Days in Oxford

Closure

2009-03-15T18:49:00.007Z

Well… Almost six months after last post….

Actually, I don't have a job yet. Well, technically speaking, I have a job. I am a co-founder and officer at Kogent Consulting. The consulting company I have started with my MBA classmates Nilan and Pranjal. We went through a great deal of work to set up this company. We are at the last stage of our first project and are bidding for second one. This is one hell of a job. We are doing some really great things. I have travelled a good amount for this job and have learned many many things about starting a company.

But I think I have waited for really long to get the job and write the last post. I am not sure how much more will it take to get one. And I think I need a closure for this blog. I have another perfect reason to do so. The blog URL says Days in Oxford. I am finally moving out of this wonderful, youthful city on 14th March. So it only makes sense to close this blog with this closure post.

The future still seems bleak. I think I am going to keep trying for a job and keep working for Kogent. In short I am going to keep hoping for the good. But I have no doubt in my mind that 2008 was one of the greatest year in my life. Here are some of the best days in past six months.

Cool Trip to Wales

Mom and Dad back in India

With sis on my birthday in India

In Saudi Arabia for Kogent work

So ladies and gentlemen, It has been an honor!

See you around!

Update:

My MBA classmate Gagan and I have launched a discussion forum for all the incoming, current and alumni MBA to facilitate free discussion and to know each other. Have a look if interested...

www.myAlumni.biz

The Last One (1)

2008-09-22T14:49:00.011+01:00

The name of this post is exactly same as the last episode of my favorite TV series FRIENDS. They had two parts of the last episode. I have FRIENDS DVD collection that I have watched so many times that I could even repeat the dialogs of almost any of about 250 episodes. But I have seen 'The Last One' only once and not planning to see it again. For I am like most of the people who can't take it. I guess I won't be alone when I am saying that I can't take the end of the most beautiful things that ever happen to my life may it be a nice movie, a great book, close relationship or an Oxford MBA. I knew it is going to end even before it started and I was preparing for it for long. But still it is hard.

Today I submitted the Capstone individual assignment (along with five others of friends who are not in Oxford any more). This was the last of the last things associated with my MBA. I am leaving my room located between two of the Oxford's dreaming spires at a historic and beautiful ship street in an hour. Every night I used to come back to my room, I couldn't help but had a feeling of living in a fantasy land. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Knight or a Dragon pass bye on that street. So it is like waking up from the dream now.

Nonetheless, This is the second last post on this blog. Just like FRIENDS, there will be "The Last One (2)" that I will write when I will land on a job.

I take this opportunity to thank you all for being with me throughout the year. This no doubt was the Annus Mirabilis of my life. And it wouldn't have been this much fun without you all.

I guess I have already put enough goodbye fuss on the blog past few days. So as harder as it is, I will keep it short. I still have thousands of thoughts I would like to write and many close friends and dear moments I would like to mention. But will just borrow the lyrics of LeAnn Rimes

Sometimes the time comes along

When it's time

Time to move on

You'll still be there

In everything that I do

And wherever I go I'll remember you

Good Luck all and see you around!!!

Random

2008-09-19T23:11:00.002+01:00

Four Oxford MBAs can not connect Wii for their life
Eleven Oxford MBAs including a french guy took more than 10 mins to figure out which way to go for Eiffel tower at Paris Metro station
A type A could be very considerate and good friend
The more people try to hide a secret, the more it becomes obvious and exposed
working in team was the most difficult part of MBA for most of us
Almost quarter of MBA class mistook Radcliffe Camera for Bodleian Library
British food, if there is any, is a big joke
About 30-40 MBAs used to live in RAC and about 150 other MBAs knew the passcode to enter in RAC
I found a caterpillar in my Sambar at Halal Munch.... most people continued eating there after they heard it.....
I would like to know if any MBA read all, or at least 90%, of the cases given as 'essential reading'
On an average, an Oxford MBA printed 2500-3000 pages in a year
At Oxford-Cambridge varsity day, Marc Waychak, Oxford MBA, jumped into cold Thames at Cambridge for 70 quids bet. A Cambridge MBA jumped after him for free... just to keep the nose of 'the other place' up
No girl, born after I did, made it to my MBA class...

Logistics

2008-09-17T23:20:00.002+01:00

Here is some post MBA logistics.

I have one last Capstone assignment due which I need to start and finish by Monday. Four MBAs including myself have managed to get a temporary hours at the outskirts of Oxford to stay for some time while we continue our job search. Will shift there on Monday after submitting the assignment. I might apply for HSMP visa next week, which will mean that my passport will be gone for couple of months and I won't be able to travel. So won't be in India for Diwali I suppose.

Amazing how fast things change from certain to uncertain to certain and back again.

End of Course Ceremony

2008-09-16T13:33:00.006+01:00

Stephen Chambers, the outgoing MBA director felt last year that the farewell dinner is not enough to properly say goodbye to outgoing batch. So he came out with very Oxfordie way. End of course ceremony. We, for once and all, changed our black ties from last night to white ones, put our gowns on and gathered to say good bye. Very touching speeches from faculties and students made this ceremony memorable. All the year was revisited in that small tent on that sunny afternoon. Then every student was called on stage to shake hands with the dean and director of the program to symbolise the official and proper goodbye.

This very last official MBA event marked the end of the course.

TT DN C

2008-09-15T14:43:00.004+01:00

I guess while I am writing about things that changed, it will be interesting to write about couple of things that did not change during this year...TT DN C

Still proud vegetarian. It is hard to survive at many places here if you are vegetarian. But so far I have managed to continue surviving without killing and intend to continue this for rest of my life. Live and let live....

Still not a party person. Oxford is certainly a town of parties. Great deal of people spend great deal of money on great deal of parties and consume great deal of liquor every week end. I tried hard through out the year. But still I am too dumb to understand the rational behind getting dressed and go to dark place and jump on floor with people you don't know. No offence to people who enjoy it. In fact I envy the people who can just throw away all the rationals for a while and just enjoy the beats. Guess just not my cup of tea.

TTC Personal Management

2008-09-15T14:38:00.003+01:00

Before I claim I changed for good, I must confess that there are people in my class who were better in personal management at the start of course then I am today. But overall I learned a great deal about time management, thinking of personal development, making relationship for future, and simply managing things in effective and less time consuming way. The time constraint had taught me to work effectively and define the priorities. Smart people will do everything possible to get the work done. But smartest one will identify the important things according to priority and will finish them in that order. Overall, I have improved a lot in past years in terms of personal management. But still long way to go.

Farewell Dinner

2008-09-14T17:14:00.004+01:00

One last time the glasses were raised to honor the dream that we had lived for last twelve months. The friends we made, the tasks we accomplished, the fights we fought and forgot, the nights we enjoyed and every moment we spent around these dreaming spires. It was an elegant night. Beautiful tables embellished with glass cutlery, flowers, wines, star-lit like roof and all the MBAs with their friends and families in tux and night-gowns. Everyone was looking very familiar, very close and yet very distant. But all were at their best. Everyone knew they had earned an enormous amount of learning and achievements in past year and they had made friends all over the world. And yet everyone knew that hey have yet way to go and everyone wished if only they could have more time to know the most intriguing people sitting in that hall on that night. This Friday night was the most magical and sentimental night in Oxford. Unfortunately, it was the last night for those distinguished and utterly blessed group of people to be together. For it was the last dinner of Said Business School MBA class of 2007-2008. A Farewell Dinner.

Capstone

2008-09-13T11:01:00.004+01:00

The last week of MBA was a Capstone Course. Four days of intensive program contained lectures, seminars, panel discussion and lots of group work. We had formed a team of seven for group. This team had all the close friends only. So we spend a lot of time arguing, fighting, laughing and playing. The course probably wasn't as qualitatively good as expected. But good chance to catch up with the class after summer. The course was concluded on Friday with the presentations by groups on what they worked upon. That was the very last time we sat in SBS as a student. Now only one assignment is left that is due on 22nd. But I guess yesterday was official end of my student life.

Portsmouth and Isle or Wight

2008-09-12T00:18:00.004+01:00

Went to Portsmouth and Isle of Wight last week end. The primary reason was to spend time with close friends. And thatz what we did. Didn't spend much time on site seeing.... Just chill out....

TTC Geographically

2008-09-08T21:46:00.005+01:00

By geography I mean two things. First is actual geography. I was thinking I have fair knowledge of geography. But this year opened my eyes. I didn't know part of Istanbul is in Europe and part in Asia, or Singapore is the south most point of Asia or many things like that. Well now I know better about both Europe and Asia. And now I know that I don't know many things yet.

But the primary motive of this post is the second meaning of geography. I mean the new meaning of geographical locations for me. Last year, for me HK was place of Jackie Chan and Dubai was for Mumbai underground exiles. Taiwan was a semiconductor manufacturing country and China was just a country that was like India but doing a lot better now. Even EU countries like France and Germany had no emotional attachment from me. US was a place where Indians go. But now everything is changed. Each of these countries now is associated with one or more faces of close friends. I know how they live, what they speak, how they eat and what they play. I can not imagine any single year when I will ever learn about so many different people from so many different places. And the best part is they are not just people. They are friends. This might sound niche and you would say any international student will experience the same. Well, yes and no. I mean yes, many get the same experience. But I am glad I did too. And I am sure not really many can make friends with so many diverse and still highly talented group of people. This is something I don't expect to happen again. And I am immensely grateful for the opportunity.

Completion of SCP

2008-09-06T22:22:00.003+01:00

On Wednesday we gave a formal presentation to team of 10 from our sponsor company about our work. That officially marked the end of the SCP. I have already talked about it. So nothing more. Unfortunately one of our team Estel member Nilanjana couldn't join the presentation. So just three of us. Bdw Team ESTEL was the name of our team. Estel is the land of hope in Lord of the Rings. So Estel could meant hope. I used this word for team where were hoped to get the SCP at least in the second round after a hell-struggle in first round.

Here are some snaps in company. No photography allowed inside. So....

TTC Team Work

2008-09-03T20:03:00.003+01:00

I already had very good experience of working in teams. This includes the experience of working as Magazine Secretary way back in college. I had to handle about ten teams of students and communicate with ten professors who were guiding the teams. This was one large team of about 140 students and it certainly taught me a lot. Same thing next year working as Cultural Secretary. Even in job I worked in virtual teams spread all over the world.

But still these teams are very different. They generally have different skill sets and expertise and there is some hierarchy in the team. On the contrary, working in MBA teams is very very different. For there is no hierarchy here, everyone is smart and many times egoistic, Everyone has their own way of doing things and the skill set might not vary a lot. This might result in either direction. If you could get along with it, you work in a team of some of the smartest and mot efficient people. The accumulative skill set, knowledge, experience and sheer brain power of such team could be astonishing and might create wonders. While if by any chance there is substantial difference in working style, you could spend hours and hours in pointless battle just to set the order within a team. Mountain goats are famous for fighting for hours to set the order. within the hurd. And this fight could be duet or even three or four goats at times. I am Capricorn by sun sign which is represented by goat. So even though unwillingly, I was involved in some of these battles. While other times I enjoyed the knowledgeable discussion and creative outcome from it.

Overall this experience enriched, if not changed, my understanding of team. I am more capable of working in team than I was before. And I have better understanding of when and why of people behaviour. I am still not able to handle certain situations as smoothly as I should. But at least theoretically I know how should act then.

By the way today is right time to talk about team as our team gave the presentation of our summer work. This is the team I worked the most with in my MBA. And today I could happily say that I liked it.

TTC Academically

2008-08-30T22:38:00.004+01:00

First on the list is must be my understanding of business and corporate world. I was below average of my MBA class in terms of understanding or the corporate world. And in a year I learned immensely about companies, people inside it, customers outside it and how theese comapanies work. There were few companies that I didn't even knew are existing last year this time. And today I not only know about them, but I also understand what is going terribly wrong or impressively well about them. Being a software developer, I knew comparatively less about some aspects of business such as marketing and finance. Enen nNow it will be stretch to say that I have mastered them. But I at least know what people mean why they talk about marketing of finance.

And the SCP we did this summer was the best opportunity to apply what we learned to reality. I am quite happy with the SCP and the work we did. And this just confirmed how much I would love to work as a consultant.

Now here I must confess that I did terribly wrong in the MBA program. I mean I still passed with good marks and all, but I know that I have made every mistake in the book. I managed time badly, misunderstood the concepts, skipped very essential readings, slept in classes, applied wrong concepts or right concepts at wrong places and many others. But I know from experience that making mistakes is the best way of learning (very expensive though… but still… the best). So I guess I could proudly say that I learned a lot in this program. And in future, when I will be required to work in real time scenarios, I would knowwhat NOT to do…. And that, as this MBA has taught me, is half work done.So I guess I am good to go :)

So my final comment will be I absolutely, perfectly, 100 % got what I wanted academically from this program.It has substantially enhanced my knowledge about this business world and has given me the new perspective to look at the corporate world.

Towards the Finish Line

2008-08-30T21:44:00.006+01:00

Yesterday we took the prinout of the SCP report. That means the SCP is academically over. We still have to give the presentation to the company on Wednesday. but the major part seems to be done. With this 'done' thing the reality or greater 'done' that started an year back and the preparation for which started about five years back is becoming more and more tangible. This is almost end of August. September used to be very relaxing month in India. It generally is the time in India when schools / colleges are open since couple of months, so you are already settled with your new friends and new course. Monsoon is almost ending. The land is still ornately green, but the October heat hasn't arrived yet. You j enjoy the college festivals and cultural festivals like Ganesh-Utsav, or Paryshan (Jain). It is very settling month...

But when I will start this September, I will have no idea where and what I would be by the end of the month. This could be the most unsettled month in last 26 years. This is not a complain. In fact I am glad about this little uncertainly as I hope that it will hold a nice surprise for me. But to look at it in another way, the MBA is ending.

So what I want to do here it to look back at the things once again and see what this year really meant to me. I am going to write few TTC posts.... Things That Changed posts that will be the result of simple subtraction of me right now and me an year ago. This is more for me than for you so be patient!!!

Yearbook

2008-08-27T16:17:00.004+01:00

So here is the final yearbook we created. Actually it is a photobook rather than yearbook. but still good record of an Oxford year. Click on the image to see the same. Warning: The link is slow at times.

Refill!!!

2008-08-24T23:16:00.003+01:00

From Monday summer electives are starting. People who have chosen electives over SCP have started to return to Oxford now. So great to see familiar faces again after two months of only a dozen people around. And so bad that when many people are here and have time to go around and enjoy last few days here, I am facing which could potentially be the busiest week of Summer. Nonetheless hope to work hard and..... well, I can't say party hard, as after a year of testing and retesting, I am finally convinced that I am not a party person no matter what.... So work hard and try to spend more time with fella Oxonians.

Thatz all for today.

Sines Refinery visit and Raksha-Bandhan

2008-08-19T22:58:00.006+01:00

Monday brought us back to reality very fast. We realised the bad travel planning. The city Sines were the refinery is located is about 3 hours bus ride from Lisbon. I wasn't interested in car driving of six hours so we took a bus. The flight and all left us will only two hours of interview. Everything was so time to time that 15 mins delay in any event of the day and we will loose the flight. Fortunately everything including interview went very well and reached back to Oxford today morning. The Oxford rain today officially ended the little summer holiday we had. Now we have barely two weeks to finish rest of the interviews and write 15000 word reports and give presentation to the company. Looks like coming days are going to be the busiest days in Summer.

