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Class of 2006 Class of 2007 |
Yessssssss .... I am through with all my exams and have completed all acads related requirements here. So god willing and profs and academic services office permitting, I should graduate next week. So what am I doing right now .... relaxing, writing this blog entry and exploring the Yahoo Mail Beta that has come out with this new outlook kind of look. I feel it is much better than the older interface. I was thinking yesterday night about all the people who have made a difference to my life, if you could term it that way. Here are the names that came up immediately (apart from immediate family):
posted by Ram at 1:47 PM 9 comments  
Just came back from my last class at ISB - the last lecture of Managing Markets by Prof Nirmal Gupta. It was an awesome class, especially because of the case chosen for analysis today. It was a two page case after reading which none of us could have possibly predicted that such a detailed analysis could be done just from the data given. I just can't stop raving about how good Prof Nirmal Gupta is. I just feel like becoming his disciple for ever and just keep following him wherever he goes teaching. Of course my hugely negative bank balance and responsibilities towards kith and kin (duniya ke bandhan yaar ..... aur kya) won't allow me to do that. But one thing I would surely say to the next batch and to the batches after that, at the risk of being responsible for increasing the bid points for Prof Gupta's courses, is that his courses are a 'must take' if you have interest in sales/marketing. I have an exam tomorrow (the same course - Managing Markets) after which I will officially complete my term 8 and whatever is required of me from the acads side. Just waiting for that moment to arrive (not for the start of the exam but for its end). posted by Ram at 1:38 PM 6 comments
Here is a Section D collage that I prepared along with the section video and other stuff for the section party on Monday. It contains the snaps of all guys and gals of my section (D). You can zoom in to see the individual snaps. 
posted by Ram at 10:05 AM 4 comments
Yes ... its time for one more of the insightful ones made by our batch .... and this one happened as recently as yesterday in the international marketing class. I haven't taken this subject but got to know about the CP at the section party yesterday. So here goes ..... Professor shows a slide depicting a graph that shows a higher percentage of population in the age group of 15-60 yrs in China than in India. Student: Prof, this means that the reproducing population in China is more than that in India Prof (thinking): @##$#$^$%$#$%$#% posted by Ram at 2:01 AM 1 comments
Admissions dept threw a party on Friday for all the people who had been involved in the admissions process. Spouses were also invited. It was certainly one of the best parties we have had here at ISB, may be because the party was of a different type - it was a party cum cruise in Hussain Sagar lake, here in Hyderabad. Needless to say, we had lots and lots of fun. Booze, food and whatever else you could get in a party were all on the house and people got drunk real crazy ..... some were unable to distinguish the lake from the rest room on board :-) . We had lots of fun on the way back too with Rohit K a.k.a McBaba in the best of form. We pulled each others' legs a lot through modified versions of bollywood songs with McBaba leading the way. The sad part however is that the Hussain Sagar lake is being maintained real bad. Many people don't think twice before throwing rubbish into the water and one can feel the stench when standing near the water. We had a batch party on Saturday with Warikoo a.k.a DJ199 in full swing. Then we had a party yesterday at Barney's apartment and had some real good fun. Today we had the section D party ... and this one was after a looooooooong loooooooooong time. Term 8 for me officially ends this Friday when I should be done with the Managing Markets exam. There are some people who are through with their ISB acads today itself. Lucky guys :-( Will post some snaps from the parties later. posted by Ram at 11:57 PM 0 comments
 Prof Nirmal Gupta (Marketing) has been voted by our batch as the "Professor of the Year - Elective Terms". Earlier, our batch had voted Prof. Krishna Kumar (Macroeconomics) as the "Professor of the Year - Core Terms". As I have written before, Prof. Nirmal Gupta is the professor I have liked the most here. The way he teaches marketing is just phenomenal. He has taught us two courses in the elective terms - Marketing Implementation in Term 5 and Managing Markets in Term 8. I must say that all people in the next batch who are planning to major in marketing should take these two courses. I think the next batch is really lucky to have him do a session during their orientation on learning through case studies. He had done this for our batch very late in the year and we had requested him to do this before Term 1 starts for the next batch. If you are joining ISB Class of 2007 and you are reading this post, then mark this - attend his case study lecture, pay full attention and take adequate notes. All