Will

“When you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true”

- Alchemist.

Drowning!

He knew he had committed big blunders. He knew his love was not true. He did not listen to her when she was screaming. He chose to go with other people and not her.

And now life has turned around, its he who is screaming. Its he who knows that he could not love anyone more than he loves her. And she is the one who chooses other people over him.

How cruel but fair... life can be? You will learn your lesson son, you'll learn your lesson.

Courses taken up in Trimester 2

Following is what I have taken up in Trimester 2

1. Supply Chain & Logistics Management (6 week course): All about how to build a lean supply chain and theory of constraints.

2. Accounting for Decision Making and Control (12 week course): Project/Product Costing, how to use and infer accounting information to make managerial decisions.

3. Marketing Management (12 week course): Basics of Marketing.

4. Managing Presentations (6 week course): A soft skills course aimed at improving presentation skills using peer and self assessment techniques.

5. Mergers & Acquisitions (12 week course): A strategy course based on mergers between & acquistions by companies. Ability to decide from a strategic point of view whether to merge or acquire and if yes then how much to pay to acquire?

6. Strategic Technology Management (6 week course): Applying strategy frameworks to understand the dynamics of technology and technology-driven companies.

7. Business Process Management (6 week course): Discussion on techniques and issues in transforming intra and inter-organizational processes in the digital age.


Brrr...lots to do...have my hands full!

Langkawi, Malaysia

During the term break, 8 of us took a trip to Langkawi islands, Malaysia.
Its an awesome place....quite serene white beaches, lush green rain forests, excellent resorts and facilities and all this at a relatively inexpensive price. One of the best places I have ever been to.

Here are some of the snaps. Check the webshots link at the bottom to see more snaps.










Link for the Langkawi album : Album

T1 tidbits

Economics:
1. There is nothing called a free lunch.
2. Accounting profit is very different from Economic profit and its very difficult to earn an Economic profit.

Financial Accounting:
1. Accountants have lots of ways to twist things, so be careful while investing.
2. Do not emphasise on Net Profits, the better indicator is Cash flows.

Managing Business Operations:
1. Doing a thorough process analysis gives a lot of information which aids in decision making.
2. Scheduling jobs and stuff is not that difficult if you are able to formulate a LP model.

Financial Management:
1. A dollar in hand today is worth more than a dollar in the future.
2. Money does not come for free, there is a cost associated with it.

Generally:
1. MS Excel is one of the most powerful tools anyone could have.
2. It depends on you how you want to make the MBA work for you.

Annual Reception and Farewell to seniors

Just came back from the MBA Annual Reception and farewell party.
The reception though looked promising initially with the MBA office booking the National Library pod (excellent view of the Singapore skyline from there) it turned out to be a dud finally. Terrible food and horrible wine. Some of us ended up leaving early and went to an Indian bistro nearby.

Done with the reception, the seniors planned to go to a pub and drink away. We guys joined them. Had an awesome time there. Some of the seniors are leaving in the next couple of days and it was great to spend some time with them. Here are some snaps from the party....

AK!

Senior Dada!

with AT and KD

Sheru!

AK and AK

Mani

Santosh

With Prof Amit Das

T1 ends!

Just finished my T1 exams today! Woohoo!
Have a break the whole of next week....lots of things planned...

For starters we have the MBA Annual Reception tonight. Also plan to watch a lot of movies that I have been collecting over the last few months and then there is the trip planned to Malaysia too. Never felt so short of time. Hold on for some fun filled posts.

Diwali @ NTU

A Belated Happy Diwali to all of you!
Am late by a week in posting this...but yeah late than never.

We had a nice diwali celebration on 21st. not going to write much...just check the pics.
the next post will be after my T1 exams.

India - A vegetarian country???

No more!!

A recent survey has found that 64% of Indian households are meat-eaters. And the more astonishing part is that 92.2% households in Southern India are meat-eaters as compared to 40.4% households in the north!!

I always thought it would be the other way round. Chikan -shikan looked more like a northie thing and south was always associated with idli-dosa!