Anyways. It was Raksha-Bandhan on Saturday. Traditional Indian ritual when sister ties a silk thread to her brother as a symbole of the ties between the two. Here is the lovely Rakhi my lovely sis sent me. Celebrating Indian event long after Diwali. I miss being there for Raksha-Bandhan. Thanks Anuja for the Rakhi. Miss you too!!!

Lisboa

2008-08-19T22:00:00.013+01:00

Spent week end in Lisbon. I liked the city. Its very calm and warm. Less crowded and clean air to breath. And the Alfama area is just cool. This city center with cobble stoned path, lovely western Europian style yellow, pink, maroon houses, hastle-bustle blended with content lazyness of locals, the cute yellow electric tram and coffee houses and bars with tables laid out on streets. Very nice area. Apart from that we visited the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos in Belem area and saw the tomb of Vasco Da Gama.

On Sunday we travelled a little to Sintra. The town much hyped as the one of the most romantic towns in Europe and the centre and the Palace is declared as world heritage site and all. To be honest, I found the town no better than Mahabaleshwar, the palace no better than Mastani Mahal in Kelkar museum and the castle no better than Raigad. In fact Raigad if far better. So kindda disappointed. however the Palácio Nacional da Pena, our last stop which we almost dropped was worth the visit. Here are few snaps:

Alfama, the Lisbon city centre

Mosteiro dos Jerónimos

Vasco Da Gama tomb

Palácio Nacional da Pena

Palácio Nacional da Sintra

Paris again

2008-08-19T21:43:00.006+01:00

Thanks to weird visa rules, Paris was needed to be my port of Entry in Europe before I go to Portugal to interview refinery for the SCP. I had enough time to go to the city centre. I decided to visit Montmartre hill that I missed last time. Thanks Nilan for reminding. This is the hill that was once a work place of great creative minds like Salvador Dalí, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh. I had my suitcase with me so decided not to climb all the way up and sat at a cool location with hill at one side and Paris at the other. I always wanted to draw a sketch in Paris. On the other hand I had Márquez's 'Love at the time of Cholera' in my bag, reading which at that hill would be another dream coming true.

What I ended up doing is to open my bag, took documents I need to read for my SCP and read them on the hill known as Sacred Heart of Paris. Why? Because that is what MBAs do......

South Killington Refinery visit

2008-08-13T22:21:00.004+01:00

Things finally started to roll out for SCP. We had couple of telephonic interviews on Friday. And on Monday me and Raymond travelled four hours in train to South Killington, a very small village near York to visit and interview a process engineer in the refinery there. Well that was the first time I saw any refinery from inside. Pretty intimidating structure though we really didn't get a guided tour or even chance to walk around. The interview was pretty helpful.

Pranjal and Raymond are in Paris (probably in night club and drink when I am writing this :) ) right now. Tomorrow they will travel to Malava in Spain to interview a refinery there. Raymond will come back and I will travel to Paris on Friday morning and if everything goes well, then will join Pranjal in Lisbon on Friday evening. Hopefully I will get time to see around Lisbon on week end. We are interviewing on more refinery there. Will be back to Oxford on Monday late night.

It is so interesting that many friends are travelling so much around the world that no city seems to be too far or too foreign.

Here is for the SCP team:

Lets see what this SCP is about...!!!

Hmmm.... doesn't seem that easy.

Holly Molly... get help call a friend, 50-50, any lifeline will do...HELP!!!

umm.. yeah.. whatever.... letz atleast go to Europe... will see about SCP later.

Cotswold

2008-08-11T23:06:00.004+01:00

On Saturday, we hired a car, stuffed it with an Indian, a Korean, a Taiwanese and an Iranian along with two umbrellas and four cameras and more importantly a GPS and drove to one more the most naturally beautiful places in England. Cotswold. Cotsworld itself is a huge area of 790 miles includes eye soothing landscapes, sprints, woods, birds and everything naturally beautiful and beautifully naturally. However we managed to visit only couple of limestone housed villages standing there since 14th century. They claim that these are England's most beautiful villages. I can't speak for whole England. But I guess it is true. The place was just lovely. Best place for families to spend a smooth, scenic, peaceful week end.

Loved It.

Ignore the legs... look at the place

Too tall people around

Our man Incheon here organized the trip, thanks to him

Lovely limestome houses row... thatz Incheon, Raymond and Behrad there...

Guess who just decided which holiday home to buy after getting job

Or alternatively checking if they need MBAs to run the canteen......

The snaps here have failed to capture the beauty of the place. Will check if others have good snaps and will upload again if they do.

Yearbook

2008-08-05T14:26:00.005+01:00

Incedently, I ended up working for the college yearbook. This is online software, so no time spent on creative layouts and stuff. The work was prettly much limited to selcting and uploading the snaps while being creative within limits. It was great fun to go through the snaps of moments through out the year. Seven of us worked on this. Here are few snaps for yearbook 'staff'

from left, Prashanth, Sirena, Maren, Will, Katy, Alok...

Lazy Week Busy Sunday

2008-08-05T00:04:00.005+01:00

The week was spent in regular SCP / VISA / JOB struggle. Nothing remarkable and hence wasn't really willing to update the blog. Spend Saturday resting, watched movie August Rush, which by the way is not as remarkable as many other had said, and was reading Marquez's 'Love in the Time of Cholera'. Enjoyable book. However my stamina of reading the book is hampered. Now I can't finish books over-night... Guess need to work out in this area :)

Nonetheless, first Sunday of August, Friendship day. Here is one old snap of Friendship day where three of us, the roomies, invited the friends in Pune for Dinner. Good Ol days.

So went Punting with remaining MBAs in Oxford. We spent 3 happy hours Punting, eating grapes and drinking Pims. What a great way of spending Sunday Morning. Really had a great time.

Really Enjoying :)

Thatz me and grapes... :-)

And to make the day the perfect, had TT and fantastic Indian dinner at Naveen's house. Me, Sudipto, Sachin and Naveen, just four of us. We had a great talk, ambrosia food cooked by Rashmi, Naveen's wife and one more cool round of talks and dessert. Wow, what a Friendship day Sunday. Couldn't ask for more.

So Guys. Happy Friendship day. Enjoy.

Trinity Term Results

2008-07-29T16:49:00.002+01:00

Results came out about 5 mins ago. Being in school was able to collect it very fast. Well, passed in all subjects with between 60-65 in all. Which means I have passed three terms of MBA in plain Vanilla manner without flying colors or falling down....Boring ride.....but glad that it didn't turn in wrong direction either....

Windsor Castle

2008-07-28T19:00:00.003+01:00

After a long time! I was planning to update on Friday. But the keyboard of my laptop, that had troubled me multiple times before, had officially gave up after a small accident. So....

Nonetheless, after gruelling boredom of week end aggravated by visa problems for scp work and hence due lack of any activity, I didn't expected the week end to be any better. So out of sheer lack of anything happening, I decided to go to Windsor Castle, a weekend of of Queen. Old pal from John Deere, Hari, benignantly agreed to accompany me. So spent quarter of Sunday waiting for Hari on different train stations (don't ask), quarter in the castle watching King's and Queen's rooms (they have seperate bedrooms - I thought that was my original idea :-( ) quarter watching the movie 'The Dark Night' in Slough (which by the way is a decent movie worth watching) and rest quarter travelling. At least I got a required break, had nice time catching up again with Hari and got couple of snaps to upload here. The next episode of the 'series of unfortunate events' was the camera going all crazy. So half of the snaps have gone bad. Here is what I have got...

Blessings of Ra

2008-07-19T23:35:00.000+01:00

Those who don't know ancient history (or those who don't play Age of Mythology, for that matter) Ra is Egyptian Sun God. Now why not Hindu Sun God Surya-Dev or Greek Sun God Apollo? Well, Surya is limited to India as mythology says, he travels in his chariot everyday and I guess doesn't work extended hours as in UK. And Apollo is not really-completely-dedicated Sun God as he shares the place with Titan Helios. I don't know other Sun Gods. So only Ra seems to be free.

Free for what? Well, to bless a sunny day in England. Actually today wasn't exactly the bright shiny day, but I got couple of warm hours and enjoyed them in SBS garden. Nice day to do nothing but relax and watch movies. The relaxing was concluded by nice and heavy dinner at Utkarsh's place, cooked by his wife Swati. May Ra bless them :)

SCP

2008-07-17T12:39:00.000+01:00

Going fairly nice with the SCP. Right now the work load is not too much. Still in order to get things accomplished, three of us, Me, Pranjal and Huan-Yi, who are in Oxford meet (or rather sit) in library everyday from 1000-1600. While the fourth Member Nilanjana joins virtually from Reading. Right now we are in process to make the future plan. So no firm plan of action right now. Just making peace with peaceful life.

Preparing mind to start working

Preparing body in the pose of working

Hard working :)

Gayatri Mantra and Giorgio Armani

2008-07-12T19:58:00.000+01:00

The new spring/summer 2009 collection for Giorgio Armani is displayed on their website in a video of a fashion show. The interesting thing is, for the background music they are using Gayatri Mantra...
http://www.giorgioarmani.com/ga_menu/EN/home.html

Just don't ask me what I was doing on that site :)

Coincidence is that today I found my fav add on youtube. That add uses couplets written by Saint Kabir as a lyrics of its Jingle. Interesting to have the spiritual and commercial world interlinked like this...

Singapura, second part

2008-07-09T20:48:00.000+01:00

Some more site seeing and travelling including good time with friends. Here are some more snaps:

Singapore Downtown, Raffle's town. Very much like any British city!

Well after hours of blabbering about the Merlion, finally when we reached there, it was under maintenance and no water coming out of it's mouth. Made me so pissed of...

...So pissed of that I needed to kick some serious arse.

And taunt Vishal until he can't take it any more.....

Don't I look content now with previous achievements :)

Parliament. Met Singapore president as well on the Orchard Street.

Old buddy from Kanbay, Sanjeev. Too bad couldn't spend much time together.

Anyways. Back to Oxford Now. From tomorrow, work on SCP starts.

Singapore - Sentosa

2008-07-05T16:47:00.001+01:00

The last blog entry was as well written from Singapore. However it was very late in the night, I was jet lagged and haven't had any snaps to show and was irritated by that article. So didn't mention Singapore. Nonetheless. Reached here after couple of hassles to continue the trend of bad things happening to me. Some of them were visa getting rejected for not booking the hotel and the screen in flight not working and hence 13 hours of journey without entertainment etc.

Anyways. Reached here yesterday. Meet Piyusha and Vishal after long time and having great time since then. Had already three fantastic meals. Visited Sentosa Island today. The place is good. However most of the tourist attractions were for families and older people. The beach is very big and pretty good and beautiful. However it was really hot and sunny. So I didn't find it particularly interesting to lie on beach or swim. Overall, the city is as humid as Mumbai. So didn't like the weather much. I guess the city is beautiful and well maintained, but not my type and I won't like to stay here for long.

Here are some snaps:

The hosts: Piyusha and Vishal. I have many connections with them. Piyusha is one of my best buddies from undergrad. Vishal is my distant cousin and all three of us had our undergrad from the same college and they are married to each other for three years now.

And the guest, yours truely. Bdw Piyusha says this is a famous bridge from movie Krrish

And the place.

A huge resort with recreational facilities is being built in Sentosa, supposed to be completed by 2010.

And the snaps of the fantastic lazer show, The 'Songs of the Sea.' I really liked this show. The story was a simple fairytale. However the use of laser lights on water drops to create celestial atmostphere and unbelievable experiences was really amazing. Hats off to this show. It made my day.

This is just a setting of lifesize village, before the show.

Guys trying to wake up the enchanted princes. The image of princess is projected on waterdrops.

Cool fire effects

Finally gets the priness. Happy Ending! :)

Overall, a Great day!!!

New TOI Article

2008-07-04T17:53:00.000+01:00

There is one saying in my mother tongue Marathi, "Sutavarun Swargala Jaane" which literally means thinking of climbing up to heaven from the clue of single thread falling from above (or something like that). It actually means that concluding from very small clue.
I am talking about this because read the article in Times of India titled 'Now, brain drain from UK to India'. click the "link here" to read the article.

Well, of course the Indian economy is growing at least three times more than UK economy and there are multiple attractive options available. I would myself won't mind working in India for a decent job. However this article considers a single event from a 0.1% students of just one university and tries to draw a conclusion about the two countries. This is immaturity of media. It is the example of confirmation bias where you just seek for the evidence of what you already have in mind and ignore the clues directing at a rather opposite direction. The Indian media just seek a confirmation to show off the so called buoyant economy and thinks that the problems like brain drain will be solved magically by sheer growth of the economy. To stop the brain drain, we have to improve upon many things like infrastructure, corruption, red-tape and many more.

On the other hand, unlike mentioned in the comments of this article, many people including Deepti are genuinely interested in working in India. So they will go back there anyway. No need to publish such flashy articles to conclude that brain drain is stopping now...

Don't want to make more bitter comments. But pity on this.

Food and Travel

2008-07-01T23:53:00.000+01:00

The blog title sounds like a name of lifestyle magazine :).

So the travel update is: as I said before, I published a paper in IEEE heathcom conference in Singapore which was accepted. Then the nice Jesus college graciously gave me grant to travel there. So.... Going to Singapore from this Thursday till next Wednesday. Well the conference is just for the day but the main aim of this visit is to meet Piyusha and Vishal there. Haven't meet Piyusha since two years or more I guess. So this one week is like summer vacation for me. Which really is true as haven't have much work as of now. Will start working on SCP once back. I have got some tentative details about SCP and it looks very interesting. Looks like will get to travel as well. More details later.

And food update is: looks like I am going to have good food for a long time. It started yesterday with my home cooked food. Then had lunch today at Jesus. They are interviewing candidates for the post of Senior Research Fellow and director of Corporate Reputation at Said Business School. This post is shared by SBS and Jesus, so am I. So I was invited for this nice lunch by college Senior Tutor. Evening dinner was at April's place. Well, the dinner wasn't really ambrosian as I cooked it. But had a greaaat time. The next three meals till I fly are already booked and I am expecting them to be good. And finally Piyusha's home made food at Singapore... So this really is travel and food time.

Nice to have a good time after long :)

Its really ENDing

2008-06-30T00:29:00.001+01:00

Today I took printouts of my final assignment and sealed them in envelop. With this my work for Trinity ends. Right now so many lines are clouding in my mind that I am afraid I won't be able to write any of them. Some people won't be here in Oxford. Unfortunately those include most of my best friends here. Since Friday I am saying good byes to them. Many had to vacate their rooms and all... I guess I instead of writing whole lot about it, I will just make my point that 'It is really Ending!'

Now next two months are so uncertain and mean so different for everyone in the class. People are going to scatter all around the world. Some lucky folks have already secured jobs and quite a few are even starting it. Some are doing SCP and interships at different places while seeking for job. While few others don't even know where they are going to put up next week....

Anyways, I am still not sure when my SCP is starting. Fortunately I got to keep the same room and I didn't have to travel. So at least one less worry, thanks to Jesus college and my SCP. Still there are couple of uncertainties that might be resolved this week. I will update as and when I will know about it.

Ending it here. Have a nice week ahead.