things may not make sense right on the day you hear them, but as you go through the year and solve cases, you will be able to appreciate the stuff more and more. One of the key benefits to me of coming to ISB has been getting the opportunity to learn from some really good professors like Prof Gupta. For example, the professors for the subjects I have taken in Term 8 - Profs Cathy Tinsley & Stephen Nason (Negotiations Analysis), Prof Francesca Cornelli (Advanced Corporate Finance) and of course Prof Nirmal Gupta (Managing Markets), have all been real good. These professors have also been making some very serious effort to take feedback on the courses from the students and incorporate it in their future lectures or for the next time they will be teaching the course. For instance, Prof Stephen Nason was standing outside the examination hall yesterday and talked to some of us after the negotiation analysis exam about the cases we discussed in class to find out what cases were really helpful and to get feedback about how he can make the course even better. It is really good to see even profs with a lot of teaching experience behind them do this (apart from the feedback that ISB collects from us for the courses). posted by Ram at 12:57 PM 0 comments
dUnKiNg GlOrY There was a dunking competition between the sections organized close to midnight. A poll had been done earlier in the batch to crown the dunking dude and dudette of our batch and they were dunked too. Here are snaps from the event ..... all these snaps come courtesy "Vickie - The Clickie", our batch's most enthusiastic photographer. He and his camera are inseparable.  Dunking Dude & Dudette of the batch "Arey .. yeh kahan fenk diya logon ne mujhe" Spin of the year "Paani bahut thanda hai bhai" Section C team in the team dunking event "Aaja beta .... tu bhi aaja"
posted by Ram at 3:08 AM 3 comments
This one could go on to become a strong candidate for the CP (class participation) of the year .... well, as told to me, this happened in the Behavioral Finance class today (technically yesterday, since its around 1:45AM now) ..... Professor: "..... and research shows that married women have lesser number of kids than married men ..." Student: "Excuse me professor, but I thought a kid only happens to a married man and a (married) woman" :-) :-) :-) posted by Ram at 1:45 AM 3 comments
 Student village parking lot Rang barse ..... Rang-bathing Aaj mein uper ..... Exchange student A & his pyjamasposted by Ram at 9:19 AM 4 comments
 Way 2 go (waise apne desh mein har cheez ke liye line kyun lagta hai yaar?) Frisbee match in progress Volleyball !! Ek aur din nikal gaya The (lighted) lawns in front of the acad centerposted by Ram at 9:13 AM 11 comments
 Kya baarish mein chai ka mazaa isi ko kehte hain? Mass Dunking Abe kab khatam hoga yaar ye sab?? Lifeline for some ..... or should I say many Ab saare funde clear ho gaye hainposted by Ram at 11:48 AM 3 comments
The year @ ISB is almost getting over for our batch. I have spent some of the most wonderful moments of my life here and have thoroughly enjoyed being here. Here are a few snaps of our batch to recount the wonderful experience (with due credits to my batchmates who took these snaps) .......  Time for a family to go to school Bas beta .. thodi der aur.. mera assignment poora ho jaayega Wow ... dad has gone to school ... and I am FREEEEEEEEEEE !!!!! Dunked Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs" for an ISBianposted by Ram at 7:21 PM 4 comments
This one is for music lovers @ Hyderabad. South Indian Cultural Association (SICA) is organizing its annual festival of music and dance from 15 to 22 March, 2006, daily at 6.30 pm. The venue is Telugu Lalitha Kala Thoranam open-air auditorium, Public Gardens, Hyderabad. The concert schedule is as follows: 15 Mar 2006 (Wed): Bombay Jayashri Ramnath (Vocal) 16 Mar 2006 (Thu): Urmila Satyanarayana (Bharathanatyam) 17 Mar 2006 (Fri): Malladi Brothers (Vocal Duet) 18 Mar 2006 (Sat): Kadri Gopalanath (Saxophone) 19 Mar 2006 (Sun): Shoba Naidu & party (Kuchipudi dance ballet 'Vipranarayana' ) 20 Mar 2006 (Mon): Priya Sisters (Vocal duet) 21 Mar 2006 (Tue): Madurai T.N.Seshagopalan (vocal) 22 Mar 2006 (Wed): Sriram Parasuram and Anuradha Sriram (Hindusthani-Carnatic Jugalbandi) I want to attend the concert of Madurai T.N.Seshagopalan, my all time favorite singer, but the schedule of classes here is playing spoilsport. Trying to work things out. Trivandrum Smt. Jayashri Shankar, who is the wife of a batchmate of mine here and a resident spouse at ISB is giving a vocal concert on Saturday, March 25th from 6 to 8 pm. The concert is organized by Kalasagaram, Hyderabad at Plot 59, Krishnapuri Colony, West Marredpally, Near Government Music College, Hyderabad. Admission is free. posted by Ram at 9:59 AM 2 comments
Here is a snap of ISB taken from an aircraft by one of my classmates here who is an exchange student ....... real good view of the campus.  and here is the same snap with text indicating what is where ......... click to enlarge 
posted by Ram at 8:10 PM 6 comments
Wishing you a HAPPY HOLI !!!! Here are some snaps from the Holi celebrations @ ISB .......  Who are these hooligans?        
