Back from Hiatus

I've been out of blogging action for a long time now - the key reason for my absence was work (loads of it) and lethargy (I didn't feel like blogging when I got off work). Now that work is back to normal, I am back to blogging.

The past 3 months were quite intense for me. My company was participating in a trade show in USA and I was put in charge of the entire event. This doesn't sound big was it was quite a challenge. I had to ensure that everything was in order, which meant:
1. Renting the exhibition space
2. Designing the booth (working with our booth designers)
3. Making the booth functional (furniture, electrical, network connections etc.)
4. Graphics (working with our designers to get booth panels, display graphics, brochures etc.)
5. Giveaways (choosing and sourcing giveaways for visitors)
6. Communication (sending out emails to prospects, before and after the event)
7. Logistics (taking care of travel and accommodation)
8. Product demos - This was the most important part. There was no point in doing anything if we couldn't demo our products successfully. This involved working with different teams to ensure that our products were ready for demo, everyone was trained on the latest features, laptops/mobiles/hardware were configured properly and most importantly, failure points were identified and backups were ready for contingencies.

 Because the buck stopped at me, I had to ensure that EVERYTHING was in place. e.g. I had to proof read each and every word on our marketing collateral (brochures) before it went to print. This was quite demanding and at times I was literally talking in my sleep.

In the end, the show went really well. We were pleasantly surprised at the number of visitors in our booth and now have some very promising leads to pursue. Personally, it was a great learning experience. It helped me develop an eye for detail and I can see the difference in my work style now. Hope this habit stays for life..

The Year Gone By

I had started blogging 3 yrs ago and I've not been as regular at blogging as I would have liked. However, one of my resolutions for 2010 is to be regular at blogging.. Let's see how it goes...

To start with, 2009 is over and I was thinking about my life over the year gone by; Here are the highlights for the last year:

1. Graduation: I had always wanted to do an MBA and after postponing my MBA plans for 4 yrs, I finally finished MBA in 2009. Even though this was probably the worst year to get out of a b-school, I still feel it was completely worth it.

2. Travels: I love travelling and 2009 (esp. the first half) was great in terms of travelling. Some of the places I travelled to are London, Loire Valley, Barcelona, Brussels, French Riviera (Nice, Cannes, Monte Carlo), Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna. Among these, trips to Barcelona and Budapest were really great.

3. Books: I got back to reading after a long time and read many books in 2009. Most of the books I read were about history and wars. All the books I read were great but these stood out:

The Haj and Exodus by Leon Uris, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Emperor Series by Conn Iggulden , The African Dream written using excerpts from the diaries of Che Guevera and AK-47 by Michael Hodges.

4. Getting back to work: Getting work after graduating with MBA in 2009 was not easy; It took me some time to get the kind of job I wanted and in the end the wait was worth it. I am currently working with a young technology company and am really enjoying the experience.

So this is it for 2009. I hope 2010 will be much better.

$100bn note!!

Okay, it is actually Z$100 bn note (Zimbabwe dollars) and not USD. Zimbabwe recently launched this note against its 2.2 Million annual inflation rate (Yes, you heard that right) This is hyperinflation at its worst.

Even this note is barely sufficient to buy a loaf of bread. At present rates, it takes atleast Z$500 bn a day to survive!!!

Read the complete article here

So, if you wanna be a billionaire, go to Zimbabwe and find a job ;)

In India

This post comes after probably my longest break after I begun blogging last year. Needless to say I was occupied but for different reasons this time.
In June, I was occupied with elective courses which ended on 30th June (with 2 takeaway exams left). On 1st July I left Paris for India and have been in India for 2 weeks now.

Before leaving for India, I was having a really hard time with the trains in Paris - In one week, I encountered delayed trains, cancelled trains and a metro strike. For my last class of Corporate Strategy, it took me almost 2 hours to reach school on a Saturday morning because of an undeclared train strike on RER-B. When I left for India, I thought that I had left my travel woes behind. But that was not meant to be for my misfortune continued. To cut the long story short, after reaching India, I encountered a cancelled domestic flight, an unconfirmed train ticket and it finally took me a 21 hour bus journey (in a non-sleeper coach) to travel from Pune to Bhopal.

