My NUS MBA

My 50 Most Memorable Moments of NUS MBA

2010-07-10T09:31:00.008+05:30

2 days ago, finally this treasured journey came to an official end after giving endless memories, and invaluable relationships. I had started this blog to record my experiences as an NUS MBA student, and now will continue to do so as an NUS MBA Alumnus. But before I make that transition, I would like to salute and thank NUS, the Business School, the Staff, our Professors and most of all, my batchmates, Class of 2010, for a lifetime experience, learning & value.

And what better way to do that, than to remember my most memorable moments of the entire experience spanning 2 unforgettable years.

NUS MBA Class of 2010, you rock!!!
Psst...I may not have named you, but you know who you are ;)
This is not an exhaustive list, of even my own moments, but do add your own if you want to...and add to the fun! :)

XYZ introducing himself in NP’s class after an all night drinking session -> "I think I am bad at sex"
“A” introducing himself 2 months before graduation, " I am A, first year full time MBA"
A & B applauding Prof IPM for something in class, assuming people would follow lead...and the entire class turning and staring at them. And then laughing.
My first blog writing ever IN-class
The ultimate status messages on gtalk and FB, and the 1000s of hours spent on both these mediums; half of those going through Debesh's photography ! :P :P
Mktg final exam : exam started at 9, i looked up at 9:30. Not 1 person was writing!
Kirti cracking jokes via chat/fb/whatever and making us laugh in class, while maintaining a perfect dead pan!!
Aperna forgetting her own calculator in a final exam!; using Kirti's and the Prof walks up and scolds Kirti for forgetting his calculator!! :D
The only meeting ever with the Stats prof, Priyanka “Powerpuff” Pahwa’s kickass handling of the proceedings and Srini’s constant disappearing act... he was trying to hide his uncontrollable laughter as coughing....and another Prof saw him laughing in the hallway.
Marketing project presentation: Wife presenting, Husband listening. Husband asks question. Team thinks it’s placed. They wait for wife to answer. Wife answers. @Prof to Husband: "very good question" @ Prof to Wife: "very bad answer" Turns out the question wasn’t placed after all. :P
The Sem1 Tiger Brewery tour, DB whom I barely knew at the time, said to me, "Dont sit next to me, I am drunk and not safe!" :O :D
The all too popular Jaimin's "Happy Jaimin" state...Happy Jaimin very soon graduated to being an adjective (credits for coining the noun: yours truly, Shipra Gupta)
Recounting stories of all daaru parties as the 2nd most favorite conversation topic, first being ofcourse, "bitching sessions!" :P
All the "late comer" songs in Corp Strat class; ranging from Canada's national anthem (where we all stood up! :P) , to a nursery rhyme by Rohini & Aperna..all the way to a "mere sapno ki rani" with full(ly made up) orchestra :D
Jaimin's :"Hail the queen!" greeting.. (The queen of PJs i.e.)
Shreya and everything about her and our friendship
X’s extremely constipated face in class. I could never figure if she was trying very very hard to stay awake or to concentrate. Or was she really, well, that badly constipated.
Rohini’s spontaneous wit, never-ending theatrics and uncanny knack of giving names to people, things and events ;)
Other people's hopeless attempts trying to match up to Rohini’s names
The makeup, the heels, the laptop, the books and running up the 10000 stairs...all in one go!
The morning before Consultant Unplugged - and SK's comment "ghar pe shaadi hai kya..kya shakal banaayi hui hai" (you look as tense as if you were planning a family wedding)
The resounding laughter from audience during consultant unplugged
The appreciation mails that kept pouring in for days later!
Council Presidential Elections 2008 - Face Off
Holi dance performance and the cheers “once more” at the end
The jokes & goofups during rehearsals; esp Srini's comment to Maggu "Naacho Priyanka!" (boy did she beat him up after that!!)
The endless date conflicts for international day 2009!!!!!
The 12:45 am bus #30 to boonlay, the potluck lunches & get togethers
My first-ever :"awesome cook" compliment
The endless girl talk sessions at nights in our apartment
Alex's high pitched "Shhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiippppppppppprrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaa"
Non-stop quibbling n sworn enemity with Venuraj..while helping him out with all his event fliers and generally being nice to him. Srini used to call us "tom n jerry"
All night long discussions at boonlay interspersed with movies, snacks, even naps!!!, ending with morning tea...followed by sleeping till noon (missed that terribly in the final sem!!)
The midnight birthday celebrations in boonlay in Sem 1
Getting dunked into the pool as a part of birthday celebrations....it was not my birthday!
All the times spent with non MBA friends..who always had to take me out kicking & screaming...and always left me wondering why I didn't party with them more often
The food @ Edward’s, the lebanese food counter and Anjappar@PGP, Thosai at Engg. Canteen; Komala's and Annalaxmi
A’s winning KY-Jelly in a pop quiz! B’s befuddled look and the need to read the packaging! and C’s comment on how men don't need it!!! now thats what i call a hat-trick!! ;) :D
The half an hr 2^nd order differential model in the channels class and the look on ev1's face, as they looked from the ¾ covered board to the 3 people in a class 30 who were actually following, writing and finding faults with it!!!!!!!!!!!
Micro Class Presentation - and the group who said MR is NOT equal to MC!!!!!
International Day Kathak Performance, the whistling, the cheers, the disbelief when I told people I wasn’t a trained dancer and the first comment right after it "Tumhara sharukh khan kahan hai?" (where’s your sharukh khan: the song was from one of his movies)
International Day "Crossing Borders" performance...as I sat there, mesmerized, for the 2nd time, at the sheer talent in the batch!!
The same night, Venuraj playing his keyboard, and all of us breaking into "Pehla Nasha" impromptu..and still matching each note!!
Cerebration 2010 grand finale...when I sat there and got goosebumps at the thought it was finally done!!
Getting my first pay cheque while still at school!!
The kickboxing & the salsa classes
Reading the email saying I had won the scholarship
The Commencement dinner award ceremony where everyone hooted for everyone else : Rohini became Alex, Debesh became Saurabh & Shekhar....Deba! :)

The 2 biggest moments of all....
The first time I ever entered the NUS Kent ridge campus, the moment the boonlay shuttle turned the corner, and I saw the Orange “NUS” board at the entrance, for the first time ever.
The moment where I finally walked up on the stage, and got my MBA degree

2010-05-28T17:43:00.004+05:30

I keep feeling constantly that i have become a completely different person, that the past 2 years have been an exponential learning curve through & through; personally, academically, professionally; and that every aspect of me feels different. To the point where at times i feel i don’t know myself anymore. Its definitely been a monumental journey and the deep impact it has had deserves to be recorded; I am definitely in a massive transition period where I am yet to find my lost footing with myself. Here’s an attempt at that self –rediscovery.

How did my mba change me?

To begin with, i have become highly adept at managing a household, and though I hardly enjoy it any more than i ever did, so is the general consensus amongst my friends. Sure I had my fair share of burning holes in the bottom of pans while cooking and clothes while ironing; butanyone i didn’t tell myself won’t believe it. Of course i have taken care to get rid of all evidence to the effect ;)

A friend’s father recently called me any household’s future delight as a rare MBA smart girl who can manage the house perfectly well. Needless to say, my mother is delighted. and even more needless to add, my pre MBA friends are just too shocked to believe anything. In their words, “the wild cat has been domesticated!” :P

The obvious, academic broadening of horizons; i know much more than i did before all the studying in MBA; even if i didn’t study as much as I would have liked to. I can do much more in excel than add numbers :D

What else? I guess the gazillion presentations have had their effect. So while I have had quite a history of public speaking, as a debator, compere, even newsreader, I learnt that giving a presentation is a completely different ball game and to top that I know PPT functions I never knew existed :D

I have aged 2.5 more years since 2008, so I suppose I probably have matured; though there are aspects to my life where I still feel like the same idiot that I have always been. Only it feels much worse now. Whoever said you can learn from your mistakes and move on...I have got something to say to you.. some mistakes you just keep making over & over. I bet there’s the Freudian theory to it somewhere ;)

A lot of things I knew I was reasonably good at, networking, socialising, confrontations, competitiveness, I have just become more adept at them I guess. I learnt the true value of healthy competition, and the rarity with which competition is ever healthy. Definitely work out more than I ever have in my entire life, though I doubt MBA had anything to do with it; may be except the dozens of Kgs I had put on in the last 2 years churning 1 assignment or email after another from my laptop, getting up only to eat, sleep..and well you know. :P

A natural introvert, something of a rebellious loner, I am much more comfortable talking to strangers than before, though again my first nature still rules. I just don’t detest having the 2^nd one to take over.

I am far more environmentally conscious than I ever was; yup that’s definitely all the climate change studying and work I did in MBA, and the difference I learnt 1 person can actually make!

I have always been a very spiritual person but more of an iconoclast when it comes to traditions. Yet, living in a foreign country with no family to provide the much needed anchor made me more religious than before. With traditions I am still of the same opinion, if they go out context of the times we live in, they must be changed. when traditions start ruling the society, they start suffocating the individuals. and that generates only 2 kinds of people. more on this in a later post...

I have become more conscious of my multi tasking skills, my ability to stretch myself and the weakness of stretching myself too thin at times. I have learnt that I can keep functioning on little sleep for almost a week and also how harmful & unhealthy it is to do so. I have learnt what a workaholic I can become and how important it is to maintain the work life balance.

Many a times, MBA taught me many things I didn’t want to know, but probably needed to. How frivolously people treat their own commitments, the callous manipulativeness, the ruthless aggression, and many such things that I had always refused to believe existed anywhere outside movies. Not that it has gone a long way in changing the way I deal with people, I still start off by thinking everyone is nice, st forward and simple; but I guess I just pick up the signs to show otherwise faster and adapt myself quicker. I suppose I am less naive than I used to be.

But I guess I am still the same person in many ways, I still come across as very approachable to some people and very cold to others...and I still don’t understand why that happens! I just know I act on the vibes I get. :P My instincts are still as accurate as ever.And I am still as incorrigible when it comes to ignoring them and landing into trouble!!

someone a few days ago put this as his FB msg

"if you could kick hard the person responsible for all your problems, you wouldn't be able to sit for a week"

couldn't have said it better myself!!! I always believed in making mistakes as long as I learn from them, grow as a person and not repeat them. I think the marginal utility of those mistakes has long approached zero, I should change strategies now & become more risk averse & start playing safe!

Recently realised that my wit and sarcasm still haven’t lost their touch......

But I guess my biggest learning has been as follows:

The simple teachings of childhood: humility, politeness, honesty, being nice, respect to teachers & elders, love to younger ones, kindness to the less fortunate, contentment, trusting in others’ goodness of heart, dedication & commitment to your duties....the simple practical things that my Mom taught me as I was growing up...those things are still as universally applicable as ever; and definitely more in need in today’s world than ever before.

Legal Issues in Business

2010-04-11T20:47:00.008+05:30

When I was in high school, our school made us take a career counseling test, which was supposed to tell us our ideal career path. Of course it was the right time to take that test, and so I took it with all my zeal. The results were something to the following effect;
scientific reasoning - negative
logical & rational thinking - negative
mathematical, computational, numerical , analytical reasoning - negative
career in science - not suitable
career in business - not suitable
career in research - not suitable
....well you get the point..and just as I was about to give up on my dream of the "high-flying" executive, my eye fell on the word "excellent"

At last! something was right! there was hope. I picked up the paper again, it read:
argumentative & verbal capability: excellent!
suitable career: lawyer, journalist or politician

in my father's words, "nonstop useless chatter - this is why i ask you to focus ...blah blah blah"....

11 years flash forward, I think I can say with confidence that the test was clearly wrong ;)

But the thought that i was most suited to be a lawyer never quite left me; and it wasn't just the test, which was clearly f***ed up; it was because all my friends, school teachers, everyone always thought I'd do either journalism or law.

And though I didn't, when I saw this course being offered, more for temporary gratification of "studying law" than anything else, I took it up. First class was phenomenal. We talked about criminal law, murders, evidence, witnesses...wow! it felt like the movies. Everything, from Damini's Sunny Deol's famous "tareek pe tareek" to legally blonde's solving a murder through knowledge of hair perming to Jeffrey Archer's novels to even Agatha Christie's murder mysteries flashed in front of my eyes . Already I could picture myself making a fiery, passionate closing statement to a jury that would exonerate my innocent client from the murder charges he was clearly being framed for!

This was going to be exciting!! :D

Alas! Fate..err the Prof had a different thing in mind..

The subject was about contract law. And for the rest of semester, every word in the class sounded obfuscated, circuitous and sometime even senseless. It took me forever to grasp the concept of consideration. A promise of exchange, where a $1 offer is considered sufficient economic value for a fresh consideration (exchange).??!!!!