Officially Not-Young

2008-06-26T13:57:00.000+01:00

My 'Official' birth date is 25th June 1982. So yesterday I turned 26 officially. In other words, I am officially 'not-young' any more. I am not eligible for Young Person's Railcard, or discounted tickets for metro or free entry to Luvre or many more. Ironically My first two days of not being young were spent in writing what could be the last exam of my life. Today I am done with exams. Finishing exams for lifetime, I guess, would be the good momento to mark the entry into 'mature' (or whatever is the good word for not-young) life. So far it was an ordinary journey with just couple of exciting stations. But can't complain. I think I am pretty much on schedule with my wish list and almost have done whatever I wanted to as a young person. And It has just started getting exciting. With last couple of twists and twirls and anticipated fight for job (and may be for marriage (not to do it but to avoid it :) )) I am sure next quarter will be far more interesting.

Now that we are speaking of numbers, here is another one. There are mere 250 Indians in Oxford out of 20,000 students. Now there will be few who are Indian origin but holds different passport. Nonetheless this number is far less that I had thought of. I mean this is just 1% of overall population. And I don't believe Indians or Chinese could be just 1% of overall population of anything (may be except Rugby, Basketball and such sort of 'local' sports). There are more than 1000 Americans here, about 650 Chinese. But only 250 Indians. Strange!!!

Anyways. Now that Exams are done, I have had luxury of sleeping in the afternoon, My buddy and TT partner Harsh is going back to India in 15 mins, I guess I will have nothing else to do over the week end but to work on the 4000 words retailing assignment of which I haven't have thought of even the topic.

So about to start my first assignment as a officially not-young person....See ya kids around.....

Brand name recognition

2008-06-23T23:58:00.001+01:00

LinkedIn is very good site for professional networking. Though the groups of the site are not searchable yet and you have to be dependent on other people knowing the group and then adding it from their profile. They are saying on the website that they will make it open sooner or later. But the sooner the better caz it is pain to find groups of your Ex company or school or other professional communities as simple as Java developers.

I found a very interesting group, 'Linked Pune'. The Director of my Ex company was member of it and I found it on his profile. When I visited the website, I saw many interesting and and high profile PUNEits on that site. I applied for memebership and wasn't only accepted, but acknowledged on their website (http://www.linkedpune.com/)

Brand name, Isn't it?

Hari's Visit

2008-06-23T11:19:00.000+01:00

On weekend Harikrishna, friend and colleague from John Deere visited Oxford. He was my first guest in the city. I got opportunity to visit couple of tourist places with him where I never had been before. We had a nice time and had a blast at Punting. Good break from study. It was great catching up with him again. And the good fella brought me 'Bakarwadi' and sweets. God bless him!

Here are some snaps:

In front of Bridge of Signs. Hari and his Nihilent colleagues, Shri and Anup.

In front of B School.

The Punting...Hari so delighted that we finally let him handle to pole :)

Though the tension is mounting now. For many people, exams started today and for few it even ended by now. I have papers on Wednesday and Thurday and another assignment due on next Monday. The Wednesday paper is very quantitative and carries high weightage so have to pass. So instead of writing this blog right now, I should be studying...Good bye then :)

Christ Church Dinner

2008-06-20T21:33:00.000+01:00

Finally got an opportunity to dine at the famous Harry Potter dinning hall. Thanks to Jitin for inviting bunch of folks to the hall. I had been to the college before so haven't dropped my jaw after entering. However nice to dine there. Jitin had already set the expectations from food at bare minimum level, so no surprise. Here are few snaps.

The picturesque first quad of CC

Dhruv Lakra. Exuberantly Happy as he is going home tomorrow while rest of us still have exams

Pre-dinner drinks

I don't believe Harsh made a joke. Aashima and Lovraj are just plain-vanilla happy.

The other side of the table was comparatively serious and meant business...

After dinner discussions... about which pub to head for!

Manoj and his wife. Manoj is smart IITian and importantly good company for sitting silently with me.

Finally the host. THE Jitin Dhanani.

Last week I got to dine at Green college which almost went bankrupt (obviously not because I ate there...) and now merging with Templeton college. On the other hand, today the talk at dinning table was about someone donating GBP 50 million Christ Church. Green is very new college and apparently has no legacy to stand out amongst old Oxford colleges. Christ Church is one of the biggest, oldest and most famous college with many big names as alumni and above all, it is the Harry Potter college. Well, the brand name and fame matters every where no matter if your are a fresh passout or an Oxford college.

TT Week 8

2008-06-17T00:51:00.000+01:00

The last week of the taught term. Many Many things happened this week. But there are many decisions yet to be made....

SCP

We bid again for SCP second round where there were still many good projects left. These projects are from relatively unknown companies. So most of the students did not apply for that. We applied to a project for a company HQed near Oxford and today I came to know that we have got it. Right now I am not sure if I can disclose the details of project. But the project is for two months, we are going to get some stipend and it might involve travel to Europe.

Well, the project is good and i would like to work on it. However just not feeling very happy as would have felt if this would have been in round one. Nonetheless can not complain about the summer now.

Last week

so this was the last week of TT course. I still have couple of exams next week and one more assignment due. But this is pretty much it. MBA is symbolically over. Though most of the week was spent in assignments only. So didn't participate a lot in senti-good-bye stuff.

I can't think of anything to write about now. So i guess I will keep this post small. Officially with this post I break my self imposed rule of updating weekly. I guess for summer I will update the blog as and when have something to write.

Interestingly most of the blogs of SBS student from last year or even this years started and ended just in couple of terms. I think the number of students updating the blogs regularly is not even two digit. I am glad I could made it this far and sure that I will continue the same. The credit goes to you who kept reading this news bulletine without complaining. You people are really patient :)

Don't have any multimedia to post this week. So here is the Google analytics picture of showing visits to the blog.

bdw, Google Analytics is the best took I know so far to analyse the website visits. I almost know who is visiting the blog, and who isn't :)

TT Week 7

2008-06-06T18:55:00.000+01:00

Nothing much this week. The week went ok. Didn't attend many classes and worked on assignments and other stuff. After I finished whining for SCP I decided to bid for second round of SCP. The result is awaited in few days. Week and weekend was without any happening. Though the worst thing was Federer's pathetic loss against Nadal. I mean the guy is world no.1 and couldn't even score 6 points in entire match. The match was so similar like last year's match. I mean the same problem with backhand, the same way to try to reach to net while knowing that no matter where you put the ball, Nadal is going to reach there, and same slow movements. Almost equal disappointment as last week when I didn't get SCP.

Anyways. As nothing else to talk about, I am adding some snaps to view.

Provost Garden and Worcester College opened to all only once a year

We were invited by Aashima and Lovraj for this garden party

Teaching Jitin how to pay Croquet - a traditional garden game

Dinner at Incheon's place. with Jenny and April

I am pretty much ready for the last week of term. I was slow and hence didn't complete much during the week end. So might be busy during the week as I have loads of assignments to complete. And hopefully will get some good news this weeks.

Thats all folks!

TT Week 6

2008-06-01T19:26:00.000+01:00

It was a transformational week. Many things changed in this week.

Strange Change

Very first and unexpected change was the behavior of people. Being private matter, won't discuss it on blog... but this substantial change in relationship with some good friends... both positive and negative change.... had major impact on my thinking and my perspective to look at the overall program and life thereafter.

A big blow

I couldn't make it to any of the Strategic Consulting Project.

There were total 40+ projects and less number of teams. So statistically, more than one project per team. But large number of projects couldn't attract any of the teams. So core interest was in about 15 projects. I was counting on IBM internship (which I lost eventually) and hence didn't formed a team beforehand. Later on it was late as most of the good people had already teams and I had great difficulty in finding team. Finally we formed team just 20 hours before the deadline and we prepared cover letters in just 5 hours. Again one of the team member had to pull out and we found another team member. Some more things like that. We bid for 7 projects. Eventually two of them withdrew, of remaining 5 we were interviewed by one. But at the end we couldn't make it.

Frankly speaking, our team wasn't very best formation. And couple of calls were given based on CV and cover letter that we formed just in 5 hours and hence were not of a very high quality. But I don't like to give excuses for loosing. So the fact is that we weren't competitive enough and we lost. This is very hard to digest. I couldn't manage to come out of it even after 48 hours. I know it is not end of the world and all the other positive arguments from other side. But when you lose, thatz what it means....you lose.

Apart from whining about it, there are some real problems ahead now. Those who can't get SCP and internship have to choose summer electives. The ones that I could choose are starting at the end of August. So when other MBAs are doing cool internships and SCP all around the world with nice companies, I am most likely to... I don't know what I am going to do then. I might go to India for about a week and come back for job search. But job search every day won't take more than 5 hours. Don't know what to do after that. Anyways..............

Sylvester Awards

SBS has something called as Sylvester Awards. A ceremony to appreciate / comment / pull legs of MBAs. There are some good awards like sportsman of the class, while most of them are really naughty like the person who ask most riduculous questions in class or sleeping beauty of the class. Most of them are very funny. And the event was organized very nicely. Kindda flashback of whole year and the fun we had. So overall it was a great event. But this event made everyone realise that the end is near. Only two weeks of classes are left. Then everyone (except the fallen ones like me) will travel all around the world for in summer work or vacation. We will meet again for 2 weeks in September and thatz it. People have started to talk about 'the end' and 'departure' and stuff. Not very pleasant subject to talk about.

I know its really whiny post and the situation might not be dire as it seems (or it might really be)... But thought I will write it whatsoever.....

Cooking

Anyway.... to change the mood... find some snaps of Indian lunch I cooked for my Asian friends on Saturday... the menu was Peshawari nan, mutter paneer, rice and my patent receipe dish of spicy coconut pulao... I blew it up... it was stuff too hot for my friends and I guess taste wasn't that good. But the nice people said they liked it....

Incheon and Jenny advertising for the food....

Sorry guys, couldn't get rest of the snaps by this time. Will update it in a day or two.

TT Week 5

2008-05-26T00:13:00.000+01:00

Every Saturday I think of writing something about the school, the course, the professors or 'words of wisdom'. But by the time Sunday arrives, I run out of time, I start thinking who am I to tell about philosophy of life and criticize Oxford profs. So the blogs turns into one more newsletter...

Not that the news are not interesting. In fact so many interesting things happen here everyday that a full magazine can be printed for every week's events. Considering my not-so-social nature, I attend mere 10% of the events that many socially active MBAs go for. Few distinguishing people attend most parties, participate in many sports, work on many committees, attend many dinners and still manage to get into Dean's list. How cool are they.

Alternatively large portion of these events is parties and bops. I don't understand the concept of getting drunk and dancing. I mean I like dancing. But I don't feel like doing it randomly and for no reason (or even if the reason is couple or more beers). This is not to say anything less about the people who like it. Its just me. Though consequently that cuts of 60% of the events and hence socializing. Right now I am not sure if I am missing something or not... Let the time tell...

Nonetheless. The headlines of the week are as below.

Week

Right now, don't remember much of it except assignments and stuff. But I like classes more and more. This week M&A class and Corporate Valuation class were very interesting. Now feel like doing MBA.

Jackie Chan in Oxford

Jackie Chan's visit to Oxford was arranged by PPE society. As a kid, I didn't know English. So the first few English movies I saw was essentially only Jackie Chan movies for you don't need to understand what they talk. Just see the amazing action. And the other thing was the English of Jackie himself. He is astonishingly poor in English. During his speech also he had to ask others many times for English translation. I can't believe he did so many Hollywood movies with this poor level of English.

And I had in mind his image as a shy, humble guy. But he is salesman personality. By that I mean he is very confident, non ashamed to call himself great and iterate his achievements, talkative and knows how to sell himself. But it was cool to see him just few meters away. Here is a video:

Oxford - Cambridge sports event

Saturday was another sports event between Oxford - Said Business School and Cambridge - Judge Business School. This is organized alternatively by each and this year it was The Other Place. Most Oxford MBAs love to hate Cambridge building and I must say, they had a point. The building is really flashy and it is indeed hard to explain why anyone will paint a business school in red, yellow and blue. But the event was organized very well. Cambridge class is smaller and more diverse. So the class is just like family where everyone knows each other well. Just like BEIT class. It was a nice sunny day and everyone enjoyed a lot. Out of 15 events oxford won 8. Considering small size of 'The other place' they did very good. The rugby was touch rugby with mixed team of guys and gals. So there were enough people and I wasn't very keen on playing touch rugby. So instead I played Table Tennis. If anyone cares about the results, I won, thought overall Oxford lost. All in all good day, good game and fun time.

This 'other place' seems to have many big and nice colleges. Though the city is small. Here are some snaps.

Judge Business School Building

Celebrity college in Cambridge. King's college

I guess thatz all. May be I will break self imposed rule of writing only on Sundays and write when the impulse to address the word will arise. If not, then next newsletter on next Sunday.

Alwida!!!

TT Week 4

2008-05-18T20:13:00.000+01:00

Paris

So here are the pending Paris snaps. I liked Paris more than London. London is very constricted. Paris is more green, more beautiful and has typical Europian city look. Some people hate this thing though I liked it.

The site seeing was more of a formality. We didn't really have much time in hand... So we went to places, took snaps and moved to next. Specially at Louvre where one can easily spend whole day, we finished it in an hour. Just visited the famous thing we knew are there.

Though there were many benefits for people under 26. Like very cheap train ticket and I even got free entry to Louvre... lucky me... most MBAs are well over 26, so I was special case

Paris

Week

Normal week, busy in assignments and all. This term is pretty interesting though for number of reasons. One is the subjects. I always wanted to know about Mergers and retailing which are the subjects I am learning and so kindda fulfilling my goal to do MBA. Another reason is guest lectures. Many classes are taken by well know guests from Industry like McKinsay partner, ex-HMV CEO and high profile people like that. So it is really intersting to hear from them about the real, first hand experiences.

Week end

Apart from meetings, celebrated Bday of team mate, noelia with cute little cake on Saturday. On Sunday I was invited by April at her place for lunch. She laboured a lot from buying vegetables to chopping, cleaning and cooking just to cook vegetarian taiwanese food for me. Can't express my gratitude for this gesture. And the food was really lovely. Great to have such a nice friends and nice food at Oxford. Here are some snaps:

TT Week 3 - MBAT Rugby

2008-05-14T23:49:00.000+01:00

When I got admission into Oxford, I decided to try two sports. Rowing and Rugby. Well Rowing schedule was very weird and couldn't make it. But I was practicing Rugby regularly. To tell the truth, compared to people playing competitive Rugby all the time, I am very incompetent. But otherwise considering I never played before, I am ok.

So finally I was in Oxford Rugby team for MBAT (www.mbat.org) where top B schools in EU competed for sports. We did damn good. In first round we washed out LBS (London Business School) team B and INSEAD. Those poor kids are still rehabilitating from their injuries. In Semi we made ESADE bleed. Final was with LBS and was very competitive. Still great performances from my team and great show. We won and we won the gold.

So we are official MBA Rugby world champions :)

See the medal

Didn't play and won sports since school. I used to play Kabaddi in school and I could say I was good. No way for sports in 11 / 12. Then for engineering, I wasn't interested in Cricket and lack of power games didn't motivate me to participate in games like Volleyball. And again due to Students' Council, time was another problem. So feel really great about this. One thing less from the to do list.

See the pics of match. To find me, you have to look carefully in the snaps... but I am there and I really played :)....

MBAT Rugby

I will upload the pics and update of Paris trip soon.

