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We had the last class of Investment Analysis (IA) taken by Prof. Subra (PS) today. When asked about the exam, this is what he had to say: "There will be 10 problems. Extensive partial credit will be given. So be sure to show your workings. In case you do not have workings to show, write lyrics of some good song. As long as the lyrics are accurate, you will be given good marks" :-) Here is what he had to say to some students on hearing that they couldn't manage to get subjects of their choice after the first round of bidding: "Arey yaar .... 15 lakh diya tumne aur tumhare choice ka subject bhi nahi mila?" (You couldn't get subjects of your choice even after giving 15 lacs?). *********************** End of 3rd edition ******************** Some sections have classes starting at 8:30AM and many people are unable to have breakfast before that. So Sarovar, the people who look after the dining/catering facilities, upon request from the student community, decided to keep breakfast open till 11AM on weekdays. During the MO session on "tie" and innovation about which I had written sometime back, Prof Tina Dacin gave the section with whom she had the 8:30AM class 30 minutes time to assemble in their study groups and discuss and come up with innovative ideas about what better to make of a tie. After about 10 minutes, she goes straight downstairs near the dining hall and sees many students happily munching their breakfast !!! They say that the first word a child speaks is "mother". What do you think would be the first word your child will speak if it grows up at ISB? Here is a datapoint .... the first word S's child spoke was "Hi"!!! She keeps saying that rather cutely. She has also learnt to speak "Bye". and is yet to pick up words like "mom", "dad" etc.. The day ahead looks tightly packed. Head of Global Human Resources (HR), Novartis International and other Novartis people are coming to ISB today and will be addressing the students at 1:15PM. There is a music competition late in the evening between the sections and final rehearsal sessions are scheduled before that. Term-end exams are there next week and I am yet to give some thought to what to do about that. posted by Ram at 1:00 PM 1 comments  
We had a farewell party for all the profs who taught us this term today. Here are a few snaps from the same ......  Prof. Mudit Kapoor (Taught GSB for the first time in ISB and was probably one of the best profs of this term along with Prof. Tina Dacin. A very humble and friendly person)  Prof. Tina Dacin (probably the best prof we got this term; taught us the Management of Organizations "MO" course. Very humorous).  The two MO profs - Prof. S. Ramnarayan & Prof. Tina Dacin  He is our man - probably the most loved prof this term. His Hindi is awesome. Yes !!! You guessed right. He is Prof. A. Subrahmanyam popularly known as Prof. Subra.  Last but not the least, here is one of the cakes that was cut. This is also the one I had a bite from. posted by Ram at 11:53 PM 0 comments
Prof Subra (PS) is teaching in class when suddenly someone's mobile phone rings. Here is PS's reaction: "Arey ... gaane bajaao yaar ... aur mazaa aayega ... yeh kya puraane ringtone bajaate rehte ho ... kuch nayaa download karo naa .... kajraare kajraare mere kaare kaare naina" (roughly translated into English: play some songs dude ... it will be more fun ... why do you have these old ringtones .... download something new ... like the song kajraare kajraare ....) ************ End of 2nd edition of Subra Times *********************** I had to attend today's MO lecture with another section (Section C) because of some other ELP (project) related commitments during the time our lecture was scheduled to happen today. Every section here has these CP kings and queens who are renowned for their class participation. Had heard a lot about some people in section C. Got to experience them first hand today. But I still think nobody can beat our section in the time spent in discussions in class, be it in useful ones or not. There is this course called SAIT (Strategic Analysis of Information Technology) this term where the prof has a very minimal role to play. Most of the lecture time goes in seeing fellow classmates doing presentations on topics allotted to them. As soon as a presentation ends, some 70 hands shoot up in the air to ask questions. You might think - "wow .... how interested people are in what is going on". Well ... this might be true to some extent with some people ... but the majority are just asking questions because there is a TA sitting there who puts a tick mark against their name if they just speak something in class without giving a shit as to whether it is relevant to the discussion happening and whether at all there is any value addition to the class. These tick marks count to a big chunk of the total marks allocated to the course. Its pathetic to see some people do such silly things just for the sake of some additional marks. There are of course some who are really impressive when they speak and