One thing that I liked while working are the Friday lunches. Not only was it a relief from the bad food at the canteen (the food at the canteen has to be bad in a software company in India ) but it was also a great bonding experience and a chance to try out the different restaurants around the office. The best though was the first six months at work outside college when we had very less work. The weekend would start right on the Friday mornings. Not that I missed them but I just remembered those days when I went out with the team here today. It was my first Friday lunch with one of the teams I am interning with and it was a nice and different experience. We went to Bonifacio high street , which I would recommend for luxury shopping . Btw, I just go for food (esp donuts at Krispy Kreme) and not for any luxury shopping(I made a note of the ALDO accessory shop there though since I am searching for a good leather wrist band for long now) . The experience was different but expected. I know being an Indian among these Filipinos, most of the talk would be about comparing India and philippines. So, right from the time we left the office till we started running towards the office after the lunch because of a sudden rain , we compared as many things as we possibly could : the cable television, the cars, the export of milk, shopping habits of Filipinos (all Filipinos love shopping but lets just say women are worse), software jobs and salaries, telecom provider rates,Katrina Halili sex scandal and one Martial art the name of which I forgot. One of the conclusions of the discussion was that Philippines is an expensive country than India, something I found out the first day I entered this country. But it was an interesting discussion and a nice experience. The food was good too . We went to an Italian restaurant and I had a Seafood Cioppino.
Friday, June 05, 2009
20 ways to get and stay Happy
In this time of economic crisis there are many articles that offer help and guidance to people to keep themselves up. I found this article titled the same as this post in TIME and in fact found it interesting. It is from 2007 but has resurfaced again. It has some usual advice but some of them are different and interesting.
Count your blessings
Hear the Music
Snog. Canoodle. Get it On (Now it is getting interesting :)))
Nurture your spirituality
Move your body
Laugh Big
Do something nice for someone else
Make more money than you peers (I told ya it is different)
Seek Positive Emotion as a Path to success
Identify with your heritage and culture
Use a happy memory as a guide
Play the part of an optimist
Try new things
Tell your story to someone
Balance work and home
Keep expectations realistic (Be like the Danes)
Make time (avoid saying that you are always busy)
Visualize Happiness
Smile
Marry Happy (not necessarily the rich)
Thursday, June 04, 2009
You are an AIM MBA if….
1. You enter the school with the expectation that b-schools generally have big campuses when in fact you are already standing near the back gate
2. You experience the most authentic Indian MBA experience you can ever get
3. You have hardly been to Manila though you study at AIM, Manila.
4. You realize there are more secretaries than professors in the school
5. You have never seen two professors together
6. You have to get 80% to pass a subject
7. You realize ‘low pass’ means a Fail
8. You make up some imaginary illness and visit the in-house doctor and the nurse once a week
9. You think everyone except you in the class is always bull-shitting
10. You feel like punching the bank clerk when she says the words ‘debit’ and ‘credit’
11. Two weeks into the course you stop worrying about getting a job because you can get a job as an accountant anywhere
12. You can talk about restructuring ‘WalMart’ at 8 o’clock in the morning having got up only at 7:55am and without reading the case
13. You definitely know for sure that if your class is asked for “100 business ideas” , 98 will be about selling Indian food and that too inside the campus
14. You still believe Operations Management only applies to restaurants(esp japanese) and hospitals
15. You are surprised when Operations Management is mentioned as a quantitative subject in your score card
16. You realize that only Marketing is being taught under different subject names
17. but still you didn’t know what the 4Ps were when you got a marketing WAC
18. Your favourite subject is Strategy Management and Ethics and it is the same with everyone in class
19. You still wonder how ‘Class Participation’ is graded and think your ‘nationality’ matters.
20. You think ‘culture’ (or ‘kulchure’) of a company is the source of all problems in the corporate world
21. You can proudly say “I know many people from the Embassy”…whichever country you are from.
22. The coolest thing that is ever done on campus is throwing somebody in the pool, which by the way is banned
23. You feel you are really cool because you can sit by the pool side and booze till 8 o’clock in the morning
24. Your future wife/husband is shocked to see ‘Jessica’ and ‘Heidi’ in the 5 favourite names for naming your Indian daughter
25. ‘You still love the school’ but wonder Why
There is so much that we can add, so if you can think of something good put it in the comments and it will be added.