TT Week 2

2008-05-06T03:48:00.000+01:00

I know I am being rather irregular in wrting posts this term. But this term time management is all messed up. In two weeks many times had to press the panic button. And no improvement is in sight... so bear with me!

Results

Well, I have already written about most of the week. Another thing to mention was- got my Hilary Term results. Of course pass in all subjects. But to my greatest dispair no distinction. I am dieing to blame someone else for this but I know only I am responsible for this. Some of my class mates got rather very good results while some smart people are at the same stage as I am. But again no reason to compare or justify. I won't say I didn't study or didn't give it all my attention. But the result is what it is... the result. And the result is pass but no distinction.

Injury

One more swollen half broken finger and bruises after the Rugby game. We practice for tackle this time. And there are good chances of injuries if you are tackled by a six and half feet giant boxer running at the speed of 30 miles per hour. So it hurts to type right now. But don't worry as you always... I will be ok :-P.

MBAT

So here is the event of the year or whatever. MBA olympics. In Paris students from top and only top business schools in Europe gather for MBA Tournament (MBAT). What am I going to do there? Well I am represeting Oxford University in Rugby....ummm...well.... I know its not as great as it sounds. but who cares... Good opportunity to visit Paris. Though the hassle I had to go through and the extra work I had to do I sometimes think its not work the efforts. And I might not enjoy there. But I am going anyway. This also means next blog post might not be on time.

So thatz all. Now I have to finish the assignment, sleep for about 90 mins before getting up for the class... so all you folks enjoy the life. Everytime you waste a food, remember of people in Africa who don't get to eat for days. And everytime you stay up to watch stupid cricket match remeber of MBAs in Oxford who don't get to sleep in days....

TT Week 1 and Week 2 1/2

2008-05-01T19:10:00.000+01:00

Why 2 1/2? Becase second week is only half done. The new term started and took speed within no time. Some little time mismanagement from my side was also responsible for it partially.

Week 1

Week 1 was miserable. As I had to make 5 teams + SCP team this term. There were so many fluctuations and changes that at one time I had all team and next moment none. I had to spend many hours in frustration trying to find out team members. Eventually teams for the elective subjects were formed. But there was no hope for SCP (Summer Consulting Project). I was keen on internship and hence didn't form teams with friends before. So all of them who wanted SCP formed there teams. And eventually I realized that I couldn't get any internship and have to form SCP team. The big problem in forming this team is companies look for diversity of backgrounds and experience in the team. But if you have people from different backgrounds, each one wish to do different projects and it becomes hard to find the common list of projects. The deadline for registration was Monday morning. By Sunday morning we still were three people looking for one more. And in frustration I dropped mail to program coordinator if we can form a team of only three. Eventually she replied negative. To make the matter worse there were three assignments due in pipeline.

Thankfully Shasha Huang who wanted to do SCP but was fluctuating between decisions met Jenny and Sirena. I had worked with Sirena in first term and working with Jenny in many times. Both of them are very good friends. They nicely told Shasha about our team and recommended me. Finally we got the team at 5 in the evening. After that many many many hours of work for:

Writing 7 cover letters for SCP
MBAT practice (I might play Rigby)
Visa preparation for MBAT. Appointment on Monday
Corporate Valuation assignment on Monday
Mergers and Acquisition assignment on Tuesday
Strategy assignment on Thursday

Long story short, From Sunday morning to Thursday morning my cumulative sleep is sheer 12 hours for four nights. But I guess I have done all I needed to.
Enough of whining. Here is something pleasant.

May Day

Every year 1st May is celebrated in UK, specially in Oxford. The tradition is on 30th April people go to different ball or parties and stay up all night. Then in the morning all gather at Magdalen College where are 6.00 am a church choir sings madrigals. This is followed by number of impromptu performances on street. Until two years back there was a tradition of jumping from bridge in river which was cancelled last year after injuries due to shallow water. Thought at the cost of highly priced sleep, this event was very pleasant and enjoying way to spend a beautiful morning with good friends.

This nice morning ended with nice breakfast at Jerico Cafe. Catch up a bit with sleep after that then after eating and some study, here I am writing this post.

Here are some snaps stolen from Jenny and Aashima.

TT Week 0

2008-04-20T17:28:00.000+01:00

Well, nothing very happening happened this week. But it was a good week. It felt great to meet friends who were travelling all over the world. Had nice time catching up. As there were no major events, I am going to stuff this post with facts and thoughts....

So once again, it was really great to catch up with friends. This is the Trinity Term, the last term of our MBA program. So for these 8 weeks I am going to try to hang out with all those as much as possible. In summer most of us will depart to do our internships and SCPs. Then we will meet again for about 15 days in September. And after that everyone will be scattered throughout the world leaving a piece of hear here for the amazing years they had in Oxford and especially for the friends for life they made here. There are good chances that many of us won't see each other ever again. But thanks to web 2.0 things like facebook, we will be in touch....

Anyways... so this term I have six subjects. All electives. I selected three finance, one strategy, one marketing and one retailing. Five of six subjects need to form groups. For these subjects the groups are chosen by us. So once again got a great chance to work with friends and with some really interesting people. I am not expecting to deal with any group problems this term.

Other than this I need to form a group for Strategic Consulting Project in summer. We need to form a group of four and bid for different projects listed. One of the projects is from ICC about the impact of 20-20 cricket. Obviously I am not bidding for it. And obviously this will be considered by Indians. Anyways. Trying to get into some good projects. I have to find the team and bid before Friday. So this will be major work coming week.

Well some senti stuff and some boring facts... Don't want to drag it more. So this would be all for this week.

Turkiye

2008-04-10T15:59:00.000+01:00

Amazing 10 Days in Turkey. Last term I was dead bored to stay back in Oxford. So before that vacation ended I planned this trip and was looking forward to it the whole term. Finally it happened and I am glad it did.

Kayaking

The main intention of this trip was kayaking. There is a very small town at southwest Turkey called Gokova. I went for kayaking there with GokovaRuzgar.com group. These guys are very cool and friendly. My instructor Yavuz is in adventure sports for about 25 years and he had pioneered rafting, kayaking and now kite surfing in Turkey. He had been Turkish champion for couple of years. His wife is into kitesurfing. And they are just cool. I had been graced with one nice dinner and and a superb breakfast at their home. I just had fun with them. And kayaking was amazing. Thought I didn't learned everything I needed to, still overall it was great experience. One day we went to a tour of an island having remains of about 3000 years old civilization. Another day we went for whitewater kayaking. All very cool. I guess snaps will give the better idea. There are also some videos in this album.

Kayaking in Gokova

Efes.

This is again 2500 years old roman city. The city is in good condition. I rented a car to go there. There I realized that Turkey has good infrastructure. And Turkish dogs are just same as Indian dogs, they like to chase cars. I don't understand this concept. I mean I am sure that these dogs know they can't kill and eat the car. Then why to chase it. Complete waste of time and energy in chasing something completely useless. I don't know why dogs behave like a humans sometimes.....

Another thing is number of cats in Efes. I counted two things in Efes. Number of cats and number of Japanese woman tourists aging above 45 (How do I know the age?.... well, you just know....). The formar was 34 while the later was 37. Now I might have missed some and might have been counted more than once as they all look the same. And all of them were looking fat and content (Last two lines refer to CATs only). The city has so much history associated with it that I won't even bother to write it. But I am glad I visited it. Here is another album.

Efes

Istanbul

Very conjusted city. The part I am in is very touristie with many tourist attractions. But this part is beutiful. Just check the snaps.

Overall I got to explore wild and serene part of Turkey, visited ancient city and Istanbul, once a cultural capital of world. Very nice and memorable trip. Also this was my first long term travel alone trip. And first time in non-English speaking country. Very good experience.

Istanbul

Now back in Oxford and trying to get out of holiday mood for the last term of MBA....

I still have got sand in my shoes: Check this video :)

HT Week 10 - End of Hillary Term

2008-03-23T19:49:00.000Z

The last week of so called Hellary term. Well the term wasn't exactly the hell. Infact I think I enjoyed it way more than the first term. The main reason being with a great group of friends. You don't need Socrates to tell you that the good company can make any moment a moment worth remembering. Neways... here are some highlights of the week.

Examinations

I must confess that I haven't prepared for exams as seriously as I did last term. But still exam is exam and I had to spend most of the time studying. This time the exams were in Examinations school. This is the traditional building where thousand of students have been writing papers of years and years. This is very beautiful building. We can't take photos inside, but if I get it somewhere I will post it later. Meanwhile here are couple of them stolen from Jenny's blog.

Examination School

People in Subfusc after the exam

So it was quite an experience to go to a nice building in subfusc and all. And this time I could just walk as the building is close to my place. And the papers were OK. Nothing spectacular, nothing too worrying. So it would be fine.

Dorcet

So here is something. MBA are supposed to be the managers, leaders and organizers. MBAs from reputed institute like Oxford (well I know we rank 20 world wide... but its not that bad) are supposed to be good at what MBAs should do. Then here is a simple story.

12 MBAs from Oxford decides to go for couple of days of vacation. The plan is simple hire cars, book accomodation and go site seeing. Well, it wasn't easy to co-ordinate four cars and 12 full grown, full ego MBAs.... so we ended up visiting nothing but city centers and restuarents in Southampton, Dorcester and Dorset. Little bit siteseeing at beach.

But tell you guys, I won't say if wasn't fun. It was a hell lotta fun. The drive was simply wonderful. The road was picturesque. The compay was fun-filled and the accomodation was scenec. You will get all that from the snaps. But the most enjoyable event was the Friday night. We played Pictionary and Dumb-Charads. It was such a fantastic fun and great break. Haven't enjoyed that much since Engineering. Everyone was at his best and there were moments for life. People got identities and characteristics attached to them which will be laughed upon everytime we will meet. Some moments are marked deeply and I am sure that after spreading throughout the world for earning break and butter after MBA, whenever we will meet, these memories will be recalled and cherished. Great event guys... One for the bests for MBA. I won't write much. Get the gist from the album below.... Still snaps from some other cameras are pending. I will upload them as and when I get them.

Dorcet Trip

Back to Oxford

But all this exam and fun made me severely run out of sleep. Even while driving back I was feeling the strain. So when we came back on saturday, I decided to ditch the previously decided plan of movie and poole and slept at about 2000. Get up in between for couple of hours for dinner and went back to sleep again only to get up at 1100 in the morning on Sunday. It snowed heavily on Sunday morning. But I missed that. Harsh actually send text that it is snowing. I read that but just preferred sleep. And then had the movie and poole thingie tonight.

This is pretty much it. I will update the blog again when I get the snaps. Otherwise I am off to Turkey next Monday. So may or may not write for a while.

Have a great time all. And belated happy Holi!!!

HT Week 9

2008-03-16T23:11:00.000Z

The preparations leave week. Last term it was very simple vanilla PL. Studied all seven days in a structured way. This term was bit different, many deadlines in between. EP Presentation and three big assignments.

EP Presentation.

Entrepreneurship Project Presentation. One of the special things at SBS. We make a team of 5 and create a business plan for a very new idea. Out Idea was a Healthcare Kiosk. I need permission from my group to share the details. But we worked very passionately for EP. This group is my most favourite group I ever had in Oxford. I loved to work with them as a group and some times individually. I guess I have made friends for life here in the form of this group. We had to give a 10 min presentation in front of a real VC, MBA program director and our EP guide followed by 10 min Q&A and 10 min feedback. I worked hours for preparing the slides. As the idea was healthcare, I created slides in Blue and White theme that will look very much 'doctory'. Also used a chic to grab the attention. The presentation was handled by Harsh and Jenny. Harsh's pitch was very enthusiastic and straight from heart. While Jenny presented with grace and professionalism backed by real data. 10 min Q&A was handled by rest of us. We answered almost every question. We had 10 main slides for presentation plus 20 backup slides for anticipated questions. Any question asked was backed up by these slides and data.
The feedback was:
This is the best presentation so far. You guys look very committed to the project and very enthusiastic. You have done your work and prepared a good case. These are the best presentation (slides) with most extensive back up slides. Your teamwork is excellent. You have handled presentation and distribution of work very professionally. The Q&A part is excellently distributed.
Our EP guide sent an email saying:
"Dear all: Very many congratulations on this morning’s work. The panel felt that this was by far the best presentation and rigorous business case they had encountered to date. "

The only negative feedback was about making financial stuff more reasonable. We will do that and submit the final Business Plan before 10th April.
Here are some snaps of this memorable moment:

EP Presentation

This is not all. We sent our idea to couple of conferences and were accepted at both places. One in London and IEEE conference for healthcare technologies in Singapore. Again excellent feedback.

Rest of the week and weekend

Then had three big assignments due. Somehow finished it. Don't want to talk a lot about it.

Also attended end of term dinner at Jesus. Nice food and ambience. Enjoyed it a lot as it was on the eve of our EP Presentation.

After that just study and study. Exams are starting tomorrow and Ending on Wednesday. So again wish my good luck. Last time your wishes were pretty helpfule :)

With this, I will end this selfpraising, show-off post.

HT Week 7 and Week 8

2008-03-09T23:49:00.000Z

Nothing very spectacular happened during these weeks. Almost everything was regular. As the term end is coming near the workload is increasing. Have done very well in some assignments while have done very bad in others. Have attended great parties and had fun with great people. This term I am hanging out a lot. Last term the outings were about once a week or not even that. And the normal time of outing was from 2000 to 2400. This term there is no regularity but it is lot more frequent. This is an accumulated result of the facts that unlike last term when I studied only with Sab, this time I am studying with a group of friends. The library timing is extended by an hour and it now closes at 12. And the work this term is more tiring. So any given night, someone needs a visit to pub or restaurant and we just go there. Sometimes we just go and play TT or Poole in common room of some college. It starts at 0000 and lasts till 0200. Overall, a lot of fun time....

It was Jitin's birthday in week 7. Here are the snaps:

Jitin's Bday

Again, thanks Aashima for snaps!

Other than that, no big parties on week end.

But was invited by couple of friends to their colleges for meals. Went to St. Cross college for lunch. Courtesy, April. Its very small college. Fairly old. (The colleges build even in 19th century are considered NEW on Oxford). I liked the nice garden there. The view was suitable for any epic movie. Though they had very modern and un-harry-potterish dining hall.

This Friday Larry Kao invited me for dinner at New College. Interestingly, New college is one of the very old and big colleges in Oxford. Harry Potter 4 was filmed in this college. Interestingly this college has nice garden and a Myans type pyramid below which people who died from plague are burried. This garden is called squicky garden because if you clap or make noise in front of this pyramid, the eco squicks. If you remember the long corridors in Harry Potter, they are from this college. And again below the floor of them are lieing many dignitaries of college. The dining hall of the college is large, old and beautiful. Enjoyed the dinner. Unfortunately it was dark and I haven't had camera. I feel very sorry for that.

Other that that the lectures ended this week. Now coming week there is very important EP presentation on Tuesday and three big and individual assignments due on Friday. So itz gonna be very busy week. To make the matter worse, there is a nice greek party in my college on Tuesday and Harsh's birthday on Friday. So letz see how I survive. Wish me good luck for presentation and course work.

Sorry for unstructured and random post. Have fun!

