As July ends..

Shots @ F Bar for the ISB party

As July ends , term 3 is well on its way to becoming another very tough term. The assignments have not stopped, and with club activities and all the finalization of electives and ELPs and PAEVs , life is just one word as of now...and not a very profound word to be blogging about !


Just finished with around 6 hours of classes and reading a 50 page case on enterpreneurship , its close to 1.00 am in the night and I still have things on my head which have been long pending. I think the only bright point of the day was India coming to the brink of its 5th test victory in history over England in England !


The weekend was great with lots happening. It started off with the party at F Bar , and then there we had our leadership session . Rajeshwar Upadhyaya , the instructor for our LDP , is just too good and every word he says in class is bliss. I will blog about some of the things he mentions in class , but I dunno how much will it be for public consumption.


Then there was another party this Saturday at the mirror pool of SV 3. The theme was " Pirates " and with the limited stuff I had to wear , I ended up looking like anything but a pirate !


Sunday was the Aikya launch. Basically , 90 very ( and when I say very I mean very very....very ) elite families of Hyderabad come and adapt one study group each. This family will remain our guardian for the rest of the time that we spend in ISB. Our family turned out to be owners of diversified businesses ranging from Real Estate to Welding products. I asked my aikya parent


" So Sir, what's your latest project"


" Oh, I and a partner of mine bought about 77 acres of land recently, so we are planning to build a mall"





I guess rich people just build malls when they are bored...mere mortals like me quit everything they have, take a loan of 15 Lacs and come and do the toughest course in the world !

A Day in My Life

0530 hrs: My new Red Merc is cruising beautifully along the Spanish coastline....!! Sylvia, my Spanish secretary…is smiling…saying something…cant hear her properly…someone honks…honks again…
0630 hrs: No.. its not a honk its my alarm bell.. Grrr.. I immediately shut it down.. the Spanish islands reappear… although intermittently.. like a flickering TV..
0700 hrs: Bell rings louder now....I wake up again.. look at the time and go back hoping the islands will come..shucks…no more Spain coming…Background sound.. “Papa… Utho papa Utho...Chai tayyar hai.....”
0715 hrs: Wife gives last call for making it to 0815 class…!! Good God.. cant a man sleep for a few hours peacefully…!!!
0725 hrs: Sleep walk… to living room… say hello to wify and kiddo..!! Sip tea… check out news..
0735 hrs: Have had a 10 minute boxing fight with my two and half year old who is busy watching CN....! Of course he does not like my intruding his very important ‘Pockeymon’ show and changing channels to news ones..
0810 hrs: Ready for the day…Corp Finance Class at 0815.. dash across the campus for making it in time.. “these watches are all going wrong.. only my watch is correct and there is still 37 seconds left..!!!”
0814 hrs: Excited and all ready for a new class.. Prof looks eager to take the class.. smiling…. more smiling… am thinking …“why is he smiling.. is there a surprise coming up.. am I adequately prepared.. ?” TA as usual is at his politest best.. deciding whether to distribute the slides or not…. junta is turning in bleary red eyed…. with coffee and water in hand.. “Shucks…why cant we have afternoon classes…huh..!!!!!”
0845 hrs: Class is touching crescendo.. and my attention level is starting to bank on the leeward side of the normal distribution curve now.. going down fast….have caught a few other people dozing off too.. Prof is still at his enthusiastic best.. orchestrating the case discussion like an artist..
0910 hrs: Finally.. the much awaited coffee break..!! While the learned few decide to pounce on a visibly exhausted prof for a ‘insightful’ chat just to ‘show off’ their tremendous international consulting experience… and ask ridiculously absurd questions… the lesser mortals like me… gather outside in the balcony.. cursing the world…!!
1015 hrs: Class is over.. am in some kind of a mental trance.. still in my seat.. wondering… what exactly did he teach and who in the world is going to help me understand all of that… someone shakes me.. “Cmon Man. Time to go to the next session..!”
1045 hrs: One more quick coffee down, plus financial times, economic times skimmed through in LRC…run for next class.. “Operations Management”.. “God..!! when will I ever learn which side is AC2..??”
1115 hrs: Am day dreaming about my venture… amidst class discussions..!! Done a few ‘seemingly important’ Class Protocols (CP’s)..so am now relaxing… very satisfied with myself and my class participation.. !!! Something wrong with my ears… cant hear properly what he is saying…!!
1245 hrs: Done with lectures for the day.. deciding whether sleep is better or shall I start pre reads for tomorrow or shall I continue research on my business plan..?? Decide to research.. so googling away to glory….
1345 hrs: Met with a few friends at the atrium.. discussed the deeper meaning of life.. about our existence @ ISB .. why CP is good and why it is not good..!! PaEV / ELP… the new Prof and his teaching style.. blah blah blah..!! Had my fill of small talk for the day.. so headed back for SV..a happy man!!
1600 hrs: Lunch done.... made ‘boats’ and ‘planes’ with paper and scissors with my son.. he is super-excited.. running all over the house with his new plane that Daddy dear has made…!! Its raining outside..!! Still deciding on whether I should start with pre reads…!! Naahhh.. there’s so much time left…before tomorrow’s sessions..!!!! Decide to have chai pani with biwi bachhe in the balcony..!!
1700 hrs: Finally hit the books..!! Gotcha finish something before the 7 pm speaker series club session.
1900 hrs: Guest Speaker session in AC4 LT: Talk on “Mergers and Acquisitions – The Indian Perspective” by a US visiting Professor. Went on till 2030 hrs..!! Realized my utter lack of in-depth knowledge on the subject.. mental notes to read up more on this…!!
2200 hrs: Somehow finished reading 2 articles.., 2 chapters.., spammed the batch…, made case notes.. highlighted each paragraph of the book yellow… and now its time for dinner..
2245 hrs: Dinner done.. caught up with wife on day’s events.. and was adequately ‘informed’ on how little I am a help with chores in the home.. Time for some friendly gapshap.. so hop over to neighbours place.. to discuss gyan… and plan out the movie that we are shooting on campus for which auditions are underway..!
2400 hrs: Went through the script of the movie.. its coming out great!! But.. oh God!! Already Midnite..!!! 2 assignments yet to be done..!!! Where is my study group..??? Why haven’t they called yet?? Frantic phone calls.. helter skelter…pandemonium..
0245 hrs: Somehow completed the assignment….thinking now… ‘if only I could have devoted lil more time…the assignment would have been so gr8!!!”
0300 hrs: Orkutted.. Gmailed…Yahood…Xtra Googlied… and finally crashed..!! (ohh forgot.. alarm set up for early morn… tomorrow 30 mins extra of sleep as class starts at 0845 J ..) Bye bye isb world welcome virtual world…so.. eh… which island in Spain where you talking about?? What..$12m..?? Make it 8 and u have a deal.. ok……………….?

