Media blues!

After India was thrown out of the cricket world cup, Sharad Pawar, the BCCI chief made the following comment on Greg Chappel(according to PTI)...

"Definitely there is a responsibility to train properly but at the same time one can show water too hot but cannot compel him to drink."

Water too Hot!! I think Pawar meant to say "water to horse". Not sure who made the mistake here, did Pawar really say it wrong or did the journalist goof it up?

Whatever it is...PTI needs to careful what it releases or else we could have a big problem...


Read the article here

Somebody get the pig a glass of champagne!!

Nicolette Hanh Niman writes in the New York Times -

"As a cattle rancher, I am comfortable raising animals for human consumption, but they should not be made to suffer. Because we ask the ultimate sacrifice of these creatures, it is incumbent on us to ensure that they have decent lives"

Read the article here

Don't know what to say, people are ok with killing animals to satisfy their hunger, but, they would like that the animals they eat, live in good conditions. Talk about human(pig) rights in the stomach!!

0.5 MBA

Its the end of trimester 2, meaning am halfway through. Another 8 months to the finish line.
This was the longest trimester, with the christmas break in between. The first half was frentic-paced and the second half was pretty relaxed.

T3 promises to be more balanced. Am taking some heavy-duty courses this trimester.

1.Global Business Management in Manufacturing: The fomer chief of Nissan, America; BMW, Japan is taking this course. The course deals with Japanese manufacturing expertise with a special focus on the Japanese automotive industry.

2. Life Sciences - A business perspective: This course deals with businesses relating to the biotech and pharma industry.

3. Corporate Business Strategy: This course focuses on the application of strategy theory and principles. "Think like a CEO" is what the prof mentions.

4. Statistics & Research Methods: The objective is to build the design and analysis skills necessary to carry out applied business research.

5. Competitive Strategy: This course examines how firms build sustainable competitive advantage.

6. Strategy Implementation: All about the issues encountered when implementing strategies.

Pretty interesting stuff.

Insecurity?

Have been experiencing this since school times, albeit in different proportions. Was the most in school, a little less in college and lesser in the MBA, nevertheless it still exists.

Am sure most of u must have heard your friends telling you "Kitna padhega yaar, bas kar"
Is that out of genuine concern or is it the insecurity? In most cases, its the insecurity, the person asking you this statement is worried more about himself/herself than about the person he/she is asking the question to.

The situation becomes more evident in the opposite case. You wont find many people asking you "Kitna cigarette fookega, bas kar". Only people who are genuinely concerned will tell you this.

Time to change...so now if you see a person smoking tell him/her, "Kitna cigarette fookega, bas kar" and if u see a person studying, you say, "Arre tu padh raha hai, padh padh. Main bhi join karta hoon".

In MBA lingo, channelize your tension in an efficient manner to do value-adding work rather than bring the other person down and hamper overall growth!!

$700,000 car!

Got the chance to sit in a $700,000 Bentley recently (courtesy Hemant)
Must say..really impressed! Hope to own something like this one day..

The Nanyang MBA rising fast!

Very happy to hear that The Nanyang MBA program got ranked in the top 100 MBA programs in the world by Financial Times and Economist IU.

To be precise, we are ranked 67th in the world (a jump of 35 spots from last year). We rank #1 in Singapore, #2 in Asia and #3 in Asia-Pacific.

Hope that we can maintain the momentum and get into the top-tier of the world's B-schools.

Some more information available here

Here is a video link

And this one is a video from a Chinese News channel. The only reason for putting this up is because it shows a class in progress. I am seen towards the end of the clip for a spilt second.

Here is a photo from the party held at Harry's for the celebrations.

Leftist v/s Libertarian

Europe and America were also agrarian at one point of time. They too had millions of small farmers at one point of time. But gradually the agriculture there moved in the hands of the big farmers, because it gave economies of scale. The children of erstwhile small farmers started doing something else. Same story in South East Asia.

In India, this consolidation has not happened because leftists and quasi-leftists are of the opinion that 100 small farmers selling their land to one big farmers and getting into some other business is a wrong thing.

For people like them, the fact that "70% of the Indian workforce is still employed by agriculture" is a source of pride.

It should be a matter of concern!

Why is such a huge chunk of our workforce still engaged in a profession with low productivity? Surveys have mentioned that 95% of farmers do not want their kids to keep farming. but they have no choice. I think that their kids deserve to do something more productive as well.

But what will they do if not farming, leftists ask? They say that if these farmers are forced out of unproductive farming because of globalisation, then they will die like flies.

Did they die like flies in other countries? Maybe a few here and there. But would you maintain an unproductive status quo and be happy with abject poverty because of it?

Give the masses the freedom and they definitely will come up with alternate means of employment.

