. Few notes to read for other classes too. I should finish everything by this Saturday. Will try my best to finish.

Are you India's creative future?

The British Council is partnering with IIMB, UK experts and the Common Wealth Business Council to hunt for twenty creative or rather lucky candidates who have that potential and who can display the rampant courage. The twenty selected people will then be exposed to two-week training at IIMB. The "creative future" school inspired by the British Council will enable potential enterpreneurs to articulate the ideas in a way which will engage both western and eastern interests. the ultimate aim of this program is to "create a creative business path way between India and UK".

Applications are invited from individuals aged 18-35 from across the creative sector. Details and application form available on www.britishcouncil.org.in/creativefuture

Last date for submitting application is 6 May 2006.

Good opportunity for the people who are looking for the entrepreneurship and who have some creative business plan.:-)

Pre-Terms

Pre-term sessions started from today. The courses offered in the pre-terms are Quantitative methods, Business statistics and Introductory Accounting. We have given the pre-term assessment tests for all the three. I flunked in all the three tests, but opted only for accounting. Its not that am damn good at Quants and stats. When I gave those two tests I am aware of the terminology atleast, but for accounting i don't have any clue and am totally blank in that. My classes are gonna start from wednesday.

Now the biggest challenge to everyone ( atleast to me) is sitting continuosly in the class for 2 hours, concentrating in the class, taking notes etc etc. Unfortunately only 4 classes for accounting unlike quants and stats.

Feedback got from some of the students who attended the quants and stats class:-

Quants feedback:-
1. "Oh my God! He is so fast and i couldn't follow him properly. The mistake i did is i didn't pre-read the quants pre-term course pack".
2. "Quants is cool compared to stats. I guess its because of the faculty".

Statistics feedback:-
1. "What is the need to prolong that tobacco details so long. Sounds funny."
2. "Basically the faculty's voice is not very clear. It is tough to make out what he is speaking ."

As I said earlier sitting in the class continuously for 2 hrs, concentrating in the lecture is a tedious job . The more work ex a person has the more tedious it is. Getting back to academics will take some time. But I am damn sure everyone of us will be ok by May-1st. No other choice. We have to ....

For the last few days, there were some flood of mails, exel sheets. Everyone is ending with filling one or other excel sheet. This is just the start i suppose ;-)

Leadership Development program at ISB

Yesterday we had this Leadership development program (which is called as LDP) brief intro by one of the resident faculty. Last year this program spanned for three months. This time the duration is increased. Also as part of LDP, 360 degree feedback was taken about us from our colleagues and friends. All the 10 forms will be consolidated and they may suggest us some improvement areas. LDP program may cover some of the soft skills like personality analysis, listening skills, presentation skills etc.

MBTI (Myers-Briggs type indicator) is one of the widely used tool in the recruitment process. We are supposed to write a test and this MBTI will classify us in one of the 16 types and it will tell the recruiter whether we are apt for the role or not. This tool is used as part of the LDP last year. I am not sure whether this tool will be used this year too.

Diverse and talented pool

Last Night we have the talent night show. Show was amazing, awesome. I don’t have further words to explain about the show. Though our section didn’t win anything, I would like to appreciate the salsa and karaoke team for their great efforts and participation. Everyone did a fantastic job. ISB PGP 2007 batch consists of singers, dancers, guitarists, weight lifters, body builders, gold medalists, tax commissioners, models, choreographers etc. Such a diverse pool!!!

Too many mails flooding in the inbox regarding the formation of clubs, electing the club presidents, selecting the team members etc. Last year every club did a phenomenal job. Hope our batch do better than last year’s batch and hope this enthu continues till the year end.

PS: Looks section B is leading now in the intersectional competitions.

EVC club Gyaan and Inter sectional competitions

Entrepreneurship and venture capital club meet is the one which inspired me more than any other club gyaan till now. It’s just because of the speaker. One of our alumni has literally lured almost everyone into the entrepreneurship. He spoke very practically and brought the real facts in front. God bless him with bright future. Not only he in particular. Almost every alumni is very helpful and they are really cooperative. Expecting the same kind of cooperation from our batch too.

There were many inter sectional competitions conducted so far. Our section won the Frisbee match in today’s competitions. As of today, our section is leading. Still few more competitions to get over. Not sure who wins finally. If we keep aside these sections and all, we all belong to one community, i.e. ISB Community.