almost always add something new to the discussion or ask some very relevant questions. One such person is Y. The two questions he asked in last lecture of GSB were really good and were not the ones that would come to anyone's mind on just listening to the topic in discussion. Prof. Tina Dacin, who is teaching us MO this term is very humorous. Here is an incident that happened in the class with Section C today ..... Prof: What do you think might be some reasons people might be uncomfortable with having power? N(student): With power comes responsibility .... Prof: Oh ... so you have seen "Spiderman 2" !! (In Spiderman 2, Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker, the spiderman - "With great power comes great responsibility") posted by Ram at 2:03 PM 2 comments
The bidding for Term 5 electives has begun and needs to be completed by noon tomorrow. We have a total of about 4000 points and we are free to allot as much as we want to each of the courses subject to the facts that we do need some points out of the 4000 for the rest of the terms, and we need to hold a minimum number of bidding points as balance to be used in the other terms. There are many other rules as well. We will soon come to know what electives we have been allotted. Spam mails at ISB sent by students are very common during the day before any exam. A separate spam thread has started today where people are letting their imagination run wild on the topic of bidding. A few days back, just a day before the MO mid-term exams, people let their creative juices flow and what resulted from the spam mails was an awesome poem-like thing. You can read most parts of it at Raghini's or Vaibhav's blogs. Need to decide what to bid on and how much to bid for each of the chosen courses and also need to work on an assignment for tomorrow. So thats it for this time .... ta.... ta... posted by Ram at 8:24 PM 0 comments
"The Tie" was the topic of a 30 minute exercise that Prof. Tina Dacin asked us to do in groups in the class on "Innovation" today. The objective was to take a tie and come up with as many ways as possible to improve it. Here are a few ideas that the students came up with:
There were many more ideas. Some more notable ones were: Ties that come imprinted on the shirt... this idea was shot down as it would kill the tie manufacturer and help the shirt manufacturer. Tie with a vibrator .... the prof immediately stopped the person who suggested this and said she doesn't want to hear any more about this idea ;-) . She told she had conducted this exercise in Italy and students there had come up with a tie that could hold contraceptives. She then started humorously comparing thoughts of students in Italy to those of students in India. The student, when finally given an opportunity to speak, clarified that what he meant was a tie with a vibrator at the lower end that could shape your abs - Ab Rocker Tie !! There was also a suggestion about a Thong Tie - a tie that could be stretched into a thong and worn. The discussion went on to how some guy in Edison's invention factory had come up with an innovative way of screwing the bulb into the holder to hold it in place. Then the prof talked about an innovative way of cost cutting in toilets in a Netherland airport. It seems they etched the outline of a fly inside men's urinals and that resulted in less spillage and less cleaning to be done. It was found out that people started aiming at the fly and that helped control the spillage !!! I think its high time I shifted to some other topic or ended this post. Here is one last thing for today ... in our GSB class today, there was a presentation about some UN index that relates to human suffering and somewhere I think in the talk there was a mention about satisfaction levels. So here is a question from P when the presentation ends.... P: "How do apply this to sadhus and fakirs who are already self-actualized?" Good use of Maslow's hiererachy of needs ???? posted by Ram at 8:30 PM 2 comments
This is probably the worst weekend of Term 4. There is so much work to be done and so many assignments to be completed. Yet a few of us didn't feel like doing anything related to acads yesterday and went to Prasads, the movie theatre in the city. Reached there only to find out that all shows were running housefull and there was no chance of getting tickets for "Salaam Namaste". We decided to wait there. The move paid off and we managed to get a few tele-booking tickets of the hindi movie "Chocolate" that had not been claimed till then. Movie was total timepass and in my opinion, probably not worth wasting one's bucks on. BCG chairman was on campus. I couldn't attend his session but heard that he was in awe after seeing the facilities at ISB and said that he had not seen such an infrastructure in any other academic institution in the world he had been to. Dr. C. Rangarajan, former governor of Reserve Bank of India is taking a course on "Macroeconomics and Policy Instruments". Classes usually happen during the weekends. Who better to learn the subject from than the person who has been there, done it all. Unfortunately I am not taking the course because of so many other things in which I am tied up. Heard my batchmates saying that every single line of what he spoke in the class today was worth noting down and worth reflecting upon later. Section B had an awesome party on Friday. People were supposed to wear ethnic dresses. More details on Raghini and Ramki's blogs. They even had a "hukkah" making the rounds (in case you are not familiar with a hukkah, please google it out). Kudos to Section B class rep "D". We call him dada. He is one hell of an enthusiastic guy and keeps himself involved in almost all sports and extra-curricular activities that happen on campus. Dada - you are just too good. posted by Ram at 8:55 PM 2 comments