2. You experience the most authentic Indian MBA experience you can ever get
3. You have hardly been to Manila though you study at AIM, Manila.
4. You realize there are more secretaries than professors in the school
5. You have never seen two professors together
6. You have to get 80% to pass a subject
7. You realize ‘low pass’ means a Fail
8. You make up some imaginary illness and visit the in-house doctor and the nurse once a week
9. You think everyone except you in the class is always bull-shitting
10. You feel like punching the bank clerk when she says the words ‘debit’ and ‘credit’
11. Two weeks into the course you stop worrying about getting a job because you can get a job as an accountant anywhere
12. You can talk about restructuring ‘WalMart’ at 8 o’clock in the morning having got up only at 7:55am and without reading the case
13. You definitely know for sure that if your class is asked for “100 business ideas” , 98 will be about selling Indian food and that too inside the campus
14. You still believe Operations Management only applies to restaurants(esp japanese) and hospitals
15. You are surprised when Operations Management is mentioned as a quantitative subject in your score card
16. You realize that only Marketing is being taught under different subject names
17. but still you didn’t know what the 4Ps were when you got a marketing WAC
18. Your favourite subject is Strategy Management and Ethics and it is the same with everyone in class
19. You still wonder how ‘Class Participation’ is graded and think your ‘nationality’ matters.
20. You think ‘culture’ (or ‘kulchure’) of a company is the source of all problems in the corporate world
21. You can proudly say “I know many people from the Embassy”…whichever country you are from.
22. The coolest thing that is ever done on campus is throwing somebody in the pool, which by the way is banned
23. You feel you are really cool because you can sit by the pool side and booze till 8 o’clock in the morning
24. Your future wife/husband is shocked to see ‘Jessica’ and ‘Heidi’ in the 5 favourite names for naming your Indian daughter
25. ‘You still love the school’ but wonder Why
There is so much that we can add, so if you can think of something good put it in the comments and it will be added.
Friday, May 29, 2009
To finance or not to finance
Term 2 results are out and my results are what I would say “OK” and what my dorm mate says “decent” . I am consistently in the “OK” range and see myself in the same range for the next two terms too. Not that I am not trying to improve but here grades are so much tried to how much you speak in class and even after knowing about that and how much class participation matters, I just cant speak out on everything and anything in class. I speak enough to just to keep myself safe. It is not like I have a problem with speaking out but just I don’t see myself doing it so much like some o do here.
Just remembered that none of the famous bschool bloggers are toppers in their class( Wouldn’t they be studying instead of blogging). So, atleast I am in some catergory :)). Anyways , I am not struggling with MBA anymore and I am content with that. The internship is going good and the first experience of actually working in a company as a consultant is good. I think the thrill in being a consultant is starting from scratch. There is nothing at start and after so much of data collection, research , meeting people and analysis , you can see things coming together and you really enjoy it. I also realised something, I haven’t used any of the tools that I learnt in the strategy management course. It was a not a conscious decision not to use any, but I feel good in the sense that I didn’t use any tool for the sake of using them but still managing to do what is expected out for me.
I also chose the electives for Term3 two weeks back.I have always liked the course titles irrespective of what is being taught in those subjects :)). Here are the electives I have chosen.
New Management Concepts
Advertising and Sales Promotion Management
Corporate Finance and Financial Service
Sales Force and Distribution Effectiveness
Operations Strategy
Global Marketing Strategy and Policy
Technology Strategy
I am not doing any specialisation. Finance is something that I don’t want to do and Marketing is something that I can’t to . So I have taken a mix of GM, Finance and Marketing courses. The biggest dilemma was ofcourse whether to choose the one finance elective or not.There is something about finance in AIM. Everyone gets so agitated and worked up when the words “FM1” or “FM2” are mentioned. People are more scared about finance than swine flu here. I myself am not interested in finance but not for the reason that I can’t manage it but because I don’t like it. It is something I can do but don’t want to. I don’t like dealing with money so much. If you think I am saying ” I don’t like money”, you are so wrong. I said I don’t like dealing with and managing it. I used to hate my salary statements for the fact that they had too many line items. I always wanted a salary statement that said “Gross salary – Taxes = Net Income” . Now isn’t that simple? It is not that I don’t like chasing money but I don’t want to get into finance and chase money by actually chasing it. But the good thing about studying finance is that, everything I study in it is new and actually interesting. That’s the reason for the one finance elective.
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