Just decided not to worry too much about the placements from day1. I will put my best and leave the rest to God.

First week at ISB

It was truly an amazing feeling to enter into ISB for MBA course. No doubt that anyone who visits ISB falls in love with this place. In the registration process which happened on 15th, we were allotted our pre-term section names, core-term section names, section details, study group members, core term course details and class timings per section etc etc. Orientation sessions were planned from 16th to 21st. And the pre term classes start from 24th and end by 30th April. I opted only for the accounting course to get the feel of the classes and to know the accounting terminology at least.

Started meeting many people, exchanging the profiles etc from day1. It’s really really tough to remember the names of the people though we exchanged our profiles. I hardly remember 60-70 names till now. We had the dean's and deputy dean's address to our class first. Dy Dean Mr. Ajit Rangnekar is a real smart guy. He has all kinds of flavor in him. I was truly inspired by his smartness. So many gyaan sessions, inter sectional competitions conducted by our alumnus. We should be extremely thankful to them for conducting some games which worked like ice breakers for us to know each other. And should appreciate them again for staying back to take these gyaan sessions.

The gist I could make out of all the gyaan sessions is:

1. Be aware of the honor code and don’t ever try to violate the honor code.
2. Plan well and don’t keep any backlogs.
3. Class participation is important. But yes, one should not ask questions just for the heck of it.
4. Grades are really important if one is looking over consultancy jobs.
5. Work hard and slog your ass out for the first four core terms. If you are able to make it to dean’s list continue with your hard work. Otherwise forget the grades and think seriously about the take over from each class.
6. Punctuality is another important factor. Be on time to class.
7. Submit your assignments on time.
8. For the group assignments, it’s the team work. Work well with your team, be good with them, and encourage them when they feel low.
9. Participate in some of the important club events.
10. Prepare yourself for placements well in advance i.e. right from term1.
11. STRESS! I guess this is the usual and the most common term I am going to hear for the next one year. Plan properly and overcome the stress.
12. Last but not the least is "Have fun for the whole year during ur stay at ISB".

We got 24 hours in our hand i.e. 1440 minutes. It’s all about managing these 1440 minutes properly and in a well planned manner. If I am able to succeed in managing my time well, I don’t need to use the word stress at all.

I wish all the best to all my batch mates :-)

Just Half day to go

After a long wait,finally the time has arrived. Hardly 12 hours to go to step my foot in ISB as a student. Just 1 year course. I have listened, read a lot about life at ISB for that one year. Very tight schedule. Planning is the IMPORTANT thing which is required now. I need to plan things well in advance. I should be able to manage my time well for activities other than studies too. I am very excited about the coming days and also kinda tensed too. Not sure where I stand in such a big competetive pool.
I am a very lazy girl. I have to keep all my laziness aside for the next 1 year atleast. I have to work hard. Just an year course, 8 semisters, 4 subjects per semister, 5 weeks per semister, hell lot of assignments :-(. I have lot of responsibilities too. So many people adviced me to take up the US offer and settle. I have chosen myself this path. I don't think that I will give chance to anyone to say that I have chosen wrong path. I am very conscious about my choices. All the best to you dear. Just do it.:-)

send off to my bro

Just came back from the airport. My Bro (Anil) is leaving to Denver,Colorado. Oh my God! I couldn't control my tears at the airport. Now even my mood is not good. Just thought I will be ok if I write this atleast in my diary. He is the only bro to me and also elder to me. My dad was saying, if i would have accepted my offer, even i would have joined my bro. But thats ok. Never mind. I can understand my dad's feeling. He wanted to see his daughter in US. Thats his dream. Never mind Dad. I will try to fullfil ur wish somehow. If I can't make it on my own will atleast marry some guy whoz settled in US. But lemme try to get it done in the first way. If not.... alternative is there. So no worries.

Will be eagerly waiting for my bro's call after 18 hrs. I miss u anil :-(.

