Lost in Participation

I feel like standing on a busy platform with frenetic activity all around me. I feel I am lost. As far as I can remember I was on a special journey. Suddenly I see her...She is my only ray of hope..my saviour...She is on the opposite platform looking the other way. I try to shout, but the sound dissolves in the din around me. Frantically I wave to get her attention but to no avail.Slowly everything fades in front of my eyes and all that remains is her memory. Memory that I cherish and that I cling to and that I hope will help me find her again.

Who is she? Well for you all she is Class Participation...and for YOU I dont need to say.

Value Addition

Value addition can come in various forms. The last few days has been enlightening for me in terms of the accounting fundas I learnt. For someone whose only tryst with debit and credit had been the mini statements one receives from the bank ATMs, it was a literacy drive in Accounting.

The other value addition came from an unexpected source. In an attempt to prepare a survey questionaire for one of the club initiatives, I came to know of a wonderful tool called zoho (http://creator.zoho.com). It lets you create simple forms by intuitively dragging and dropping various controls on a form. The best part of the whole exercise is that one does not need to be a technical expert to be able to do it. Having worked in IT services for nearly six years, I was really surprised rather awestruck at the ease of use and the flexibility it offers. I would strongly recommend it to anyone interested in creating small data entry type applications for various uses. Once designed, the form link can be sent to intended recipients to fill up the data. The data gets saved on the zoho server and can be retrieved in Excel format for output if required.Thanks for SM for his help in this initiative.

So with that I look forward to Term 1 for more value additions. After all, that is what the MBA would be worth.

Ignorance is Bliss

There are two sets of people on campus right now.People who are panicked and scared out of their brains and others who are relaxing like they have paid 18 odd lakhs to have a break from work and chill out. Needless to say that I fall in the second category and the reason for that is not my superior emotional quotient but the fact that I have only taken Accounting preterms. Stats and Quants preterms I must say have assumed killer status and have psyched engineers and CAs alike. And with all this going on I have all the time in the world to have an afternoon nap, watch Champions league, IPL and also revise a few concepts of Maths and Stats. I just hope that all this hoopla will settle as Term 1 takes over and that my ignorance will not come back to haunt me in the core terms.For now I really am enjoying the bliss.

Taste(Test) of Leadership

It has been a long grinding day for me.For the first time in three days had to attend a class for 2 hours and I can assure you that it was not easy. I think it will need a bit more practice before I perfect the art of attending classes and then having the energy of doing pre-reads for next class and completing the assignments. From the look of it First term already seems daunting.

Interestingly today I got a taste of what it takes to lead a bunch of wannabe MBAs.A few interesting takeaways from today's experience.

1) A PPT helps in getting your point across to the audience.

2) Moderating a discussion is extremely challenging and it becomes all the more difficult when the audience has divergent views. The moderator needs to impose some rules to bring order and take the discussion forward.

3) Taking up an initiative is often a thankless experience and so one should be mentally strong enough to handle it.

4) Given a chance most people do not know when to stop.

5) Everyone wants to know what they will get from an initiative but no one really talks about how they can contribute to the cause.

Anyways, I will keep all of these points in mind and do better in these aspects next time around. However I really feel good about what I did because otherwise I would never have had the opportunity to evaluate my presenting skills or ability to lead/present in front of a demanding audience. So far so good...Hope such learning opportunities continue to keep coming during the next 1 year.

On a lighter note just came back from another room where a bunch of us were watching the Champions League semifinal between Man U and Barca. I just remember the engineering college days when we used to gang up in the hostel common room and watch these matches till the wee hours.Anyways my stamina isnt doing too poor rite? After such a day, I still managed to pull myself to write a blog at nearly 3 in the morning.

O Week Ends

It feels so strange today...All of a sudden after 7 days of intense action consisting of registration, games,section cheering, gyaan sessions,team building in the blazing sun, movies and loads of parties, today the calendar is empty.The class of 08, I must say has done an incredibly good job of planning our orientation.Today as they have left, it is time for us as a batch to take up the baton passed and uphold the legacy of ISB. So much has hapenned in the past one week that I think its time to just sit back and see the things that do stand out.

1) Screwing up our voices doing Section Cheering "Sec C Sec C"(intended sexy) which I must say is the best section chant of all the sections.

2)Meeting the same person thrice in a party and doing the same round of introduction only to forget the name totally next morning. Its been the biggest challenge to keep track of the names of my batchmates with more than 430 odd people.

3)Winning the intersection football and cricket competetions hands down and the funny part is that I almost lost my nose in the process getting hit by a stray shot in a football game while watching from the sidelines. Talk about passive contribution!!!! But the good part of it was the free publicity that it brought with a lot of people asking me if I was doing OK for the next 2 days. Another funny thing about the incident was that while I was still in shock after getting hit, UN clicked my photo which I am sure will make great viewing later.

4) Talent night yet again made me all depressed. Dont get me wrong I enjoyed it but I really felt so depressed for being talent deprived. I wished I had known that learning guitar or knowing how to dance/sing can have so many benefits. Just kidding...But seriously some of the performances were amazing specially carnatic vocals and guitar and the fusion composition.

5)I have to make a confession here....I couldnt help looking at a girl from our batch who looks similar to my girlfriend. I felt so odd the one or twice we had eye contact.Anyways no offence..I was just missing my girlfriend..:)

6)Met a lot of "reeeeally reeeeally" nice and smart people with diverse profiles and coming from across the globe. It seems that choosing ISB was a wise decision.