posted by Ram at 10:50 AM 3 comments
Six of us - Ramki, Rajani, Murali, KaRa, Clickie & I went on a trip to Guruvayur in Kerala. Guruvayur is home to the famous Guruvayurappan (Lord Krishna) Temple. I had visited the temple only once before this when I was about 9 years old and have very vague memories of that visit. I had been wanting to go back to the temple for many years now and am happy that I could finally make the trip. Guruvayur is about 30 kms from Trissur in Kerala. There is only one direct train to Trissur from Hyderabad called Sabari Express and it takes about 24 hours to reach there. From Trissur, we took a bus and reached Guruvayur in about 45 minutes at around 3:00PM. We had a slight difficulty in finding accomodation, may be because of the festival going on currently in Guruvayur but finally managed to locate a hotel that had rooms to let. After taking bath and getting ready, we went to visit the temple. The temple has a rule that one can't wear shirt, pant, lungi, pyjama or chudidar inside the temple. In fact this rule is there in many temples in Kerala. Like most other devotees, all of us were wearing veshtis (a traditional apparel for men down south which is basically a long, unstitched cloth wound around the waist and looks very similar to the dhoti). We were lucky to find "seeveli" happening when we entered the temple. Seeveli is a ceremonial procession with caparisoned elephants, usually done towards the end of morning and evening pooja. In many temples, elephants feature in seeveli only during festive occasions but I am told that at the Guruvayur temple, they are a part of the seeveli daily. The elephants are bred and trained at "Anakotta" which is about 3 kms from Guruvayur. The procession is led by people playing panchavadyams (an orchestra played with five instruments; for more details, click here). The panchavadyam is a treat to the ears, especially if you hear the complete performance which is essentially a crescendo starting with slow beats and reaching the peak towards the end. After watching the seeveli for sometime, we joined the queue of people waiting to have the darshan. The structure of the inner temple is such that it has oil lamps all around the outside walls. We had the privilege of lighting many of the lamps while we were standing in the queue. We finally had a good darshan and then went to the temple pond. Murali had planned to do angapradakshanam (circumambulation around the inner temple) and had to take a dip inside the pond before the same. Ramki, KaRa and I accompanied him and cleared the way for him while he did the angapradakshanam 3 times. We then went to the Mammiyur Lord Shiva temple which is about a km or two away from the Guruvayur temple and had a good darshan there too, after which we ate our dinner. Murali and I went back to the temple and came back to our rooms at around 11PM. The six of us slept for about 2.5 hours after which we got up, took bath and got ready to visit the temple at 3AM for the "Nirmalya Darisanam". We did not expect the temple to be crowded so early in the morning and were hence surprised to see the huge turnout. After waiting for a lot of time, we again had a good darshan and after having breakfast outside, proceeded towards Trissur. In Trissur, we visited the Vadakkunathan Temple (of Lord Shiva), which is a very old temple. The temple had a very big enclosure with a lot of open space and many trees. There were three shrines inside the temple dedicated to Lord Shiva (Vadakkunnathan), Lord Shankaranarayanan and Lord Rama. After visiting the Vadakkunathan temple, we had about 2.5 hours to have lunch and kill time before boarding our train back to Hyderabad. We had planned to go to the beach but then decided against it as we were told that the beach was far off and because we might not be able to be in time to catch the train if we went there. Rajani's relatives living in Coimbatore met us at the Coimbatore station and brought some delicious home-cooked food to sustain us during the return trip. I just can't stop thinking about how tasty the food was. Need to thank them a lot for the effort that would have gone into the preparation. I will try to post a few snaps from the trip in one of the later posts. Meanwhile, the following links could be useful in case you are planning a trip to Guruvayur and want to learn more about the place, the temple etc .. Temple location and how to reach Accomodation Temple Customs Sanctum Sanctorum Some snaps of the place posted by Ram at 4:09 AM 3 comments
Work has started on our batch's yearbook. There was no concept of an yearbook at my engineering college. It will be really wonderful to open the yearbook many years from now and recount all the wonderful things that we did here. It would also be interesting to read all the 'masala' laden khabar from the yearbook once it comes out. I am eagerly looking forward to its release. Hope I get to write about KP there ;-) The placement cell has asked us to summarize our interview experience. This should form a good repository for the batches to come. Having been a part of the application evaluation and the interview process for admissions to the next batch, I am also thinking of putting together some dos and donts for prospective applicants. I am going out of Hyderabad today on a trip and should be back by Monday. May not be able to blog till then. More details on the trip on my return. posted by Ram at 1:14 AM 1 comments