"Frustration" caused me a lot of pain & frustration! No matter how frustrated you are, unless lightening strikes u on the head or Katrina's (the storm) sister blows ur company away (pun unintended), you cant claim frustration to get out of a contract! Why not call it "I cant do it because I am dead!!" instead?

CISG, the full form of which I still dont know, took 10 years to form, does not cover services & half of the goods or anything thats too complex for a 10 year old to understand; cannot be reinforced and hasn't been updated in 30 years since it needs majority of 74 member states to sign the smallest of amendments!! ...Errr and its still being used...The world has changed in 30 years, and you need 74 members to sign putting a fullstop to it..err i mean on it, and businesses r still using it!! No wonder things never get done with governments and international law!

I still don't understand why if B breached the contract, and A was efficient enough to cover his losses, A is not entitled to damages from B, & B gets to go Scott- free. A is penalised for being efficient!! If I ever felt confident about using the word "ridiculous!!" it was at this instant. So confident I was, that I actually used this in front of the Prof, when she was teaching it!!! Oopss!! tch tch...nows thats over confidence, thank God it was not you-know-who ;)

Many times I suffered Frustration, the english one, and went "arrgghhh!!!"
And in the end no matter what the case and what the evidence was, the judgment always...Alllwaayyyssssss depended on how convincing the argument of the lawyer was to the judge.

If it wasn't for the ever so patient, smiling, kind and knowledgeable Prof Kah Leng, my final addition to the list of 10 Best Profs @ NUS MBA, I would have given up long ago!!

Ya ya, we need this subject. Its contract law, and its surprising how many business people make mistakes because they don't know this stuff. I was surprised at how many times I saw the terms I studied in this class, spring up around me. They had always been there, but I had never noticed. And yeah my level of awareness has gone up manifold.

And through this increased level of awareness, my 3 key takeaways,

stay away from getting in trouble with the law
if you get stuck, hire the darn best lawyer you can afford
and lastly..the golden advice a friend passed me on a chit in class,

"always bribe the judge"

;) :D

Channels of Learning

2010-03-30T12:17:00.008+05:30

After writing about the best profs, is it time to write about the 20 odd subjects I studied in the past 20 odd months? No, not really, not unless some one asked for it! But as I near the end of this once-in-a-lifetime journey, I thought it would be nice to share some key highlights of my academic experience at NUS MBA.

My courses:
A no brainer isn't it. At $$$$ per class, this better be a key highlight!! :D

During my MBA, I made a deliberate, conscious choice of touching as many diverse aspects of a business as possible. While the Finance people worked well on their way to get mini-PhDs by doing every possible finance course offered by NUS MBA, and ditto with Marketing people (though they had very limited choices to be honest).... I tried to get as much breadth as I possibly could.

I tried to strike a balance between pure strategy courses, supply chain, finance and marketing, and quite a few off-beat courses. And while the learning from the typical courses was immense, I think that to me at least these courses added a whole lot of value and new dimensions to my business & behavioral understanding.

These courses were: Legal Issues in Business, Ethics & CSR, Negotiations, Asian Cultures & Religions, Management practicum with an NGO,

And the reason I have shared these specifically with you, is that students often don't realize their significance & either ignore these courses, or take them to get "a light course with easy grades". These courses just show you so many things you have never thought of before, if only you listen carefully.

Simulation games

We had to play simulation games in Corporate strategy, corporate entrepreneurship & Product&Brand Management (though I didn't take this course). My personal opinion, games are a LOT of hard work, immensely time consuming..but they truly provide exponential learning. As close to real life practice as you can get, games are a must, even if you want to kill yourself for taking the subject, when you have to play them every week! :)

Industry Talks

It doesn't matter if you have nothing to do with the topic, or if you don't want to make a career out of it; attend as many as your time permits. You will be surprised at the end of it all, how slowly all pieces start to fall into place in 1 big picture called a "business". I remember attending a talk to Carbon trading; now I am the one of the most Finance challenged MBAs in the history of MBA world; so obviously, I gave up after the first 1 hour. But the first 1 hour was general stuff about global warming, carbon emissions market and so on; and that was a lot of learning. Did I curse myself for the next 1 hour, sure! I still wish I could have slipped out after 1 hour and used that time for something more fruitful, but thats the price you have to pay I guess. Okay with 1000 things to do in your MBA, you can't attend a talk on hedge funds if you are hardcore marketing, & vice versa; but at least give it a try. You may be surprised at what you find.

Professor-Time

Take some time out every week to have a lunch with at least 1 prof you really like. I didn't do it as much as I would have liked to, but that 30 min - 45 min of offsite intellectually simulating conversation can add so much more value to the whole experience. And not just professors, include any one you like, the admissions person, your own career counselor, just talk to the canteen guy...I learned a lot about Singapore season cycle (whatever there is of it..:P) and its links to the various chinese festivals from Edward, the Western stall guy; and the Middle Eastern guy, he told me so much about Golf! ;)

Extra curricular
Especially event organizing. I organised / volunteered for tons of events, whether organised by student council (where it was my job to help!:P) , or alumni or the school; or at times even the university. I was one of the main organisers for Consultant Unplugged 2009 & Cerebration 2010. 2 of the biggest NUS MBA student driven events. And these events taught me so much more about management and people, than any classroom teaching could have. Each time it was like running a mini organisation with a target to meet. Yes, I cursed myself to no end when I was organising them, but honestly, in retrospect, the learning was monumental!

yeah other extra curriculars (aka 2 dance performances, blog editor etc. ) were good fun. They were hardwork too, but through those, it was more about having fun than learning.

NUS Libraries

A truly world class treasure of knowledge, NUS has many many libraries. Each housing 1000s of books easily. Just the NUS Business School library has 4 floors and 1000s of books on a wide variety of subjects. Now I am not much of a library person, all my life I have hardly ever stepped into one except for to pick up a novel to read. And since I started buying books, almost never. So for me the idea of having such a huge collection of books, reports, journals and what not is so daunting that I'd rather prefer google.

But this is where the magic steps in. Not only are ALL NUS libraries interconnected and online, which means that whatever book/journal you are looking for, if it exists anywhere in the 100s of 1000s of books all over the univ, you will find it; but its a very advanced s/w. You can reserve books online, locate them in the library, get them delivered to your dept library, even renew them online. Not just books, @ NUS MBA, I had access & training (!!) to all possible relevant databases, factiva, euromonitor, bloomberg, GMID, Osiris, you name it and I have been taught how to use it.

Too much information?? Drop the library your specific request! the library staff works very diligently to solve your specific queries, not about the library queries, specific info requests. I have written to them asking for complex historical industry data & reports and they have come back with the precise information within the same working day!!!!

I think the NUS Business School library staff can teach everyone a thing or two about customer service!

A definite highlight! and help I am going to miss soon :P

These are all I can think of at the moment, but what I have realized is, I am never able to recollect everything I did in my MBA at one go. When I had started my MBA I was convinced that I wanted to make the best use of it. Sure, I had a different "best use" in mind, but what actually transpired was even better! Its been a roller coaster that nothing could have ever prepared me for.

I personally believe MBA to be training ground to learn all aspects of a business, even the ones you don't know exist & never think about, and if you agree, then in your MBA you should strive for a holistic experience as well

10 Best Profs @ NUS MBA

2010-01-03T17:10:00.004+05:30

As the last semester of my MBA begins, and I look at Stupid dodo's status message (I gazed and gazed but little thought, what wealth my MBA to me has brought..)

I realise that perhaps one of the biggest returns for me personally has been some of the stellar professors that I studied under, some great Profs that I got to know...and others who make me wish I had more bandwidth to take more courses!! :P

If you enter NUS MBA, then try to ensure that you take classes with these Profs. If some one asks you your RoI from NUS MBA, a huge element of that RoI will be the genuine opportunity to absorb a fraction of this wealth of knowledge. In fact, if you are one of those who truly look at a value add from your MBA other than a fat paying job at the end of it, or 2 years back to being in college; then this might just be the biggest element of your RoI.

Following are some of the most brilliant professors I have studied under here @ NUS MBA, semester-wise,

1) Prof Srinivasan Sankaraguruswamy, or Prof Srini, as we all called him. The best accounts prof I could have hoped to get. The first and till date only Prof on my gtalk! & FB!! Despite my having no background in accounts whatsoever, he managed to get me so deeply interested in a subject that could easily have felt so mundane; that if he had been taking one more course in the later semesters, I would have taken it come what may! He taught us the numbers..and then taught us how to read between them. He could pick up any financial statement and leave me dumbstruck and awed at the amount of information he could extract out of that one piece of paper in less than 5 minutes!! ;)

2) Prof Ishtiaq P. Mahmood - Stimulating discussions, endless knowledge of every subject, every country, every dimension possible, I could have listened to Prof Ishtiaq just share his knowledge forever. He took one lecture in corporate strategy and taught us so many new things. One lecture in exchange rates, and suddenly they became so clear! His knowledge was like the infinitum...in multiple dimensions, at both macro and micro level. Till date the only person I know who could talk about culture, history, politics, financial practices, and exchange rates in one single sentence and still make sense!! And of course the absolutely yummy Bangaldeshi food at the end of the semester! ;)

3) Prof Elizabeth Boyle - Tough, Demanding & In-your-face. Prof Boyle never sugar coated her opinions, whether they were about corporations, or us. Hands down the toughest professor to please till date ( and I am not talking about just this MBA program) ...she is also one of the BEST! To call her course rigorous is an extreme understatement,..to call her study material useful...even more so. Some of the best cases, the best articles, and the most thorough analysis that I have sat through till date. She pushed us to our extreme limits, and it feels that has paid off. She is the epitome of the teacher who pushes you not because you are bad...but because she knows you can be so much better

4) Prof Sam Ouliaris - By far the most endearing, the most loved professor who enjoys the maximum fan-following from our batch. He was suppsoed to take 1 class in the semester, he ended up taking 2, each with 50-70 students! That's saying something!! In all his classes, the first 40-50 minutes went discussing the news, and making sense of it in Macro economic terms.For the first time in my life, I could make sense of news in FT and link different things. For a person with a zero economics background, and an equally terrifying experience of micro economics, this course was a sheer delight..of course the only course where ALL the work was optional!! His having left NUS is indeed a tremendous loss to the NUS MBA Students!! :(

5) Prof Chu Singfat - After Prof Boyle, the most direct and demanding professor. The number of memos that he ripped apart, and the stubbornness with which our grades refused to move by so much as a point...I was terrified of the final grade! If there was one course I was in danger of flunking in the final semester,...it was this! His passion in teaching, his knowledge of his subject and the fact that his course was so completely different and so tanglibly and immediately useful in our careers made it all worth it! In my opinion, and the opinion of almost everyone who took his class, his course should be split into the basic Statistics core module taught in the first semester and elective analytics module in 2/3 sems...with more depth added to each module

6) Prof Trichy Krishnan - I had heard so much about his xxxxx words per minute speech - speed, among other things such as the immense workload and his infinite love for numbers and differential equations...that I attended just one class for fun in the 2nd semester. I loved his class so much that I didn't think twice before taking another subject with him in my final semester, and I never regretted it. Specially so becuase the work load wasn't nearly as high as had been for the 2nd sem subject...and there was relatively limited scope for differential equations ;) ... I got to enjoy only the good things....his endless knowledge..and the supersonic speed at which it came out!!My brain had never worked at such overtime speed just to catch all the words he was saying! The walk back home after his class usually went in assimilating and digesting everything he had said ;)

7) Prof Bob Fleming - Passionate & completely dedicated to the cause of helping people, ethics and CSR, he taught the importance and the difficulty in being honest & ethical at work and in life. His classes were the common ground for people's emotions to get riled up, as their own understandings of right n wrong..ethical and non-ethical got questioned quite regularly. Needless to say, passionate & at times even heated discussions followed in class. The answers were never easy, and quite often completely non-existent. I always found it unbelievable how many personal stories he had of the conflict of values he had faced in his own career spanning over 30 years His course taught me that the things people take for granted..including their own value systems..fall into easy decay without so much as a moment's notice. A course that in my opinion must be taught to every single student entering the corporate world. And made me wonder if I would be able to stick to my values as unfailingly as he had done.