After I reached home, I was in for a surprise with the internet connection. In my hometown (Narsinghgarh), I have to use dial-up internet connection which provides data transfer rate of 3-4 kbps (yes, there is no typo). With this speed, I was barely able to check my mails and faced a really hard time accessing the net. There is no broadband facility here. After speaking with multiple vendors (ISPs) and exploring multiple connection modes, I settled with a GPRS enabled internet connection using my phone. Even this does not provide a great speed but it is definitely much better than the dial-up connection and I can do the basic surfing and communicate with people.

I have been in India for 2 weeks now and might stay here till Aug end. During this time, I will be travelling a lot. If any of the prospective HEC participants want to meet me, drop me a line and we can plan something out.

Some interesting articles

Found the following articles interesting:

An article in Independent on MBAT

http://www.independent.co.uk/student/postgraduate/mbas-guide/on-your-marks-get-setits-the-mba-tournament-845769.html

Article by David Maister in Consulting Magazine. Some of the points mentioned in this article are really worthwhile

http://www.consultingmag.com/articles/781/1/Advice-to-a-Young-Professional/Advice-to-a-Young-Professional.html

Bear down! who's next

The fire-sale of Bear Stearns at $236 M was the most talked about topic at HEC yesterday. Everyone was wondering who the next casuality is going to be and if we could pool in some capital to buy a bank ;)

In our Economics class y'day, the professor showed the following video which is a spoof on Bernake's monetary policies. Awesome video I'd say...

Ethanol as biofuel - a viable alternative to traditional fuels ?

In recent times, we have witnessed a lot of talk about biofuels in general and ethanol in particular. Biofuels are being promoted as alternatives to traditional fuels primarily because they produce fewer poisonous and greenhouse gases that harm the environment and cause global climate change (global warming). Governments everywhere are subsidizing startups in biofuel industry and leading energy companies are also investing huge sums of money to develop biofuels.

Some recent studies have pointed out the ill-effects of using ethanol as a bio-fuel. I recently came across a very good article on Economist debating the use of ethanol as a biofuel. The entire article can be found here:

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10766882

Another article from CNN talks, among other things, about how ethanol could add to the food woes of emerging countries. This article can be found here:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/24/eco.biofuels/index.html

It will be interesting to see how the biofuel industry responds to these challenges. I will try to get some industry responses on this and post them here.

Reached Paris

Finally, after multiple rounds of shopping and packing, I reached Paris yesterday. The flight (Air India) was dull and pathetic. the crew members were not much help. The service was just horrible. I would never want to travel by AI again. I wonder how does it manage to attract so much traffic despite the quality.

I will go to the campus today for registration and some other formalities. So I am gonna meet many classmates today. This has got me really excited. Lets see how things turn out now.

Adios Pune, Adios Infosys

I have spent my last week in Infosys and in Pune. Friday was my last day in Infosys afer over 3 years. I met most of my old teammates. had a final lunch with my last team and walked away with two farewell gifts. I started packing on Saturday morning and left Pune by the evening train.

My journey of over 3 years at Infosys has been a roller-coaster ride - full of lows and highs (more lows than highs though). However, at the end of it I consider myself lucky for having worked for 3 different clients/domains - DHL(logistics), Finacle(Corporate e-Banking) and UBS(Investment Banking), i.e. virtually a new assignment every year.

Now I am looking forward to spending some free time at home where I can relax, eat home made food, read, spend time with cousins and meet relatives. I guess this is the last ocassion when I'll spend almost 3 weeks at home because I don't think I am going to get so much free time after MBA.

Last week in Pune

I am leaving Pune this Saturday and heading for home. I came here in June 2003 and have spent close to 3.5 years here. I have a lot of friends here and I am spending these last few days meeting them.

