HT Week 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.