An opportunity to do that was provided by the MO mid term paper today. There were 15 subjective questions to be answered in 75 minutes. There were questions like "decision making .... xyz ... abc .. blah .. blah .. blah .... do you agree or not?" I felt like writing "I agree, but not completely". Then there was a question which went something like "why decision makers in organizations might be allowed to make mistakes while people undergoing management education ...... or undergoing training to become managers are penalized for mistakes" and I felt like writing "because there are no TAs (teaching assistants) in organizations but there are TAs in educational institutions like ISB". Its really sad the way the first half of the course was taught to us. The only respite is that Prof. Tina Dacin who is teaching the second half of the course is doing an excellent job. Its amazing to note how the course suddenly doesn't seem all that boring now. This is bound to be another busy weekend with so many assignments and so many talks and events happening. Mr John Clarkeson, Chairman, The Boston Consulting Group, Worldwide along with BCG India delegation would be visiting ISB today and will be addressing us in the evening. There is an inter-section talent hunt being organized by the music club on Sunday. There is a competition being organized by the Marketing Club on Sunday. Nothing much to add for the time being .... better get some sleep before the 2:30PM SAIT lecture. I am still searching for some takeaways from the SAIT course. posted by Ram at 12:30 PM 3 comments
The Arts & Creativity Club organized a four day pottery workshop where students/spouses/staff/children could work on the potters wheel, guided by an expert, and see their imagination take shape. The workshop ended today. Each individual's creations will be air dried, fired and returned back so that they can then be painted and kept as memoirs. We have new profs for the last 5 classes of MO and GSB. Prof Tina Dacin is very lively and scores much above the earlier prof in teaching MO. She is able to involve students even when taking very dull topics and is very sharp too. She even noticed the sheet of paper that was being circulated around by students asking for comments on the first female prof of the core terms. The new prof for GSB is good but somehow I liked the earlier one, Prof. Mudit Kapoor a lot more. The new prof Dr. A.K. Shiva Kumar has prescribed so many articles for reading that we would reach our retirement age by the time we come to the end of it all. For both GSB and SAIT, students have to do presentations daily while the profs get to watch and have all the fun. The latest gossip making rounds is that its the profs who are doing the free riding this term. We have the MO mid term this Friday. Except for IA, all other subjects are faffy. The best story writer is going to get the maximum marks provided keywords in his/her story match those in the copy given to the TAs who will correct the paper. Prof Subra continues to rock with his multilingual comments. More on him in the posts to come. Bringing this post to an end with a few snaps from the pottery workshop. This is not me but CFO standing with his creations. His shirt reads "Overeducated .. Underemployed"..... which essentially means that we need to give him more work w.r.t to our assignments :) ..... just kidding .... this dude is so quick with everything that he finishes things off even before the bulb starts glowing in my top storey. posted by Ram at 9:00 PM 0 comments
CFO with his creations 
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CFO at the potter's wheel ... doesn't he look like a professional? 
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Here is the Google Earth view of my student village (hostel). The red X is where my apartment is located. The tall tower that stands out in the student village can also be distinctly seen in this image (labeled as Tower). 
posted by Ram at 1:09 PM 0 comments
Here is a Google Earth view of a part of the ISB campus. This satellite image is a bit old and some buildings are missing. This was sent to us by our Assistant Director, Co-curricular activities, who happens to be an alum. In the center is the main acad block. The structure to the left of it in the NW direction is my student village. 
