Desperate measures

Whole of ISB appears to have gone into a hibernation. No parties, and no loud music. People are seriously trying to do something before Monday strikes. Before we even realized that we have spent 50 days at ISB, Term 1 came to an end and we are standing in front of a battle called Term 1 end exams. Anand Narasimhan was the one who counted the days, I am ubanle to make out the difference between today and tomorrow.

Only way people are entertaining themselves is through spamming. Talent is coming out from unexpected quarters. There were songs, videos and even ISB special comics that are floating around. Makkadman seems to be the friendly neighborhood in ISB.

While Engineers and CA's are enjoying the advantages, Doctors are really slogging. Look at Dr. Kirti, he is trying to grasp everything by doing multi-threading (doesn't it sound familiar)while Ratnakar Gore is trying to piggyback.

The senior citizen's study group has upped the effort dramatically. We will have to wait and see what the ROI would be.

Sleeping in the class

After the three hectic days that were spent in attempting the assignments I was really tired on Monday. And as the Statistics class was going I was slipping into a state of sleep despite all my attempts to be awake. While all this is happening our official photographer Mr. A managed to get couple of snaps and followed it up with couple of more snaps of mine speaking to the prof and he also gave them some funny names. Have a laugh at my cost :)


Caption: Sleep_Best


Caption: You had doubts after all that

Let me know if you have any other comments.

Credit for the nice pics goes to Ashish Naredi.

An inspiring day

A Philippines corporation has suddenly become more popular than HLL and its CEO is the new visionary for all of us. In one day we have learnt a great deal about this company.

It was inspiring thing to see five people sitting in one room with full commitment and continuously work more than 12 hrs in a focused way despite having so many differences and arguments. Somehow I never saw such a committed effort in all the five organizations that I have worked. I always tried to remain committed and focused but got distracted by inability of people in agreeing to disagree and focusing on the objective. I think the key difference is the incentive and the stakes involved. Here everyone has a very high stake and we were all tied together.

This is a great example and I am sure I can find use of this experience in the corporate world to improve performance of individuals working in teams.

Some interesting words that I uttered due to excessive exhaustion - cossing the toin (supposed to be tossing the coin), and that coimbatore is 16 km from Hyderabad (I meant hrs but km is what I uttered. Nevertheless this is nothing new and I had this knack proving myself as a complete fool in the midst of serious happenings and that appears to be my contribution to the general humor

Some random thoghts

Each of us have some common/uncommon thing that we tend to to do whenever you find having lot of time but nothing to do. I too keep doing a slightly uncommon thing. Like a painter who keeps doing some sketching, I too do thought sketching. By thought sketching I am referring to verbalizing what you think others are thinking by reading from the non-verbal cues. At ISB it's very difficult to have that vaccuum, but I found sometime during today's session and did some interesting mind sketching. I am reproducing whatever I have written down, it may sound foolish even to me now, but I still want to just share my instinctive mind sketches. Here we go:

Let me take a backseat, I really don't care what is happening around, let me listen to others, why the obvious questions are repeated again and again, I know everything, what everyone else is saying I know that already, I am better than everybody, I am different, How good is the speaker, let me validate what I already know, I won't talk but I want to be a part of the discussion, can I, I'm better off without an MBA, but I'm here just to prove to others that I too can do something, I slogged hard, I'm start, I have certain desires, hope they get fulfilled without much effort, I hope I can utilise my seating advantage well, Why the hell I'm sitting here, do I know why I'm here, am I wise enough, looks like something important, let me take notes, they are talking non-sense let me take vengeance, let them know that I know, when would this end, how should spend my time this evening, I have been doing certain things and they are working great for me, I'm unique, all the others are very boring, why did ISB make this a graded course, do I need this, what would be served for lunch, do I have a 5 rupee coin for the coffee machine

I also managed to go aroung my SV and take few pics. I could locate a beautiful hibiscus, red chameleon and a peacefuly coexisting rock and tree, take a look at the pics:

First week passes

The first week classes of Term-1 is over, but wait the work and reading are not yet over. There are two assignments and one quiz pending apart from the huge list of pre-reading work.

A sudden change of habits has definitely imbalanced by me. In the second class of Managerial Economics, the prof was doing some calculation and suddenly I opened my mouth and uttered six, don't ask me why I said that and where did that number came from, and the prof went silent for about 10 sec and said "Dude". It was a shocker for me and I couldn't quite understand why I uttered that word. I might have definitely appeared to be the biggest fool for him. Fortunately there is no CP for this course.

Despite being a voracious reader all the time, the amount of reading that I attempted would be almost equal to almost a year's quota. Normally I would borrow or buy and then for about a month or two would eat and sleep with it. But now, I don;t have that luxury anymore.