8) Prof. Dubois - Although I took his classes in ESSEC, as a part of my Asian Cultures module, he taught us Confucianism / Taoism... he is in fact a Professor in the NUS History Department. A genius of a Professor, an expert in his field, he had an astounding ability to capture the class attention. During the 3 hours lectures, no one would ever utter a word, unless it was relevant to the subject. And that my dear reader, in a class of French students @ ESSEC was an unbeatable achievement. And that too for a subject that was pure history... He made the classes unbelievably interesting by giving examples ranging from Chinese folklore to the Feng-shui implication of the architecture of the building right next to our campus. He is a truly exceptional, and genius of a Prof. And one of the main reasons why I am glad I took classes @ ESSEC, without that class, and that course, I would have missed out on studying under such a brilliant Professor

9) Prof Ter Kah Leng: Soft-spoken, kind & gentle. The epitome of patience. Never lost her smile. Sounds more like a mother than a Professor doesn't she! I guess she needed all these qualities, given that she teaches Law to business students. Or should I say, the obfuscated language of Law to the argumentative business students. Where anything shorter than a page is "a sentence demanding explanation". Where consideration has nothing to do with being considerate. Where "Agent" has a different legal meaning, and the Principal- Agent problem is an entirely new concept. Where sometimes, things just dont seem to make any sense at all. And at others, you even stop trying to understand. Where at times, all she could say was, "this is the way law sees it". Her patience was remarkable, given that she had to explain the same concept to different students multiple times. And so was her comforting smile, that often seemed to say, "I know this is hard for you, but stay with me & we will keep trying." A very nice Professor to teach law, and the virtue of patience :)

Another Professor I loved studying under.. was Prof. Siva Kumar..my Hinduism prof @ the ESSEC Asian Cultures course, I haven't included him in the above list since he isn't really an NUS Prof. But is definitely in the same league of brilliant teaching. A lawyer by profession, I suppose eloquence, well articulated, well structured thoughts and the ability to mesmerize his audience, is a part of his job! ;) Add that to his in depth knowledge of Hinduism, it didn't matter to me if I am a Hindu, and knew more than half the stuff he was teaching...it was sheer pleasure to learn from him.

Apart from these, some of the other professors, that my classmates have found brilliant, but under whom I did not get an opportunity to learn... are Prof. Aron Low (Fund Management), Prof. Joseph Cherian (Options & Futures), Prof. Prem Shamdasaani (Marketing), Prof. Cynthia Wang (Negotiations) & Prof. Gurmeet Singh Bhabra (Advanced Corporate finance)

All these Profs had 2 attrbiutes in common, as do all good teachers, anywhere in the world at any level of education..a passion for their subject, and a passion for teaching.

The last 1 slot remains unfilled...I have missed way too many good profs during my MBA, perhaps I should come back to take their classes as an alum ;)

2010-01-01T21:21:00.002+05:30

everyone who has so much whizzed past a b-school has always told me that MBA is grueling. and though for most people the most grueling part is the first semester, for some the later semester are equally or sometimes far more hectic, thanks to internships, part time jobs, b-plan competitions and what not, activities which people start looking at from the 2nd sem onwards, after having overcome the initial transitional hiccups [ grossly understated ] into MBA.

so getting back to the first thought...MBA is grueling. Or is it ? I mean of course if you compare it to the armed forces, or even studying medicine, I think not. Now at the fag end of my MBA, with 1 semester comprising of 1 course left, I think I probably can attempt to answer this question with some authority of experience.

Here's my take on this question, semester wise, to the best of my memory

Sem I

my task list
5 subjects,
a few extra-curriculars here and there

I think this semester feels the hardest, because of the magnitude of the overall change. different place, different people, different food. and if you are studying abroad, then a different time zone as well. New subjects from new fields, most of which are alien to many of us. The fact that the person sitting next to you has eons of experience in the subject doesn't make it easier to bear. And since the first semester is all about forming your base, the subjects tend to be more theoretical, more exam oriented..and that makes it harder. the longer you have been away from exams, and the newer the subjects are to you..the harder it becomes. With extended periods of insufficient sleep, irregular sleep timings and erratic food timings, people do fall ill as well, quite often in the first semester. The body, mind and heart...all 3 undergo major shocks in the first semester. And it does become a test of sorts of your physical and mental stamina.

So yes sure, first sem is grueling, but more because of the change than the MBA itself.

Sem II

my task list
6 full subjects
1 practicum with an NGO
1 Club to run - 1 flagship event to organize
1 blog to manage
1 dance performance - this one took 15 days to prepare
weekly kickboxing classes (Yup! B-) )
lots of random volunteer work for school events
some small work on the side to make some extra cash
internship search

By Sem II, you have become more used to the environmental factors of food, place, time zone and people. The people hopefully transform into friends..at least some of them do. The subjects you take are as per your choice, so even if they suck, the fact that it was your choice some how makes it less frustrating. Your body gets used to functioning without sleep. Most people get involved in maximum extra curriculars in this sem [ and the 3rd sem for 2 year programs ]

Most importantly, you feel that if you could get through sem I, you can get through anything else. So while I did much more in Sem II than in Sem I, it was mostly out of volition than compulsion. And that made it easier to handle. And mostly fun.

Sem III

my task list
5 subjects
job search
small work on the side to make some extra cash
the same club to run
the same blog to manage
additional temp. media director work
1 dance performance - this one took 2 months to prepare
Cerebration to co-organize - NUS MBA's biggest flagship event
lots of volunteer work for school activities
lots of parties
1 exchange program, with loads of public transport travelling and odd hour (read early morning) classes! :P

in retrospect, my task list just kept getting bigger! I can't imagine how I did all this!

As the final sem begins, it starts to hit everyone that time is flying by. That soon this will all be over, and people will go off in their own directions. So the number of get togethers and parties increase dramatically. Course work doesn't subside either, especially if you didn't take the special term and still have 5-6 subjects to finish. but the focus shifts..from coursework to friends and jobs. Course work becomes a necessary evil, that must be finished. Unless ofcourse some one like me still enjoys it and does it only a little less diligently than the earlier 2 sems. Most people withdraw from extra curriculars in this sem [ or Sem 4 for 2 year programs ] and focus primarily on looking for jobs.

But with or without all those subjects & extra curriculars, I think the feeling of nostalgia and the parties make this sem feel the lightest.

So you see, whether an MBA is grueling or not, is more a factor of choice & perception, rather than compulsion. Most of your compulsion and the environment factors end with Sem I. From Sem II onwards, its all a matter of choice.

So while I do have friends who never had any task lists except for coursework through out their MBAs, while mine always seemed endless...both them and me enjoyed our MBA equally, just through different lens of perspectives & differing definitions of enjoyment....

and in retrospect, nobody minds the grueling..in fact, nobody finds it grueling. not anymore.

all one is left with, is cherishable memories that last a lifetime.. :)

France in Singapore

2010-01-01T12:57:00.005+05:30

the more correct title would be ESSEC in Singapore..but this one sounds more catchy :)

A few days ago, I stumbled upon an old chat to a friend..

" 1 exchange and 2 semesters...that'll complete my MBA totally!! :) "
-- dated Aug 17, 2008

Approx, 15 days into my MBA. Sigh...lofty dreams. So while my "2 internships" dream would take a few months to shatter, the process for exchange dream was much faster :P

Aug 29, student exchange briefing:

A very entertaining informative session. My take away, I couldn't afford it! It would need at least another SGD 10K, and there was no way I could garner that kind of money from somewhere. And thus ended my starry dreams of taking pictures in snow and seeing the Statue of Liberty, or the likes.

MBA went on, until the final semester..when I decided to read one of the many emails before deleting it. It was an invitation for an exchange program with ESSEC, Singapore. I could take classes on their Singapore campus. Well it wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I had said "1 exchange" more than a year ago to my friend, but it was my best shot, and I took it.

I took 2 courses there, Negotiations, because I had missed it during the summer term; and Asian Cultures & Religions, because it sounded interesting, novel and different.

Negotiations

Lots of cases, in-class role plays as negotiation exercises and lots of debriefing. At times it felt like I was back in school doing theatre :P We were the only 2 indians in an otherwise completely French class. It was my first experience with French students, and the fact that they were mostly far younger and with little or none pre-MBA work experience, made the difference in perspectives all the more stark, all the more interesting.

Asian Cultures & Religions

This course definitely was the best part of the deal. It was divided into 5 main parts: Hinduism, Confucianism & Taoism, Islam, Buddhism, and SEAsian Politics & Economics. Spread over 12 classes and taught by 5 different professors, it comprised of a lot of interesting insights and information packed into 1 course. I learned about the history and origin of each of these religions, the politico-economic history of the ASEAN countries and tons of cultural nuances, which would have otherwise taken years of living in these places to discover. The fact that each of these Profs was a true expert in his/her own field only added to the learning. The interesting spin was that while 3 of our Profs were actually Profs from the NUS History department, 1 was a Senior person from McKinsey while the other was a Lawyer who teaches just for fun! Stellar people I definitely would not have met otherwise.

And as for the course, I think such courses should be offered by all MBA programs as core modules, to sensitise students towards cultures and histories of countries they live in and want to work in. These are critical elements, at times far more critical and some times far more useful, than knowing the technical stuff; Such courses help broaden the view & perspective of MBA students from looking at just the financial elements of a business...to the overall actual business in the context of its sorrounding environment

In retrospect, it may have been a fraction of learning of what I would have gotten going to another country altogther, and my travel was restricted between NUS & National Library (floor 9, 13) :P; but it was still a great experience to have had; It gave me exposure to a new culture, a new school and of course 2 new courses, one of which at least was so totally different from a typical MBA course; and yet so essential if anyone wants to adapt & work successfully in these cultures.

My advice: Going on an exchange is a must. Even if the travel is only until National Library :)

2009-12-16T19:39:00.000+05:30

i haven't blogged for so long, that I got worried that my blogs-to-write might actually start escaping my mind and spilling over on to my task list, so I thought I better start.

another hectic semester has flown by. and while the semester itself requires a few blogs of its own, as usual one of the reasons it was hectic was because I just couldn't shut up and sit tight. I had to go jumping around agreeing to do everything!

One of the things I agreed to do, was a dance performance on International day. and no, not just any bollywood choreographed dance, a classical dance. What????????!!!!!!!! I thought to myself.

"Why would you agree to such a thing. Worse,...volunteer for such a thing! Representing true Indian culture! what the hell is wrong with you?? You want to represent the Indian culture, wear a saree. Thats enough! It takes people all their lives to learn classical dance. They start from the age of 2, not 26!!! And definitely not walk up on the stage 2 months later to perform! Of all the crazy ideas, this has to be the craziest!! You are an idiot I tell you!"

"Ya ya i know.." the nutcase inside me replied, " but now I have said I'll do it so lets see. I'll give it a shot"

"Nonsense!! You always do this! Idiot!!!" I replied grumpily! And so it began.

2 months of waking up every morning, trying to teach myself a danceform I had absolutely no clue about. Cursing myself for doing this to myself; as if I didn't have enough on my plate already. The only good thing I saw happening was that I was losing the enormous amounts of weight I had put on being my couch potato self for 3 months at home. So ya, that was motivation enough.

I picked a song I had fallen in love with many years ago, I figured this was the opportunity to pick it up and give it a shot. If I was going to make an ass of myself on the stage, I might as well at least enjoy the song in the practice sessions.

And after I would get over the "I-hate-myself-for-giving -up-on-precious-sleep" part, I did enjoy dancing as well; i.e. when I was not falling down from all the spins...Oh I was preparing Kathak, did I not mention that? Yes...so at least a month I think went only into getting all the spins without falling flat on the floor.

With time, I grew fond of Kathak, and got better at it too. At least I could sit and stand repeatedly quickly throughout the dance. And that was good. But the best part came when I felt confident enough that I will actually step on stage and perform. That was the time, I decided to go buy myself a pair of "ghungroos"

An entire evening scouring the shops in Little India, struggling to explain ghungroos, since I didn't know the Tamil or English word for them, that was an experience in itself.

My best attempts sounded like "Bharatnatyam...feet..round bells" , you had to be there to see some of the "bells" that came out as a result of this!

Thank God for the help I finally got in translating it to Tamil! Once I bought them, I felt like a 12 year old. That was when I had last worn ghungroos, in some school dance. I was so happy and jumping around :D

My flatmates however, had a different view. With every beaming smile of mine, they let out a groan. As if they weren't fed up enough of waking up every morning to the same frikkin' song playing in the house..now they couldn't sleep at all thanksto the added noise of my ghungroos. I refused to rehearse wihtout them, until they refused to let me live any longer unless I took them off! :O :P

My ever so polite room mate, asked me nicely to lower the music volume and take off my ghungroos. Went back and banged the room door as hard as she could.

"Ouch!!!!"

She later on told me, that during her mid term exam, my song kept playing in her head. She just couldn't switch it off. There was only so much I could do to stop myself from literally rolling on the floor laughing!

Well 2 months of similar fun and pain finally came to an end and the D-day came. The rehearsal totally bombed. Now it was too late to backout, so I figured that if my actual performance did bomb similarly, I will just join the audience and laugh at me :)

It didn't. It went pretty well I think, judging by the response I got. People were stunned when they found out that I wasn't a trained dancer. A big factor to my advantage was that half the audience wasn't Indian and in the other half no one actually knew Kathak.

So despite the fact that what I did was may be only 30% kathak or less, and that it would have been shot down by a 3 year old trained dancer in India, my selection of event helped! :P

In retrospect, as always, I am glad I did it.