7) And last but not the least, the case study intro session gave me a glimpse of what to expect in class over the next 4 terms. A lot of good insightful ideas and questions spiced up by real good Arbit CP( ISB term for class participation for the heck of it with repeating same ideas in different sentence structure, elementary obvious questions and really irritating points) We decided that we will cough in class to signal the person that we all feel he/she is dishing up Arbit CP and if the person fails to get the hint he/she needs to be dunked in the swimming pool after class. I think we already have an Arbit CP champion in the making.

8)Ohh and I totally forgot to mention the grand Apollo hospital prank played on us by the Class of 08 which had the entire batch stumped. I hate SK for making me do situps for a minute to check my heartbeat increase rate after active exercise. But its soo funny to think back and wonder how the entire batch failed to rationalize that there is no AIDS vaccine available and no such thing as a universal snake bite vaccine. Talk about 400+ of the brightest minds of the country. It shows that people do lose their sense of reasoning when its clouded by other things.

Anyways am off to have our first study group meet over coffee at CCD.See u soon.

The start of a new Chapter

Its been crazy four days now at ISB.I can say it already feels like ages that I have been here and to be honest I have already lost track of time and dates and the day of week.The O-week has been fun so far and apart from an energy sapping treasure hunt game in the sultry heat of hyderabad,things have been really enjoyable. I had always known that the peer group at ISB would be amazing and it really is. Over the last few days had a few amazing conversations regarding the possible remedy of traffic problem in Hyderabad to the stock markets in Nepal and how Indians are making money there to possible ideal garbage disposal mechanisms at ISB.

Some of the highlights and key experiences so far

My physical stamina needs significant improvement.I intend to start playing TT from tomorrow(spent 3 hours scouring the city to get a TT bat and finally!!!!)

I guess the cafeteria is CMM 5 certified. Otherwise I dont know how they manage to prepare such a diverse range of food which tastes equally poor to me each day.Well for a break, I had Tandoori chicken today out at the city. It really feels great after tasting chicken after ages.

Nothing is "free" at ISB. I guess those of you here will understand what I mean and for the rest wait till you get here.

My mind feels numb. I miss being with the people I love. Sometimes my mind wanders off to this fact amidst all the noise and the frantic activity around me.

The ISB campus is really beautiful. I intend to go on an early morning walks and take lots of pictures, some of which I have promised to share at this space.

So that is that and now its pretty late. My body has been crying for rest for ages but I guess I need to read the first case at ISB for tomorrows class at 9.
Ciao

Catchup...

Its been a long time since my last post. To be honest inspite of going through a very hectic time, I wanted to blog regularly but my slow Tata Indicom internet connection did not allow me to. All I have been doing is check mails when I connected to internet.Anyways today that I have managed to find some time on the internet, let me pen down some of the things that happenned in the last one month or so.

Job: Spending days at work has become such a pain these days. The workaholic that I have been for the last 5 years or so, I never imagined that I would be spending days on end at work doing absolutely nothing. I wish that the notice period was just 1 month which would have enabled me to spend the days at home instead of labouring through doing nothing at work.Compounding the misery is the fact that most of the sites that helps one pass time is blocked at work too.Anyways the good part is that my resignation process is almost done and I am all set for the release on 8th.

ISB Meets: I must have attended atleast a dozen ISB meets at Kolkata after coming back in February. They have always been fun with discussions ranging from frustration at work,to career shift prospects and debates over job situation post ISB and the prospective salaries and other interesting topics which I think would not be appropriate to post in a public forum.And all this mostly at CCD either at Millenium city or City Centre. Now we have decided to meet for dinner this weekend which would be a welcome break from drinking endless cups of cappucino or cafe frappe.But I must say that I am already liking the bunch with whom I would be spending the next 1 year of my life and I cant wait for it to start.

Family: Staying with parents after a long time and man isnt it rewarding. Getting all the favourite foods cooked by mom is absolutely the best treat I can possibly have. Its a privilege..really.Apart from that I have been able to catch up with my old passion of watching football(now I can call it that and not soccer) on TV. So lot of late night staying up.

Personal Life: Personal life has been a little turbulent these days because staying apart from the person you love is very difficult.... all the more when you have lots of time for yourself which you wish you could have put to better use. Anyways thats life. :)

Back in India: Adjusting to life back in India has not been as challenging as I expected. A lot of it has to do with the anticipation of joining ISB. A friend was asking me the other day how I was finding life back in Kolkata.That got me thinking....I think I miss quite a few things...Going out on long drives in my car has to be the most important thing I miss.Having a cup of coffee at Starbucks while watching the sunset at Monterey Bay has to be another.I also miss the cool weather the year round and not having to sweat a bit...I miss having the occasional steak and beer. Ohh well there is moreee....

ISB: ISB has done an excellent thing. It has decided not to release the highest salary figures of CO 2008 to the media. This is an excellent step to thwart the unrealistic expectations of future MBA students and the society in general. Kudos to ISB which has again proven that its audience is the world and not just the indian MBA market. But the placement figures have been quite good and all the more the types of roles, sectors and career shifts.Hope the global economic slowdown does not impact us next year.

Resolution: I intend to be a regular blogger all during my stay at ISB. I hope this will be good reading for any of you that might be interested in life at ISB...I have been a regular visitor of the blogs of CO2008 and I guess my blog might be read by CO2010 as well.

Next week: I travel to Hyderabad next week and on 12th its supposed to start.So hopefully my next post will be from Hyderabad and ISB.By the way I will also try to post some pictures of the campus which I heard is comparable to some of the best universities of the world.I think it will go a long way to help people come out of their stoic, old fasioned picture of Hyderabad that they have on their minds - of old mosques, of Charminar, and of narrow crowded streets.