Lots of crazy things are happening in one of the courses. All those who made it to ISB are highly smart and also very competitive ad this makes CP a very big challenge. Some one raises his hand and prof says that he would only give him a chance if it is a question and the guy starts with, "I think." I never quite understood how can a question start with I think. Another guy starts doing all the math that he learnt with the prof and the prof unsuspectingly falls into his trap and the whole class misses about 5 min of valuable time. Finally all sorts of things are happening in this class. Only good thing is that we are all doing our reading and discussions and the prof is able to reasonably complete the part before the 2 hrs end.

And finally the rain god also seems to have understood that it's time to chill everyone and sent a downpour onto ISB. I wouldn't be surprised of it rained only at ISB as the heat last week, both the sun and the studies, went into it's all time peak for this year; it's quite common in Hyderabad to rain at place and be totally dry at another place that is about 5 km away.

It's time for me to chill and enjoy the long weekend. Will be back with some nice pics.

Of spam and spam filters

Sorry for spamming, that's how most of the mails in my ISB mailbox start with. On the other hand we were trying to decide whether to accept a spam filter based on one test in the stats class. With so many formulae around the difficulty seems to be in picking the right one.

As people are becoming more and more acquainted the sorries are coming down and demands for action are going up. People seem to be finding solace in airing their views directly on mail addressed to everyone in the world and expecting that the concerned party takes a note of popular demand and take some action. But the action is to be taken by a Business Manager not by a club presidentship aspirant.

That brings me to another point, consider the amount of money spent by politicians during elections. Wouldn't it be a good idea to auction the political representation by the amount of money one can donate to a certain fund and then allow the top three bidders to share power for a certain period. That way the money will find a better use.

Also wouldn't it be a good idea to have a rating system for all political parties based on what they do on a daily basis. That way the political leaders can find some useful ways to score points for their party and not hang around the party chief's house. If the human resources engaged in the political arena are utilized for some positive purpose I'm sure we would be doing very well as a country. May be involve them in cost benefit analysis of a regulation supported by economists and that way we can expect them to be sensible and contribute to the regulatory process in a positive way.

Hope Chandrababu Naidu's, and S.M. Krishna's are reading this.

First day in class

Preterm sessions really helped in getting adjusted to sitting in a class for 2 hrs listening to someone while attempting not to fall asleep.

But the first day in Term 1 has been quite a good experience. It was amazing to see how a prof explained what maximization is using the example of reaching the top of a mountain. In the process he also explaing what a derivative is. The other class was not that simple and most of the class spent at least thirty min in explaining to each other after the class got over.

Sitting in the last row is certainly has a very good advantage - you can see everyone in the class without bending your neck. Certain people seem to have the knack of catching the attention of prof and asking questions after questions. I am really lagging behind. I don't know if I am able to understand everything right away or I am so confused that I can't clearly state what question I have.

Heard from others that there has been lot of arbit CP and there are already couple of mails in our section requesting people not to do so in our class. I have to wait and see how many would stick to that. But our section seems to be focused on studies and I feel I am in good company.

The most boring world cup ends in the most boring way

It was no where near any of the previous world cup finals. It rained even on the day of final and the match was reduced to 38 overs a side and then later bad light was offered to batsmen, batsmen accepted and Australians started celebrating. Mcgrath had to put back the stump that he might have pulled out to keep as a souvenir of the last match he played. After that I didn't see the ending as it was too obvious.

Australia did what they planned to do - shatter Srilanka bowling and put on a great score. Srilanka did have a decent start until both Jayasurya and Sangakkara got out in quick succession.

But yesterday was not all that depressing. We had an excellent party on the campus. Nidhi Reddy organized the party and I think 80% of the Class turned up. Lots of music and lots of dancing for me. After the party I had spent almost two hrs with Mr. R discussing various topics. After a long time I had an open discussion with a new person. My complex way of thinking is getting more and more clear to me. I really don't know how to deal with it. Is it good, is it OK or is it not so?

Anyway have loads of reading to catch up. See you in a short while

Music, books, problems, party, pre-reading, calendar

That's the sequence my mind is following. Music is running while pages are being flipped, problems are discussed but the party schedule is on the calendar, pre-reading looks ok but the calendar looks completely choked.

I think my mind is following the Markov's chain, none of these states are transient. Sleep and food are the ony ones that are recurrent. Only absorbent states are whether I canreach my goal or not.

Term 1 begins

Last year around the same time I started my journey towards ISB. The first step was to figure out what is GMAT, can I manage to get a good score in it, how much preparation is needed and can someone reliable help me and so on.