HT Week 6

2008-02-23T14:20:00.000Z

Week

Came and went. Just like other 5 weeks. Some assignments, Measure leap in EP, again nothing in TMO project, and stuff. As I said before, I am working in different groups this term. About 4 groups... Three of them are choosen by student while one is imposed by the college. This compulsory group had really smart people with diverse backgrounds and knowledge. Unfortunately we didn't / couldn't work as a group. This was one of the most disintegrated teams I had ever worked in. At the end I made some very good friends at the same time some bitter relationships in this group. All in all we submitted our last assignments as a group this Friday and I am just glad that it is over.

Surprisingly I didn't study as much as I needed to and still somehow I am not feeling pressured. I know... very bad for me.....

Anyways. On Wednesday called Jenny and Incheon (Korea) for dinner at Jesus. Both of them are my EP partners. Both of them are very experienced and senior to me but still very humble people. Loved the dinner.

here is one more from dinner last to last week.

McKinsey presentation
For some people it was like event of the year, for some it was annual worship event. Almost every other MBA dream of working for this company. They are elites of the elites. The company of smartest people in the world. Actually the presentation was almost like any other presentation. But the atmosphere was charming and, if I would say, inspiring. McKinsey had brought people from all over the world for the presentation. They were well prepared with agenda and who is going to talk about what and all. Everyone of them was in black suit. And great number of MBAs were in the same attire except I guess only 5% (including me...). We were sitting and they were standing and everyone was dreaming to cut the few feet distance between them and us. Every student was thinking of standing at the other side. McKinsey tag is one of the most powerful tags in the world. And you could see it in the eyes of students how much they desired for it. I think max 4-5 of us will be able to pass that few feet distance and all of sudden will be regarded as success stories by the school. They will be featured in school broachers and called for school events and honorary dinners. While most of the rest will keep having equally successful but less regarded career...... Interesting......

Week End

Mardi Gras

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mardi_Gras

Remember last term I was whining about missing the Templeton dinner? Well I came one step closer this term. Still I couldn't get the dinner ticket. but got the ticket for the after dinner party. Well, the party wasn't as much fun as I thought and the dance floor and DJ weren't that cool. Not that I was craving to dance... but it just couldn't raise the party atmosphere to the extend expected. Nonetheless had fun with friends. And managed to kept alive this term's tradition of celebrating Friday nights till Saturday morning. Here are some snaps:

Mardi Grass

PS for computer illiterates: Click on the above picture to see the album. Also you can click on other pictures to enlarge them

Jodha Akabar

Saturday was bit lazy. I was supposed to study but I didn't. I was supposed to go to Cowley Road to get some Indian grossary but I didn't. I was supposed to buy wetsuit for Turkey trip, but I didn't. Then what did I do? Well.... nothing till 4.00 pm. At 4.00, 8 of us gathered at Gluecester Green bus station to travel for about 2 hours to Southhall. Reason was food and movie. SouthHall is an area populated mostly by Panjabi folk. This area has most of the Indian stuff you need including restaurants, hotels, supermarkets and theatres. Had good food, watched the movie Jodha Akabar, fooled around and reached back to Oxford at about 3 in the morning. but I must say we had a great time. This is the stuff I was missing last term. I am glad I am having fun this term. Here are some snaps:

Jodha Akbar

Once Again courtesy Aashima

Rest of the week end

But I know this fun is at the cost of study. Every hour I am spending in partying and hagging out with friends is piling up the work I need to do for this term. And with only 4 weeks remaining for the end of the term, I am afraid that I will be in trouble.

But anyways... I am thinking that I will enjoy this week end and then will start study. Though I became restless for not studying since Thursday. That made me skip the rugby today and study instead. Skip rugby because I had some other plan as well.... Nintendo Wii.... My college GCR has Wii as I mentioned last time. Jenny seems to be fan of wii and wanted to try it. So she, Tarun and Ravindra came to my college GCR in the evening and we spent about 3 hours playing wii and Pool. Again had a great time.

So thatz the story of this week end. Lots of fun and good time and very loose on study. Hopefully now coming four weeks will be fruitful.

HT Week 5

2008-02-17T19:00:00.000Z

Before anything else, here is the video of Oxford MBA created by college. There is one more at you tube. This is taken last year, so you wouldn't find me in there :)

Week

As expected, the week was pretty busy. I was brave enough to ditch couple of lectures to work on assignments. Had to interact with multiple groups this week. Thankfully things went smooth. Though I have realized that we are lacking considerably in EP as well as a huge report due end of the term on Technology and Innovation Strategy (TIS). During weekly EP meeting on Friday we have distributed the work and decided the timeline. So we are at least moving in that project. But for TIS, the group haven't even meet yet. This is scary. We have to decide something this week.

Anyways. Got Turkey visa. So everything including visa, tickets and hotel is done now and I am really looking forward to the trip.

Week end

Had another blast this Friday. Actually had macroeconomics group meeting from 5 to 7. So didn't go to happy hour. All the seminar rooms in college were occupied. So we went to RAC for the meeting. RAC is the Templeton college accommodation just across the street from SBS. Templeton college takes about 60 MBAs and more than half of them live in RAC. So had meeting in the common room there. After the meeting played TT for about an hour in that common room. After TT grabbed some quick food. The plan was to meet at Aashima-Lovraj's place like we did last Friday. But Jitin insisted on watching movie. So finally me, Harsh, Jitin, Lovraj and Aashima we all ended up in the GCR (Graduate Common Room) bunker of my college. They have this nice big TV, DVD system, music system, Wii, pool table and foosball table. We spent many hours there watching movies and playing pool and foosball. Finally dispersed at about 2.30 in the morning. Great fun and great to spend time with friends.

Rest was normal. Working on assignments. This Sunday I wasn't feeling very good. So decided to ditch rugby. Now I am feeling sorry for that decision. Anyway. The guests of this Sunday's Jesus college dinner were Mr and Mrs Kiran Chaugule. Marathi couple from Pune. And they are Jain. So was like family dinner. Had a good conversation in Marathi.

After that here I am writing assignments. Couple of them are due in few hours and group members are sending mails after mails. So have to go back to work.

Meanwhile here are the snaps of Chinese new year celebration that I promised week.

Chinese New Year Celeb

Courtesy Aashima:

HT Week 4

2008-02-09T14:06:00.001Z

Week
Very lazy and relaxing. It was a week to recuperate and get ready for next 4 weeks. I stretched myself a lot on last week end. So by the end of Monday I had completed the whole week's readings and assignments. So I just took a little break from studies. I used time to chat, sleep and hang out. On Wednesday I called Naveen and his wife Rashmi for dinner at my college. My college has formal dinner every night except Saturday. I am allowed to bring max two guests. And it is 'comparatively' cheaper. So I have decided to use it as a platform to hang out with friends and network with contacts.

Just a food for thought:
In real business life, you make two kind of relationships; friends and contacts. Friends are the people with whom you share the emotional side of your life, you seek help in trouble and these are the people you can count on blindly. Contacts are the people you meet with particular purpose in mind. You just know few aspects about you contact, like particular work area, the company (s)he works for and his/her job role and suchlike and you let him/her be aware of same kind of aspects of your life. You never open up with your contact.

Anyways.....I invited Naveen Verma, Pretty smart and senior person from Pune and his wife for dinner on Wednesday. The dinner was pretty good. Had some good time and good laugh.

Naveen and his wife Rashmi at Jesus dinner hall

Went to London on Friday for getting visa for Turkey. I am going Turkey this vacation from 31st March to 11th April. If anyone is around and would like to join, let me know.

Chinese New Year
This thursday the Chinese New Year of RAT started. The new year is as big festival as Diwali. Jenny Hui, a nice friend from HGKG gave me a new year present including chopstics. Really nice of her.

Jenny and thatz Abhijo written in chinese.

My Chinese New Year gift

Then the chinese gang in B School arranged a cool program on Friday. They had hosts and singers and dancers and instrument players, all in traditional chinese. Pretty good program and great performances. Unfotunately I didn't have camera at that time. So you guys have to wait till I get snaps from others. After the program went to Aashima and Lovraj's place with couple of friends and had a biiiiiig talk about life and relationships and stuff till 3 in the morning... We were asked by the housemate to keep our voices low. Them we moved to street but still the discussions were getting so heated that we were asked to shup up by the neighbours as well. Great start of week end. :)

Week end
Well it was very relaxed and normal week end. Moderate study and rugby on Sunday. Spent some time calling people. Mom n Dad had bought webcam at home. So had a great chat with them. It was great to see the family.

This Sunday I invited Aashima and Lovraj, very nice Indians based in Dubai for dinner at Jesus. Those poor souls had finance assignment due in 3 hours. So they couldn't loiter around. But again the time went very nice. Once again depending on Aashima for snaps.

That should be pretty much all. Coming week is supposed to be very busy and next week super busy. But I think I have enough of rest and am ready for it. So bring it on.....

HT Week 3

2008-02-06T23:02:00.000Z

A very very busy week . Have multiple assignments due and some of them are still due so this is going to be short.

Week
As mentioned, very busy week. And it was hard to concentrate on classes. Though a very good assignment on social networking. This cleared many prejudice I had about the buzzword networking that I am hearing in MBA for long time. And the more I know about it the more I think that I should do it but the more I realize that I won’t be able to do it. Well I can write pages about this but some other time. Though the toughness of the week was relaxed by couple of events. We celebrated Sabina’s birthday on college on Monday. Nice break and chance to eat some good cake. On Thursday went to Karndeep’s place for dinner. He invited few of us whom he don’t meet regularly. This was clearly the effect of networking assignment. Nonetheless we had great dinner. He is really good cook. And then had typical WIT hostel type fun after so long... these two breaks have kept me going though the week

Weekend
Again most of it was spent in assignments. There was a bop (oxford word for parties) organized by SBS MBA students on Saturday. I thought it will be a good break and may be a chance to do networking or at least see how other people do it. But alas. It was a big flop. Very few people turned out hence I left pretty early. Although managed to play rugby on Sunday. I can’t call it tough any more as more and more professional players are coming in and it is getting more serious and implacably more nasty and tough. But I liked it very much. Unfortunately there are too many big guys around and have to save my little body intact for writing more and more assignments.

Well I am sure there were many other interesting things during the week but I am not able to think of it right now. So I will stop it here... See some snaps at the link below.

HT Week 3

HT Week 2

2008-02-06T23:01:00.000Z

Hello Guys,

Week
Well the tension has started to build up for ‘Hell-ary Term’. Had to attend number of meeting and seminars this week. Worked on many assignments as well. And even though I was studying regularly, I couldn’t finish all I wanted to. But the subjects are more interesting compared to last term. Partially because three out of five subjects are electives and I choose what I was really interested in. So the subjects for this term are:
Core:
Operations Management – a bit of manufacturing industry related subject. But quite a bit stuff for software companies too. Overall good content course
Marketing – Very interesting contrary to my prejudice about it
Electives:
Strategy II – Technology and Innovation – Very interesting subject. I like both, technology and innovation. And course structure is very good. We do almost one assignment every week and couple of big reports at the end of the week. Thought because of this, it is very intensive subject and eat too much of my time.
Global Strategy – Inevitably about outsourcing, off shoring and India-China. Part of it is repeated in the above subject. But still interesting
Macroeconomics – Number and theory... Economics is very interesting in that there are number of theories and theories of numbers... Looks like it will be useful later on.

And then Entrepreneurship Project. This is also interesting work.
But all in all very very busy week in terms of study.

Seminars:
Two big names this week. Tony Taylor. COO of Cathy-Pacific. This airline is major player in HGKG region. He was very nice and jovial person. Very smart too. He was very candid about his company’s position. For the first time I saw my thoughts matching with some CxO. He was very analytical, careful and calculative in taking risk. And he knew where are the problems. Nice to know that you can be conservative and careful and still be a COO.....:)
Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones. CEO of L’Oreal. First British to lead this French company. He his CEO since 20 years and have managed to grow double digit growth every single year. This is really very impressive record. And this guy was also very frank about his views. To say it in his words, when he started, people were thinking of French cosmetics as very effective and very pricy. And eventually they lost interest in it. They didn’t want French richness anymore. They wanted American ‘cool’ better than French ‘cool’. So what L’Oreal did was opened office in New York and put it as headquarter for some products. They also brought some American brands. And people bought them because it was cool because it was American. Makes sense... isn’t it.

Job Front
Well some lucky guys have started getting interview calls. People with relevant background or from developing areas like China, Middle East are favourite as of now. Guys like us who have IT background like thousands other are good for nothing for these consulting and finance firms. May be I have to start with Technical company only.

Weekend
Anyways. Had big plans for week end. Couple of parties, Rugby etc. Well.....Everything washed away... Couldn’t finish the assignments and reading... so cancelled all the plans one by one and spent most of the time in library ...Thankfully somehow managed to go for the formal dinner at my college with a friend. Nice dinner. Started at 7 and lasted for 2 hours. There was a Birthday of some undergrad and many of her friends were wearing devil costumes to celebrate. Eventually it turned out that most of them were from the Church quire. When the Birthday cake came, I never heard almost 50 people singing Happy Birthday in such a delightful and sweet voice. Such a great place to be. Coincidently my dinner companion’s birthday is also tomorrow who was very envy at this girl....

Nonetheless. Now here I am at Sunday night and have tons of reading to do. Anyways. You guys enjoy your life. I, along with Roger Federer, will survive from our setbacks last week.

HT Week 1

2008-02-06T22:57:00.000Z

Hello All,

Week
So this week I rearranged my definition of being busy. Even though this was fairly slow week with only few events. But busier than most of the weeks in last term. And it is destined to get only worse. Coming week we have couple of companies coming for presentations, seminars from about 3-4 very prominent CEO / COO, almost 7-8 group meetings, couple of assignments apart from regular lectures and stuff. Because of this, this Hilary term is notoriously know as HELL-ari amongst MBAs. Anyways. This week there was only one remarkable event.

SAID business school naming ceremony.
It was completion of 10 years of naming this school as SAID business school after Mr. Waffic Said donated about 10 million GBP for the building. Many big names had come for the event and four professors gave updates on their research during the program. Mr. SAID said how the dean and the students and good and dean said how Mr. SAID is good and all that kind of stuff. For the drinks many students took photograph with said. I obviously was not interested (as I am becoming anti-human (pronounce as antie-human) day by day). So I volunteered taking the snaps. There was a rumour that SAID’s unmarried girl has come too... I did some R n D and shown some interest in that particular area but alas.... no luck.... looks like have to pay my bank loan by myself....

Friday pre and post happy hour.
I am working in four different groups this term. Three of them are chosen by students while one is assigned by the college for two compulsory subjects. It is getting very difficult to co-ordinate group meetings considering different times available to different people in different groups. Our college-chosen group met on Friday and after about 2 hours of rigorous and tense discussion we came to the conclusion that we have to start working from this week for the assignments due in week 4. That means reading the week 2,3 and 4 for two subjects over the week end. Believe me guys this is equal to TS (or similar subject that Fadtare (or similar named teacher) taught us in Third year second sem). We have a feminist, anti-fun (antie-fun) woman in group who insisted on labouring over the week end reading stuff. So I was never this happy to attend Friday happy hour after the meeting.

Week end
The above mentioned factors made most of my Saturday and Sunday with upper side of my body in the book and rear on chair. And it was rainy so no rugby as well. So instead used both evenings for outing. On Saturday went to ‘Oxford Ghost Tour’ (see the snaps attached). In this tour the guild dressed scary (supposedly) would walk you around the historic and dark sites in Oxford to tell the stories of ghosts there. Thought the concept and formation was good the guys was using some childish magic tricks that irritated me and made us leave without completing the trip.