Oh and I had also prepared a small informational video about Kathak, for people who wouldn't know.

Here are the links to both, feel free to criticise the intro video :P :P :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2wYeDA9ZE0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLh_K-4ogDs&NR=1

The year gone by...

2009-12-08T15:16:00.001+05:30

My closing address as the Editor of NUSMBABUZZ.

Thanks to a chance discovery by Dr. Lalit, the fact that I blogged had reached NUS before I had. Whatever he had to say at the time must have been something good, for soon after our orientation, I was approached by one of our seniors & then Editor of the Buzz.

He asked me to write a one pager for OBS and I happily obliged. Writing was a passion and as far as I was concerned, this was going to be my 2 cents contribution to the NUS MBA community and the blog; and the only extra-curricular activity I would do in the next 17 months. If there ever was a bigger misconception!

Click here to read more

2009-09-16T22:38:00.006+05:30

as the interim media director, one of my jobs is to update all council websites.running after people to get information to update their websites, accommodating "ASAP" requests of updates at 3 am, sitting up till 4 am working on a ridiculously archaic CMS in which Ctrl-Z results in all images getting getting removed from the page (while the text you wanted to undo stubbornly stays on), taking hours to make the simplest of changes, putting all of my all of my past work-ex, skill and expertise to shame, i was still dragging on...practicing self-motivation to the fullest. until one day, after many days i ran into one of my dearest friends (errmm yes...you got it, you need to run into even ur dearest friends in mba at times...both of you being forced-workholics doesn't help either :P my advice, dont make friends...or dont work so much :P but i digress...),

so as i was saying...after many days of having spent an entire night updating his concerned webpage, i ran into him and this was where all my self inflated delusions of performing a crucial task for my school and the future batches, was shattered and crushed into a fine powder that the wind (which is a rare commodity in Singapore considering its hard to find breeze even at the sea beach!! it came at the most inopportune moment) promptly scattered into the fine dust; and drowned me into the eternal reality of client-vendor relationships.... and my heart almost instantly cried out,

sigh o sigh..
i wonder why...
i take so much pain...
all to no gain...
wen all I seek is client satisfaction...
with my client alas i have no more interaction...
its back to s/w my friend
wen from SRS to bugs, all is yours to design
and yours to defend!!

why my dear faithful reader you ask......

coz after hours of my work and days of waiting to get atleast an acknowledgement the words that befell upon my eager ears were that he had "NOT YET SEEN THE PAGE!!"

alas for him! Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and certainly not if she happens to manage ur s/w and control your media + publicity ;)

to start my revenge...i dedicate this post to the One-Who-Has-Not-Seen-The-Page ;) :D

sound the bugles...the war is on!!!

of headaches and...

2009-08-26T16:46:00.007+05:30

i have my own will. and so does everything that belongs to me. including my headaches.as beings of free-will, they crop up when they want to, no matter how inconvenient their timing is. if you remember my marathon 24 hours headache, you would know what i am talking about.

i used to blame my sinusitis for it, but that has long subsided into a not more than a once-a-week-for-a-few-hours occurence; but then you see, they say stress, lack of sleep, poor eyesight, too much laptop, too much thinking, too little thinking, too much eating, too little eating...too much air-conditioning, too much sun, pretty much everything it seems to me, can be a cause for a headache. and so when one of these headaches hit me, i no longer try to weed out the root cause.

given the continuous inflow of "new findings" of harmful side effects of this medicine and that, i don't take these either , well not frequently at least..

so here i am,in one of the most technical courses of my entire mba, blogging! and dont get me wrong, i am not fond of cribbing to the whole world, on the contrary i find it in really bad taste., and definitely a waste of space! and yet, my head is threatening to split into pieces and this is all i can do to keep myself from walking out! tch tch...

what's worse is that i have just spent the past 2 days relatively free, to the extent that i actually Facebook-ed!! if only my old friend had decided to plague me a little earlier, I would have found it easier to cope.

but no, just like the quintessential unwelcome, uninvited guest who arrives just as you are locking the door to go out and then refuses to leave, leaving you wishing if only you hadn't spent the last 5 minutes searching for keys, you might have escaped this misery.....my dear old friend arrived just as i was about to enter this class, suddenly, unannounced, unsuspected...leaving me with no choice but this...

that i must forget the $$$$ of money i am spending per class and pen..err type...my pains away, showering my mundane and entirely ineffective attempts at turning my misery into humor, on my poor unsuspecting readers,...who would open this post with the hope that this time., finally, might have written something to hold their interest

alas! dear readers... must as i thank you for your unfailing hope that some day i shall rise to be the writer you should like me to be...once more i do nothing but disappoint....

well my headache's gone..if thats any consolation! ;)

2009-08-20T22:01:00.003+05:30

Its unbelievable! i have been back to school for over 20 days now and I haven't blogged. not once. it isn't that i haven't thought about it, coz i have, its like some one once said to me, becoming an editor kills the writer in you. i think ever since i took over the NUS MBA students' blog, i am just always so busy scouting writers for the blog, editing and putting up their write-ups, that my own writing falls to the bottom of the list.

But fortunately for the writer still lurking in me, yesterday a freshman walked up to me and said,
" i love your blog"
"eh? you mean the students' blog?" [ ya. the compulsive editor!]
"no no , your blog. the personal as well as the mba one. especially the mba one, it did give good insights into the life here at nus mba"
"errmmm..yaaa thanks! im glad you found it useful"

it reminded me, that i am guilty of ignoring one more thing that i personally like. in the past years, i have given up sketching, photography, dancing, and now..even writing seems to be getting lost in the other, more "worldly" matters.

so without further rhetoric, what have i been upto since i got back.

well, i have moved houses, and a lot of our friends have left for exchange, so the first week went in settling down in the new houseand attending loads n loads of send-off parties. almost one every evening. yaa....i had gotten pretty sad by the end of week!

so anyways, the next week was orientation for the freshman batch. ofcourse i was one of the volunteers helping out; and i remember sitting there and thinking "We can fail 2 subjects and still get our degree! wow i didn't know that!!" ;)

it was exactly the same, i mean EXACTLY. the dates, the times, the schedule, the only difference was this time i was on the other side of the table, handing Out the goodie bags. it felt weird, the year literally had flown by. and soon it will all be over. but i get emotional again, as you can perhaps see, i am not in my best spirits. Oh nothing, i suspect i just might be coming down with a bad case of too much pending work ;)

well so orientation ended, and ofcourse the hilarious week of module add-drop started, and this too was EXACTLY the same as 2nd semester's add-drop weekk; with the exception of superficial details of subjects and professors.

in the meantime i also took two extra courses with ESSEC. i hosted/organised a couple of events, attended a few workshops and yes, had a lunch at my place where, to my delight, a lot of people turned up! :) umm dont get ideas, i wasnt cooking! it was a potluck :D

and here i am. its been only 2 weeks since the sem started, and already i have so much backlog of work its not funny!! i dont know what i am doing with my time honestly!! i havent even taken stock of the work i need to do for the subjects! pfff....

you know its funny...ppl have so much fun in their /MBAs, and everyone tells me that no one ever studies in their last sem and people just party and have fun.

i wonder why i am nearly always overloaded with work!

sigh......

well atleast now that the jinx is broken, i hope i will record my last sem experiences more regularly. i cant stop time, but i can immortalize it :)

About Practicums, NGOs & PostWar Rehab

2009-06-22T21:30:00.005+05:30

Somewhere in the first semester we got an email offering a 2MC Consulting Practicum with an NGO called MAG International. With zilch knowledge of the practicum or the NGO in question, and armed with nothing but the starry-eyed enthusiasm that only fresh entrants into the b-school possess, of course I signed up for it, of course I had Alex and Tulika with me; even in that starry eyed phase; I wasn't that lost ;) A few initial meetings and the first semester swallowed us. There was no option but to put it off to the second semester, keeping in line with the second nature called Procastination :P

But when we did finally get working on it, it was such a tremendous experience. As b-school students, who have paid huge money just to get in, and at least expect to make huge money as well, day and night work on case studies on how companies make and lose billions of dollars; working with a constant thought that money is scarce gave a totally different dimension to the thought process. Not just that, but the people we got to talk to, both inside the organization and outside, the government officials and corporate contacts we got in touch with; yes perspectives that would have never occurred to us; things we wouldn't have thought of (ahem..offices we wouldn't have visited :P) ..and lessons we wouldn't have learned; lessons ranging from simple humility to cut throat diplomacy

And then of course there was the added awakening about post war rehab; which to me at least only comprised of immediate refugee camps & donations for food and healthcare. this project brought home the ever lasting destruction that a war brings upon its victims and decades long consistent rehab programs spanning housing, food healthcare, education, employment and the start point of it all, land de-mining, that are needed to bring back normalcy into the lives of people victimised by mindless wars.

yes it was another module to worry about, another report to write, another set of meetings to organise, another presentation to give...but it was totally worth all the pain.

And working with Alex & Tulika just made it so much easier and better than it otherwise would have been

looking back

2009-06-22T21:17:00.001+05:30

So J-Bhai's blog made me realise that while I was busy cursing the traffic driving back and forth from work, he has done half of my job. his posts on Internship Search and a day in Sem-2 took care of two blogs to write from my to-do list. and very thoroughly, I must add. Thanks J-Bhai!

So putting all the pieces together, really why did the second semester feel so diametrically opposite to the first. i was living in the same place, taking the same shuttle to college, it was the same canteen,the same lounge, the same people, and yes subjects and professors were different but that's a given isn't it. I guess the difference was, and really these reasons were pretty much applicable to most of us, we all felt much more in control. We had chosen our own subjects, and yes of course we still landed with subjects / profs we hated, but the feeling that it was our own doing some how made it easier to bear.

Also, by now we knew each other reasonably well. And that made group dynamics very different. Much more easy going, relaxed and stress free. We depended on each other far more and there was a lot more trust. Of course we were also acquainted with the working styles of most people around and psst...knew of those who have none; and had learnt how to cope with those too.

A lot more people had moved near campus, which meant a lot more parties were thrown at homes and there was a lot more off-time to get to know each other. That made working together easier. We were well into the process of becoming friends.

A lot of us had added responsibilities of the Council and its various clubs and that made life totally different. While it meant a lot of additional events to organise / volunteer for and a LOT of extra work; it also meant a growing sense of belongingness to the school. It wasn't just about taking classes anymore, we were doing something to make a difference, cultivating a culture, attempting to add value to the school, to our class mates and hopefully to future batches as well.

But of course no write up on this semester can be complete without the mention of the exchange students. Honestly, I personally hadn't expected so many, and that too from Western Univs; I suspect it was the recession's doing though I haven't dug any previous years' stats to prove it. But whatever the reasons were, it was an absolutely terrific thing to happen. It totally made up for the hitherto lack of diversity in the Indian-Chinese dominated batch. There were canadians, americans, french, norwegians, italians and many more. Though I dont remember if there were any australians, or anyone from the african continent; but I could be wrong about that. if there were then I did miss the opportunity to meet them. But whoever I did meet/take a class with had different perspectives, work methodoligies, and as Alex claimed, different drinking styles ;) It was very interesting to see how people do fall into stereotypes, how which nation you belong to does have a huge impact on what you think. In any case, the point is NUS Business School hadn't felt this global a b-school in the first semester. Cultural diversity and exposure were epitomised this semester, and I for one totally relished the experience.

I could go on,...and I probably will, but I think in short, it all started with the feeling I had, landing back in Singapore in January, after a month long break at home. It didn't feel strange. It did feel just as it had done when I had landed at the Delhi airport. It felt like I was home.

a-pac

2009-05-15T17:21:00.004+05:30

speaking of 2nd sem, a big differentiator from the first sem was how divided the class was on various subjects and professors. So for instance the APac class. It wasn't the usual international business class as people who knew what to expect, had expected. It was more a political science / history / sociology all in one kind of class. the reason why so many people strongly disliked it. precisely the reason i loved it so much.

a) it was a much needed break from all business oriented stuff, not that i dont enjoy that.

b) it gave a much needed perspective. it made us think of things business students should know and think about.

c) for once in my life, history needed no cramming for exams :D

on a more serious note, i guess point b) was the reason why many, including me, loved the course. any mode of professional qualification, by definition, works towards creating specialists in that field. engineers are not taught about market feasibility of their solutions; nor are scientists. similary Bschools, though attempting to give students a "holistic" view of things, the views are still restricted to the financial and related perspectives.

this course showed us the history of japan, taiwan, korea and many other nations, and taught us the links between history, politics, culture and how they the shape of the world of business today. it taught us what the work culture really means from a country's perspective and what affects or rather, shapes it. as future managers, it is important to understand people, and where they come from. it is important to see why people behave the way do at an individual level, coz people make up businesses, industries and countries. cross border trade is heavily impacted by how people perceive each other, and for the most part, why perfectly sound businesses, negotiators and even ads, fail overseas, are explained by cultural factors. cultural sensitivity is a grossly misused word. it isn't about not making racial jokes, that's simply civilised human behviour. it is about much more. and gaining that requires getting a good understanding of all of the above factors about different countries, cultures and economies.

this course showed us all of that, or atleast tried to, and it showed us all of that through cool, interesting videos. and no cramming! how much cooler can a subject get ... ;P

2nd sem

2009-04-30T18:25:00.001+05:30

The semester went by really fast. It practically flew. Anyone who said that the first semester at mba was the hardest, clearly never attempted to do so many things in the second. Just like all other decision taken by human beings, where you take a decision and then find justifications for it, I think it starts with you believing that the semester is going to be easy, and then doing everything to make that happen. Having a club to run, a blog to edit, an NGO to consult, a company to assist and 6 subjects to get through..and then expecting the semester to be easy is clearly the wrong approach. Not to mention the one off competitions here and there, and of course other extra curricular activities where when you are not putting up dance performances or firing confetti bottles, you are ushering people and helping set tables.