Simple Problem - Simpler solution.

Many of us, in ISB, want to have a cup of coffee in the midst of a class break. Many a times, however, we are unable to have the coffee for the want of a five rupee coin.

We, in our class one day, were discussing possible ways of addressing the problem and the guys came up with several ‘innovative’ solutions. One of the guys suggested starting a new business venture in the ‘Supply Chain Management’ of five rupee coins, and another suggested a corporate alliance with the ‘D’ company to ‘clean-up’ the Coffee Vending machines of all their ‘belongings.’ The best and the most innovative solution, however, was quite obviously the one that I suggested ;-) and the one that finally got implemented. This solution is that of a simple ‘Coin-Box.’

The ‘Coin-Box’ solution has now been under implementation, in our class, for the past three weeks. The solution is, as the name itself suggests, a simple box filled with around fifty to hundred coins of five rupees each. The box is kept in the class daily and the students are free to draw any number of coins out of the box after putting an equivalent amount of money back into the box. The beauty of the solution is that there is no one who monitors the process or guards the box.

The 'Coin- Box' lying just like that - with no one guarding it.

How long then can the ‘Coin-Box’ continue without suffering losses or without being ‘looted’ if there is no one to watch the ‘cash-flow’ in and out of the box? Well, as pointed out earlier, the ‘Coin-Box’ has successfully been under implementation for the past three weeks (we actually have Rs. 25 extra in the box at the end of three weeks!) and I don’t see any reason for this to change. The ‘Coin-Box’ will continue to serve the students of our section (and possibly others) as long as they continue to serve the box by living up to the trust and confidence posed in them. And the chances, if any, of someone betraying the trust of the whole group look really slim to me.

Therefore, the ‘Coin-Box’ shall continue to quench the thirst of 5 (Ru)P’s in the class break to facilitate the students’ understanding of the other (4)P’s and (3)C’s in the class.

There is also, perhaps, much greater significance of this solution/experiment than the mere provisioning of five rupee coins for the purchase of coffee. There is, in my view, a very important lesson that can be drawn from the success of this experiment - that sometimes, less reliance on an elaborate set of rules and regulations that betray a sense of mistrust in the members of the group and more reliance on the general ‘goodness’ and honesty of the members can be a better of way of running a system effectively.

If the previous sentence didn’t make much sense, dismiss it as some mumbo-jumbo and continue to have your coffee. Any time you find yourself constrained for five rupee coins - just find the LT where the class of our section is held. And to answer which is our section, the class of which you have to look for, you just have to answer another simple question – “Which is the section that really rocks?” Answer this question and thou shall have thine answer.

P.S. Please do not take the ‘section’ comments seriously. They were added just to add a dash of humor. Happy Coffeeing!

The 'Coin-Box' in action

Term 1@ISB

Statutory Warning to all future ISB aspirants:

You shall enter the ISB Danger zone at your own risk. Management will take no responsibility for loss of sanity due to sleep deprivation. You will be the official prey of predators, mostly imported from other continents, otherwise known as Professors, who will try to roast you both inside and outside the classroom. The inmates of this zone are prone to bouts of mass hysteria, especially around birthdays, resulting in involuntary dunking into the pool.

All future applicants to ISB are adviced to check out this great piece of work by Dr Dhawal Jhamb. Dont say later that we did not warn you!



cheers,
C,
On behalf of ISB - Class of 2008