Only 30 days remain before I graduate from ISB. Here is what most of my batchmates are busy doing these days - the 8th term coursework, finding out which of their near and dear ones will be coming to graduation and making travel arrangements for them and for their return back home, contacting movers/packers for transporting stuff back home, catching up with some well deserved sleep after slogging for 7 terms and going to the gym to wipe out any signs of prosperity that have appeared. Holi is on March 15th. Since classes have been scheduled on that day, the Students Family Association (SFA) and A, the guy who organizes all our parties are zeroing in on 12th March (Sunday) as the day for celebrating Holi on a large scale. But what is a Holi that is celebrated on any day other than the "Holi" day. I am planning to go out of Hyderabad this weekend and will miss the celebrations if they happen this Sunday. Hope we have everything happening on 15th itself. Ending this post with interesting snaps sent by one of my batchmates Giks today. Have a look at the proud new owners of cars parked in one of our student villages:  
posted by Ram at 7:05 PM 8 comments
Here are some more ....... ------ Student: This industry is not very attractive Prof: What do you want to say? Is the industry attractive or not attractive? Student: I am not very sure! Prof: Again, what do you want to say? Are you sure or not sure? ------ “Actually, I think ......" ------ "As we know, man proposes and god disposes. So .... " ------ There was this student in our section who would always do the following: Student lifts his hand to ask a question. Prof: Yes Student: Actually, I have a question Prof: Yes Student: Well, actually I have three questions ------ Admissions director is sharing interesting stats about the batch during orientation when he sees a bullet point in his slide which says "Student XYZ has been certified ..... as @#@$%$%$*%#$$##$sg#$@#$ (some certification worded in Portugese) in the Portugese language" He asks who this student is and then asks him/her: "How do you pronounce this?" (He is refering to the @#@$%$%$*%#$$##$sg#$@#$ certification) Student replies (knowing or not knowing what he is refering to): It is pronounced as "Portugese" There is laughter all around. ------ Prof Jagmohan Raju's style of doing cold calling is unique here as he hits the return key on his laptop and a student's photo pops up who has to answer the question that will appear next. Once Prof Raju in his cold calls in Term 2 came up with a question that was not directly related to what we had learnt so far and the guy who was supposed to answer it was told to try his best. Even if he couldn't answer, the whole class could collectively think and try to arrive at the answer. Prof Raju: All right. So what is the answer? Student: Am I allowed to use a lifeline? There is laughter ..... Student: Can I phone a friend? Prof Raju: Whom would you like to call? Student: Prof. Scott Ward The whole class bursts out laughing. (Prof Scott Ward taught us Marketing in Term 1) ------ Have to rush to a class now ...... more later ...... posted by Ram at 2:21 PM 5 comments
I was just sitting in my room today doing nothing, as usual, when memories of being in Section D in the first four terms came flooding in. The first thing that came to mind after that was the CPs that used to happen. Here goes some "insightful" class participation (CP) that happened courtesy our batch ..... more to come in the next few posts on this topic. Since some of these are attributed to other sections or to classes I am not a part of, what is written about such CPs is what was told to me. ------ "The best form of communication is mouth-to-mouth communication" ------ "IT may not give you a sustainable competitive advantage ... but not having IT can result in unsustainable uncompetitive disadvantage" ------ "One of my batchmates here in this class once quoted Rudyard Kipling who said that the strength of a wolf is in the pack and the strength of a pack is in the wolf. This means that there is a lot of benefit in collective learning ....." ------ "The $1 tax cut argument won’t hold because it will violate the principle of fallacy of causality" ------ Student: The way I see it…I personally feel 25000% inflation is cruel to society. Prof: We’ll discuss philosophical issues after the class. ------ "I prefer to buy my diapers from Costco !!!" ------ Student: Isn’t this sad? Prof: Yes .... it is tragic. ------ "The target segments in IBM Thinkpad ad are: (i) Males and Females, (ii) Those who use laptops and those who don't" ------ Prof: Human beings are the only ones who drink milk of other animals, that too when they are adults. Student: What about cats? Prof: Oh yes domesticated cats, too. ------ Prof: “So why is Wal-Mart so successful?” Student: “What we’ve learnt so far from the Dell case and the Intel case is that nothing succeeds like success.” ------ “Is no culture also a culture ?" ------ Student: If you read the case you will see that ... Prof: You mean I’ve not read the case??? ------ posted by Ram at 1:08 PM 4 comments