But you know what really freaked me out? My second semester got over yesterday; of course assuming I don’t fail in any of the subjects; I am done with 2/3^rd of my MBA. These 17 months are supposed to be an experience of a lifetime, and they are just passing by too fast. But this blog piece is not supposed to be about me lamenting or embarking on to philosophies of life…this blog pc. Is about what this semester was all about, and why despite the madness of it all, it was all worth it.

First & foremost, the Professors these past 2 semesters. I studied under some of the most knowledgeable people I have ever come across and being taught by them was an honor & privilege of a lifetime. Prof Sam, Prof Ishtiaq, Prof Srini, Prof Boyle…in their own unique ways had so much to teach that in each individual class I would wish I had more time to spend on the subject. Then ofcourse consulting for MAG. My first experience working for an NGO, and that too in such a niche area. It was such a tremendous learning experience. And then there is the Consulting club. My first semester as the President just taught me so much, organizing Consultant Unplugged took a good part of my first 2.5 months and I remember there were times when I would fall asleep with my hands still poised over the mail I was typing and I would wake up 30 seconds later with a start, afraid I had sent out an unfinished email to a prominent industrialist or NUS faculty member. Then there was the Holi dance, it was just so much fun preparing that after almost a decade of leaving school and the stage. Managing the blog is a tough job, just that as they say, you stop writing the day you become an editor. Not to mention the salsa and kickboxing classes I took. I know this list is not comprehensive of all the new things and many firsts that I have done so far in this program, but what this list is really not complete without, is the people I have met here, as my classmates. A set of brilliant, talented, multi-faceted driven people, each one of whom has something unique to bring to the table.

And I know even next semester I will hate myself for doing this to myself, but I will also know this is all worth the pain. And I will wish that time wasn’t flying so quickly

Observations on the Science of Finance in the Practice of Finance

2009-04-11T20:17:00.002+05:30

an excellent lecture by Robert C. Merton, HBS.

i, of course, am aiming to understand some time between the next 5-20 years

Consultant Unplugged 2009

2009-03-30T10:02:00.001+05:30

On March 19, 2009 at 2:30 am, as I finally flopped on my bed, and in the 2 seconds before I fell asleep, all I could remember were Srikanth's words, "Just make sure you hold Consultant Unplugged"

The day was Dec 6, 2008. I wasn’t even a month old as the Club President when at the annual ART dinner, one of our alumnus, Srikanth Sridharan caught hold of me and Srinivasa, our student council President, and told both of us that we must hold “Consultant Unplugged”.

...Click here to read more

The NUS MBA Consulting Club

2009-03-23T21:09:00.004+05:30

Shipra Gupta, President - NUS MBA Consulting Club, writes for the IIM Calcutta Magazine, "The Joka-Strategist" ...

People pursue MBA programs for a variety of reasons: switching industries, climbing the next rung of the corporate ladder, taking a study break to go back to the joys of being a student and taking a sabbatical to figure out the next step in life; constitute a few of those. A large proportion of these categories of students explore consulting as a prospect career option. Add to this a large number of students who harbor an informed preference towards this field, and the result is almost half of every new batch that wants to consider a career in consulting. It is this very half that the NUS MBA Consulting Club aims to assist in their journey towards the career of their preference.

.... click here to read more

NUS MBA FT Rank 35

2009-03-21T14:53:00.001+05:30

Every year around the end of Jan come out what the world calls "the FT rankings". The Financial Times takes it upon itself to create elaborate rankings of B-Schools across the world on various scales. These rankings are intended as a comparative analysis of the schools and a measure of their competitiveness They are considered highly prestigious and are strongly valued by the student fraternity...

...Click here to read more

dancing away to holi

2009-03-08T22:47:00.007+05:30

for a change i am actually writing for my own NUS MBA blog, rather than scouring the cohort to cover an event for the NUS MBA BUZZ blog. a completely new meaning to losing work life balance i must say ;) ....

anyways so before the approx 2 minutes in which i will drop off to sleep expire, let me write this.

it all started when, i am not quite sure, err..did I just write that sentence?! Okie, i am tired. let me try again...

it all started about 4 weeks ago at some event where we all gathered when Priyanka said casually, lets do something for Holi and suddenly, as always at the mention of extra avoidable work, bells started going off in my head and i knew i had to listen to them... [ u try ignoring 100s of audio-visual bells going off in ur head at the same time and then judge me ok!]

So a couple of weeks later, at the next event, this one was the NUS MBA FT rankings party, i quickly gathered a few people and outlined a plan for a medley dance, built around Holi out of populare bollywood numbers.

mid term break started, and so did our rehearsals. every evening for anywhere between 5 minutes - 4 hours the student council lounge turned into our stage and the sounds of 1-2-1-2-ta dhi-na-dhinak-din-3-4 filled the room, with 6 full grown MBAs headed to take on the world moving to my nagging instructions.

every morning i dragged myself out of bed, cursing myself for having taken this additional work wen i cud have slept away to glory during the break and every night i flopped on my bed happy we were doing this; knowing from past experiences of stage performances of all forms; that its these things that create ever lasting memories and bonds; and even if the actual final performance is not that everlasting [ though ofcourse thanks to facebook its now widely available :P ] and that it were the rehearsals that were so much more fun. the laughter, the jokes, the mistakes.. i dont remember when was the last time i had laughed so much. and of course, the actual satisfaction that i was working out physically, in one of my most loved ways! dance!!

so well, 2 weeks of rehearsals, juggling between classes and assignments and meetings, dragging ourselves to exhaustion finally yielded results. Today, after our performance, all I remember hearing was the shouts of "More! More" from the audience :) after which of course i was given "special" treatment, for having escaped the morning colors round on excuse of this dance :P

[read lifted up and hosed after being smeared with pucce rang from head down, i still look all pink!!]

For fulfilling the need of greater self admiration and publicity [given that during my school days i never blogged, here is today's performance :)

egg-jams!!

2009-01-26T16:53:00.005+05:30

so i was just adding things on the top of my never ending google to-do list [oh i love google!!] ... when the increasing scroll intrigued me and i decided to actually scroll to the bottom. at the very bottom, was a task saying "9 Dec - blog-exams" which means in my language to myself, that on 9th december last year i was supposed to write a blog on my exams for the first sem. but why exams?? why would i want to blog about exams..exams are exams...tough and painful!! so i opened the draft, and after a few minutes of staring at a blank screen, closed it again; and pretty much forgot about it. Until a few days ago I heard the most dreaded words a student can hear, "Pop Quiz!!" ..oh no wait, the most dreaded words are "Pop Quiz Grades!!" , but well cause and effect! and suddenly , it all came gushing back to me.

the panic, the kick-myself feeling, the wonder, the struggle and the shock, invariably followed by a short lived post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)...

the panic, " There is so much to do..how will this course ever finish,

the kick-myself feeling, "why didn't I study through out the semester?!! I am soo dumbbb!!"

the wonder I first felt looked at the paper and asked myself "Did we ever study this ?" ;

the struggle where I tried hard to fit something I had studied into what was being asked, "Marginal law of diminishing returns ? no I mean prodcutivity..no what was the difference...is this the producer function chapter???ok let me try another question.."

and finally the shock, "OMG! I cant even figure out which chapters these questions are from!"

invariably followed by the PTSD... "I should have never come here. What am I doing here, this is not for me...I'll just end up flunking here, the only one to flunk in the whole batch!"

I remember in one of the exams that started at 9 am, by 9:30 I had hit the shock state. Desperate, I looked up, and BeHold!!! the entire class was looking either up, left or right. Those who weren't, were staring at their papers, tapping their pencils vigorously against the answer sheet, hoping i think to tap some answers out of the pencils ;) If I wasn't afraid of being kicked out and losing my last chance of passing, I would have laughed out loud! And then there was another, where I remember staring at an exam question for 10 minutes! and still had absolutely no clue where to start.

Now I have had my share of exams, but this acute realization of each of the 6 stages of taking an exam had never hit in such full force :P I remember consoling myself from seniors' words "Next sem will be easier" ...and moved on.

Until I heard the words "Pop Quiz!!" arghhh!!!! the endless readings, cases and papers not to mention case comptetions, club activities, managing the nus blogs, not to mention actually attending all events....had long dispelled any notions of an "easy sem". But still, pop quiz????

15 minutes through the quiz I remember thinking...."why did I come here.. this is not for me, what am I doing..." the fastest I had taken to hit stage 6, even by my own standards in the previous semester!

welcome to the second semester!! :D :P

2009-01-26T16:26:00.007+05:30

tired of dressing up as "executives" and addressing the class with fancy presentations with figures, analysis and what not...when once we got a chance [ read freedom] by the prof to be creative, we decided to chuck it all and return to the basics!! an afternoon, and a chai ki dukaan..well not really, but the best we could do in Singapore..we still had to present in class, and it still had to stick to a topic ;) predictably, this was way mor fun than the scores of presentations we have given till now...what was not so predictable was..or perhaps we didn't want it to be...was that almost everyone is a class of close to 150 thought the same!!!! most presentations in that class were role plays of some kind or the other. and while we were the only ones to actually record it [ as much as i know till now ] there were some simply brilliant ones..if only I had videos to those as well!!

if only we could get this kind of freedom always!! :D but obviously B-schools are much more fun with drama school sprinkled every now and then ;) psst...anyone listening ??? :P

sponsor an executive ;)

2009-01-14T23:11:00.007+05:30

absolutely had to put this video up!! :)

MayBe..may be not

2009-01-14T22:51:00.005+05:30

every semester, there is this NUS ritual called selection of electives. well the idea is to give students the freedom to choose their own subjects...and hence their own learning. while in principle and in the reality this is an excellent methodology, and one of the things i love about this MBA program, but like all good things in life,..it comes with its own price. during the selection period, you invariably see the exact same conversation happening everywhere.."which subjects did you take".."i m thinking of dropping this and taking that instead"..."do you how this prof is?" ... "not sure yaar lets see i'll attend the class and then decide"... "i dont know,.which ones did u take?" ... and so on.

most classes in this period have anywhere between 10-60 students attending classes; confusing, im sure, the professors as well with regards to their own repute among the students; especially if the final turnout is way different from this period. Not sure if professors really care how many students take their class, but if I were them, I think I would take it as a reflection of my popularity and sit and brood in my office where did I go wrong [ ermm yes I am sure I'll be the ones with 10 students 'trying' out my class ] .....but then, I pretty much do obsess over anything!

anyways so getting back to the point, you see, this period is full of endless vacillations..much like the rest of the MBA to be quite honest, yet unique in its own way.

and it is during this period, that finally, the stupid dodo...the only one with his own mascot in our class, who had yet failed to match up to its name, came up with a gtalk message that totally epitomized this unique and interesting phase of our MBA experience...