Farewell Time

Hmmm.. Finally it’s the time to get farewell from my company. Last Monday was my last working day. As everyone I too got affected with LDAW syndrome. Yesterday night my colleagues have given me the farewell party at Chutneys, Hyderabad. Gone are the days where I really enjoyed my work, helping my colleagues. When I joined as a fresher in my company I was assigned to one mentor (Sudip). I still remember those days. I just folded my hands and went to him and asked “Sir! Can you please give me one program to analyze.” Now to the same person, I just go and sit on his table and say “Kya Sudip! Kya problem hain? Do u require ne help”. Life is ironic. I miss all those days and all the people here in my company. Everyday I used to go down and used to have that road side panipuri nd sometimes chat too with my colleagues.

I learnt a lot in this short journey. There will be something to learn from any creature in this world. God bless my company and my colleagues.

How to win friends and influence people-Part Two-Four

Part Two-Six ways to make people like you
1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile.
3. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
6. Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

Part Three-Win people to your way of thinking
1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
2. Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong."
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately.
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge.

Part Four- Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment
1. A leader's job often includes changing your people's attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this:
2. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
3. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly.
4. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
5. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
6. Let the other person save face.
7. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise."
8. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
9. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest

Each part has its own importance. I rate 7/10 for this book. This is the must read book for everyone. If we really inculcate these as our habits, no doubt we become successful person in anything.

Happy reading :-)

Good Achievement

I am very happy for being part of the CMMI ML3 achievement in my company. Though my company is taking the bond amount from me, I worked my best. Represented the project, attended the interviews related to process areas and project. Everyone said like why I should work for the company so hard if they are taking the bond amount from me. Even I was bit inclined not to work. My mind was half split with work and not work. I strongly feel like anything in this world can be gained thru love and affection, definitely not thru criticism. This is the best part, which anyone can learn from “How to win friends and influence people”.

Looks things are going in a positive direction. My CEO called me from US and thanked me personally for helping the organization in my last working days too. All of a sudden he started talking about Sabbatical and about my H1B Extension. That’s really great. I am not sure whether I will consider the option or not, but I am feeling really satisfied for what I have done. The option given to me is, he is ready to take me to US after my MBA at ISB. But thing is I need to take three weeks off in between so that I can go to US just for the heck of my H1B extension. But am pretty sure that taking three weeks off is definitely not possible. I’m not sure if the exchange program help me in any way. Once I get into ISB I can get some more details related to this.

Now the million dollar question in my mind is “will he take 1 lakh from me?” Time will tell. I need to go to office on Monday still for the final settlement. Lemme see how things works.

How to win friends and influence people-Part One

How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie is one of the best books which I read in my engineering days. Just felt like reading the book again. This book tells about how to increase one’s ability to deal with people. It’s all about human relations. Building a business is nothing but building the relations.

The concept in the book is explained in four parts. Part one is all about fundamental techniques in handling people. Part two is about six ways in making people like you. Part three is about how to win people to your way of thinking. Part four is all about how to change people without giving offense or arousing resentment. I will try my best to list out some good points in each part.

Part One: Fundamental techniques in handling people:-
1. If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive- Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment. F.Skinner, the world famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behavior. Later studies have shown that the same applies to humans.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by proud and vanity. The principle here is “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain”.

2. The big secret of dealing with people- The deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be important”. In our interpersonal relations we should never forget that all our associates are human beings and hunger for appreciation. It is the legal tender that all souls enjoy. Try leaving a friendly trail of little sparks of gratitude on your daily trips. You will be surprised how they will set small flames of friendship that will be rose beacons on your next visit. The principle here is “Give honest and sincere appreciation”.

3. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way- The only way to earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it. “If there is one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” Looking at the other person’s point of view and arousing in him an eager want for something is not to be construed as manipulating that person so that he will do something that is only for your benefit and his detriment. Each party should gain from the negotiation. I guess this concept we will learn in negotiation subject at ISB. The principle here is “Arouse in the person an eager want.”

Happy sriramanavami to everyone :-)

Things to do before getting into ISB

I guess am already running late in finalizing the to-do list before getting into ISB. Let me finalize it now atleast. Yup.. It’s never too late. :-)