I was officially released from my last Infosys project on 31st July and since then I have been having a great time. I have been going to office just to meet old project friends and ofcourse playing squash :). Friday will be my last working day in Infosys and as of now, I am not feeling bad about leaving. Maybe I am too excited about the life ahead but I am sure I will miss Infosys and Pune once I reach home.

Apart from meeting friends, I have been shopping a lot; I have been to shopping malls every single day for the last 4 days and have spent close to 25K already (and my shopping is not over). I had to buy a lot of t-shirts as I did not have many because of formal wear in office. I bought 7-8 t-shirts, 2 jeans, 2 pairs of shoes, a watch, a cellphone and some other misc items. I am yet to buy a formal suit and I will get it stitched now in Indore. Having never been a shopping lover, this was not easy for me, going through shopping mall every day and then selecting stuff. The fact that I am a terrible shopper (I find it very hard to decide what looks good) did not help. But I am glad that I have finished most of it.

Now the more difficult part is packing stuff and taking luggage to home. If I were to carry all my belongings with me, I would require atleast 2 suitcases and 3-4 travel bags. I looked at my clothes and started dividing them into 2 groups - one which I will take to Paris and the other which I will not. I will first pack the stuff that I will take to Paris and then depending upon the space available( I have decided to travel with 1 suitcase and 2-3 travel bags) I will fit in the other stuff. I am sure that I will have to discard most of my stuff here. As for my books, I am just giving them away to anyone who likes to read. I will keep only a couple of books with me and give away the rest.

Have to finish this blog as I have to meet some friends for dinner shortly...

Airtel billing woes

I have an airtel broadband connection at my flat. I have been using their services for close to 3 months now and I am really surprised at their lack of system integration. For those who do not know, Airtel is the biggest private telecom player in India and provides a host of services - landline, mobile, corporate , broadband and they are also launching IPTV in India by the end of 2007. Their telecom services have been growing rapidly which is also reflected by the growth in their stock price (close to 650% in the last 3 years).

Coming back to the main subject of this post - billing woes. I am a tech-savvy person and prefer using internet for paying bills wherever possible. I receive and pay my electricity, credit card, dmat account and mobile bills online. I just don't like receiving bills in hardcopy and writing cheques for payment. I consider it a waste of time and precious paper. Now the problem with airtel - my billing address is my office address and so if I want to collect my bill, I have to go to another building and wade through a pile of mails to locate my bill which is something I hate. So I want my bill online. Last month, I called airtel customer care and asked them to email a copy of the bill. I received a postive response and was told that it would be done in a couple of hours. It never happened. I called atleast 5 times asking them to send the email and they just could not do it. In the end, they sent a person to my home to collect the cheque.

Today, I called them for the last month's bill. The customer service executive told me that I would receive my bill (by courier) by 10th. I asked him to email it and predictably he said that he was sorry about it and that I can wait till 10th and if I don't receive my bill by then, they will initiate the email process. Going by my last experience, I am sure its not going to happen. So now I am mentally prepared for a visit by a friendly airtel cheque collector!!!

Have you experienced something like this???

I've quit!!!

Finally, I put in my papers today; I initiated the e-separation procedure after discussions with my manager and the senior manager.

I had informed them about my plans almost 2 months ago; So it was a mere formality today. Originally I was supposed to resign around mid-June but looking at some recent developments I decided to advance the date. I would still be working for almost 2 more months. My final date in Infy should be 3rd August.

The main reason behind advancing the date is to speed up the process of finding my replacement. Even though my manager had told the resource manager about my exit plan a month ago and had asked for a replacement, nothing has happened till date. So we decided that I formally put in my papers early to put pressure on the resource manager!! Let's see how soon he finds my replacement.

I have also informed my onsite manager but he hasn't conveyed this news to the client yet. The client expects me to give them a period of 4-6 weeks for smooth transition. I am giving them 8 weeks which should be more than enough.