The status-quo-ist mindset advocated by leftists is born out of a deep inferiority complex. Deep down they feel the Indian masses are inferior and hence need protection. Indian libertarians on the other hand, do not suffer from this inferiority complex. We believe that the Indian masses, if freed from the state's illogical shackles, can prosper and make the transition into an economy which is not so strongly agrarian.

Look at Indians living abroad. I am not just talking about the white collared engineers and doctors. Even the blue collared people who reach foreign shores by illegal ways do very well. You do not see low-class immigrants living on welfare in Europe or America. they are hardworking and ingenious people who make something of themselves.

A lot is written about the WASP work ethic, but I think the Indian work ethic, born out of our history and our "culture" is a potential gold mine. Which is why most Indians, be they educated or uneducated, do well in foreign countries.

It is our inferiority complex, caused by colonisation and compunded manifold by a socialist polity, that holds us back.

Bottomline is, that the Indian workforce, if freed, can make rapid strides. There will be some growing pains of course, but we need to look at the bigger picture. We can not stay in the dark ages just because of a few suicides.

I will use an example. Tongawallahs (horsecart-pullers) ruled the streets of India a few decades ago. They were the only means of public transport. And yes,a tongawallah is also unskilled. So when taxis, buses and autorickshaws came in, they obviously threatened to put the tongawallah out of business. I am sure a 50 year old tongawallah, who has just driven a tonga all his life, would have contemplated suicide. In fact I dare say some of them must have committed suicides. People who manufactured tongas, and their workers, would also have contemplated and committed suicide.

Would you use this as a reason to keep taxis, buses and rickshwas out, and continue using tongas? the exit of tongas benefitted everyone. It was a slow, unproductive means of travel, and had outlived its utility.

That doesn't mean that Indian-made-tongas were replaced by imported buses and taxis. indians started making buses and taxis too. And others, much more in number, started driving them.

Hope you get the point.

Happy New Year

A Very Happy New Year to all of you!

Some food for thought to begin the year:

#The busiest man has the greatest leisure#

#Silence is the hardest argument which can sometimes be offered to your opponent#

#If I like praise, it means I can be easily hurt by defamation#

#If you want to avoid pains, you will have to avoid pleasures also#

Going home...

Its vacation time!

How I longed for such a vacation while I was working. This is definitely a huge advantage of being in college..you get good long vacations! I am going back to India for 3 weeks. Lots of things planned. Will be visiting my native to attend a felicitation function of my Grandpa. A road is being named after him and a statue of his is being inaugrated. Will be visiting a few more of my relatives all over M.P and then head to home. Hope to have a good, long, relaxing holiday!

Bintan, Indonesia

The school has closed for Christmas vacations. Everyone is heading back to India in the next couple of days...but before that we decided to have some unadulterated fun. We headed for the Indonesian island called Bintan for a 2 day trip.
Guess what we did there? We did nothing!! No hurried sightseeing, no getting up early, no plans! Just relaxed...ate...drank...slept!
I surely did enjoy this trip...it is sometimes good to do nothing. Caught up on some music, some gossip and generally made peace with myself while lying down on the beach. Here are some pics....

The gang

Thats our boat

Bintan island

Our resort

Pax's birthday celebration

Total chill!

Quenching our thirst

Beach Volleyball

Lunch time

Soothing sea

Resort

Kick ass!

Taxi Talk!

The taxi wala's in Singapore can be quite interesting and knowledgeable. I have now had 2-3 episodes and thought its high time I wrote something about them.

Episode 1: As soon as i get in, the taxi guy says "Namaste, Aap kaise hain?"...and he was not Indian..was a Singaporean with Chinese origins. I reply to him and then ask him where did he learn this. He says from his passengers. Then tells me teach something more in Hindi.

Episode 2: This time its a local Singaporean muslim as the taxi guy. We are travelling back to the hostel and he starts talking about life. And i was taken aback, he had such passionate thoughts that he could become a preacher. Some of the things he told us,
1. "I do everything for a reason, I do not know why people go on vacations (we were coming back from a vacation in Indonesia). Its the same air, same earth everywhere. Its the same eyes and nose you have. So why go on a vacation? Its all in the mind about getting stressed or de-stressed."
2. "Mother is the most loving person on earth. If there are complications during pregnancy, the mother is ready to sacrifice her life to let the baby be born. A baby who is unknown to her. A baby who might not listen to her or might mistreat her one day."

Epsiode 3: Its again a local Singaporean guy. We ask him a general question of how bad is the taxi problem during christmas. And he says "Its bad during christmas, but will not be very bad this time around. The Singapore economy is not doing very well. People do not have much money to spend as compared to last year. Singapore has become like a saturated market and news jobs and company headquarters are going to India and China. Singapore needs to pull up its socks if it wants its economy to keep growing."

A customer friendly driver, a human behaviour specialist driver and an economist driver! I am impressed! Wonder if these guys did their MBAs! If not, then the MBAs of the world are in for some competition from the Singaporean cab drivers!!

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