On Sunday evening watched the movie “Charlie Wilson’s war’. No comments on that.

Due to time crunch this is short and lacks many fine details that I would have liked to add. But MBA is all about being superficial without going into details. And I know most of you don’t bother to read it completely. So this is it.

HT Week 0

2008-02-06T22:55:00.000Z

Hello back,
HT in the subject line means Hilary Term....

There were couple of seminars this week. Heard some cool quotes during that time. Like below...

Don’t give me that MBA bullshit

Mr. Tim Berry, 60 years old guy, founder of Palo Alto software Inc gave a very pleasant and out of the way from regular MBA talks.
This guy graduated from Harvard when I was not even born and joined a company every MBA in the world aspires from. McKinsey. He worked for McKinsey Mexico city for about 4 or so odd months. He didn’t like the way of working there and the sophisticated system of the company to make the employees forget the family and consider work and the company as a policy. He left and started writing computer books. Not a really charming work to do. Fortunately he knew some guy at Apple who asked him to work on a Business Plan for Apple. And from then Tim worked for many years specially from Apple in the areas of Business Planning and development before starting his own company Palo Alto.

The above mentioned quote came from the CEO of Borland (Remember Borland C++???). At the starting phase of Borland Tim was one of the three directors of the company. The CEO of Borland was a guy of instinct and he took every wrong decision in the book. Every time the CEO used to present his revolutionary and theoretically wrong ideas to the directors, Tim used to feel that he is risking the whole company. When he tried to explain the same to the CEO (whose name I don’t remember right now) the CEO simply said to Tim: “Don’t give me that MBA bullshit”. Against all odd the CEOs ideas came out largely successful for about a decade. And he took Borland to a new height which theoretically was not possible.
But in defence of MBAs, eventually his risks inverted back at him which made him loose his job and put the company in large debt. Tim had left long before that.

I liked the way this little guy engaged the class in non-MBA way. Very nice and pleasant way to start the term.

Artists bend the rules, even greater artist break the rules, but fools just don’t know the rules

The quote by MBA program director Stephen Chambers during the EP presentations. Out EP in healthcare kiosk is facing multiple regulatory and other issues. I am working at the business side of it and Harsh is working at technical and patient side of it. Letz see how it comes.

Trinity Electives.
For the next term we have all six subjects as electives. There are about 25 odd subjects to choose from. So on Wednesday and Thursday the professors of each subjects pitched about what is there in his subject and why should we take it. We all are given total 120 points and we need to bid this points against the subject. Each subjects have upper cap and the highest bidders gets the subject. So we have to work a lot in first choosing the subjects and then bidding for it. I found that very good professors are teaching boring subjects on the other hand very interesting subjects are taught by not-interesting professors. Looks like I have a lot work to do here.

Job recruitment Fair.
Well....WIT did a LOT better job than this fair. Some 20 companies cam for the fair. Most of them were middle sized firms looking for recruiting couple of people. Also some big shots like Amazon and KPMG opted out at the last minute saying they have stopped recruitment. Due to credit crunch and subprime in US and UK the financial companies are in deep trouble. To spare you all from MBA Bullshit the gist is this is just about a start of a recession here which may end up having very bad recruitment year for MBAs.

Week end.
Went to Manchester to visit my uncle there. Typical relative visit. And to make it worse it was raining all the time. So nothing happening there.

Happy New Year

2008-02-06T22:53:00.000Z

Hi Friends,

Wish you all and your family a great and successful new year ahead.
Had been to London eye for new year. Here is the video I have uploaded on youtube of the firework.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zngibRQsF_4

And here are some snaps....

New Years Eve 2007-08

Once again Happy New Year. Have a great time!

MT Week 10 - End of Michealmas Term

2008-02-06T22:40:00.000Z

This is it. The official and total end of the first term. Here is how it went.

Exams:

Well the studies were not really as hard as engineering. I mean there were no very difficult concepts to understand or very tricky problems to solve. But the theme was to understand everything and express it. For Strategy and DEM we had a real cases to read and then answer the questions. There you need to understand the frameworks and should be able to relate them to real life examples and put it effectively in the paper. While the mathematical papers had very limited time, about just an hour, to finish the paper. All in all though it is not very difficult to pass, it certainly is difficult to get the distinctions. And we had six exams in four days. All in all due to the long and tiring working hours we were putting throughout the term, the stamina was about to end. Remember the feeling after long trek or hard physical work when each and every muscle in your body is exhausted to its limits and cries for no more? Well same thing had happened to each and every nerve in the brain. Then were just about to break. Never had that feeling before.
Like all exams, some papers went good some bad. Overall I hope to pass in all.

The last paper ended at 1030 am in the morning. And some crazy people had literally brought Champagne and other drinks to the exams. The first bottle was opened at about 1038. And then many people started drinking only to finish at 0400 am next morning. It was crazy and unbearable. As per tradition, we all went to ‘Turn and Tavern’ pub. After an hour some of us left for lunch. Had a nice spicy Indian lunch, went back to home and fall on bed for next 3 hours. Then went to a friend’s place for dinner. Before and after dinner, played TT for long time. And again had good Indian dinner. On the way back to home, at Oxford Retreat – which is nearest and most visited by MBAs pub in Oxford – found many people. Stopped by there for some time. Most of them were drinking whole day. And at about 2345 the pub owner asked all to leave to close the pub. Many decided to head to another pub for more drinking. I went home to sleep. But I couldn’t. I was actually missing the exam and working. Past 10 weeks were so busy that I had no idea what to do with free time. And I was planning to go to Scotland for vacation. But at the last movement two out of four backed out. So the plan is dismissed. Now everyone has their plans for vacation and I am going to die of boredom. Since then I am wondering what to do and apparently doing nothing even though there are some small things to do.

London:

Anyways. Went to London with Aashima and Jitin on Friday. As I hadn’t participating and planning, there was no plan. We didn’t spend much time in normal tourist attractions or taking photos. Our prime concern was Indian food and musical. We had dinner at Woodlands. Simple south Indian Idli- Dosa. But tested fabulous. And then went to the Musical: The lord of the rings.
If you need to know the details see the link:
http://westendwhingers.wordpress.com/2007/06/06/review-the-lord-of-the-rings-the-musical/

If you google for it, you will find more. In short it is a musical show with production cost of 25 million GBP. Interesting fact is some pieces of its music is by AR Rahman. And I must say that this was the most spectacular stage performance I can imagine. We were lucky to get the cheap tickets still it cost me fortune (about 30 GBP). But it was worth every penny I spent. Acting was it was OK. But the stage and lights and special effects were beyond imagination. The stage floor is made up of 17 pieces that can go up and down and roll around. Using this many formations from bedrooms to mountains and castles were done. And I can’t describe the light and other things. Greeeeeaaaaatttt show. See the photos. They will give a glimpse of how spectacular it was.

Apart from this nothing is really special. The temperature is not rising about 3C at any point during day and I don’t have anywhere to go and almost no friends in Oxford. So this could be one of the most boring vacations. Apart from that I guess everything is fine.

MT Week 9 (Preparation Leave)

2008-02-06T22:35:00.000Z

Alright. This is gonna be short.

Week

Study all the week. Most of the time in college library. Remembering and missing the old PL days. But here there are range of people and range of talents. Like there are people who are studying all the day and half of the night along while interestingly about 30% of the class went to Oxford-Cambridge varsity rugby match in London on Thursday (of course I didn’t go). And some people are just genius and know everything. While some people are really struggling. Anyways I think I did fair job. I studied almost as much as I planned throughout the week... well except Friday. On Friday I was supposed to study Developing Effective Managers while Sabina still wanted to study Economics. So we decided to study separately. Apparently I studied almost nothing that day. But it was a fantastic day and most memorable of the week. Had nice Malay lunch with Sunil Goyal and then Carmen in the evening.

Carmen

Carmen is one of the best classics opera for almost a century. The first show was played more than 100 years ago. It is French opera. You can find more about it at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen
The theatre is just near my place. From outside it is a weird red building. Looks like any Laxminarayan talkies in a town in Inida. But when we went inside, we couldn’t believe it is so big. This is a real opera house. Three stories of sitting arrangement. The stage was a also big and as tall as the building. There was a live music. So all the players were sitting next to the stage. And the complete opera is in French with English subtitles. How come there are subtitles for opera??? If you are reading carefully than you might ask this question. Well... no big brainer. They actually had a sign board at the top of the stage displaying the subtitles. The actors were good. It is one of the most seductive operas and it was like that.... But the way they performed it naturally on stage was really good. It has a donkey and horse in it. Apparently both the animals are famous and they even had their names advertised. And it turned out that the lead male character is such a looser in the opera that Sabina liked the donkey most and Margarette liked the horse most. There was a supporting actress who was playing the role of the ‘next door, simple, nice, village girl’ which I liked the most. And then there was the role of Carmen. She was pretty and good actor too. But she cannot be liked by really nice gentlemen. So apparently I didn’t either.

But overall it was great break. Thanks Jitin for arranging it. And the experience to watch the opera with live music and all the stage setting skills of Brits and the ambience of an old and great theatre was awesome. Hopefully I will see more of these in UK.

Exams

So here I am. From tomorrow exams in subfusc. The exam venue is pretty far and I have arranged a shared taxi with couple of more MBAs. Hopefully everything will be on time.
Bdw Thanks guys for your wishes. Next time I will be through the first term of the MBA at Oxford. That means I would have lived the quarter of my dream. Cool.

MT Week 8

2008-02-06T22:33:00.000Z

Hello Guys,

How are you people doing?

Study Group

This was really happening week for me. Most of all it was the end of first term lectures and assignments. We submitted a big assignment on Monday and that was the dissolution of my study group. It was a group of very talented people who already have achieved many things in their life and I was glad I was there. Though the chemistry was not perfect and we had few tense situation we did pretty good compared to most of the groups. Many groups were meeting almost every other day and working hard on assignments while our effective time management allowed us to meet only for 2 hours for regular assignments and about 6 hours for two big ones. And we distributed things effectively so everyone didn’t end up doing the same thing. I kindda liked the way we worked. I wish we would have less diplomatic, more considerate and more funnier. But all said and done, it was good group.
Here are some snaps of my group.

Study Group

Last lectures

And then we attended all the last lectures. We won’t see most of these professors again. It was just amazing term and amazing professors. Friday was especially hard. We had lecture of Finance taken by Alex. If you remember from my last mails, Alex is the most handsome guys most of the people ever see face to face. And he dress like Bond. And with his German wit he is hot spot in MBA class. Most of the girls in my class have crush on him. All the girls wanted to take a photograph with him. But somehow he escaped from that and guys in the class helped him. Apparently all the cameras were owned by guys and they said they will take the picture during the next session. I literally herd sound of the heart breaking of 21% of the class (we have 21% girls in MBA).
The next lecture was by James. Again if you can remember, James was the actor, most funniest, stylish, typical English person with English sense of humour. I would really miss his teaching style. He is indisputably most engaging teacher I ever had.

Friday eve

I started studying on Monday only after the assignment unlike most of the people. Me and my study partner Sabina generally stay in college until it shuts down. On Thirsday we were almost locked in a seminar room as we didn’t notice it already is 2300. The seminar rooms doors gets locked at 2300. Somehow we escaped. Anyways the point was we were working hard throughout the week. So I decided not to study on Friday eve. I spend some time at Friday happy hour where all drinks, cocktails, mocktails were free as it was last happy hour of the term. Some people really enjoy this happy hour. But somehow I don’t enjoy it that much. You need to be able to talk on any random subject with any random person. This is what they call networking in MBA. And many people do that. I can’t for two reasons. I get bored talking foolishly on random subject after a while. I mean I can’t hear an American whining about British bureaucracy or a German about how he got drunk and wasted of an Indian about his days in US. And second I can’t talk to random people just for the sake of talking. I recently discovered that I need to know the person before start chattering with him. I came to know a lot of suchlike things about me during MBA. Will talk about the something later. So After Happy Hour went to watch a movie Beuvolf. Nice animated movie that refreshed mind little bit.

Week end and next week

Studying all week end. Thought getting up very late. Played hard and nice rugby today. It was a good break. But tried to solve couple of past exam papers of Finance and FR and it was disaster. April once again spent some time this week to explain me Financial Reporting. But looks like I am still not very good at it. So AparentlyWe both failed in both the papers. So it seems that it is now time for the serious study.

Next week is preparation week. We don’t have classes as this is the time given for exam preparation. No plans throughout the week except I am planning to go to the Opera ‘Carmen’ at Chirst Church on Friday as a break. I might not send mail next Sunday as I could be preparing for exams. The exams are from next Monday to Thursday.

I hope I will do good in exams. But your ‘All the best’ mails could help J

Epilogue

I was thinking of writing summary of the term and my overall feeling. But I guess I will do that some time in the vacation. Meanwhile if anyone of you is going to be in UK / Europe during Christmas the please let me know. We could meet and hang out.

So guys, thanks for reading my mails (may be not always, but at least no one replied asking me to stop spamming their mailboxes). This was the good term and good time. Although I failed at many things I should have done better, I guess overall it was good. May be I will be more mature, smart and polished next term to take maximum out of it.

MT Week 7

2008-02-06T22:32:00.000Z

A week of great depression it was.

It started OK on Monday. We had loads of assignments due. I was doing major work in most of them. But I was all great with everything and world was a nice place to be in.

And then BANG!!!... .First rejection in years. I had applied to Diamond Management consulting. I met the people two time and made a good impression. I thought it is a good fit for me. I did my research and everything. In short I did almost everything written in the book before applying. And then I applied and got a rejection. What the heck? Not even interview call. Straight away rejection. Fundamentally unsuitable candidate... Didn’t get any rejection since I got job in Kanbay. Then the jobs applied, schools applied and even some other aspects of life, no rejection for long. And here it comes.

Now I think it is good that it happened and it happened early. Though I was knowing that being in Oxford is not passport to any job and I need to work really hard for job. I know that many Indians from last batch of the profile same as mine and interested in the industry same as I am are still looking for the job. But somewhere I was feeling that it won’t happen to me. And now that it has happened I know where I stand and where I need to go. I was thinking that I won the biggest batter in career when I got into Oxford. And I am not only glad but also thrilled and fascinated to know that there are many more to come. (I know thinking like this won’t get me a job... but just trying to be dramatic )

But this was not it. There was the best formal dinner of the term this Friday. Templeton Black Tie Dinner. Last week I didn’t register for it because I didn’t have company and I thought it will be boring. But then On Monday and Tuesday I was asked out for the dinner. Such a shame I couldn’t make it there. So week end went really boring. No party on Saturday night either. Just busy in work.

And then today I twisted and hurt my figure at rugby so very bad that it is swollen to double its size. And it is hurting to type. I have couple of more sad storied but I think you got how this week sucked to I will stop whining.