1. Need to finish CMMI activities in the company. -C
2. Should take the back up of all the important data from my office PC. -C
3. Get all the certificates, relieving letter etc etc from the company by 10th of this month. -C
4. Sorting out all the important folders in my office desk. -C
5. Should follow up accountant person to get my form-16 before I leave my company. -C
6. SBI loan is sanctioned. But need to check up with HDFC bank also once as this SBI people are on strike and as I didn’t get any documents from the SBI guys. -C
7. Need to update the financial analysis document. -I
8. Should follow up my project manager for filling up the LDP 360 degrees survey. -C
9. Sort out my shopping list and need to do some shopping, Need to help my brother in his shopping too as he will be leaving to US on 15th morning of this month. -C
10. Should sort out many things in home, as we need to vacate the house by 15th. -C
11. Need to visit doctor once. -I
12. Should meet all my friends atleast once. -C
13. Need to write the accounting and quants test for the pre- term validation. Oops last date is 12th. -C
14. Need to refresh my database of contacts . -C
15. My mobile need to be repaired to make it work till 15th atleast. After that newazz I can use my bro’s mobile. -C
16. Need to mail to all the important persons who are in my important contacts list. -C
17. Should read “Men are from mars and women are from Venus”, and some of Dale Carnegie books. -I
18. …

Oh my God! List is growing big. As of now the list is so. Lemme update the status on daily basis for the above list. I should make sure that I am completing all the above mentioned things before I join ISB. (Just 8 days left)

PS: I -In progress, C- Completed

Lemonade Game-Want to become an enterpreneur?

Today when I was just browsing the blogs, I found this interesting game from Manu's blog. I too just gave a try to it. Woww.. Managed to get $39.06 for the first try.

100% cutomer Satisfaction and 85% popularity. :-D

Cool game :-)
Tempted to play again. Woww.. This time 100% customer Satisfaction and 100% Popularity. And the net profit is $72.85.


Let us see what will be the highest :-)

ISB Placement news

There was some news last week in Economic times about ISB placements saying “ISB grads rake in $200,000 packet “. But that was before the official declaration. Now that the official news are declared.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1479076.cms

http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/apr/05salary.htm

Here is the fact sheet of placements taken from the ISB site:-

Fact Sheet – Placements 2006
Salary
• Record International salary : USD 233,800 ( INR 1.04 crores)
• Average International salary : USD 120,700 ( INR 53.5lakhs)
• Highest Indian salary : INR 30.34 lakhs
• Average Indian salary : INR 11.77 lakhs
Placement Statistics for Women
• Percentage of Women Students in the Class of 2006 : 19%
• Highest International salary for a woman student : USD 223,400
• Highest Domestic salary for a woman student : INR 20 lakhs
• Average salary for a woman student : INR 9.89 lakhs
Percentage up in Highest Salary over 2005
• International : 29%
• Indian : 44%
Offers
• Total number of offers : 425
• Number of Lateral offers : 424
• Number of International offers : 42
• Number of Indian Offers : 383
Placements Summary
• Total number of companies that participated in the Placement process : 143
• Total number of students participating in the Placement process : 328 out of 345
Leadership Positions in companies
o COO
o VP – International Marketing
o Head – Marketing
o International Country Manager Designates

Nice Article

Thats really an inspirational article. A seedha saadha Ladka, who moved from the slums of chennai to IIM-Ahmedabad and planning to setup his own business venture.

Smoking!!!! Nah Nah

Smoking is injurious to health. Everyone knows this fact. But still they do. Why? Most of the people say that smoking relieves tensions and stress. Is that?

Some days back I wrote an article in mouthshut.com regarding this. Just thot.. will post that in my blog too.

Here you go...

Let me start by telling the advantages of smoking if one has it:

1. No thief dares to enter smoker’s house to rob. Since he will be coughing all the night it may mislead him to think that someone is awake in the house
2. Worrying about your body and visiting so many health centers for weight reduction treatment. But still no use?? Don’t worry. Start smoking guys. Your weight can be reduced sooner as you will be losing your lungs.
3. These people don’t need to worry about malaria. No mosquito bites them, as they will be always surrounded by smoke net, which sounds like mosquito net.
4. These people will never become old. Feel like saying Wow…….. Wait. Before that know the reason. Because these people die very soon. Frightening!!!!

