TT Week 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!