The next batch is scheduled to join ISB on 15th of April and has quite a few bloggers. The following are links to some of the blogs of soon-to-be-ISBians that I know of and visit: Abhishek Jain Alok Jain Anuradha Sunku Chiranth Chanappa Deepak Mittal Disha Rustogi Kapil Mantri Karthik Bharathy Kiran Cavale Kishore Krishna Krishnan Ramaswami Kumar Rajendran Mahesh Shenoy Manu Karan Nikhil Kamma Piyush Kheria Priyanka Rath Rishik Ghosh Sabyasachi Mohanty Santosh B S Shivangi Tiwari Sowmya Velayudham Sukalp Sharma Sumit Poddar Sundeep Tibrewal Swapnil Deopurkar Swapnil Nadkar Venkat Raman Vithal Donakonda Yashovardhan Gupta Have also added links to these blogs on the left side of the page. posted by Ram at 7:06 PM 7 comments
US President George W Bush visited the ISB campus today. There were so many security personnel here that it looked like the whole of Hyderabad police force had been deployed at ISB. Needless to say, it was entertaining to watch/hear the president speak :-) I was not among the ones who chose to be in the audience at the atrium where the rendezvous happened. Instead, I watched a significant part of the proceedings on the TV at home. You can find some coverage of Bush's visit here at the following links: President George W Bush Visits the ISB "I am Honoured to be at the ISB” – President Bush "ISB is a Centre of Excellence" - President Bush Pictures & Video Clips of the visit Has a US Prez ever visited your campus? Bush favors outsourcing The world needs India: Bush President Bush Meets with Young Entrepreneurs at the ISB posted by Ram at 7:27 PM 0 comments
Got a mail today from the admin people here that addressed us as "Almost Alums". The mail had details of the graduation ceremony. The week before the ceremony has also been termed as dis-orientation week (The first week on campus was termed orientation week). Upon reading this, a few of us (idle minds ... what else) started thinking about what might be planned for the dis-orientation week. When we came to ISB from the real world, we had nothing to do except study, work hard and utilize the facilities provided. Drinking water could be got from any tap on campus. Housekeeping guys would come to change linen and clean the room. So many other hassles which one would face in the world outside were suddenly non-existent. "AC" started commenting that the disorientation week probably was to condition us for the real world. Housekeeping guys would probably stop coming, we would have to cook our own food or order food from outside, washing machines will not be operational and we would have to wash clothes on our own with our hands etc etc .. Dubya is coming to campus tomorrow (in all probability). Security people are all over the place and security checks are being carried out at many points. There was a security briefing held yesterday afternoon by the DIG of police and by our dean. There were many humerous moments during the briefing. The DIG warned against going near US security men/snipers out of curiosity :-). We will have to warn KP (arey .. saadda KP .. apna quaddie .. who else) against doing anything like that and keep him indoors tomorrow :-) posted by Ram at 2:53 PM 0 comments
After sampling the courses, I have finally decided to choose the following three: 1) Managing Markets - Prof. Nirmal Gupta 2) Advanced Corporate Finance - Prof. Francesca Cornelli 3) Negotiation Analysis - Prof. Cathy Tinsley (Sessions 1 to 5)/Prof. Stephen Nason (Sessions 6 to 10) Decided to drop the "Leadership Lessons from World Literature" course after much thought. Though the prof is good and I like to listen to him speak, there are just 3 courses I need to do this term to complete the required credits and the above three courses came out a shade more important to me. Attended all the three lectures yesterday. Found all three profs to be really good. If you are in the next batch or plan to join ISB at any point of time in the future and plan to take courses in marketing, then you should surely take any courses that Prof. Nirmal Gupta teaches. He will, in all probability, be the best professor of marketing you will ever get to see. Results of this year's round 2 of ISB admissions are out. We have just a month more to go before we leave this place and make way for the next batch which will join here on the 15th of April. posted by Ram at 11:54 PM 0 comments
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Name: RamView My Profile Orkut me !! Previous Posts
Please access http://ramsabode.wordpress.comMigrating to wordpress Bangalore Gayana Samaja concerts Sikkil Gurucharan @ Bangalore Gayana Samaja Kyun kiya tumne aisa .. kyun Concerts this weekend in Bangalore I, the tagged one A trip to Srirangapatnam/Mysore - Part 3 A trip to Srirangapatnam/Mysore - Part 2 A trip to Srirangapatnam/Mysore - Part 1 Archives
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