Time for a break

It had been a roller coaster ride since the day I landed at ISB. Thank god it had not been anything like what I imagined it to be. I had been stretched in all possible directions.

I never thought I would stay awake beyond 12 midnight but 2AM became the norm now. But for the support system of ISB, it would've been impossible to survive the rigor.

As the core terms end and the electives start there is yet another cycle of unsettling and settling. New section mates, new group mates, and new profs. Placement fever is about to begin and I think things are going to speed up from now on.

There is an attempt to launch an official ISB blog and something may happen on that front shortly. Of all the four terms, this term end exams were the most strenuous in terms of preparation but when it came to the exam hall, two of the exams got finished in less than an hour.

As per my original plan I should've been flying to China today. But thanks to the miscommunication from CEIBS, I'm happily sitting in Hyderabad. I don't what I would've been feeling if I was actually going but in hindsight I am more happy to be at ISB. I would be able to take more courses and focus on my goals.

Two/three days back suddenly I felt that I should write short stories. I also quickly came up with a storyline too. It is about a love story at a call center. A young graduate joins the call centre and his team leader happens to be a girl. Though she is elder to him, he gets attracted to her. He likes her confidence, the way she handles tough situations and tough people. She also moves freely with him but by the time the guy develops confidence to tell her, she gets engaged to someone else.

He goes ahead and expresses his love to her but she brushes him off saying that it was just friendship and she can't imaging marrying and living with him. She gets married a month later and leaves the job to join her husband in another city. The guy goes and meets her and for a brief moment she gets a feeling that may be she was little to quick to deny the young guy but then brushes it aside and bis adieu to the guy.

Guy goes back to his job, feels a little sad for few days and then a young girl joins his team and he starts feeling that may be he has not really lost his love. He can divert it somewhere else and the story starts again. Inspiration for this story comes from a one liner that my old friend, Partha Saradhi, told me long back. It goes like this - When young, even a donkey looks beautiful and lovable. Though the story doesn't completely relate to what he said, I feel it does.

Hope you liked the story (in the most driest possible expression). I would appreciate encouragement from the readers.

Laziness in me is waking and before it takes over let me click the publish button. Good bye for now

Crazy Day - Sec E's last day

Yesterday was section E's last day and it was a crazy day. First it was our group's turn to do the GSBC presentation. Our topic was on child labor and we had enough mix ups since friday. Everyone in the group became lazy but for few of us it was important and we pushed it till the end. We managed to get hold of a nice video clip from ILO's site and played it. The video was apt in the sense that it projected the problem but also gave a hint of positive results, which is slightly away from the doomed feeling I got from all other statistics and presentations.

Next it was Prof. Ramana Sonti's class. I really feel that we should've had another two sessions with him. He is highly passionate about the subject and I really enjoyed the INVA course. He suddenly realized that all those in the class were wearing the same T-shirt. I was given the opportunity to ask the last question for the term and for the core terms though I am not the question master.

Once the class was over it was a mad rush for photographs. We must have clicked more than 200 snaps yesterday and we took pictures at all possible locations in the main building. The photo session went on for more than 2 hours. Though we just half way through, the emotions yesterday were like that of the last day. We all know that it would be difficult to catch up with all the section mates together again except may be in the parties.

Once the class was over it was a mad rush for photographs. We must have clicked more than 200 snaps yesterday and we took pictures at all possible locations in the main building. The photo session went on for more than 2 hours. Though we just half way through, the emotions yesterday were like that of the last day. We all know that it would be difficult to catch up with all the section mates together again except may be in the parties.

In hindsight, it is amazing to see how the first half has zipped past of us.

Latest Pics of Sec E

Hi People,

I have uploaded all the pics that I clicked on 5th Sept at
Sec E pictures

Captured moments

I have uploaded most of the photos I clicked to flickr. Follow the below links:

Sec E

ISB

My Pics

Garbled Messages, Great Professors

Let me clarify, there is no linkage between the parts of the title. Garbled messages is something about me and the greatness is all about the professors

I always thought that my humor quotient is low as I normally cannot come up with a new joke. But the deeds of God are great.

Strange as it amy sound, I had seen that when I am speaking very passionately about something, people suddenly start laughing. Today another such thing happened. In the Strategy session, during the break we were discussing the model that Prof. Harbir Singh gave us on culture. When I was tryin to relate it to the tip of the iceberg model, suddenly people started laughing. When I asked what's so funny about it, they repeated what I just said, and it seems I said ice of the tipberg and hearing that I too started laughing.

This is the second time I have done this in the last three months. Last time it was "coss toining", I was actually trying to say coin tossing and I repeated coss toining thrice befor I realized what I was doing.

I have log back realized that I tend to speak little faster as I try to verbalize my thoughts and therefore it comes out in a confusing way for others. But after I started delivering training programs, worked a lot on this and used a clear plan, writing out the exact words, phrases and examples that I would use and was quite successful in keeping it simple for others. But when it comes to complex subjects, my mind works so fast that it becomes very difficult to verbalize them instantly. To overcome this I am working on using analogies to keep it simple and relate it to the audience.

Anyways, Term -2 at ISB comes to an end. We have three days to prepare for the term-end exams. This term has been a mixed bag in terms of the amount of effort and learning.

Competitive Strategy has put a lot of emphasis on prereads while Markstrat needed lot of team decision making. Macro Economics cleared lot of questions and allowed me to understand the linkages between Business, Society, Politics, Economics and people. Indeed I had got lot of my questions answered. Watching commanding heights gave a sense of what actually happened in the modern world. It was a sort of history but it is still contemporary and I feel that economics is one subject that will be contemporary forever. Economics is more of an art and less of a science, and Management inherits lot of those characteristics. Decision Modeling appeared to be math intensive but I felt it is more about logic, coomon sense and application of maths.

All the Profs have been fantastic and I think we had the best of the lot. I would remember Prof. Harbir Singh, Prof. Pradeep Bharadwaj, Prof. Jagmohan Raju, Prof. Ziv Katalan, Prof. Milind Sohoni and Prof. Krishna Kumar forever. These professors are not only great teachers but are also great contributors to their fiedl. After interacting with them, my respect for teachers ha got reinforced. Gaining knowledge and applying is one level of leadership but disseminating knowledge in a credible is at a much higher level. Credibility is the key word.

Finaly I have decided to post pictures of these great professors who would continue to inspire me by their passion and greatness


Professor Harbir Singh, also seen in the picture Ankush (black shirt), Pinaki (wondering what's happening) and Ratnakar (taking a parallel session)


The passionate professor - Milind Sohoni, and Suhail Abrol (not) listening carefully

Most liked professor - Prof. Pradeep Bharadwaj and the Rocking section - Sec E

Sec E for you

On the last day of Term 1, when we reached AC8LT for FADM we found that our display cards were missing. We searched everywhere and found them nowhere. I realized quickly that friends from the other section played the mischief. I quickly looked around and found that the seating arrangement display would be nice souvenir to keep and picked it up from the notice board (that was the last day it was needed). I don't know if the photos printed resemble the actual people in anyway but that's the only thing that I have in which everyone from Sec E is there without being hidden by others.

Look at all the innocent faces:


But alas, the whole thing is in Black and White making it further difficult.

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.