mere funde

Tag: ISB

  • One eighth there…

    The Godfather – Guys are cheering upstairs. I hear cars coming to the house. Consigliore of mine, I think it’s time you told your Don what everyone seems to know.

    Me – Term 1 is over!! People are going home. And those who need a drink are partying at the Co2008 Lounge tonight!!

    So there. I am an eighth of an MBA. And the past couple of months seem to have passed in jiffy. The assignments, the cases, group meetings, classes, CP, arbit CP, gyaan, dunkings, parties, and all the fun. Also, the profs. have been real awesome, and have made the courses so much more interesting than they really are. I hope that the trend continues.

    In all, it has been like the downhill ride in Calvin and Hobbes – mostly a blur! But a fun one at that 🙂

    I will be watching movies tonight and relaxing. I am heading to Bangalore Bengaluru tomorrow night and meeting up with Rahul, Ankit, and Sam (Sasaram) and hopefully having loads of fun. It has been almost four long years since I was last in Bengaluru and hope it is the same fun place 🙂

    And then it is back to the grind from Monday, and I have morning (0815 hrs) classes to deal with 🙁

  • The week that was…

    Some highlights from the first academic week at ISB:

    • The profs are really good, and their ability to keep the class engaged for a couple of hours amazing. All that talk about international profs is true I guess. I was very skeptical about my ability to stay awake in classes, but I have managed that without too much fuss. We discussed ManU in an accounting class, wine and cheese were talked about in economics, and a lot of stories revealed in marketing!!
    • We already have had a quiz. Granted that it was a pretty simple one at that, but one in the first week. Seesh!!
    • The first case study for Marketing, the only course with class participation (CP). As imagined, there was a lot of “arbit CP” for which people were dunked in due course of time. Also, it felt awesome that the strategy that we came up with was actually the one that the company used later.
    • We have our first assignment due by EOD today. Again nothing too difficult, but something to be done nonetheless.

    Other than that, the week was pretty calm and most of the time was spent, well, sleeping. A couple of birthday celebrations were attended. I must confess that dunking does not follow any pattern at all, random distribution if I can borrow from Stats, and if anything it keeps increasing in randomness. People get dunked without rhyme or reason!!

    One great thing about this place is the movie screening. You can use the comfortable lecture theaters for screening movies, which can be borrowed from the seriously awesome collection the library (LRC @ISB) has!! We had a smalll screening of Amores Perros on friday evening. The director, Alejandro Inarritu, effortlessly weaves three separate stories and tells a wonderful story about love, life (he calls it death), and betrayal.

    I also joined the ISB Blogging community and hopefully we will soon start blogging on the official students blog.

  • The sound of silence…

    The honeymoon period, as they call it, has come to an end. The first core term, for the Class of 2010 [Co2010] begins tomorrow. We already have loads to read up even before the first class. Just leaves me wondering if it is a sign of things to come!!

    The weekend was spent partying, generally relaxing, and getting mentally prepared for the coming weeks. My section (E) went out for a Hyd trip and I joined them for dinner at Angeethi. There was a BITSian lunch proposed today, which had to be postponed due to some circumstances. Btw, there are some 17 BITSians in this batch, up from 12 last year – way to go BITS!!

    Another interesting event was a interactive session by Navtej Sarna, Indian Ambassador to Israel, IFS Office, Class of 1980 [Note: I was born in 1983]. He spent a lot of time as the spokesperson of the MEA, and spoke candidly, without spilling any beans, of his experiences there. He elaborated on how the Indian media needs to regulate itself in events like the 26/11 or the Kandhar hijacking. He also spoke on how India’s perception in the West has changed over the years, and also how he reacted to Slumdog Millionaire vis-à-vis Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A very interesting hour and a half was spent with him. I am already becoming a fan of the speaker series at ISB.

  • First Impressions!!

    I have been at the ISB for a couple of weeks now, and I must say I am pretty impressed.

    Anyone who has been to the ISB, will confirm that the infrastructure of the place is top notch. The only other place in India that comes close is the Infosys Mysore campus. The campus is well planned, beautiful, and extremely well maintained. The student lodging is very very comfortable, and the management does its best to keep useless distractions away from the students. The library is very well stocked, both with books and an assorted collections of DVDs. I just wish we get some free time to use it 😉

    As for the current batch, its amazing diversity never ceases to amaze me. There are folks from every possible industry, and every possible company. There are folks with a couple of years of experience, and there are people with more than 8-10 years of experience. While that also accounts for a lot of confusion during class discussions, it also brings to light a lot of questions that we could never even have dreamt of!! There are media folks, lawyers, doctors, people from the armed forces, family business, and what not. The kind of knowledge and queries they bring to the table is just mind boggling. Also, most of them are fun loving folks. We already have had 3 big parties, and umpteen number of section parties. One problem though is remembering the names. There are around 10 Amits, many more Goyals and in the end I remember only a small fraction of names 🙁

    Lastly, the faculty. We haven’t really started on the core courses, but as soon as we do I will definitely comment on this part. But from what I have heard from the seniors and others, the faculty is really good and wouldn’t be a sore point.

    PS: Lloyd Blankfein, CEO, Goldman Sachs, was on campus a couple of days back and he had a very interesting presentation about empowerment of women entrepreneurs through the 10000 Women program launched by GS. This was followed up by a witty QnA session with the students and the Press.

  • @ISB

    Long time no post. But then, I was in Siliguri for a couple of weeks with extremely limited internet connectivity.

    I reached Hyderabad on the 11th of April and since then have been busy with the activities in the Orientation week. My brand new laptop (the Dell Latitude E5500n) was only given back by the IT yesterday after installing licensed version of all softwares ISB would want me to use, and since then I have taken some time to customize it and make it usable installing Firefox, Chrome and others.

    Also, ISB has some media policy for the students, covering what they can or can’t write about on their blogs. I am waiting for that to be clarified before I start writing more frequently.

    Till then c ya!!

    PS: I turned 26 yesterday – and to quote Harry Potter – It’s not everyday that your young man turns 26 is it!!