May be I'm confused..no wait! may be I'm not..

says it all!!

and the beauty is, its not even his own! for a stupid dodo he knew where to go and exactly wat to copy ;)

happy new year

2009-01-13T00:28:00.003+05:30

long time since i last wrote....despite a month of vacations; but then during the vacations i was busy doing things i hadnt done whole semester, eating home cooked food and gossiping..with mom, friends, sister and name who you will. reading and watching tv. and updating my personal blog. and updating the NUS MBA blog. and..oh well you get the idea.. so you see, while i had intended to write about my exams, the put it off till my results came out, then when they did finally come out, there wasnt much to write...and so started the new year.

a new semester, new subjects, new teachers, and whole new kind of madness! :) only this time..i think..i repeat i think...i wont be as lost as before! so the other day some body asked me about my new year resolution..and i was like "what do u think i am..8??!!" but then, on 2nd thoughts..i am back in school,aint it?! and on top of it, this is [hopefully] my last year ever as a student...so there you go, I said, thats my new year resolution! .. make the most of this 1 year, in every possible way I can!!

will I really be able to do it..?? I dont know..but I'll try! :)

oh and yes ofcourse i did put up this post with no story or style just to make and comeback after a month's break and break the ice..errr..umm not exactly the exact idiom to use..but you get the idea!

interactive learning and puppets

2008-12-09T00:56:00.001+05:30

Ok, so you know all this talk about interactive learning and all. group discussions, class participation, experiments, projects, cases etc. etc. they really help foster a whole new perspective. help u learn more n more about how to deal with people. specially wen u r not in a clearly defined hierarchy of workplace but are all equals. helps u realize ur own strengths and weaknesses. but most of all, these things help us learn to look at the bigger picture. prior to coming here, i used to think that my work experience at a startup company had taught me fairly, how to do that.

but since then i have come a very long way. or so i would like to think at least :) and this self indulgent thought first manifested itself in one of our operations classes. we had a class experiment. we had to make paper puppets. yes you got that right. paper puppets. and it did remind us of our primary & middle school class proejcts as well. but what the heck, we are back in school aren't we? and quite frankly, its just so much more fun than attending another 3 hours lecture. and so we started.

only, this game was different. we were split into teams, with set targets for number of puppets to be made, the puppet making itself being split into different sub tasks, each timed individually. before we knew it, making puppets was a full fledged operations management project, with proper work/resource allocation, quality assurance requirements at every step, managing speed, 7 efficiency without compromising quality in product delivery.

so the end take away from the experiment was learning the art of looking at the bigger picture and then zooming in to the operational challenges and execution details, and more importantly learning the importance of this irrespective of the nature or scope of work. and yes it was a lot of fun too.

i still have those puppets as a souvenier of the experiment, and a proof of the importance of quality & timely delivery. plus i do love balloons and puppets still :P

heck! i like interactive learning! it's a lot of fun!! :)

2008-12-07T18:13:00.002+05:30

so the first sem is over. well assuming that i don't flunk in any of the subjects, that is. so , under that safe assumption, a third of my mba is over. 4 months of endless new experiences, or perhaps one gigantic whole new experience...yesterday, at an event some one asked me what has been my take away from this sem. what has changed in the way i think?

to be frank, i had been trying to take some time off and really think about that question myself, amongst a lot others. so now that i am finally sitting down to blog, really! what has changed about me?

Hmm, I know a bit of accounts, finance and stuff. i have seen a bit of singapore, and quite a bit of the culture here, interacted with a lot more nationalities than i would have in an Indian b-school. I have attended seminars , lunch talks, stage shows, and what not. i know one word each in i have a whole lot of different people from commendably diverse backgrounds, so i hope i have been able to learn new things from them and hope that i will remember at least some of those.

I have taken loads of pics, most of which i havent yet gone through or even transfered, let alone upload. i have become so much better at so many things at home..especially cooking [ i can see my mom revelling in that :P ] ...

but honestly,..i think i managed to experienced only 1%, ok may be 10, of what i perhaps could have. i think my take away from this program has just begun.

2008-11-26T20:05:00.004+05:30

who says mba students are all serious and cant be creative?? well, with a few (ahem) exceptions of slef-proclaimed and convinced writers (ahem) , there are a few brilliantly creative and witty minds around me...and gtalk is the medium that brings this sheer creativity to the forum... this blog is dedicated to such examples of sheer geniuses ;) ..more as a means of immortalizing these slight things on to the online world but also as memories of my MBA days of things which make me smile on some these bleak days :((

i will keep building on it time and again, and if people allow me, i'll put their names as well ;)
LS : [ after 2 devastating mid terms ] i got slaughtered twice in a day
LS : [ After a rather longish class discussion on Cathay Pacific ] Cathay Pacifi-ed
LS : [ While preparing for those mid terms ] : NCF is harder than NPV
LS : [ " ] total NPV negative!
LS : [ rt before a Marketing presentation ] who dare climb the banyan tree!
KChops : [ the same presentation ;) ] I'm on top of banyan tree or is the tree on top of me ...baah!! getting screwed both ways ;)
NJ: [ before eco mid term ] economically unstable
RB: [ " ] Eco waiver waalon ko keede padenge! [ oh btw..this was a person with Eco(H) in graduation ;) :D ]
Stupid Dodo: [ yup we do have our own mascots ;) ] : well the msgs hvnt really matched up to the mascot yet ..so im still waiting for tht brilliant creation ;)

we had a case, on pork. incidentally, it got assigned to ALL vegetarians in the class. so during the group discussions, you would see people squirming in their seats on the mention of carcasses and de-boning. during that period, their gtalk messages invariably reflected their plight...

JBhai: "hawaii dukkkarrr..."
SG: "some one tell me how to sell pigs.."
JBhai: "suuuuaaarrrrr ke bachcheyyy.."
Banka Bhaiyya: "Pigs on the wing"

1 day before the final presentation on the case,
SV : "is oinking"
JBhai : "suar ke bachche...ab nahi bechega tu"

after the presentation,

SV: "is done oinking.."
JBhai: "forgive me Lord, but i sold the pig"

right before final exams
KChops : "ram kare aisa ho jaaye..mera exam tu de aaye, main khelu teri lag jaaye"
me: "ram please jaisa KChops keh raha hai kar do"
ram: ???????????????????????

a? : "assets negative liabilities shooting and God save the equity!"

JBhai: " Don't know why people didnt want to do this project and miss the learning"
SG: " JBhai do my project and get twice the learning!!"
Jbhai: "can we not get mixed bundled MBA without ***"
JBhai: "prisoner's dilemma: can 116 students collude to not study and get same grades with lesser efforts??"

[as u cn see...Jbhai is always on a roll... ;) ]

KChops: "is recruiting for 'Society for Creative Alternatives to Microeconomics (SCAM)' - Applications are welcome"

TS: " of all the seasons, I hate the egg-jaam season" [ oh and trust me, this was there long enough to be called "for the whole season" !! ]

watch out for more to come...

2008-11-23T10:46:00.000+05:30

I just realised that our blog hasnt been updated since the I-Day 20-sept, which, in MBA years translates to approximately 3.78314 light years.

So I was just wondering why no one has yet written anything on one of the most fun event of the year... click here to read more

the final lap begins!!!

2008-11-17T23:21:00.006+05:30

-12 noon - finance case
- 3 pm marketing meeting
- 5 pm Operations meeting
-6 pm Eco meeting
- 8 pm Case meeting
[dinner somewhere in between]
[going home some where in between ]
-1 am re start on marketing
11 am - case meeting
1:30 pm - case presentation ---- we lost :((((((((((((
3 pm - operations final presentation [ more on this later ;) ] --- One off the list
6 pm - marketing meeting
.... 3 am - marketing still on!!!

the madness is in full swing..the rush hour ;)

though im thinking, so much for all the planning of all the months. dont know why we even bother, never works anyways!!

2008-11-10T23:23:00.000+05:30

for something good that I am trying to do in life..please help me out by taking this short survey

thanks a ton!!!

Oktoberfest

2008-11-09T00:40:00.002+05:30

on popular [ and flattering I must add :) ] demand... adding in a direct link

कुछ दुई चार दिन पहले हमरे कॉलेज माँ ओक्टोबर फेस्ट रहा. अब भइया हमका तोः मालूम नाही की ई ओक्तोबेरफेस्ट की बला होअत है l हमरे इय्हान तोह ओक्टूबर का महिना मान दशहरा होअत है तोः हम इन सोचें की कौन जाने ई इन अंग्रेजन का दशहरा हुई..read more

2008-10-12T22:35:00.003+05:30

mid terms finally over. despite all my efforts, with the one exception of FM, they all su****!! :((((

well I am not really sure what to do next that'll help. but now I know what will definitely not help.

starving myself of all parties & holidays.... this won't help
sitting at home thinking I should study ... this won't help
sitting at home and thinking I should go to college and study...this wont help
sitting in the library and thinking I should go home and study...this wont help
coming home and cooking, cleaning, chatting, talking on the phone...never!
sleeping in classes...oh that was such a waste! at least for some subjects!! :P
sleeping in the library...nope! its sooo cold there!!
putting everything off till sunday, including sleeping,...naaaahhhh!!!
blogging..this will certainly not help
cheat sheets ... they don't help at all
the actual sleeping...umm, not until i figure out a way of studying while sleeping ;)
eating.. no that just makes me feel like sleeping even more
sitting anywhere and actually studying...that did not help at all!!

oh and one more thing...
blogging..this will certainly not help
cog sheets ... they didn't help at all
sitting anywhere and actually studying...that did not help at all!!

so going by the general logic that i shud atleast stop doing things that are not helping, I am going to stop cooking , cleaning, thinking, starving myself of parties [that i actually already did], sitting in the library, sitting at home, sitting "anywhere actually" and well studying. im sure i cn sit "somewhere" since , home, library and "anywhere" are off the list, not sure if i cn give up blogging, sleeping and eating, but i'll try ;)

and hopefully then i'll b able to figure out what is it that will help ;) :P

The Tooth Tragedy

2008-10-12T19:40:00.004+05:30

blame it all on the mid terms, which i did horribly-horribly-in anyway, that I almost missed recording this significant happening of my life! It all started...oh well, technically it all started with the Big Bang. But without ridiculous context explosion, it all started on a Saturday morning. The last Saturday of the 2-Saturday mid-term break. I woke up with a weirdly nagging toothache. And it hurt when I tried to open my mouth. But I was on my way to a day long workshop [ errmmm..yes finances, rather their complete lacking, forbid me from doing anything better on a mid-term Saturday] , so I quickly got ready, grabbed an apple for breakfast and ran out the door. Eating the apple turned out to be much harder than I had anticipated but the tough & resource-efficient food-respecting side of me stopped me from throwing my only breakfast away. It was to be the stupidest mistake I had made in atleast the past 10 days [ oh you wouldn't believe the frequency at which I make those! ]

By evening, I was in a lot of pain. And I just could not open my mouth. I just couldn't. I got home and asked Doc, the savior of us, the plighted MBA batch of 2010, what could I do. Without getting into the gross details of the examination, he prescribed some simple stuff and asked me to visit a dentist first thing Monday.

Monday btw, was my Statistics final exam. Not mid-term, final. And I hadn't opened the books during the entire semester, thinking I'd be able to do it over the weekend.If only I had known...

The thought of the weekend still makes me shudder. One side of my mouth was badly swollen and I couldn't open my mouth. I could only mumble in the way of speaking. And it hurt so much that I was almost incessantly in tears. Food was reduced to cold milk and studying was no longer a decision I could put off.

And then I realized that I had picked up Soya milk by mistake, one of the rare things I'd rather starve than having! Oh well...somehow, I managed to get through the weekend, almost without food, and the exam, almost without preparation [though the results aren't out yet, I'm hoping].

And then the visit to the dentist. He told me I had too much wisdom, [thanks to the my endless life struggles...(sigh).. but that's another story ] , so much that my body was literally unable to hold it anymore. And he needed to take half of it out. surgically.

and there it was. A scene straight from the hindi movies. A starved with a face heavily right skewed and hence critical patient, in need of immediate surgery and the inevitable no-funds-reality. Only there was no Idol around that I could go and worship or curse, to get a sudden immediate flow of funds. the nearest temple would have taken me a long time to reach. and although by then with dishevelled hair, agony on face n tears streaming down, hallucinating over food, crawling my way to the temple doorstep would have made the perfect candidate for a miracle, i was more apprehensive of my forthcoming mid terms, than looking for being made a movie subject.

So I convinced the doctor to give me some medicines, and ventured forth, hoping that medicines would fix things long enough for me to get back home. The next 5 days were spent in decreasing pain and increasing hope and glimmer in my eyes.

So far, the hope hasn't disappointed :) I'm hoping to keep hoping.

though I wonder if I had actually tried the temple stunt, and a movie had indeed been made, what would it have been called??...

The Tooth Tragedy?? 3Ts?? oh God! marketing is causing irreparable damage to my natural lack of creativity!!