Most smokers believe they exhale the majority of smoke they inhale into their lungs. But, most of the smoke remains in the lungs. A very small percent actually comes out (about 10%). Also, remember that the smoker is not only going to smoke that one cigarette. He will prolly smoke another within a half-hour. Then another after that. In fact, he will probably smoke 20, 40, 60 or even more cigarettes by the end of the day. And tomorrow will be the same. Smokers enjoy a very small percentage of the cigarettes they smoke. In fact, they are really unaware of most of the cigarettes they smoke. Some smoke out of simple habit, but most smoke in order to alleviate withdrawal symptoms experienced by all smokers whose nicotine levels have fallen below minimal requirements. The cigarette may taste horrible, but the smoker has to smoke it. And because the majority of smokers are such addicts, they must smoke many such cigarettes every single day in order to maintain a constant blood nicotine level. Wondering what is this!!! When a person smokes then nicotine is directly injected into blood and after certain time that level goes down for which again he lights another cigar.

Once just to visualize the effects, scientists collected the tar from 2000 cigarettes and diluted it in a bottle. And the collected tar is painted on the skin of mice, 60% of the animals developed cancer of the skin within a year. Consider this when watching people smoking and exhaling only 10% of the tars they actually take in. Not only are these chemicals being painted into the lung, but smokers are also constantly painting them up on their lips, tongue, and larynx, swallowing some and thus painting it in the esophagus and throughout the digestive tract. Smokers have increased incidents of cancer in all of these exposed sites.

A normal lung will have black specks throughout indicative of carbon deposits from pollution. Just think of how the smoker’s lung will be blackened because of both pollution and the tars he paint into his lungs with every puff he take.

Now that you know what it looks like on a large scale and feels like, lets take a look at the microscopic level of things that happen in the lung from smoking. The most well known disease is emphysema. This is another one of those diseases that primarily happen to smokers. Over 90% of the cases are smoking induced. There are cases in some families where there does seem to be a genetic predisposition, where non-smokers get it too. This is from a rare condition, a lack of a blood enzyme called alpha1antitrypsin. This again is rare, but if you do have family members who never smoked a day in their life get emphysema there may be a genetic tendency. But again, over 90% of emphysema cases are simply caused by smoking. Eradicate smoking and you eradicate the risk of the disease.

To get a sense of what it feels like to breathe with emphysema take a deep breath and hold it. Without letting out any air, take another deep breath. Hold that one too. One more time, take one more breath. Okay let it all out. That second or third breath is what it feels like to breathe when you have advanced emphysema. Emphysema is a disease where you cannot exhale air. Everyone thinks that it is a disease where you cannot inhale but in fact it is the opposite. When you smoke you destroy the lungs elasticity by destroying the tissue that pulls your lung back together after using muscles that allow us to inhale air. So when it comes time to take your next breath it is that much more difficult, for your lungs could not get back to their original shape.

Imagine going through life having to struggle to breathe like those last two breaths I had you take. Unfortunately, millions of people don't have to imagine it, they live it daily. It is a miserable way to live and a slow painful way to die.

Do you know what makes people to cough?

Lungs will be having bronchus layer on which we find cilia. Cilia are helpful to sweep the mucous produced. But as people begin to smoke the functionality of cilia gets reduced as many chemicals in tobacco are toxic to cilia first slowing them down and soon paralyzing them all together and then destroying them. As the cilia actions being diminishes mucous starts to build up in the small airways making it harder for the smoker to breathe and causing the characteristic smokers cough in order to clear out the airways.

If a smoker quits before cancer actually starts, even if the cells are in a precancerous state, the process is highly reversible. Cilia regeneration starts in about 3 days and within 6 months the normal cilia function will be returned once smoking stops. But if a smoker waits too long and cancer starts, it may be too late to save his or her life. Unfortunately, if a smoker waits until a malignancy has started, the outlook is grim. The overall 5 year survival rate for lung cancer is only 14%. Lung cancer is a disease that while once uncommon, is now the leading cancer killer in both sexes.

For quitting smoking one had to have strong determination. Ex-smokers are often tempted when watching others smoke. Spending time with a specific friend and watching them smoke may be a trigger especially if it was the most time you had spend with the friend since you quit smoking. The natural tendency is for the ex-smoker to start to fantasize about how good a cigarette will be at that given moment and how good it must taste and make him feel. It is true he may be enjoying that particular cigarette, but the odds are he is not. Be far from those guys while they smoke until you feel confident.

Don't fantasize about cigarettes. Always keep a clear, objective perspective of what it would once again be like to be an addicted smoker. There is no doubt at all that if you relapse to smoking you will be under the control of a very powerful addiction. You will be spending hundreds of dollars a year for thousands of cigarettes. You will smell like cigarettes and be viewed as socially unacceptable in many circles. You will be inhaling thousands of poisons with every puff. These poisons will rob you of your endurance and your health. One day they may eventually rob you of your life.