posted by Ram at 1:02 PM 2 comments
Onam was celebrated yesterday on campus and today we had cultural programmes organized in continuation of the celebrations. To see a brief write-up on onam, please click here. The programmes were awesome. There was a short skit depicting the origins of onam. The "Kaikottikali" dance was beautifully coreographed. The cultural programmes were followed by a screening of the critically acclaimed malayalam movie "Manichitrathazhu" with English subtitles (for people like me who do not know the language). Here are a few snaps ....... Pookalam (flower arrangement) - prepared by students 
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King Maveli's Court 
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Guru Shukracharya (aka Giksa in blogger circles) 
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King Maveli offering his head as the third step to Vamana (avatar of Lord Vishnu) 
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The "Kaikottikali" Dance 
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The Tiger of "Pulikali" - he was also our ace compere 
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Pulikali - Hunter rejoices after hunting the tiger 
posted by Ram at 8:25 PM 0 comments
Prof Subra (hereafter refered to as PS) of the Investment Analysis fame continues to rock the campus. Heard this today at the breakfast table from my batchmates in another section ... can't vouch for the "facts" though: PS after explaining some doubt to a student: "Arey bhai ... tumhare paas 100 crore rupye hain aur usme se tum 20 crore nikaal dete ho .. toh kitne bache ... 80 crore naa? Hindi bhi nahi samajhte kya?" Here is what he told to some other person "Are yaar ... yeh ek aur namoona aa gaya" ... and the funny part is that two non-Hindi speaking people were apparently heard discussing: "Arey ye namoona kya hota hai?" to which the other person replies: "Namoona means example". PS continues his teaching @ speed of light and the MO (management of organizations) prof continues teaching @ speed of bullock carts. Bodies start falling all around me as soon as the MO lecture starts ( I mean people start sleeping). The rest who are awake are hooked on to the net or busy playing games on their laptops. People who have forgotten to bring their laptops for the 2:30PM MO lecture keep cursing themselves until they are put to sleep by the sweet words of the prof. A teacher can change the way you approach a subject, for the good or for the bad. A live example of the first kind is Prof. Mudit Kapoor who took the first five classes of "Government, Business and Society" for us this term. A simple, humble and very friendly person, his approach to teaching a subject probably as dull as MO was appreciated by most students. This is the first time he is teaching this course and I thought he did a fantastic job. He kept most people in the class interested and contributing to the discussions that happened even though there were no marks for class participation in his subject. Diverting from the usual stories, here is something for the music fans: Biography of veteran music and performing arts critic Subbudu has been released. To read more about the book and about the critic, click here. I had the chance to hear Mr. Subbudu 4-5 times in New Delhi and his speeches were all full of humor. Music and dance can contain terrorism says President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Click here to read more. In a happy mood as today is the birthday of a very close friend of mine. My best friend's birthday also falls this month. The pity is that we won't be able to celebrate it together this time as he has gone off to the US. And finally, wishing u all a HAPPY ONAM !!!! posted by Ram at 6:30 PM 3 comments
A few more snaps taken on the immersion (visarjan) day. Thanks to CFO for the snaps. Ganeshji Idol 
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Ganeshji Idol 
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Immersion 
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We had an awesome talk today on "Corporate Governance and Ethics: lessons for Indian entrepreneurs" by Sri T.N.Seshan, former Chief Election Commisioner of India and orator par excellence. He was excellent in acads too ..... * Masters degree in Physics at the age of 19 with a gold medal * Police exam in 1953 - all India topper ... didn't join * IAS exam in 1954 - all India topper ... decided to take up civil services for a career Some key takeaways: "That which sustains human life is dharma. The ability to distinguish between dharma and adharma i.e, what is wrong and what is right, is only present in humans. Two cows watch a banana peel on the road; they don't say you saw it first, you take it. Dharma is at the center of all of it. It is my fervent prayer that you should learn dharma. You should learn ethics. Not because you fear getting caught .... I hope you will have time to think about it. The ability to say no is not available to the lowest fellow. It is available to the highest fellow. If the highest fellow sets the tone of the organization