Silicon Valley

As I mentioned last week, on Monday many people from silicon valley came to oxford. There were so many big names that I won’t even bother to write all, But founders of Twitter and Creative head of Google, Chris Sacca and few more were there. It was great event. Great session. But I really didn’t know how to use it for my benefit and I got bored. I mean if I talk for 45 seconds with Chris Sacca, I am not going to get job in Google. In fact he won’t even remember me unless I am damn too genius, which I am not. So what is the point in being selfish and greedy to grab him and talk to him. But eventually my EP project partner (see note at the end about EP) who really is genius from IIT talked to Jerry who is kindda interesting person in Silicon Valley (Harvard Business School wrote a case on him, known as Jerry Sanders’ case. This guy was fired from every job he had and later on he started number of companies in California) . Couple of his companies are kindda same as our EP project so I have made a nice presentation to send to him and he might help him.
I need to learn the skill of making impression in 30 seconds and talk to people about whom you don’t really care. This is the side of MBA I really don’t like. Anyways....

But it was great to be in the same room where few of the most innovative minds in the world are... Great event. So sad that I couldn’t exploit it.

Academic

Tonight I am about to finish the last assignment of this term. The last one. I don’t believe the end of first term is here. I still remember the first group meeting and how we were surprised and worried about how are we going to finish all the eleven assignments seven weeks. And here we are about to submit the last one. We did average in all assignment getting about 65 in each of them. It exactly there average. So we are neither doing good or bad. Although it was really a different experience working in a group. I already talked to you about the group. But what I didn’t know at that time was where there last degree is from. We are six people overall. One is from Harvard, One is from UCLA, One is from Cambridge, One is from IIT and One is from IIM (yes he already is MBA). So how does WIT sounds in front of them??? But I must mentioned that I never felt intimidated by these guys. I never felt they are way too smarter than me. In face I could have chopped down there arguments into pieces if I wanted to. But everyone’s way of thinking is different and amazing. I liked that.

And finally I have got a study partner (or atleast it looks like it). I was so used to study with partner in engineering that it was hard to study alone. But now we meet today and decided to study together till exam. We have formed a tentative timetable of study as well. Coming week is the last week of this term. Then we have one week for preparation and them exam from 10 to 14. Six papers in four days and you have to wear a subfusc for exams. Isn’t that interesting?

Epilogue

So here I am. Hurt and depressed. Challenged and so bounced. Nostalgic, worried, intimidated and unpolished. So lots of chances for improvement and again, Mile to go before I sleep

MT Week 6

2008-02-06T22:31:00.000Z

Busy Busy Busy!!!

That was the theme of this week. Had one individual assignment, one mock exam and one huuuuuuge Financial Report analysis for Vodaphone due this week apart from regular stuff....

On Monday I thought I won’t be able to finish anything. But April, an accountant in Deloitte and couple of other companies taught me Financial Reporting and kind of saved me. The people who don’t know finance are called as ‘poet’. I was thinking that I am engineer and have strong maths background, so I am nothing but poet. But I realised this week that I am very much poet.

Anyways. Somehow we finished the Vodaphone report today. It underwent number of revisions and discussions. But we are done. But now we again have two assignments and one huuuuuge industry report on no-frills airlines in Europe. So coming week won’t be any better. I am so busted......

But anyway tomorrow we have “Silicon Valley comes to Oxford” event. Big, famous and rich nerds from Silicon Valley come to oxford. We have one garage session were we will be literally locked in a garage like room and brainstorm about new ideas. Why garage? Because most of the famous companies in SV including HP, Sun, Yahoo, Google started in Garage.... Then we will have a masterclass with some of them and at the end of the day a regular networking event. Looking forward to it....

Because of the busy schedule week end also was pretty much busy. The only TP I did it I went to a Greek Party on Saturday night. Regular party but very nice people, had fun. Unfortunately it is damn cold and rainy all day today. So couldn’t play rugby.

That should be all for this week. Hopefully next week will have some time in hand.

MT Week 5

2008-02-06T22:30:00.000Z

Hello all... and welcome back after Diwali.

Sorry for a one day delay in the mail....

Week 5 started casually. I was thinking that I am managing the time well. I even had few spare time as well. We had three assignments due this week. But our group planned everything so well that we were able to finish all of them ahead of time. Two out of three assignments were supposed to be done by three people instead of our normal six people group. So we split our group into two. In my sub-group, all three of us were Indian. One was IITian and other was IIM grad. So no worries for me . But all of sudden things started to slip out of hand. On Thursday I realized that I have many things pending but it was already late.
The major things I had to do were as below:
- Complete individual DEM (Developing Effective Managers) assignment due on coming Wednesday
- prepare cover letter and CV and apply to Diamond Management and Technology consulting company
- prepare for coming FR (Financial Reporting) exam which is tomorrow.
- prepare for Diwali function at SBS on Saturday.
- prepare for Finance I with the help of a friend.
- Work on FR assignment and prepare for the group meeting on Wednesday
- pre-readings for the class

- I worked little for Diwali. The function was OK. But I am feeling low since few days. So didn’t enjoy that much. I have some regular snaps but I will spare you from viewing them as they are our normal MBA snaps in traditional dresses.
- I spend most of the Saturday preparing the cover letter and resume and get it reviewed from couple of friends and finally send the application today. Bdw today was the deadline to apply. Made it just in time.
- I read all the material for DEM and created a draft. But still have to finalize the document – 5 hours of work left
- I am so lost in FR. All accounting stuff. I had a feeling that I understood things in class. But now that I am looking at past year exam paper, I am not able to solve more than 20% questions. Another accountant friend had promised me to explain the concepts today. But I have a feeling that she won’t turn up and I will be doomed. – 8 hours of work
- The Finance I expert friend got very busy to explain anything to me. So that is still pending. May be this Saturday
- Still have to prepare for FR assignment – 8 hours of work
- Couldn’t read anything for today’s class. So I BUNKED IT. Feeling so bad. And there is possibility that I will bunk one of the two classes tomorrow. But still pre-reading for at least one class – 4 hours of work.

So looks like I have to do 23 hours of work in coming 16 or so hours and I am spending time in writing mail to you guys. So shameful of me. I should better go back to work....
Ohh... I feel that I was born in this library and never went out to see the world outside....Anyways....

Hope you guys had fun during Diwali. Great to go back to work isn’t it 
So enjoy guys... don’t worry about me.... I will probably survive.....

If I do, see you next week....

PS: The only good thing happened was few of my relatives gathered at Manchester this week end for Diwali. They all felt that I am alone here so they should help me and they send me three packs of Diwali sweets and Namkeen... .At least something good to enjoy....

MT Week 4

2008-02-06T22:26:00.000Z

Its routine now.
0600 – first alarm... I am like “what the heck, I slept just a while before and itz already a morning???......”
0700 – second alarm... come on... you can get up....
0705 – Finally get up and get ready....
0800 – Open outlook calendar, diary and couple of other calendars. Double check the must attend event’s time and venues and plan for the day
0815 – Breakfast. Most of the time milk and toast....
0845 – Lecture /workshop / seminar or something like that in college.....
It continues till 0500....

1700 –1800.... I am not sure what do I do during this time... Surprisingly I leave college everyday at about 0500 but rarely see the room before 0600.... I must watch myself.....
1800-1845 – Dinner... generally self cooked and eaten while watching FRIENDS...
1900-2100 – Company presentations for aspiring students or similar events....
2100-0030 – Reading for coming class
0030-0100 – preparation of next day and confirming the calendar and rechecking other stuff...
0100....Ohh dear sleep....

Itz more or less the same... Things change as the time of lectures are different and stuff.... but mostly like this....

Week 4 had a major exception....
Oxford IMPS

IMPS is kind of a drama society of Oxford student. They had hollowing show on Monday and I went there with Jitin Dhanani (who is interested in working at IMPS). There were about four girls and four blokes. And they didn’t have anything already set. The complete one hour performance was ‘online’.... The theatre was very small and completely full. People were standing wherever possible. But these IMPS people controlled the crowd very effectively. They made us participate. They used to ask the crowd questions and then perform according to answers. For e.g. Tell any place – crowd would say CASTLE. Then tell who is in the castle? Crowd: Ghost. And they will perform for 10 mins about ghost in Castle. You won’t believe this is not practiced before. Not a single time did they went speechless or boring. And the last show was amazing. They had a musical show based on the inputs from crowd. And the sound and light of the theatre was as effective as any Marathi theatre. What a great show.... Really amazing. Glad I went there....

MBA Snaps
Then as I mentioned earlier, had a photo session at SBS. See the snaps here:

SBS Photo Session

As you could see, had some fun with our subfusc.... funny dress... may be won’t feel that funny when we will wear it during the exams....

Other than that the week was pretty much regular.

Week end:
Firework
Many many years ago a bloke named Guy planned to blow up the British common house. Apparently he failed. But the crazy Brits celebrate this day by lighting up the firework. At South Park, few thousand people had gathered for this event. They had the firework and at the end they had a bonefire where they burned a replica of this Guy. Kind of mix of Diwali and Ramlila.... Saw ‘Fulbaji / fulzadi’ there and remembered Diwali in India. Nonetheless it was one spectacular show. Though had to pay 6 quids (british equivalent for bucks) for that, it was worth it. At least five MBAs were supposed to join me. Only one turn up. But as I said, I had fun. See the snaps below.

October Friday Firework

On Sunday I was pretty much busy in study. We have two big and mathematical assignment due next week. I tried to work on finance assignment and after almost 4 hours of work I am nowhere. May be would talk to the study group tomorrow to find out if anyone has any clue about it. Overall coming week looks like a gruelling one due to assignments. And again its a Diwali time. We are celebrating it here. So may have to spend some time in organizing the event. Anyways. Still got time to play touch Rugby today. Added couple of more bruises but last week’s bruises healed. So good to go again 

MT Week 3

2008-02-06T22:22:00.000Z

Hello Guys,

Nice to see some replies last week. Also got some mails other than replies. As much as I would like to answer them all in details, I may not be able to do it regularly. I apologize for that. But I would keep sending this weekly mails as far as I could.

So Here is how week 3 was.

New look
Surprisingly many people in my class liked my haircut. They were asking where did I get it and apparently few of them went there too. Funny, isn’t it? May be that is where the MBAs are different from dogs at Kothrud ;-)

Assignment
My fear came true. We screwed up. We got only 60%. This is very less. Can’t do anything. May be we next time... May be this time my teammates will listen to me....

Job hunt
But we are same as our most faithful pet in terms of smelling the stuff we want the most. Jobs. Many companies are coming for the presentation every day. Most of them are for undergrads. But we MBAs are reaching there anyways and as self centred and arrogant we are, we are really ridiculing the Company people with our very personal questions. I went to one presentation every day. Free drinks and sometimes free snacks. Many times free accessories. It is difficult to get job in big consulting companies. So these presentations is the only way to know about so called ‘boutique’ companies of small size. But I don’t really understand their funda of presentations. These firms are really small and most of them recruit less than 10 people a year. Still they recruit only from five elites in Europe, INSEAD, LBS, Oxford, Cambridge and IESE. They go to these colleges and spend lot of money on presentations only to recruit 10 people. Most of these companies get about 1500 applications per year for 10-15 positions. Quite frustrating ratio. I am getting sick of worrying about a job.

Coca Cola CEO Neville Isdell to Oxford
Meanwhile Coca Cola CEO came to Oxford on Saturday. Nice old man. His lecture was in Nelson Mandela lecture theatre and this guy is a big fan of Mandela. So he shared couple of interactions he had with Mandela. Then he started talking about the community work Coca Cola is doing everywhere. I liked it at start. But then I got bored. I mean, come on yaar... you sale coke, a carbonated drink for the price tens time greater than the manufacturing cost and all you are talking about is how socially responsible you are. But this guy was certainly down to earth and he seems to have prepared his speech talk for us, Unlike the UTC CEO babbling about unreceptive Indian corporate environment. And Naville admitted that Coke screwed it up in India. He said that if there is one area where we are not doing better job, it is India. Overall I liked him better than UTC CEO. Quite an good experience. At the end they gave us all T Shirt. Very much like we had during the first year of IT for strokes (ITians rock the world and embroidered bull at front, quite crummy). CEO of 3I, Phillip Yeo also came to SBS this week but I couldn’t attend his speech due to work load. This is the best thing about Oxford. You can hear almost any powerful person in the world.

25 hour Sunday
Also This week I kindda learned how to let it go. I mean how ‘not’ to attend each and every event in town and how not to read each and every page assigned. So I managed to get some time. I used it to have the most preposterous use of time for MBAs. Sleeping. For two days I slept little over than 7 hours. Quite a luxury here. And today was like dream come true. The daylight saving ended today. So we got to set our watches back by one hour. That means this Sunday was 25 hours. How cool is that... Enjoyed one hour of extra sleep.... bdw now the time difference between here and India is 5.30 hours.

Week end
But this not-working-hard put me under little depression. I was so ridiculed after Friday happy hour that I came home straight away and spend next 60 or so hours doing not-so-value-adding work. I didn’t even go to any Saturday night party (I should have. They had a great bop on Saturday. [PS: Bop – party in Oxford]) Instead I watched movies. Four of them. Any Given Sunday (best inspiring speech of Al Pachino. Inch by Inch), Good will hunting, Blue umbrella and little trip to heaven. That made me feel bad about wasting time. So used the 25 hours Sunday effectively. Did some cooking, lot of study, and in the afternoon went to play Touch Rugby. This is mellow version of Rugby where you don’t need to kill your opponent. Instead of tackling, you just need to touch him. But still it could get very bad. And I played with two Brits and an Americans and an Australian who were just kind enough not to run over me. It was a typical British day and raining all day long. We played anyway in rain and liked it.

And then went to the Eid dinner by Oxford India Society and Oxford Pakistan Society. The dinner was good but then they decided to have a niche talent show and people started singing and one guy was making is worse with Guitar. Bear them for some time and finally left. So no here I am in the room studying for tomorrow’s lectures and the assignment due on Wednesday. It is almost 2330 and have miles to go before I sleep  bdw do you guys like this poem??? If you don’t have it, find it attached.

Epilogue
So this was kinda sluggish week. Ready for next week. We have a SBS photo session tomorrow. So again getting dressed in white bow tie and out batman / Dracula / harry potter capes. May be that will be a good chance to get a snap with friends and not-so-friends and some snaps of school. Letz see. Other than that coming week seems pretty ok in terms of workload. So have a great week guys. Wish you all Eid Mubarak. Enjoy and take care.

MT Week 2

2008-02-06T22:19:00.000Z

Hello friends,

Wish you and your family a very very Happy Dashera.....

Paying Dues
Before I start, I have a confession to make. During the engineering, a metrosexual friend of mine had a haircut. He paid almost twice as much to normal for that special cut from a luxury barber shop. But it turned out very pathetic and that guy was looking like.......... well very bad.... and I didn’t waste a single opportunity to make fun of that high price cut (Suneet, do you remember him???)..... And yesterday I paid my due for the fun I made. I paid almost 40 times more than my friend. But due to cultural difference (as I am calling it now) and miscommunication, it has turned out so bad that even the dogs in Kothrud would have hated themselves for having that kind of cut.... And too bad that I had to go to Dandiya with that cut. People made special arrangements to take my photographs and laugh at me..... Anyways.... Duniya gol hai aur har pap ka ek double role hai....

Week 2
So... week 2 was as busy as week 1 if not busier. Apart from lectures, we submitted our first assignment this week and while I am writing this mail, my group mate is about submit the second. These assignments are time consuming and the most stressing part is getting all the big shot, egoistic, competitive and arrogant MBAs work together and agree on one thing. I have a feeling that our group is not doing particularly well in that aspect. Nonetheless we are about to send second assignment. On Monday or Tuesday we should gate the grades of first assignment and then only we will know how good or bad we are.

