mere funde

Listen to this.

This is all TK said before he made me listen to “Tere Bin Nai Lagda Dil Mera Dholna” (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan). And, almost immediately, my mind was transported back in time.

It was Oasis of 2004 and Euphoria was playing during Prof show. Those were very sentimental times. Your last sem on campus, close to people you love. We (Bansal and I) had requested for them to play “Ab Na Jaa” which used to be our favourite since Misra’s psenti sem. And when he did, I remember calling Misra and others and making them listen to it on my cellphone, as me, my wingies, and some other friends got super emotional.

I don’t know which show TK was at today, but boy it felt awesome! He knew I love the song from the East India Company show we attended in CP a long time back.

Thanks man!! <hugs>

It has been a really long time since I posted anything. Three weeks to be exact!!

When I was about to join ISB I always thought I would post regularly and see what I have been up to during my time there later. However, compressing two years into a year long program means that the amount of work is substantial and leaves you with almost no time to do stuff you like.

The Bangalore Bengaluru trip at the end of term 1 was amazing. Three days of complete peace with nothing much to do. Movies were watched (loved Star Trek and LOTR – ROTK Director’s Cut). Good food was had. Lot of card games were played. This was probably amongst the last few trips to Bengaluru with Rahul around. He is all set for his Oxford stint, and I hope to see him in Bengaluru on his last day there during end August. I guess the next trip after that will be for Sudeep’s wedding in October.

In addition to Ankit and Rahul, I also met Samua and DDM after ages. Talked for quite a while with both of them. With Sam, it was more about his work and my experience so far at ISB. On the other hand, spent almost an entire day chatting with DDM and remembering old times at EVS, which, btw, is seeing a lot of changes. Also, struck up a nice little friendship with her kid.

Back in Hyd, the term 2 has been especially demanding with pretty heavy stuff like Decision Modelling & Optimization. Also, most courses have either cases or group assignments to be completed, which means that most of your time is spent in group meetings. Thankfully I have cool people in my study group who make these meetings fun.

Other than that, I have hurt my right ankle and damaged a ligament it seems. The ankle is in a temporary cast On the brighter side of things, I get to ride around the campus on these motorized wheel chairs (nick named “Ferraris”). Also, you get a lot of sympathy “Awwws” and “Ooohs”, though they dry up very fast I must say.

Hopefully the next post will take lesser time. Till then, Sayonara!!

The Godfather - Guys are cheering upstairs. I hear cars coming to the house. Consigliore of mine, I think it’s time you told your Don what everyone seems to know.

Me - Term 1 is over!! People are going home. And those who need a drink are partying at the Co2008 Lounge tonight!!

So there. I am an eighth of an MBA. And the past couple of months seem to have passed in jiffy. The assignments, the cases, group meetings, classes, CP, arbit CP, gyaan, dunkings, parties, and all the fun. Also, the profs. have been real awesome, and have made the courses so much more interesting than they really are. I hope that the trend continues.

In all, it has been like the downhill ride in Calvin and Hobbes – mostly a blur! But a fun one at that

I will be watching movies tonight and relaxing. I am heading to Bangalore Bengaluru tomorrow night and meeting up with Rahul, Ankit, and Sam (Sasaram) and hopefully having loads of fun. It has been almost four long years since I was last in Bengaluru and hope it is the same fun place

And then it is back to the grind from Monday, and I have morning (0815 hrs) classes to deal with

I believe that Airtel has the best customer support of all mobile carriers in India, and also the best network. It has been my preferred carrier for more than 4 years now. However, they did not land up on campus till about a week after we joined, and since by then everyone else was on Vodafone CUG, I had to join the Vodafone bandwagon too.

The first shock was that Vodafone did not support Twitter. WTF!! Wake up and smell the breeze folks. It could be a significant revenue earner, and yet you have decided not too support it. Can someone please explain the logic??

Next, I had some issue with the billing (never had it on Airtel I tell you), and I lodged a complain on their helpline. I must inform you here that it is near impossible to speak to a human voice on their IVRS. However, I did manage to file a complain, and 10 days (seriously) later they get back to me saying that they believe that the invoice is correct. I try to explain to the person my logic, and why I think there is an error, but he doesn’t know anything about my complain. What?? Are you fricking kidding me!!

Anyway, I sent their regional head an email about the error with the invoice details, and also the complaint number. He replied back saying I had forgotten my mobile number. I was soooper pissed. Can’t they locate my details through the invoice number and my name?? How hard can that be??

Seriously Vodafone, if you want to be as attractive as the Zoozoos, get your act together in customer support.

I must confess that I am tea addict. And ever since I have come to Hyd, I had not had a good cup of tea. You see, Hyd believes in this concept of over boiled and extremely sugary syrup that they like to call the “Irani chai”.

Having lived in one of the best tea growing areas in India, this just wasn’t good enough. Even Gurgaon had decent chai. From being someone who made at least a couple of trips to Subhashji’s place everyday, be it summer, winter, or rains, I had become someone who had not had good tea for four weeks!! Sheesh..

Anyhoo, the jinx was finally broken today. Megha, one of my study groupie, treated us all to authentic north Indian chai. Believe me, never had a cup of chai looked so inviting. It was pure bliss. Thanks Megha

By the way, my other groupies are Sunil (CA Sahab), the profound thinker Kirti, and the sleepy head, yet amazing, writer Malavika – go check her blog.