Read the full story here

Some more B-school Gyaan....

This is from a friend at ISB. They asked one of their profs abt the Dos and Donts in a B-school.
This is what he replied "Do not go too far to one extreme or another: too much networking or too much book learning. Those who spend lot of time on parties miss out on learning from academics, and those who neglect socializing, miss out on learning from others".

A little bit more....
“If yesterday was not yesterday, today would not have been today”!!

Dada speaks...

Dada ka baat hua gyaan....

Beta life mein do cheez yaad rakhna....

1. There is nothing called a free lunch
2. The person in front of you is as capable as you are, do not underestimate him.

Once a pig, always a pig!

He stood with his hands in his pocket, eyes scanning the skyline. Then he surveyed the very traffic that he had just battled through.

"Once a pig, always a pig!"

He said it out aloud, to no one in particular. Approaching the wall of his terrace he looked at the playground closeby. A hundred test matches were being played all at once. He remembered his own "career" on a playground just like that. When you were fielding in the wall-less labyrinth of cricketers and pitches, you often forgot which wicket your match was being played on. It took a bit of time to figure out if you were the midwicket, fine leg, long off or deep gully. He was never put close-in, so those positions never entered his consideration.

He took his hands off the wall and took a batting stance. He had wanted to be the next Gavaskar. He didn't. Tendulkar did.

A little way off the playground, he saw a medium size mob of people standing in a circle. Starining his eyes, he saw that some kids were performing a street-play on the ev of Republic Day. His mind went back to 8th Std when he performed in an interschool play. He would stand in front of a mirror and rehearse the dialogues for hour. He knew he could have the audience in splits with his comic portrayal of a drunk talking to himself in the mirror.

He smiled and wobbled around, trying to recall those lines. He wanted to be the next Amitabh. He didn't. Sharukh did.

He approached the wall of his terrace again. This time He climbed on it and stood up. Looking down, he wondered if it would hurt.

That's when his phone rang.

"What?....oh...ok, sir, yes sir, yes sir. Tomorrow morning at eight? Yes sir."

He climbed down from the wall and went inside his house.

"Once a pig, always a pig", he said it out aloud, to no one in particular.

7 things I want to do before I graduate

1. Part ties with my best friend...laziness
2. Participate in atleast one competition and make atleast one Business Plan
3. Manage my time well and allocate enough time for fun and party.
4. Improve my presentation skills (both talking and making ppts)
5. Learn different things by experiencing various cultures.
6. Visit lots of places in SE Asia.
7. Lose some weight.

I guess there is some work started on 4 & 5. Rest all still lie in my head...hope to start working on them soon!

The Shit smells the same everywhere!

Literally!!

I passed by a sewer truck on campus today and for a moment recalled Dharavi.
Different races, different religions, different food, different nations...but yeah the shit smells the same everywhere! Talk about Global standards!

Which way to go? - Part 2

VR left this comment on my previous post. Thought I should put it as a post and comment on it.

"Quite an obvious line of thought coming from a non Indian. It was the same kinda discussion that I and T from Switzerland had yesterday before the IT and E-comm class. I think that conversation partly throws light on why these distinct schools of thought exist.

He casually told me that the competitive nature of Indians sometimes is quite unnerving for him, as it was for a few others from his land. He went on to add how the higher education streams in his country were relaxed and were easy to get into with a bit more effort and the whole lifestyle was so relaxed, that the government was doing everything possible to encourage higher education aspirations. However people are just plain happy leading the laid back life that they have got accustomed to. Like the Little Men in "Who moved my Cheese"

Now contrast this with India. Which Indian middle class student today does not want to do a B.E? How many of them nurture plans to do a Masters, get a plush job, etc. Almost everybody you know of, right. What is the government doing? Nothing, coz the system takes care of itself. Like the competitive free market system in capitalist countries. This is the breeding ground for competition where a little complacency might do you in. Given this as the backdrop, shouldn't it be natural that we Indians are already losing out on 40 winks in search of a job? I still completely agree that it should not be at the cost of getting the best that MBA has on offer for you, but worry you will.