by saying no to corrupt means, then you may only be say an assistant engineer or an assistant manager or whatever you are called, you don't have any difficulty .......... none of you are going to occupy positions of inferiority, you are going to be occupying positions of superiority. In that place it is easier to set the tone. The higher you are, the easier it is to set the tone. Set the tone. Set the tone. Set the tone. You never never give up. Never .... Those who have licked the boots of all their superiors have come to no great good" Seshan Humor: "When you don't have anything worth to say in someone's bio-data, you say Mr.Seshan needs no introduction" (after he was introduced to the class by saying he needs no introduction) "Your standing presence is forbidding" (To a faculty who was standing) "Palghat brahmin comes in four varieties: they are cooks, crooks, civil servants and musicians. I am every one of these." "I was made in-charge of forest, environment and wildlife. My wife called me up at Toronto where I had gone to procure some equipment for the dept of space. I had a colleague called Das . He was posted secretary, culture and I was posted secretary, environment and wildlife . My wife calls me up and says Das got culture and you got vulture." "They tried everything in the book and outside to throw me out .... they tried to impeach me ... even that idea was given to ******** by me. I told him: There are three ways in which you can get rid of me. One is for me to resign in my own handwriting, the other is for god is to take an active hand and the third is to impeach. Since I was not willing to resign and god wasn't helping him, they decided to impeach me. They did not even know how to write an impeachment petition .... so I offered to the opposition MP saying that I will write an impeachment petition" "I remitted office in 1996. What have I been doing since then? I have been inflicting myself on educational institutions". "Alexander came, Porus came and Rukhsana came. Do you know who was Rukhsana? She was Alexander's wife" (when talking about the History of India) "Where there is sugar, there will be a fly. You can swat one fly but not all. The more flies you swat, the more will appear" (when talking about corruption and about Chanakya's work in Arthashastra) "That was the result of some gentleman who tried to rewrite my history and ended up rewriting my geography. Secular or otherwise" "I need to cover 2500 years in 5 minutes .... I have to move fast ... no no .. and then BC became AD ... and then there was Shahrukh Khan as Ashoka .." "The Indian kings .. they were fighting each other, marrying each other or marrying and fighting each other" "3M is a little bit difficult if the state and the people both start printing money" "Akbar decided that there were 2 simple elementary formulae for uniting India: one, he would marry any Rajput princess found wandering; two, he created a religion in which chapter one was from hinduism, chapter two from islam, chapter three from hinduism, chapter four from islam." "Then came Aurangazeb who was the first true Taliban. He disliked women. He disliked music. He disliked his brothers .... he said women did not exist ... most children were born by divine concepts" "The portugese had very little possessions ... but they owned whole of Bombay island ... they gave it away as dowry to get their princess married to the prince of England ... must have been a ugly princess ... just imagine getting the whole of Bombay in dowry ... my father in law didn't even give me a plot of 40 by 40" "From a country that did not produce more than 3/4ths of an inch cotton today we produce 1 1/2 inch staple cotton so that the most unlikely shapes can go around in denims and jeans. Have you seen the unlikely shapes walking around in denims and jeans?" "The chinese population statistics are as dependable as any of their other statistics. The chinese statistics are always 300% higher. They don't tell you higher than what" "He was not particularly strong in English and I was not particularly strong in Hindi. Yet I wrote in my file and sent him ... hoga hoga badnaam hoga lekin hoga badnaam aapka" "One member (MP) one day asked a question deliberately ... how much lotonium do we produce? I said ....... we are not aware of a material called lotonium, therefore we do not produce it .... I knew that the only way to answer them is to come down to their level" "There was once a health minister of a state who said: kamaal hai, idhar log baithe hain jinke paas khoon nahi hai and idhar log baithe hain jinka blood pressure high hai. Inse khoon nikaalke unko dete kyon nahi?" "If a generalist tends to ask questions which he has no business to get into, then of course the generalist will be a pain in the anatomy" posted by Ram at 5:09 PM 4 comments
T.N.Seshan @ ISB 
posted by Ram at 5:01 PM 0 comments