PS: Go watch Vinicius – a Brazilian documentary on the life of the brilliant composer of “The Girl from Ipanema“.

Some highlights from the first academic week at ISB:

• The profs are really good, and their ability to keep the class engaged for a couple of hours amazing. All that talk about international profs is true I guess. I was very skeptical about my ability to stay awake in classes, but I have managed that without too much fuss. We discussed ManU in an accounting class, wine and cheese were talked about in economics, and a lot of stories revealed in marketing!!
• We already have had a quiz. Granted that it was a pretty simple one at that, but one in the first week. Seesh!!
• The first case study for Marketing, the only course with class participation (CP). As imagined, there was a lot of “arbit CP” for which people were dunked in due course of time. Also, it felt awesome that the strategy that we came up with was actually the one that the company used later.
• We have our first assignment due by EOD today. Again nothing too difficult, but something to be done nonetheless.

Other than that, the week was pretty calm and most of the time was spent, well, sleeping. A couple of birthday celebrations were attended. I must confess that dunking does not follow any pattern at all, random distribution if I can borrow from Stats, and if anything it keeps increasing in randomness. People get dunked without rhyme or reason!!

One great thing about this place is the movie screening. You can use the comfortable lecture theaters for screening movies, which can be borrowed from the seriously awesome collection the library (LRC @ISB) has!! We had a smalll screening of Amores Perros on friday evening. The director, Alejandro Inarritu, effortlessly weaves three separate stories and tells a wonderful story about love, life (he calls it death), and betrayal.

I also joined the ISB Blogging community and hopefully we will soon start blogging on the official students blog.

The honeymoon period, as they call it, has come to an end. The first core term, for the Class of 2010 [Co2010] begins tomorrow. We already have loads to read up even before the first class. Just leaves me wondering if it is a sign of things to come!!

The weekend was spent partying, generally relaxing, and getting mentally prepared for the coming weeks. My section (E) went out for a Hyd trip and I joined them for dinner at Angeethi. There was a BITSian lunch proposed today, which had to be postponed due to some circumstances. Btw, there are some 17 BITSians in this batch, up from 12 last year – way to go BITS!!

Another interesting event was a interactive session by Navtej Sarna, Indian Ambassador to Israel, IFS Office, Class of 1980 [Note: I was born in 1983]. He spent a lot of time as the spokesperson of the MEA, and spoke candidly, without spilling any beans, of his experiences there. He elaborated on how the Indian media needs to regulate itself in events like the 26/11 or the Kandhar hijacking. He also spoke on how India’s perception in the West has changed over the years, and also how he reacted to Slumdog Millionaire vis-à-vis Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A very interesting hour and a half was spent with him. I am already becoming a fan of the speaker series at ISB.

I have been at the ISB for a couple of weeks now, and I must say I am pretty impressed.

Anyone who has been to the ISB, will confirm that the infrastructure of the place is top notch. The only other place in India that comes close is the Infosys Mysore campus. The campus is well planned, beautiful, and extremely well maintained. The student lodging is very very comfortable, and the management does its best to keep useless distractions away from the students. The library is very well stocked, both with books and an assorted collections of DVDs. I just wish we get some free time to use it

As for the current batch, its amazing diversity never ceases to amaze me. There are folks from every possible industry, and every possible company. There are folks with a couple of years of experience, and there are people with more than 8-10 years of experience. While that also accounts for a lot of confusion during class discussions, it also brings to light a lot of questions that we could never even have dreamt of!! There are media folks, lawyers, doctors, people from the armed forces, family business, and what not. The kind of knowledge and queries they bring to the table is just mind boggling. Also, most of them are fun loving folks. We already have had 3 big parties, and umpteen number of section parties. One problem though is remembering the names. There are around 10 Amits, many more Goyals and in the end I remember only a small fraction of names

Lastly, the faculty. We haven’t really started on the core courses, but as soon as we do I will definitely comment on this part. But from what I have heard from the seniors and others, the faculty is really good and wouldn’t be a sore point.

PS: Lloyd Blankfein, CEO, Goldman Sachs, was on campus a couple of days back and he had a very interesting presentation about empowerment of women entrepreneurs through the 10000 Women program launched by GS. This was followed up by a witty QnA session with the students and the Press.

Long time no post. But then, I was in Siliguri for a couple of weeks with extremely limited internet connectivity.

I reached Hyderabad on the 11th of April and since then have been busy with the activities in the Orientation week. My brand new laptop (the Dell Latitude E5500n) was only given back by the IT yesterday after installing licensed version of all softwares ISB would want me to use, and since then I have taken some time to customize it and make it usable installing Firefox, Chrome and others.

Also, ISB has some media policy for the students, covering what they can or can’t write about on their blogs. I am waiting for that to be clarified before I start writing more frequently.

Till then c ya!!

PS: I turned 26 yesterday – and to quote Harry Potter – It’s not everyday that your young man turns 26 is it!!

… Well, not really. But almost there. 

When I landed in Gurgaon, in November ‘05, the first reaction was – Wow!! What am I doing in this God forsaken place?? But then I got used to things. Made friends. Work became fun. Trips were made to Pilani. And truly speaking, I am hating the moving from Gurgaon experience. It sucks!! 

Tomorrow morning there will be no more familiar faces. No Pooja, no Gogo, or Sanchita, or Rahul. No more cribs by Shivangi. No funny ringtones from Manju. No lunch with the gang. No chai with Anoop and Praguna. 

Damn!!