Ginger & Cardamom

Sudden Realizations

This is one of the most costly blog entry I have ever made. Why? I am sitting in a class and as usual the professor sucks and now when I did some homework that what is it costing me to be here and listen to all this worthless nonsense is a fortune. It pains and trust me, it pains really hard. You know sometimes I wonder when I feel like this what the people who were working in really goood organizations and left their jobs, pay, office everything in hope to come here that they will get some decent value with a lot of business sense. You know why I feel MBA SUCKS is because this is what I am paying for my MBA-

Annual Fees in SIBM Rs90,000.00

Cost of laptop on account of 60% depreciation Rs30,000.00

Annual Salary which I would have got at TCS Rs206,000.00
(Micro Eco told me this is Opportunity Cost)

Interest @ Rate of 5% compunded 6 monthly) Rs16,503.75

Total Annual Cost I am paying to study at SIBM Rs342,503.75

Monthly cost of MBA Rs28,541.98

No. of Pd's in a month (Ideal Case) 144

Cost per Hour of every lecture at SIBM Rs198.21

So I am writing this blog for Rs. 198.21/hr andd trust me I would have really appreciated that I would have soemthing of business sense out of this money but whatever is going in this class I find writing this blog far more value adding as compared to listening to the class. To add to pain one of my very good friends sitting just at my back finds his interest in reading what I am writing instead of the class and for him this costs increases to Rs. 346.56 / lecture as he left a job after working for two years. I GUESS THE HONEYMOON IS OVER. And everyone is waiting for the MBA to get over and rock in the real corporate world to prove their mettle. Adieu!!!

The Cleaning Day

Sometimes the most weird of the work can be a fun. The idea of cleaning the whole college by the MBA students on the first instance sounded like crazy. We had been hearing a lot about cleaning of the college, which is a tradition, before the Campus Placement start the juniors volunteer to wash clean the whole college. The day is referred as the cleaning day or rather cleaning night. The night started on 10th of December where we turned up in large numbers to clean the college. The things in the night started when me, Reena, Sumeet and Mayur were having dinner and making plans for sipping up coffee at Barista, when Shlokie called and said we were about to begin and he wanted us for support. We dropped the idea of the coffee and went back to the college. The college and all the classes where we get bored everyday by idiotic lectures presentation were all open and empty, free to face the stampede of the rocking spirits of SIBM. All the floors were plugged in with different music and the fiesta started. The floors were divided the fun was about to begin. The IT team got the lab with some more volunteers. The things started rocking when Karthik banged inside the ladies LOO ( for cleaning ofcourse) and till now he is still wondering what the shelves are for?????? We started cleaning the lab and having fun where we had a colin fight where we sprayed colin all over the hairs of people, though I still wonder that whether the colin is effective or not despite me n sumeet sprayed a lot of colin on Reena's hair she is still blonde (Refer- All Blondes are dumb or all dumbs are blonde http://panduspeaks.blogspot.com). Then as the cleaning spree went ahead we started having water fights and the I also had broom-fight with Reena. We overtook JK Rowling (with due regards to her) when we changed the concept of quidditch on broomsticks to Mops (courtsey Prasun & Vaidi). Then final bite from stuffs at Barista. There were a lot of things which could be understood by the following photographs.

The Barista Bite

Guess What REENs trying to play perfect Marrige Material

Naina Joins the League but dear having the broomstick doesn't mean that you will assault the photographer

After the Final Touch

Peace at last, dont worry floor is broomed MOP and ABOVE ALL I AM TIRED

Well more fun of this in the Next Post, till the Adieu!!!

Summers in December

My summers have finally arrived in the starting of winters. Yes, I finally got an offer for my summer placements from Tata Teleservices. Today was a rocking start as our IT team had to cover 5 presentations for the day. My day started with a usual run between our IT LAB which is on the fourth floor to our auditorium which is on ground floor but we have to climb down to the basement for the entrance. So amongst all this chaos of mics audio cables and LCD's I attended a sleep inducing ppt trying to be awake. Soon after the ppt I was told that I was shortlisted for NDTV process and I rushed through the lab and the room no. 13 to check the details. My pulse was rocking and I sat with Vikram and Vishay discussing questions like what are my strengths and weakness and why I want to leave IT and join media (though we framed a decent answer but still I can't think of a valid reason that why on earth would anyone like to leave an IT company to join a TV channel) and then after this brief session of introspection I hobbled up to the lab (don't ask me that how I manage to keep my fat when I climb so Many stairs, you can do your PhD on that) and struggled with the computer to get all relevant data about their Mcap, CAGR, Market Share, Competition, Industry Analysis etc. I came down mugging all these figures. At that time perhaps I knew the figures like they were the only thing that would be asked by them. There to my surprise on the board was my name making a proud announcement that I have "cracked Summers" with Tata Teleservices!!!!
Wow life rocks, things changed I went like an Idiot all over the college telling people as if I got a jackpot. Finally I reached the second ppt and then after all that I kept my promise and I brought cake for my IT team , I was so clever that I brought chocolate as I like more than Black forest and as a perfect team does they made it a point that all that cake should be as close to my mouth and my hairs and the ordeal continued until there wasn't a place left to smear the cake. after then we had a lot of chit chat. Well the day was a rocking one. I hope what tomorrow has in store for me. Till then Sayonara!!!