Hopefully, the workload will decrease now and I'll have some free time to concentrate on learning French and reading some other stuff.

Ramblings

Have been thinking of writing for a long time but could not do it for some or other reason. I am writing now while watching the Champions League final.

A lot of not so good things have happened since the last time I wrote. The worst thing is that I sustained a mallet finger injury while playing basketball 2 weeks ago. This means that now the little finger of my left hand is plastered :(. It would take atleast 4 more weeks for the finger to heal and there is a chance that it will never be completely straight again :( :(

Another bad thing is that the workload in office has increased. The worst part is that this has happened at a time when I have hardly any interest left in the techical J2EE stuff I had been doing all this while. I want to spend my office time in undergoing domain trainings and getting to know more of my domain (Investment Banking) but its just not happening. These days, I am mostly banging my head on "struts-spring framework" and how to write reusable code which can handle future requests in the application.

As if this was not enough, today I realized that my French sucks!!! Today, in my French class, I tried to narrate an incident (in French) which happened while I was leaving from Shanghai for Beijing. I was terrible and could not speak even one sentence correctly. My grammar is just horrible. With just one month to go for the French level 1 exam, this is a good wake up call for me. I need to pull my act together before it is too late.

Nothing new happening on the MBA front. I am yet to block my flight tickets. Will do it either this week or the next. The only activity that I have been actively pursuing these days is networking. I created my Linkedin profile around a fortnight ago and my network already exceeds 32000 people :). If you haven't yet registered on linkedin, do it. You won't regret it.

Second Life

Came to know about SecondLife today while reading a blog on Freaknomics
This is the first site of its kind and I was really amazed at this concept after browsing through the site.

It is a 3-D virtual world owned and managed by its residents. It started in 2003 and has over 6 million members currently. Aptly named SecondLife, this site allows you to live an alternate life and do whatever you want to do.

It allows you to create your avatar, meet people, buy land, create your house, create/buy a business, engage in all sorts of fun activities etc. i.e. do whatever you want and can dream of (Of course you will need to shell out some money for most of the activities.)

If this was not enough, then you can also make real money by exchanging their virtual currency (Linden dollars) with real currency (USD) over the site's Linden Dollar Exchange!!!!

So, if you want to live another life where you think you can make more money, you know where to go ;)

Global Warming - Time to wake up

Came across this article about global warming today. Some excerpts:

if the world continues to burn fossil fuels along current lines, then the dangerous emissions would rise by 90 per cent by 2030.

Countering the argument of the developing countries, like India and China, that reducing emissions would hit their economies, the report says that at worst, the global GDP would be blunted by about 3 per cent by 2030 if it undertakes these emission cuts.

What this article tells us is nothing new. We all know about global warming and how dangerous it is. The point is are we really serious about it. Should it only be a topic of discussion among environmentalists, a topic of contention during world economic forum meets or should this topic become a part of our daily lives?

We are aware of the pitfalls of using fossil fuels (coal and oil), but what do we do to reduce their consumption? The answer is - Nothing. It is high time we start doing our bit towards this. There are small things which if each one of us do, can collectively make a big difference. Some of the things that we can do are:

Reduce the usage of automobiles. Make use of public transport as much as possible.
Do not waste paper.
Do not waste water.
Do not waste electricity.

These are very basic things that each of us can do. Collectively these could have a big impact on our environment.

Lets make this world a better place for ourselves and for our future generations.

OBC Quotas - Know history first

The first news item that caught my attention today was about the Indian Supreme Court striking down government's petition to vacate stay on implementation of 27% OBC quota in higher education institutes. The notable statement made by the bench was that if OBC quotas have waited for 57 years, there is no reason why they cannot wait another year giving the court ample time to examine the whole issue and deliver a final verdict on this.

I am immensely satisfied with this judgement as this vindicates the stand taken by most of the anti-quota people that this whole issue deserves a thorough analysis before passing any law on reservation. There should be a detailed statistical survey to find out the exact percentage of OBCs in India. It is also necessary to find out the impact (positive/negative) of existing quota policies on SC/STs and society in general.