Yokogawa

2008-09-29T21:02:00.004+05:30

a measuring instruments manufacturing MNC. we had an industry visit to their Singapore facility, where they have successfully implemented JIT..despite the differences in the nature and scale of its operations. an interesting visit. more information on the company. wikipedia link

advanced excel workshop

2008-09-29T20:54:00.004+05:30

a day long exercise learning the wonders of solver in optimization problems and pivot table in MS-Excel. perhaps one of the most productive single-day, 8-hr-long lecture so far at NUS. the brain was exhausted but still asking for more at the end of it. and ofcos there is a lot more of stuff, material that i need to , want to and should learn n know. i had always thought excel as being the only MS product that i would ever like...but i was wrong, its the only MS application that I'm actually so amazingly intrigued n fascinated by as i've always been with linux!
its powerful, cheap , and apparently really helps u get a good job :P. hmm, mayb i shud ve just taken a 6 months advanced course in excel :P :P

n it makes me wonder even more, that the same company that created excel also created heavy ,bulky crash prone, cumbersome operating systems like vista!

do u think the creation of excel was outsourced by MS ?? ;)

special thx to Shivdat, the senior who organised the workshop and ofcos, Professor Chu Singfat for giving a simply superb teaching and training session! :)

and at the special request of jaimin to not let this siginificant fact slip into history unnoticed...the Prof gave out original McLaren keychains to 3 people when they got some answers right. Yes ,you guessed it, one of them was ofcourse jaimin himself ;)

may i shed my laziness and actually practice more on what I learnt so that i also shed my forgetfulness and rmmbr wat i learnt ;) :P

Connexions

2008-09-23T14:04:00.003+05:30

A regular NUS MBA event, this is a platform for companies and students to interact with each other. The companies that turned up this time were JobHunters, GroupM, 3M, Emerson, Phillip Morrison, Unilever Asia, UoB, Ernst & Young, Bloomberg and Cargill amongst others. Each company had several representatives who were there to give information about the company, and the various roles on offer, for jobs as well as internships. It was my first Connexions and I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with the companies. All the more since right now the actual job hunt stress is not there in my mind bogging everything else down, I could genuinely focus on gaining information about the various companies.

Post this there was a clean technology talk at the INSEAD campus, with panel members from Mckinsey, Deutsche Bank and a PE fund that invests into clean energy projects focusing in Asia, [ the name I regretfully forget ]. A very interesting talk, with new perspectives and viewpoints from the panel members as well as the audience.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable and informative evening.

Field Trip to the Tiger Brewery ;)

2008-09-23T10:59:00.002+05:30

Let me correct that..its Asia-Pacific breweries, a Singapore Exchange listed brewery that supplies over 120 brands of beer to over 55 countries in the Asia Pacific Region. But I didn't know this when I got the email to register for the field trip..err I mean Industry visit. That's what we call them in B-School. "Field trip" is for primary school! :P So well, I received this email a few weeks ago, inviting to a visit to Tiger breweries. Now I don't drink alcohol, but I was curious to know about the brewery process, and so I registered for the event. So, a few days later, on a bright sunny afternoon, cheerfully ignoring the befuddled looks on people's faces when I told them that I don't drink alcohol but I still intended to go, I boarded the bus alongside my fellow batchmates.

Once there, we got our visitors' passes and were ushered inside the welcome hall. Our tour guide [whose name I regretfully forget ] , gave us an introduction of how beer is made and its nutritional value. For the less enlightened souls, beer is made of malt [ roasted barley ], hop, yeast and water. It releases more energy, has calories equivalent to natural apple juice and helps prevent heart attack & high blood pressure. It also goes excellently with a variety of foods. So you see, it's purely vegetarian [well if you exclude yeast] and very healthy ;)

After this enlightening introduction, our tour started. The actual brewery turned out to be a 24*7 fully automated plant in which the only humans to be seen were at computer terminals controlling the plant. The plant produces over 40000 cans , 30000 bottles and similar number of barrens of beer from 8 tonnes of malt every single day! The brewery produces over 100million liters of beer every year, of which 55% is consumed within Singapore alone. the rest is supplied to Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand amongst many other countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Post the brewing unit, which had a lot of huge closed cylinders, labeled caustic soda, water and so on, we then proceeded to the filling and packaging unit. Again fully automated, it was truly enthralling to see thousands of cans and bottles running through various steps of cleaning, filling, pasteurizing and sealing on automated conveyor belts [not sure what the technical term for these is]. And especially since I had always seen such things only on TV, I was fascinated :) It all sounded in such a rhythm, that a slightly more musical person than me would have been able to weave the sounds into a tune :)

Sparkling clean, and pleasantly green, the campus had its own basket ball courts and even audio speakers hidden among the bushes, disguised as stones, playing radio..providing endless free entertainment to its employees. Of course there were other departments, like sales and marketing, which were not a part of the tour, so we didn't see them.

Post all this Oh no wait! not just yet! There was another information download of the breweries, its history, and numerous accolades over the past century. At this point I realized I had lost my visitor's pass. Considering the fact that my NUS student's pass had been kept as a security against that pass and that I was not even drunk..this was the epitome of my absent mindedness. May be I had gotten too fascinated with the cans moving :P So I dragged the tour guide and my poor dear friend Pavithra, all the way back through the entire factory looking for it. finally we found it, thankfully only half way through!

So , Post all this came the part almost everyone [ except a few non drinkers like me ] had been waiting for...free beer!! And lots of it.... Ofcourse everyone had already started and I had missed the first drink, not that I would have drank. After the first drink of Tiger, people were free to take endless refills of Tiger, Heinken, Guinness, Baron's and many others. Great pub, excellent ambiance, pool and of course, lots of people gulping down free beer, I must say it was a real fun 1 hour! The maximum fun (Hic!) I have had in a very long time! ;)

On the way back, the bus was a lot noisier and Hindi songs were resounding off the walls! :P Even the non-Indians, after they failed to shut us up, joined in and we all had a blast of a time. Drinkers, non-drinkers alike. and I was not even (hic) drinking... ;) :P

2008-09-16T21:20:00.002+05:30

The 4Ps

Product
Price
Placement
Promotion

The 4Cs

Consumer Solution
Consumer Cost
Consumer Convenience
Consumer Communication

The 7Ss

Structure
Systems
Strategy
Style
Staff
Skill
Shared Values

And lots n lots n lots n lots more....

The result???

The 3Ms

Marketing Mid-term Mayhem!

2008-09-16T21:18:00.001+05:30

On the NUS MBA blog,

Welcome lunch@ Kent Ridge guild House

2008-09-14T20:18:00.008+05:30

just some gtalk status messages to reflect the pre-marketing mid term states of mind ;)

[they actually made me laugh, and freshened me up to cram some more!!!! ]

NJ : does anyone know where kotler is...please go n kill him for his sins to the society

KC: chhup gaye saare nazaare oye kya baat ho gayi...maine mktg kholi din mein raat ho gayi

RB: sawaal yeh hai ki dhuyein udenge ya totey!!

JS: akshar jo naache..kya khaayi hai bhaang??

S : bllllllllllllaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

and ofcourse..my own... : stats..mktg...stats...mktg...hmpf..hmpf..

for we are the most sc***** up batch who have on consecutive days!!!! f****
more coming up...(hopefully ;) )

ahh..so as expected...here are some more, after 1 batch has had stats and 1 batch has had mktg,

KC : sawaal yeh tha ki dhooyen udenge ya tote.. amaa ped ujad gaya, ghosla jal gaya, dhooyen aur tote dono ud gaye!!

me: crappy today crappier tomorrow

DS: i have called up Kotler who has apologised to all of us

stats!! stats!! stats!!

2008-09-13T00:17:00.003+05:30

after this stayed as my gtalk status for 48 hours straight...i decided that this definitely deserved its own article. so what am i talking about? statistics. a subject...no, let me rephrase that..the only subject I had some sense of familiarity with before joining my MBA program. I had known accounts, finance and economics would be a pain...but i had hoped statistics, which i had some vague remembrance of- from the good old engineering days, and marketing which really does use a lot of common sense and market observation would bail me out.

hopes hopes high hopes...

here i am at 3 o'clock on a saturday morning, having spent more than 14hours straight with no major breaks, not to mention the interrupted work that has been going on on this project over the past few weeks, and considerably since last 3-4 days, trying to interpret the results of statistical analysis, struggling to find some reason to the madness, some logic and rationale behind why in the name of God the actual data would not follow the theoretical model! Oh I hate the real world!! no assumptions hold !!! :((((((((

Well I better get back to work...i still need to complete the report and then work on the presentation as well for monday. Oh and did I tell you I also have my marketing mid term quiz on tuesday and no its not common sense and market observation. its a LOT of hard facts, statements and concepts!!

Oh dear Lord!!!

2008-09-06T18:32:00.003+05:30

my first illness at MBA. i had known it wud come, owing to my sinusitis and an anti-AC environment which frequently gives me colds which not-so-frequently turn into viral fever...but so soon, within a month of coming here..and right when i had so many things to do... :(

i hate being sick..and i dont think i hv hated it so much, but then i never was this alone either.. i dont remember ever having been sick and not surrounded by friends n family!! and of course Mom who made awesome food and my sister who did whatever I asked for till i got well!! oh the loved n pampered me!!

though to be fair i have had a lot of classmates asking how i am since morning, and getting me food at all times and anything else that i need too...so by God's grace i still am as well looked after as possible under the given circumstances, so this one time i would go against my own rule of not revealing identities in favor of a higher principle of never forgetting those who give help when it is needed...and give special thanks to lalit who gave me all the medicines and called up periodically to check how i was, pavithra & madhu who got me lunch and evening snack - which really was the extra unexpected bonus :P , Ram who got me a recharge card for my phone which was totally out of balance, Phadnis who got me dinner all the way from little India, nikhil, suvira, abhishek,jaimin, alex and many others who offered to help out in case i needed anything... not to mention mayank who called every few hours to check how i was, and ankit who kept me company for hours by singing (oh well....) over a long distance call!! wow! thats a lot of people!! on second thoughts, i have never been surrounded by so many people actually!! and never ever had a doctor call me up to ask how i was!!! :)

thank God for that!!

of course im still not out of bed and tomorrow might add to this list of people, though I hope i am out of bed by tomorrow and dont need to bother more people!

plus i do need to get my thick head around a/c for this quiz! i am having nightmares about assets and liabilities and expenses and revenues... :P :P :P

i cnt write any more coz my eyes burn and head spins by sitting up and looking at the computer..

2008-09-02T18:53:00.003+05:30

and here's another one ..I am spending so much precious MBA time blogging..I wonder if I can take up blogging as a profession post MBA!!

2008-09-01T14:18:00.004+05:30

I am doing something I could have never imagined myself doing...blogging in the middle of a class! I know myself to be pretty eccentric, more so because I like to think of myself as a writer than my actual natural instincts. And keeping in line with this belief I have done all kinds of out-of-the-line things...eaten in the middle of high-end meetings, walked into office in flip flops, slept on my desk sitting right next to my boss, eaten right under "No Food" signs.. once I even painted my nails in the midst of a client meeting [ dont ask how I did it..but a girl's gotta do what she's gotta do!!]... but this, this is a new experience altogether. Everyone, including myself, always believed me to be a diligent student, which is ofcourse my way of of saying I was called a nerd and made the butt of every joke in class :P

And here I am blogging in the middle of the class after spending all my minimal savings from my limited work-life and loading my parents with a loan they could never have afforded at an age when they should have been looking forward a comfortable retirement.....

But then I have never, never in the theory-intensive textbook-oriented teaching in the Indian education style found a class to be more useless. The irony is, I used to quite like this subject back in school and this was the only subject I was looking forward to studying with some comfort level!!

Oh well, what is..is. Looking at the brighter side, we are allowed to use our laptops.. thank God for that!! and who knows, this might be a newer vista for me altogether, an opportunity to become "cool" ;) ;)

Why I haven't written in all this while...blame it all on all the other subjects which are totally new and strain my limited brains to no end, the endless projects, meetings, group cases, and assignments.. and of course all the extra sleep that I have to take to wear off all the stress I get thinking of so much pending work!! ;)

2008-08-28T21:45:00.002+05:30

projects, assignments, post readings, pre-readings, case studies, group meetings, club meetings, traveling, cleaning, cooking (followed by actually eating my own cooking), washing, ironing, hmpf hmpf hmpf...