And now again I am trying to figure out what kind of effort is needed from me, would I be able to cope with it, what do I do to be prepared and is there someone who can help me and so on. I have started feeling that may be getting in was easy, getting out wouldn't be. But hope prevails considering that so many others have gone through similar thing and succeeded.

Was browsing through the term one books and found them very interesting. Hope I will have enough time to go through all of them in detail.

When I was doing my diploma, I always dreamt of being an entreprenuer but offlate I was thinking about ideas that can impact society in a positive while being profitabe. Today in one of the briefings the same thing came out in a different form called Social Venture. This is one area I would like to spend some time on during this valuable one year.

Tomorrow is the world cup final. Never has been another world cup that has been so boring and predictable. I predicted right at the beginning that Australia, New zealand, Srilanka and South Africa would reach semis and that Australia and Srilanka would reach the final. And a day before the final I predict that Srilanka is going to take the cup

Muralidharan is going to play a great part and the way Jayawardene played in semis makes me feel that he is peaking at the right time. But overall the world cup has been a big flop. Even Mandira looks bored, the excitement on her face is gone and she appears like a DD news reader.

It's time for me to grab a bite and get immersed into the books. Bye for now

It's a great feeling

When some put in so much of effort for others whom they even don't know well, I don't know why, I feel the touch of humanity. The unselfish, no motive work evokes a great emotion.

That's what I felt about the effort put in by the Class of 2007 in the orientation week for us, Class of 2008. All of these alums have been placed and would have had a so many other things to catch after the hectic year at ISB, but they instead chose to be here with us and help us to get inducted into ISB.

It was also great to see all the talent ISB has recruited this year. There are great artists who can sing, dance, play instruments and write and direct creative skits.

ISB also has been very successful in attracting more experienced people. This year there are about 70 students with more than 8 years while there were about 40 of them last year. In the general management club informal session the whole discussed around two topics - Leadership Programs and Executive Placement.

I have more or less made up my mind that I will join just two clubs - General Management club and the consulting club. I would like to invite as many senior people as possible for the speaker series. That way it would add value to the students and also would give a glimpse of ISB to the external world.

I am pretty happy with my decision to join ISB, in fact I would say thrilled, after meeting my batchmates. But as usual there are some studs and I hope they stick to the extra curricular activities. Lots of parties have been happening around but I have decided to get my complete sleep as the preterms are about to start from Monday.

It's really difficult to remember what is decriptive statistics and what is inferential statistics but I'm slowly getting in to the grove. Wish me best of Luck people.

The journey begins

One of the goals that I have identified before joining at ISB is to play whatever is possible. Today I started that. As a part of the orientation we had played football and frisbie tournament. I am in E section and I think I have got fantastic section mates. We reached the semis in Football and we woun outright over the other two sections in the frisbie matches.

We had an alum who did a quick coaching and strategy in the middle when we are appearing to be loosing the lead. It worked wonders and after that we never looked back. I contributed my part by plying in both the matches and scoring one point in each. Overall it was a hectic day calling for both mental and physical attention and there is more now.

Also the dunking ritual has started with three guys from Sec E getting dunked. It included Arun from our Hyderabad gang.

I am slowly settling in and getting adjusted to hectic schedule. The day here is atleast three times more hectic than what it was at work.

I met Abhishek from 07 batch who is joining Mercer Management Consulting. He offered to support me in getting more details about Mercer HR consulting in India.

Team Building

Finally I had an opportunity to be a participant in a Team Building program. The program has been organized by the Alum from Co 2007 and was very well done. We had Jam, Ashraf and Dipti facilitating the activities for 36 of us. We had lots of fun, lots of physical activities and some gyan.

I have uploaded few pics on flickr. Check them out.

The internet speed here is very good and the HP nx 7300 is very good. Another hectic day awaits me tomorrow and I need to figure out some time to post about couple of topics that I mentioned earlier.

Reporting from ISB Hyderabad computer Lab

Finally the wait is over. I landed at ISB at 9:00 AM, checked in Student Village 1. Managed to finish the registration process by 12 noon, had lunch at Goel Dining Hall, received the laptop from the vendor and handed over the same to IT dept for configuration. Managed to find the computer lab and the first thing I've decided to do is write this post.

Lots of things happened in the last few weeks. Let me list down the titles of the two posts that I wanted to write based on what happened in the last few days, so that I don't forget them:

1. Right drivers for right performance and behavior - Indian Cricket as a case

2. Why most of my classmates from IT background crib about HR department? My experience and insights from a HR point of view.

That's all for now. Need to catch up with some sleep. Experience here till now has been very good but I can see that those who came late are standing in queue and waiting for their turn. I'm sure they wouldn't be delighted, but it's a part of the game.

The class size this year has been increased to 450 from last year's 418 and I'm in section-E. That's all for now.