Finding myself
Apart from that we had couple of personality tests, one by careers office for job assistance. That test says that I am perfect to work as a project manager of Science and R n D project. But OK to work as a consultant. Anyway I had a much awaited meeting with Sector Consultant of Management consultancy and he seemed to be satisfied with my CV. Bdw our school has a strict CV format and all CVs are one page only. I kindda liked that format.
The another test was a part of Developing Effective Managers (DEM) course. That tests results are measured in five areas and my results are as below
1. Emotionality
I am responsive, calm and very hard to embarrass or shame. But I am Quick to anger and very hot blooded (can you believe this?????.... ;-) )
2. Extraversion
I am perfect ambivert. Neither introvert not extrovert at all.....
3. Openness
I am conserver with moral absolutes and occasional daydreamer. But I am very much like a explorer, Experimental, abstract, speculative and novelty seeker.
4. Agreeableness
I am frank and open and am negotiator. But I am very competitive, pushy and fighter... (again... can you believe this :-P )
5. Conscientiousness
Well mostly balanced. Well prepared and confident, striving very hard to success, follows rules but sometimes disorganised.

Job
Had quite a few presentations by companies. Again most of them were for undergrads, but we MBAs went there anyways. Got some contacts and lots of free stuff like pens, kitchen, back sack. I had such a great talk with a representative from Diamond that she gave me pen drive of 128 MB. But overall job seems to be very tough task.

Socializing
Other than that had couple of dinners with friends. On Friday, during happy hour, I was asking people about dinner plans. Couple of girls responded as if I am asking for the date...So finally, I decided to cook at home. Couple of friends heard that and joined me. Still many people were calling each other about the plans for dinner and somehow many of them got a news that a great Indian food is going to be served at my place. At the end almost 15 people -not all Indians- dropped in to my kitchen. My kitchen is shared between six people and still is very small.... It is just 10 x 5.... We ate everything I had, and as we were running out of space we spilled outside the kitchen at the space reserved for fire exit... But we had fun.

Dandiya
And the best part of the week. We had DANDIYA yesterday. First time in Oxford. No need to tell how much I enjoyed. Played from 2030 to 0100 in the morning. At the end I was not able to even move my leg. But almost no one knew Dandiya there. And literally no boy / man knew it. So I was in very much demand and played with only elegant of them..... you know what I mean ;-)... And also worked as a part time teacher of Dandiya for some non-Indians.
Here are some snaps of Dandiya.... Many more to come from other friends. Will send the links as and when I get them.....

Oxford Dandiya

So this was week 2. We have total 8 weeks in first term. That means almost 25% is done. And ready for next gruelling 120 hours of life till Happy hour of Friday.

MT Week 1

2008-02-06T22:18:00.000Z

Phew.... It cruised away with such a speed that it ended before realizing.

On Monday the lectures started. I must tell you the professors at Oxford are exceptional. Highly qualified, authorities in their subject, very smart and still considerate and engaging. Their knowledge of subject does not intimidate you but it just sneaks in your brain along with the jokes. The prof of Financial accounting explained everything in the context of opening a business of lemonade. And he literally brought lemons, sugar and glasses in the class to make the stuff easier to understand (for those psychos who require irrelevant details: Water was already there). Anyone would think what a comedian, looks like he is teaching a kindergarten. And this guy is working with Prince Charles on Financial Reporting. The professor of Decision Science is also damn smart and have many achievements in life. But his lecture was like a play of Othello or any other Shakespeare play. He was moving like a mime actor, making faces rolling eyes cursing the previous professor who didn’t clean the board and telling student not to worry if they don’t understand as next week there will be completely new topic and if they don’t understand it either, completely new topic for the week next to that. He must have worked on his voice. His voice and ups and downs and skills to speak was like a top class actor. And it won’t hurt to mention briefly about the new sensation in the class. Sorry guys, he is a guy. The prof of Finance is German. And he is so damn smart and cute (almost like Roger Moor with the same 007 style) that Gents in class find it difficult to get a seat in first two rows.

I never learned so much more in a week. I read almost 300 pages (about 30 hours), attended lectures of 18 hours, seminars of 25 hours, meetings of 10 hours, admin stuff of 10 hours, presentations of 10 hours, socializing of 10 hours and partying of 10 hours, Matriculation 5 hours. 128 hours work. Say 20 hours for eating commuting and other. That means 40 hours of sleep = less than 6 hours a day......
This is amazing. And this is what I want... I like it. Have an assignment due on Wednesday. But almost done. So no big worries for coming week.

You must have got my Matriculation mail. Apart from that the event of the week was formal dinner at Jesus on Monday. It was a typical Harry Potter type dinner. I used 5 dishes, 3 bows. More than dozen knives and forks and 5 glasses for a single dinner. Typical British formal dinner. I enjoyed it but have to stay alert all the time for not spilling the food or dropping anything from the excessively crowded table. It was a seven course dinner. Welcome drinks, soup, starters, main course, dessert, fruits and port. Too bad I am not getting time everyday to attend formal dinner at college. Anyways. Here are some snaps of the same. These are taken from mobile camera. So forgive the clarity (of lack of it).

Jesus college formal Dinner

Now I have to read a case that will be discussed in the class tomorrow. So I am making this mail short.

MT Week -1 and Week 0

2008-02-06T22:11:00.000Z

Week -1

So it has all started. Week 0 is a week before the actual lectures starts. But the zero has nothing to do with the amount of work that has been given. I have my outlook calendar full, I am keeping my appointment diary and have alarms set in my mobile and have notepads and lists. And still I am not able to do all the things I need to do. Never thought of time management so much and never had so many events coming from so many directions at the same point.

But before the week 0 started, here are some snaps of week -1.

Week -1

On week -1 we were going to pub every night after 8.30 and used to stay there till the pub closes (2300, 0000, 0100 depending on the pub). Every day almost 10 new people were joining us and we were overgrowing many pubs in Oxford. The last event was huuuugggeeee. I met many people than I remember there and all this was under the name of socializing which is considered as most essential part of MBA. We also celebrated a birthday in a pub. On Saturday we had a Oxford Pursuit event. They had divided us into teams of six. And they gave us a list of about 15 questions. The answers of these questions were scattered all over the Oxford town. It was like treasure hunt. We had to move all over the oxford to find the answer. It was a great event to break ice. But as I arrived early, I was knowing all in my group already. We tried hard but scored 17 out or 23. Three teams scored 23. Just for the record, each team had different set of questions…. In between these events couple of career workshops and some events took place. On Friday George David, CEO of UTC came for the seminar. I had a lot of expectations from him. But in vain. He just gave general presentation about UTC and all of sudden he started explaining how China is way better than India. Well UTC is in manufacturing company and in that sector China is lot better. But Many of us didn't really understood why he had to come all over from US to UK to tell people how China is better than India. That marked the completeness of a perfectly boring speech and total waste of time of many high profile people. On that note, attended few other seminars and let me tell you that everyone is talking about India and China.

Week 0

Week 0 started with inductions. Lot of them. About IT and Library and Healthcare and many more. The induction lasted for two days. Then had a fresher's fair on Wednesday. All the student unions in Oxford had their stall there ranging from sports to religion to film to wine tasting and everything else you could think of. Also there were some retailer's stall as well. Got quite a few free goodies there. Very rare think in UK.

Then many more career workshops. These guys are very career oriented. SAID has hired some people called as sector consultants. They are very high profile people like Harvard MBAs worked in McKinsey for 25 years and like that. You book a half an hour slot with them and they will advise you about your career. These guys are very experienced and British so unmistakably very rude. They are not afraid to say "Your resume is crap (bullshit)" to anybody if they think so. I have booked slot with Management Consultancy sector consultant on 18. Lets see. But many people are saying that getting a good job is very tough and many students including myself have started our research and search for job every before our first lecture starts. Oxford has very good reputation. To exemplify this, everyone from us got a letter from Roland Burger, personally signed by CEO about tell how good the company is and they hope that we would consider joining them. But despite this, very very very rarely any company higher more than 2 graduates from SAID. So competition is tough. And we have many horror stories from current students. So lets see what happens.

Also the class is divided into three sections of about 75 people. The classes will be section wise. Means max 75 people in lecture. Also we need to finish almost 14 assignments in my study group of 6 people. For this term the study group is decided by the school. My study group looks like this
Naveen from Infosys Pune, 8 years work ex.
Sumit, already PGDBM from IIM-L 2 years work ex
Hermit (female)– 2/3 generation Indian in UK – IBM consultant
Sirena (female) – US Oracle, 7 years
Marc – US, Entrepreneur
And me. So I am the kid in the group.

Then had a induction in Jesus college. Same things. But they gave an book of the rules for the examinations. Who could guess how many pages are there in this book???? Well 1100. Yes ELEVEN HUNDRED ONLY. It is a Oxford tradition and no one really reads it. But still. ELEVEN HUNDRES PAGES OF EXAMINATION RULES….. (see interesting story about it in wickipedia.. .you have to google for it…. Sorry). On Friday had my first formal lunch at Jesus. It was good to see all dressed people. And it was good break from MBA talk. Met many interesting people. Most of them doing Dphill which means they are world class experts in there subject. We have couple of more MBAs in Jesus and we were looking fools and very material in front of these guys. And there are many subjects even in Engineering for research than I knew of. Oxford puts you not only down to earth but many times burry you below earth. Outside just being in Oxford gives you a special status that you loose immediately after coming here. You are talented? Well not as talented as our student who found about gravity or about black holes and 45 more Nobel laureates . You were MS and CS in college? Very funny, we has 23 presidents from University and so on. The university is way to large to be overgrown by any individual or even a country. Yesterday had one more dinners with my mentor in parent. Each senior graduate is given 4-5 fresher graduates for mentoring. The senior is called as Parent, we are kids and 2-3 parents make a family. So had a family dinner and my parent cooked nice veg curry and rice for me. It was nice evening except an American loud girl.

Anyways. Spend most of the day today reading for the next lecture and finishing the pre lecture assignment in accounting. Remember I talked about theft in Oxford???? Well the seat of my bicycle got stolen yesterday night. I was lazy to park in cycle in enclosed shade of college so just locked in open cycle stand outside my room. And they stole JUST A SEAT. Damn it.

Nonetheless, the time we were calling as honeymoon weeks in Oxford is will be over in two hours and what is about to begin is very hard, very tiring, very intimidating, sometimes even frustrating but still the most exciting and most awaited year of my life. Apart from other career related and enjoyment expectations, I hope that I will get time to breath, eat, sleep (at least 4 hours a day) and write to you guys. On the similar note, hope you guys will have time and interest in reading.

Oxford Preview

2008-02-06T22:08:00.000Z

Oxford city:
Many people (including me about 2 years back) don’t know that Oxford is a city. In fact Oxfordshire is the county in England and Oxford is the main town in that region. Oxford's name comes from the crossing point (ford) across the Thames. The ford was used by cattle farmers to drive their oxen to market. It is the combination of the words 'oxen' and 'ford' that give Oxford its name. (Fords are places where the water is shallow enough to walk across to the opposite bank.)
There are two universities in Oxford, Oxford University (the famous one where I am going) and Oxford Brooks University. This town is about 90 miles South West to London. It is famously known as the ‘City of Dreaming Spires’ for the skyline of city is embellished by the spires of many churches and towers and other monumental buildings.
River Thames passes through Oxford. It becomes wide and shallow there. And it is called as “Isis” and not Thames.

Oxford University:
It is one of the most famous and most ancient universities in the world. Established about 800 years before, this university is still recognized as among the top three universities in the world. Today Oxford University hosts almost 30oo0 students and almost thousand world class faculties, many of whom are Nobel laureates. This university has given two presidents to India (Pandit Nehru and Manmohan Singh) and hundreds of scientists and authors and politicians to the world. But there is no University campus as such. Various colleges and hostels and labs and libraries of university are in different buildings spread at the centre of the city.

SAID business school:
Though Oxford was providing the management programs long before, in 1996 they decided to formally step up into management education and started SAID Business School. This school provides the MBA and MFE degrees. SAID was a businessman who donated about 23 million for the building this business school (which he apparently earned by dealings of arms). So I would be studying in SAID Business School, University of Oxford.

Oxford and Cambridge similarities and differences:
Well just few years after Oxford started something happened and few people from Oxford went to Cambridge (which also is a city like Oxford) and started the Cambridge University. So the educational system of both the universities is very similar. But for some reason they hate each other. They won’t even take each others name. Instead they call the other university as “The Other Place”. There are annual sports events between both the universities every year which boosts this rivalry. The famous sport between the two universities is rowing. And the annual rowing competition is as competitive and extreme as Ayrton Senna – Alan Prost F1 race (I could say India – Pakistan cricket match but I hate cricket).

Oxford Collegiate System:
The most confusing part of Oxford is their collegiate system. Oxford University is consisted of about 40 colleges started at different times. Each college specialized in their own subjects. For under graduation you take admission to respective college and your courses, lectures, exams and administration will be through the college. If you don’t get into the college you applied, you are not admitted. But for post graduation, the courses are conducted by university. Still you have to take admission to one of the college. But once you get admission in the University, the college admission is secured. You still may not get the college you want, but you will get into some college for sure. The administration stuff such as accommodation, food and access to the graduate common rooms is provided by respective college.
To make it more complicated to understand, the MBA and MFE degrees are given by SAID business school under the name of University of Oxford. So I will be admitted in University of Oxford, My lectures, courses and exams will be through SAID Business School, but I am on the roll of Jesus College (I am admitted to Jesus College out of the other 40). Well, if you are still confused and interested in knowing it well, mail me… otherwise just leave it ;-)

Jesus College:
So apparently I am admitted in the Jesus College. This is one of the old and small colleges in Oxford founded by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571 and catered mostly Welsh students for a long time. This is also one of the richest colleges (with closing reserves and endowments of £79,700,391 in 2003. FYI, Oxford University owns more than £ 3 billion as reserves and endowment. This is more that what TCS annual revenue) I choose it because it is small and admits only 2 MBAs per year. So I am hoping to know more people outside the MBA class. Also this college is at the very centre of city and is not far from SAID. So things would be convenient to me. Jesus College also had very famous alumni like Lawrence of Arabia (there is also a Hollywood movie on him).

Examination School:
There is a dedicated building for exams there. This is one of the best buildings in Oxford. It was built in 1882 and since then this building has witnessed the never cracking tension, silence and the joy of holiday on the faces of hundreds of thousands of students. Fortunately this is fairly near to Jesus College so I won’t waste much time in commuting during the exam. Being a very old and traditional schools Oxford is full of various types of official, unofficial and even weird customs. One of the customs is that on the last paper of your degree, you leave the Exam School from the backdoor (like we leave the movie theatre). This marks the end of your exams and that you won’t even enter into this building again. Cool, isn’t it?

Oxford and movies:
Oxford is being pictured in many movies the most prominent of them all is Harry Potter. Many parts of ‘Hogwarts’ like ‘The Great Hall’ of dinning, the library and many other is the Oxford. And I am going to have dinner just like Harry Potter every night. But mine will be in a smaller hall as Jesus is a small college. The Harry Potter hall is the dinning hall of Christ Church College.
Also if you remember the white lead actress of Rang De Basanti… She is the daughter of the Oxford Dean.