Now there is no good thing or bad thing about each line of thought, it is just that different countries of the world go through different stages of evolution at different periods in history and it is this which shapes an individual's mental make-up."

Knowingly or unknowingly VR has answered my question that whether this has become the Indian psyche? Yes, it has. VR lists the reasons and circumstances very nicely above. The next logical question that comes to mind is ... Agreed we have this competitive nature which is a good thing when we are in India, but should we continue with this now when we are at the global level or should we make a concerted effort to tone down ourselves and make others feel comfortable around us? Again two lines of thought emerge. On one hand we can argue that healthy competition is not bad. Its not as if we are pushing others down to show ourselves higher. On the other hand we can say that most of us now plan to work in global companies with people from various nationalities and it is very important that we do not come out 'loud' and make others comefortable around us. After all, teamwork depends on the comfort level between team members.
Is it time to leave behind the Indian psyche and embrace the Global psyche?

Which way to go?

Yesterday I was talking to these people from a different country regarding the career prospects after we finish our MBA and what should we do about it. And I guess I came out as a little too desperate. I am not sure but I think I can speak for most Indians B-school students here that we are desperate about getting an internship or a job.
Two days back the Indian gang was discussing about getting an internship and job and we were talking about making an exhaustive list and start applying. Some of us were of the opinion that we should apply left and right and we might get lucky atleast somewhere. On the other hand when discussing with my foreign friends, those guys did not seem in any kind of hurry. Rather one of them mentioned "I have just started my MBA and am not even sure where I want to work later on". Basically she meant that she wanted to explore different areas within the course of MBA, develop an interest and then go job hunting.
This statement of hers kind of took me aback. Back in India so much emphasis is given to placements that sometimes we forget everything else. The sole aim of joining a MBA program is to jump to a better company. Interests, likings, developing oneself, making full use of the MBA program and everything else takes a backburner. Rather than concentrating on the job at hand i.e., transforming ourselves to be better managers and extract the best out of our MBA, we tend to concentrate too much on the future. Not sure why this happens and whether its a good thing or a bad thing. But is this the usual Indian psyche?....To be secured about one's future. Or has it got something to do with the prestige issue? Indian B-schools have campus placements and hence most students select a job from the available lot before they graduate. This maybe kind of puts a pressure on the students doing their MBA from foreign universities (where there is no concept of campus placements) and it becomes a prestige issue that even they should be placed before they complete their MBAs.
I personally do not mind waiting for sometime after I complete my MBA to search for 'the' job. But am still not sure which is the correct way to go? I mean there is no harm looking for the jobs if you already know what field you are interested in. But yeah, this should not come at the cost of loosing out on the value of your MBA. And then I dont rather mind waiting and searching for the right job also. Not sure what I will end up doing...on the one hand the peer and parental pressure is always going to be there and on the other hand is this new line of thought that I am learning from my foreign classmates.

Karaoke Night

We had the monthly MBA get-together today. It started slow with very few people initially... we had a couple of beers and then TB suggested why not use the karaoke facility. So there we went in, a small room with a TV (showed the lyrics), a couple of speakers and microphones. Slowly but surely the crowd started pouring in and so did the singers! Had a fun night...did this karaoke TV thing for the first time...but its surely not the last time!! Some pictures from the party...

The initial few

The final group

Dada humming along

Singing ultimately led to a little bit of dancing

TB and AS singing a duet

Friday Evening with Jack Daniels

The Occassion - SB's Birthday
Accompaniments - Pizza
Sound - Boombastic music on Bose
Location - Nanyang Valley

The Party boys or men or whatever!! The real boy is the red t-shirt guy!


AK after a couple of JDs!

Open your Mind

My Way is My Way
but it is not the Only Way

The Rising Sun

The rising sun
age old
yet new and inspiring
lighting up the world
with its soft pink rays;
just watching the familiar hues
dance on the still water
I return to emotions
that never truly left.
Just as the sun sets
it rises again
wide arms embracing a new day.

- Li Steins -