We had a party here yesterday in complete retro style. People had to dress up in 70's style. Alums who were present in Hyderabad were also invited and there was a small informal meet with them before the party. When you have 350 odd in your batch, this is what can happen ..... K meets A at the informal meet with the alums and both start talking. Each of them is thinking that the other guy is an alum and both continue talking for some time before they realize that they are both in the current batch !!!! We also had a Melody Nite before the party began where tam numbers of veteran composer Ilayaraja were sung by students. Had loads of fun. Here are a few snaps from the Retro Nite ...... posted by Ram at 4:10 PM 0 comments
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As written in my previous post, I had the good fortune of attending two pujas on Ganesh Chaturthi day - a Maharashtrian style puja early morning & in the evening and a Andhra style puja in the morning. In the Maharashtrian puja, we had the idol installation in the morning and will be having "aarti" regularly till Sunday when the idol will be finally taken to the lake in the campus for immersion. Missed out on getting the "prasad" post puja as a few of us had to rush to attend the 8:30AM lecture. But got really tasty prasad after the Andhra style puja, thanks to "S" and his wife. Reminded me of the puja back home and the delicious "kolakattai" (tamil word for a sweet dish) which mom would prepare. Another good part about this Ganesh Chaturthi was that Sarovar, for the first time in ages, prepared a good dinner, that too Maharashtrian style. Some of us also had "avani avittam" last month on Rakshabandhan day when we had the "sacred thread (janevu in hindi) " changing ceremony. Investment Analysis class just got over and I have become obsessed with this guy. Remember ... last term it was PBC. This Prof "Subra" is too good. No one can probably compete with him in teaching at such a fast pace and yet make most of the people understand what he is saying. The real fun is when someone asks him some doubt and he starts off in Hindi. Here are a few things he spoke in class today ...... "arre .. pehle hi ham log confused hain ... aap aur confuse kar rahe ho" (after a student asked his query) "funda saaf ho gaya kya" (after answering a query) "as munnabhai says .... tension nahi lene ka ... exam mein sab ho jaayega" (after doing a long numerical) "zaraa thande ho lein" (after a long query asked by a student) posted by Ram at 1:54 PM 0 comments
Had the fortune of attending the puja in both Maharashtrian and Andhra brahmin styles. Will write in detail about the experience in the next post. Here are some snaps .... "Techno" guruji performing the puja (in Maharashtrian style) 
posted by Ram at 9:01 PM 1 comments
Lord Ganesha's idol  Ganpati Bappa Morya !!! posted by Ram at 8:59 PM 0 comments
ISB is participating at the following locations in the WMBA Tour in the US: Date Time VenueMr. V.K.Menon, Director, Admissions will be there at these venues. Moving on to other news from the campus ... we had the first lectures of the remaining two subjects of Term 4 today. Overall, I felt impressed only by Prof. A. Subrahmanyam (Subra) who is teaching us Investment Analysis and Prof Mudit Kapoor who is teaching us Government, Society and Business. Prof Subra, as he is called, is really energetic, cute, speaks at the speed of light and looks to be thoroughly knowledgeable. Even though he spoke so fast, I could understand every bit of whatever he said. This may be because he essentially just did a recap of whatever we had learnt last term. The funny part was whenever someone would ask him a doubt. He would suddenly resort to Hindi and say "Dekhiye Aisa Hai ...." and then continue for some time even telling numbers used in illustrations in Hindi. The speed at which he went about his task and his non-stop speech reminded me of the Maruti ad which came a few years ago where the cute little surdie boy responds to his father's statement "oye .. bas kar chote (stop it kid)" by saying "ki karaan papa, petrol khatam hi nahi honda (what shall I do dad, the car doesn't run out of petrol at all)" In the Management of Organizations class which I felt was one of the most boring classes we have had till date here, a case discussion was going on and a student suddenly asked a question. Prof S. Ramnarayan responded "Which case are you refering to?" which had the entire class burst out laughing :) He then quickly modified his words to "Which particular instance are you refering to?". The case was about a guy having trouble managing things at his workplace. Suggestions from students on what the guy should do to manage things better included going to a pub with the people he had differences with and settling it out there, having a shark among the fish (which was some really insightful comment by "P" as always ... I think he meant having someone to make people work hard and fire people if they were not performing) etc.. There is a special Marathi dinner tomorrow on the occasion of "Ganesh Chaturthi". It will be a welcome change as dinner these days has just gone from bad to worse. Some students were planning to celebrate the festival here. Am not aware of the latest on that and on whether "Ganeshji" will be dunked on campus. If not that Ganeshji, we will surely try our best to dunk a student by the same name. posted by Ram at 5:29 PM 2 comments