Consider all these consequences of smoking. Then, when you watch a smoker you will feel pity for them, not envy. Consider the life he or she is living compared to the simpler, happier, and healthier life you have had since you broke free from your addiction. Hopefully when you breathe normally today you are not in pain and you are not on oxygen. If you don't smoke you will continue to give yourself the ability to breathe longer and feel better. Never lose sight of this fact. To keep your ability to breathe better for the rest of your life always remember to - NEVER TAKE ANOTHER PUFF!

Back to the Kitchen work:-(

After a long break, again back to the kitchen
work. All these days my granny was there with me and she used to do everything. You can see her in the pic. She was like after me and my bro to eat food on time. Just yesterday she left to my hometown. She might be coming back on april-10th or so. Till that time, somehow I need to manage this cooking part. I couldn’t spend much time on learning this cooking stuff. I am still a novice.

From tomorrow no one is there to give tea/coffee to us. I should be the one who should get up first and prepare tea, lunch, dinner etc. (Breakfast gets skipped as we wake up so early in the morning by 10:00 Am :-)). My bro will be sleeping in other room and wakes me up by irritating me with his missed calls. His ultimate goal is to get bed tea from me. So from tomorrow the fight starts.

Perfect weekly planning

My weekly planning worked well this time. Submitted Loan App as per schedule did many things as per planned and the most important thing, which I did, is meeting all my Hyd friends on Saturday. I have almost lost touch with them coz of my GMAT Prep, ISB Application process, Interview prep etc etc.. had a wonderful time with them.

After almost 2 years, yesterday I went to visit Buddha statue along with my friend. I was really thrilled to stay there near the statue for almost 45 min. Last time when we went (b4 2 years) we didn’t get down at the statue. Looks lot of renovation.




Here is some info about the Hussain Sagar lake and Buddha statue

Hussain Sagar Lake:
The most popular promenade Tank Bund dams the Hussain Sagar large lake that connects the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. In the middle of the lake is the 'Rock of Gibraltar', on which stands the statue of Buddha. The beautiful Necklace Road lies on one side of the lake.
Buddha Statue:
The 16 meter tall, 350-tone monolithic colossus rises high from the placid waters of the picturesque Hussain Sagar Lake. It is made of white granite, finely sculptured and stands majestically amidst the shimmering waters of the lake.

Bond Breaking…....

Wondering what is this??? Yeah! I have signed the contract in my company for three years. Stupid me. Don’t know what will be the effect of that bond at that time. Bond gets over by July. I have CHOSEN myself to work in a startup company that time. Of course I don’t regret for choosing a startup company. But then, I was just thinking how foolish I am to sign a contract for three years. I didn’t even try to negotiate by asking for two years. Anyways past is past. However, I can change my future.

I have very good name in the company, good relations with the colleagues, topped the performance appraisal among everyone in the company, and took many responsibilities so sooner in my career. All thru my career, I got many appreciations from my superior authorities, though I didn’t earned much in monetary terms. In spite of all the effort I kept, just for 3.5 months, I will be paying 1 lakh to the company. Wowwww

I tried my best to negotiate with my superior management, but all that went in vain. When I mailed my superior management to consider me, I have got a big reply from them. Here is the reply I got from them. Am just pasting only half of the mail:

“I truly believe that you are a RAW DIAMOND waiting to be unlocked by ISB. I do believe that you will get great offers after your completion of ISB course. I was reading on Samachar that IIM-B graduate got 90 lakhs job offer …blah..blah... When someone is getting this amount of compensation, I think it is worth the loans and bond amounts. Our bond amount is very tiny compared to your tuition expense. “
blah..... blah....... blah.. ...
You are going to invest a lot of amount of money in ISB with bond amount and loans. This investment will make you concentrate more on studies and ..blah blah blah….. In fact, this one lakh would make you work hard and be great in the class!
Blah..blah ....blah
You are a diamond, smart, intelligent and hard working gal. Believe in yourself and fulfill your dreams!"

Huh! Decided not to ask any more. Mail shows that they are toooooo narrowed in their thoughts. I always believe that it’s the passion, which drives us for tomorrow, definitely not the pain or emotions.