2008-08-25T21:29:00.002+05:30

No, i didn't spare the official NUS MBA blog either! ;)
Freshers Party - Hawaiian bash

2008-08-21T20:42:00.006+05:30

I attended my first ever campus recruitment talk. And the picture right here, on the left, is what I gained out of it. No..it wasn't an "artisty" company...take a closer look. it was a ****** talk. So why was I, a financially challenged, hardcore software person there?? well I'm in B-school ain't I! so how can I single handedly destroy the age-old tradition of IT-professionals turned MBA students by not aspiring to I-Banking & wealth management etc etc. Plus all the self preached pep talk & philosophy about experiencing and exploring... So I went. the talk started 1 hour late. so much for all the racket about punctuality & professionalism in Singapore! While I was standing there waiting, I saw students from undergradute Business courses, Engg. even Bio-Chem background there. "Seriously...Bio-Chem in ********??? This should be interesting!!", so I thought. We got into the hall, obviously over capacity, but that's ok! It was a college campus recruitment talk, just like anywhere else. :)

And then the speakers, distinguished guests from the ********* started giving speeches. After about 2 min of attention span, I lost interest. And track. 2 hours later, I walked out, with half of the audience. The other half had already sneaked out one-by-one during the endless accolades being thrust upon ******** as a company. I have a vague recollection of how many people spoke, none of what they had to say. It was a great marketing & brand building campaign to say the least. And I suppose for people unlike me, i.e. people who go to talks they know they are not going to be interested in and then not even pretend to be interested in and spend the entire duration doodling on, my Citi notebook I had proudly acquired a few days before at one of the better talks, gave n basically goofing around..for people unlike such people, the talk I am sure was good and left a good impact. Oh and this doesnt necessarily exclude the people who weren't sleeping the whole time, for what is more blissful than 2 hours of precious free sleep catch up time! :)

there are a lot more such talks coming up. from banks and companies otherwise. I hope everyone gets the job they want. As for me... hmm, the **** head of ******* had the surname Gupta..may be I should draw my family history and see if I can locate him on it somewhere.... ;)

briefly

2008-08-20T18:57:00.004+05:30

the first press release for out batch!!! :) just to make sense & relevance, the photograph has nothing to do with the article. and while the article is there for you to read, its only fair to the photograph that I shed my lethargy and give you some context behind it. plus I'm dying to hear some ooh's and aah's at what great orientation programs NUS has and how lucky I am and how jealous you are! so without further delay, this pic was taken at the final activity of our 2-day Outbound orientation program. leaving out the cumbersome part, the raft that you see , or well imagine to be there beneath us all, for we haven't learned how to float sitting on water (may be they'll teach us that too here coz whatever they're teaching is anyhow as alien to me as sitting on water, but I digress...).

the poor raft that u imagine to be, is bearing the weight of 16 of us and was built by us. Only us. :D and the end of the raft, the only end you cannot see, because that end was sinking under my ever increasing weight , i am sitting right there, at that end of the raft. its unbelievable how much weight i have put on and hair i have lost in less than a month in this country!! I wonder why...must be the chicken and the economics!...

hopefully there will be many more press releases... all announcing good news :)

2008-08-17T21:14:00.004+05:30

Friday afternoon: club briefing
Friday evening: MBA Fresher's party;
Saturday afternoon: classes
Saturday evening: Graduate students fresher's party for all NUS graduate students
Sunday afternoon: results of the first test out for half the class, leaving that half in tears and the other half (including me) in jitters

feels like I'm back to playing on a see-saw...to top it all, 5 totally new, completely alien subjects. Not to mention that to more than half the class, those subjects are like nursery rhymes, things they can do with their eyes closed, hands tied behind their backs.

Oh and of course the stairs. the never ending, all victorious stairs. the stairs that take the wind out of you even before you reach the class. maybe i should write a separate article on these stairs. they sure as hell deserve one! ... hmm may be someday when I am not massaging my feet from all the stair-climbing all day long...

remember that song from Kaante...jaane kya hoga rama re..jaane kya hoga maula re

2008-08-13T05:14:00.002+05:30

first class of statistics, first of marketing, first if accounts....Oh dear Lord why didn't I take commerce back in school...

the obsession of Indians with engineering should go away..the new obsession should be MBA. well it already is but parents should realise that the manifestation of that obsession has to begin early. start by asking ur child to take commerce instead of science, then study finance or business administration, and then do MBA. coz even if he/she is an engineer, somewhere down the line he would want to do an mba anyway so why not make it easier for your child.

oh dont pay attention to me, i am just rambling! On a less stupid note though, the professors here all have a good sense of humor. (psst...i would be more honest but they still have to give my grades! ) they crack jokes and keep the environment of the class as stress free as possible. they make themselves as avaialble for students as possible. we're free to approach them via email, phone, personal chit-chats or even MSN. thats a humongous shift from the Indian education system (or atleast my experience of it), where school teachers and college lecturers took endless pride in being formidable.

they also make detailed presentations, add real world examples and try to maximize the learnings of the students as much as they can. that's another major shift from the Indian education system, where the teacher used to walk in holding a textbook, would write a lot of stuff from the textbook on the board and leave. its not that the education we had, didn't cost anything and the teachers were not getting paid. its the difference in attitude that matters. having said that, its not as if I am condemning all teachers. Far from it, the teachers I learned from, most of them, were dedicated and hardworking. I know whatever I know today because of what I learned from them, both in school as well as college. I am proud product of the Indian education system and in many ways I find it superior to many other systems. but yes there is a lot that the heavily text book oriented Indian education system can learn from other systems outside the country.

i would go on but i have to go find the book "finance for dummies"...

2008-08-10T20:16:00.003+05:30

another post after a gap of 20 days...so much for capturing the MBA moments and memories!! But what to do the orientation lasted another couple of days...following the endless walking were orientation for endless student clubs and presentations...followed by 2 days of endless physical activities at an outbound program. it was endless fun actually.... Alas! it ended in 2 days flat!!

And then started my classes, an intensive module for 3 days, 1 lecture for 8 hours every day followed by daily readings, tests and a project, which is what I am supposed to be working on as of this moment! I missed the one thing I had really been looking forward to watch..the Singapore national day fireworks and the parade (on TV of course :P ) thinking that I would study (which I didn't of course), I spent the Sunday morning in College and the evening trying unsuccessfully to start working on my report...."so much for a Sunday you the queen of procrastination!" , I can hear the voice in my head saying.

If this is how a week goes with just 1 subject, then I am not sure what I am in for from tomorrow, when all the other subject classes also begin. Kudos to my seniors who managed to participate in the all those clubs along with their studies!

I can hear the not too distant sounds of a whirlpool of projects, assignments, tests, quizzes, submissions and group discussions getting nearer and nearer ready to drown me in....

So while I struggle to stay afloat for the next 6 months, adieus dear readers, till my next post, whenever that comes.

Have a good life! :)

orientation

2008-07-30T06:01:00.002+05:30

So it was orientation yesterday. I would've written yesterday but...oh well we'll get to that later. Starting from 9 am it went on till 4 pm: hours and hours of briefings about the course, the faculty, the various clubs and associations in a freezing auditorium...it brought back the memories of school and college functions, which invariably had starting speeches by the Chief Guest, the Guest of Honor, the Principal, the Vice principal and have-who-you-will speaking for a good length of the program, with us kids always waiting for the actual activities to begin. And it made me realise how even worse have become my attention and concentration spans. So much for gaining patience with age! :P

But just like everything else in this world, the briefings too came to an end and the "activities" for the day started, which comprised of lunch and a business school tour. As for lunch I have already ranted enough about how me along with the other Indians are yet to come to terms with the fact that we'll never get those good home cooked simple Indian mom-made dishes anymore.It's surprising how despite the large number of Indians in Singapore, I haven't yet found any authentic Indian food [ except at Muthu's curry at City hall which is at best a poor cousin of Indian food, and so not worth the cost! ].

so after a forced in lunch, [ you have to eat! ] Finally, the business school tour started. We started walking, chatting happily away in 2 lines, listening to the group leader [ a senior ], fondly remembering the school field trips where walking in 2 lines following the teacher was so cool and so much fun. Before we realised, we were climbing up and down endless staircases. What followed was a 105 minutes fiesta of climbing staircases, with various rooms & facilities dispersed in between. There were broad stairs, narrow stairs, high stairs, low stairs, spiral stairs, straight stairs, wooden-railing stairs, glass railing stairs, indoor stairs, outdoor stairs...they just went on and on and on endlessly. It seemed to get to anywhere from anywhere else in that 3-storey (yes thats it! just 3 storeys! ) building, you had to climb an average 3 stair cases of different varieties.

By the time the tour got over, we were dying to get home and crash, yet too tired to quite literally take another step. I still have a sprain I got from one of those stair cases yesterday, or maybe it was all of them combined that my leg couldn't take! So you see I would have written yesterday but I was too busy sleeping off the exertion and at least 2 Kgs of weight lost in 1 day! My orientation program should have been correctly labeled as the orientation walking program!

It could have been a figment of my imagination or exertion (:P ), but as we were leaving the tour, I thought I heard some one say "The National University of Stairs"....

The journey begins...

2008-07-29T00:02:00.000+05:30

So after years of dreaming, struggling, praying and crying, all in the "day and night", "alone and in-public" varieties, a lot of excitement, jubilation & anticipation, farewell parties and congratulatory treats, the chaos and madness of sorting out the paper work and the final packing, final non-teary goodbyes and security and immgration checks, I finally boarded the Jet 9W-18 for Singapore last Thursday, 24July,08 at 8:30 AM IST. The flight was surprisingly on time and disappointingly turbulent and hence felt longer than otherwise would have. I watched a movie on King Henry the VIIIth which I think had made some major historical blunders, but its a movie! I slept for a while and after some time a thankfully uneventful albeit somewhat bumpy journey came to an end and I, along with 5 of my absolutely delgihtful batchmates, landed at the Changi airport at 5:30 PM SGT. The ride out of the HUGE Changi airport was surprisingly quick and efficient and after some quick calling card purchases we were on our way to our hotel for the night.

At the first glance, Singapore struck me as a rarely balanced mix of lush greenery and endless high rises, all competing to out do their previous counterparts in height.Great roads, disciplined traffic and helpful people, it all seemed too good to be true. And then we got to the eating part, and you know what they say...if something feels too good to be true, it probably is!! :P We got to a nearby mall to eat, none of us in the mood to really experiment with food, we decided to skip all Thai, Korean and even Local food stalls, tried to ignore the existence of Pig Soup & Duck soup stalls completely and go for known , simple dishes. Well have you ever eaten dry chicken wings with steamed rice? How about vegetables, prawns and noodles , all boiled only, in a lot of soup. Oh and no spices at all!! And did I mention our group has 2 pure vegetarians? well actually they came off pretty well, with sizzler shahi paneer and naan! ( though I am not sure if they agree with me, since we ate all of their food! ;) )

The next day went in checking into the hostel and sorting out all the admin issues. The 5 of us are now scattered across 11 floors of 1 building; a building which has more than 11 floors but the elevator goes only on the 5th and the 11 th one!! Imagine dragging over 30 Kgs of luggage per head across and around those 11 floors using an elevator that goes only on 2 of those 11!!!! We, well actually the guys, had a harrowing time lugging their own and then our luggage to our rooms but we finally managed.

Since then life has been all about settling down in the hostel, cleaning, unpacking, grocery shopping, and sleeping. Yes eating is not involved here. The struggle is still full on , though hopefully soon either we will get used to eating whatever is served in front of us, or start cooking. Knowing myself, I think I'll start eating God-knows-what-not. After all its hard to give up a old habits of sheer laziness and aversion to cooking :P There has been some sight-seeing, apart from what I could see from the MRT, but thats for another blog. Maybe once I have actually seen those places! ;)

Oh and did I mention my hostel is 2 Km away from the nearest MRT station, and atleast half an hour away ( on the MRT ofcourse) to anywhere else!! I know I'll be walking a lot in the near future! :P

Tomorrow is my first day to College, and the first early morning after almost 2 years (excepting random mornings, such as the morning of the flight ofcourse ). It is a long term dream come true, I should be excited. Come to think of it, I am. But more than that I am nervous. Just feels like 8 years ago, when it was my first day to bachelor's degree. I am not just nervous, I am actually shit scared :P what if i can't cope up with so many subjects,...so much to study...what if i dont do well...disappoint everyone including myself...oh well what will be will be. All I can say is...

Let the fireworks begin!! :)

First Post

2008-07-22T01:26:00.000+05:30

From ever since i can remember, I had a dream. I wanted to go abroad for at least 2years. I always wanted to attend a traditional convocation where you wore a robe and hat and everyone threw their hats together at the end of the ceremony. I had also wanted to study in a hostel, but my parents always found me too young for that (they still do). And somewhere around college, the MBA bug bit me. And bit me hard. for ever since then, despite year after year of flunking CAT, I just couldn't let go of the MBA dream. And then, when I was just about to give up all hope and surrender to my parents wishes to marry me off and see me "happily settled" in life,... GMAT happened. It seemed that over night (well actually after burning the midnight's oil for 2.5 months) , it seemed that perhaps I still had hope. That perhaps I didn't need to give up just now. Miracles do happen. And by one such miracle, must have been my mother's good deeds and my friends' prayers ( even if only they wanted me to stop cribbing), I got through NUS

After years of dreaming, seemingly fruitless studying, months of anticipation and weeks of madness completing miscellaneous formalities, I am now all set to embark on this journey. (Well almost all set, there's always that endless To-Do list ;) )

With 2 days left to go, I am filled with a strange mix of excitement and trepidation. I hope I am able to do justice to my years of toil to achieve these dreams, and more than that, justice to my family's never ending prayers and support and my friends' relentless counseling and motivation and God's grace.

With this hope I start this new blog, dedicated to my experiences at NUS , while all my general posts will continue to be blogged on the old one