We had the first class of Term 4 today - "Government Society and Business" by Prof. Mudit Kapoor. The topic of discussion was institutions and institution building. Found Prof Kapoor to be a very friendly and gentle person. He plays cricket with the students regularly and was the star performer in the last match we students had against the staff & facutly. Good news from the class is that we will have a take-home mid term exam and the question has been already given to us in class today. The schedule this term is very hectic .... so what ... tell me some new thing dude. Well the new thing is that end term exams now happen in the fifth week itself (usually they happen in the 6th week) so that people doing ELPs (projects) get time to go & meet their client(s). Its gala time for people who haven't taken ELPs. They get to meet their near and dear ones and stay for a longer time than the 3-4 days they get usually in the term breaks. Unfortunately I am in the former category, so no term break again for me. Thoughts of going home do come during the term breaks. But, I have really become used to this place now and it has sort of become like a home for me. I generally do get attached to places. I did get attached to my office a lot and wouldn't have probably left it had the MBA bug not bitten me. Same goes for this place .... no .. no ... I don't mean I intend to repeat the program next year too. In the classroom, the view from last row is very good ... I can see the entire class and see who is doing what. But it is not very conducive to learning. Its tough to keep oneself awake especially when so many classes happen on a single day. Also, sleep is like a contagious disease. It spreads quickly from person to person. So if one guy sleeps, his neighbour also starts sleeping and the chain grows. There is a long queue in front of the coffee machine everytime we get a break. Would end this post with 2 laws (of economics?) that Prof Mudit Kapoor shared with us: 1) To every economist, there is an equal and opposite economist 2) Both of them (the economists) are wrong. Happy Teachers Day !!! posted by Ram at 11:55 AM 2 comments
Before I knew, this term break is also getting to be over. Most of the time was spent in the business presentation (BP) workshop, LDP assignment and ELP classes. Went to the city on Friday and watched the hindi movie "No Entry". It was what you would call "a total timepass" with some good comedy at the end. Watched another movie "Maine Pyar Kyon Kiya" yesterday. After doing the LDP classes where there was a lot of analysis of movies, it was very difficult trying to be the pre-ISB guy watching a bollywood movie and really hard to try not to think what leadership qualitities the hero or the heroine has, what would the lyricist have thought before penning down this song etc... What happens in ISB during the term breaks? Some common things that do tend to happen everytime are:
News spreads like forest fire on campus, be it of significance to all or not. The other day I heard at the breakfast table that one of the guys from our section whose is from the US was planning to visit his family there in the next term break. I met him outside the dining hall and he was shocked to know that while he was still toying with the idea, the entire campus already knew about it. Seating arrangement for Term 4 has been released and I am sitting in the last row. Last term I was in the first row, though in one corner of the class. Had to stay wide awake and thus learnt a lot from the lectures. HSBC scholarship applications were invited last term and a few students have been shortlisted. Many of them have accounting or finance background pre-ISB. Citigroup scholarship application deadline is over and results from the first shortlisting exercise will come out soon. There are a lot of scholarships available exclusively for the female students too. posted by Ram at 12:29 PM 2 comments
Term 4 begins on Monday. The courses this term and the professors teaching them are as follows: 1) Investment Analysis - Prof. A Subrahmanyam (UCLA) 2) Management of Organisations - Prof. S.Ramnarayan (ISB + Director {Change Management}, Center for Good Governance) / Prof. Tina Dacin (Queen's School of Business) 3) Strategic Analysis of Information Technology - Prof. Rajiv Banker (Fox School of Business, Temple University) 4) Government, Society & Business - Prof. Mudit Kapoor (ISB) & Prof. A K Shivakumar (Independent) Click on the appropriate links to view faculty details. posted by Ram at 5:04 PM 1 comments
Please click here to access the petition and know more about it. This will take you to Bharani's blog where it is posted. Had 2 days of business presentation workshops. Whatever little energy was left has been consumed by the LDP assignment. Have to next start doing the ELP related assignments. Planning to relax for as much time as possible over the weekend. Term 4 will start from Monday onwards. No energy left to type anything else ..... posted by Ram at 10:48 AM 0 comments
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