Two Days@ SIBM

A brand new day, though another manic Monday but also the start of another brand new semester, with brand new class (for me at least), and brand new classmates. You must be wondering why I am using the word brand so much, that's because we have been divided into three section according to our specialization so was trying to put some marketing in the daily life ;). The first day was good with our slooow stats professor, but the luck was on our side and we had an action packed class with pigeons flying around, driving some of our batchmates for an out-class run. The day was unusually short with two lectures after the lunch being cancelled and I had a nice time relaxing and catching up with friends and the stories about their holidays. The things are coming back to normal why??? I got to configure wi-fi on one of the laptops....but mind you WI-FI IS WORKING. I know I am a bit sentimental about it can't help it have spent lot of cribbing about this faulty!!!! I mean flaunty (that's what we do in all of presentations and website write ups- flaunt our wi-fi) little system.
The second day was even better, imagine a situation where you are on the operation table and a doctor stands with a huge knife in his hands and tells you that you can't be provided with anesthesia as it's not available in the hospital and since hospital has already taken the operation fee so you are going to have an operation right now without an anesthesia and you can shove all your pain wherever you want to... It was a similar situation when our prof for management control system entered our class and told us that he finds the idea of us doing the subject funny as we haven't done the pre-requisite subject before. To add more to the taste he tells us that we will complete the pre-requisite all by ourselves as the mcs thing is already in our syllabus. Quite a genuine reasons... god help us. So SIBM is rocking back and tomorrow the whole of our marketing class is waiting with their fingers crossed for Wednesday morning 10:30 a.m. for the macroeconomics class by Nikhil's (for those who don't know him visit http://nikmuse.blogspot.com/) favourite and loving Harinita Ma'am. Adieu!!!

The Tipping Point: How Little Things can make a big difference.

I completed tipping point yesterday night and I must say it is a fascinating experience to read this book. It talks about the epidemics, in general the mechanism by which a normal situation turn into epidemic. It talks about how very small things add together creating such a huge difference. Malcom Gladwell describes tipping point as the magical moment when an idea, trend or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips and spreads like an epidemic. He says that there are three important laws which make an idea tip. The first one he calls as the law of few, in which he describes how important are the people who are part to spread the idea. He says that for an idea to spread it should be passed through some special kind of person in the society called connectors, mavens and salesman. These are the people with wide and influencing social contact. These are either people with large sphere of acquaintances and friends, those who are respected for their and the general people prefer following their opinions. The second law he calls as stickiness factor. The stickiness is the concept that if an idea is heard by a person then he or she should be able to remember it.. He talks about some TV show designed for kids called sesame street which tipped because its content stuck to the kids. Then finally he acknowledges the power of context where he says that the situation of the passing of the idea is also very important. He talks about the normal human attitude of attributing the characteristics as a whole without considering the situations. For ex we say a person X is honest, we mean that he is honest with friends, family etc. It's not necessary that he will be honest at work too. Then he talks about the group dynamics and the magical number 150. He talks about the fact that in any group if there are more that 150 people then they all won't be knowing each other individually. That's the capacity limit of the human brain, and he explains how this is being used in business for competitive advantage. Then finally with the help of two case studies he concludes that for an idea to tip and to become an epidemic it's required that all the small things discussed are the ones which make a major impact.
Overall the book was a very good read. Though it became a bit boring and monotonous at some instances but things were well explained. There were a few problems specially for an Indian like me to relate to the concepts which were duly explained with the help of the US TV show which is difficult to relate to any example in India. But the essence was clear. The cruise through the 259 pages of the book was really a very enriching experience. Adieu.

The Journey to Find Myself: Engg College to B-School

It was few months back when I sat on the terrace of Panchvati (for those who don't know it was my hostel in engg college) and was tellling my juniors that it's so good to see the stars and the open sky. Since then life has been such a roller coaster ride, IMI vs. SIBM the tough decision, then such an uncooperative faculty in the college who think that students are the people with most free time. You know they feel that we are the bugs who can be crushed because they hold some thing which are called our internal marks in the hand. They don't realise that we students are human being and due to their inefficiencies we are the people who suffer most. Anyways the crux of the matter is that my joining in the SIBM was delayed due to my faculty back at my engineering college. So I had this great I mean late start but finally I am here. With first semester over I am now a would be manager, the guy who would sit in those plush offices in those armanis and versaches, driving luxury sedans, sitting in the big board meetings. This is what most people assume MBA is all about including me some years back. Well all my high flying dreams meet the reality. All the things seem more like our real world. Now that one semester is over everyone back at my place wants to know what I have learned in these four months. The answer to this question is one word called FAF, the art of speaking or writing when you nothing about what you are talking about. Well I will talk about this art in some of my next post and how I have learnt it? How I am planning to master it? All these answers coming soon till then, Adieu!