Came across a very interesting and informative article on the history of OBCs and OBCs who were the dominant section couple of hundred years ago have become a marginal section now, thanks to the British Raj and Indian politicians. This is a must read for all the people who have been following the quota battle.

Death, Destiny, Fate

I watched Final Destination 3 this weekend. Having watched FD1 and FD2 earlier, there was nothing new that I had expected from this movie. Yet after watching it, I started thinking again about death, fate, destiny etc.

Many a times, when things go wrong, we talk about destiny. “It was destined to happen”; “May be this is not the correct time” are the phrases you hear most often. How do you explain things happening around you? Things that are not in one’s control are easily attributed to destiny. But who knows what destiny is? Who knows what is in store for you and me? When you try hard for something but don’t achieve it, people console you by saying may be it is not the right time. When you do succeed later, people say – “see, you have achieved it now. It was not meant to happen then”. You nod in agreement and continue with your life. But who knows when the right time is? Is there a book somewhere that contains the destiny of every living soul on this earth; which contains the right time for every event in one’s life?

Is this fatalistic attitude correct? May be it is; It is so easy to attribute things to destiny and fate because no one can question these forces. You can never be wrong when you talk about destiny - if one succeeds later, you can say “You were not destined to succeed then”; if one doesn’t succeed, you can still say “May be it is not meant to be; It is not in you destiny”. Either ways, you are right. Also, this way you don’t have to bang your head trying to figure out things; you can continue with your life, working hard for something waiting for the “right time”.

I hope to figure out answers to the questions of death, life, destiny, fate etc. some day. May be it is not the right time now for me to have these answers. May be the right time will never come. Who cares! Life goes on!!!

Colours of Holi

Happy Holi!!!
This was the jist of all the messages that I started receiving on my cellphone since Sat evening. Its interesting - sms is a good way to keep in touch with people with whom you do not regularly interact. I received messages from some friends with whom I haven't spoken in a couple of months. But come Holi (or any other festival), and I am sure that I will receive messages from these friends. This is an advantage of being in India. You have festivals all around the year which offer you a good opportunity to send sms to your friends so that they know you remember them...

Back to the colors of Holi. Normally, I am not a Holi person, I mean I don't love playing the colorful Holi that is usually played in North India. In my childhood, I used to dread the H-day; On that day, we normally kept the front door of our home closed to prevent any unruly elements entering. But when some acquaitance or even a family member entered the home after having colors smeared all over the face and body, I used to literally shut myself in a room (sometimes under the bed) waiting for the signal from my Mom that all is well.

The first time I played Holi was during my engineering days. Even then, I was fooled into playing it; I was tricked by some trusted friends. It was decided that they would come to my place, we would use "gulal" to mark the ocasson of Holi and then spend the entire day eating and watching movies. Little did I know of their "other" plans. To cut the long story short - they came, they smeared pucca colors (pink and green) all over my face and body, we then ate and watched movies and they left after that leaving me all colored like a peacock. It took me the longest bath of my life(appx an hour) to get back into my "presentable" self again. On that day, I took an oath that I would never ever trust anyone on the H-day.

Yesterday, I played Holi again after a gap of almost 4 yrs. Even yesterday it was unplanned but then no one tricked me yesterday; I walked into the trap. I woke up yestreday morning to the loud noises of kids running all around the building parking area and common area throwing water and colors at each other. Some were even accompanied by their parents. It was a lovely sight, watching those kids having fun. It reminded me of my childhood days which were so different.

I was alone at my flat and was getting bored. So I decided to pay a visit to a good-old college friend's home. When I entered his building, he was barely recognizable - his face coated with different colors and he was busy "painting" others. Once he saw me, he shouted with joy - "Ek aur aa gaya"!!! Such was the delight on his face that I could not turn back and return to my place. So then, history repeated itself after a gap of almost 4 years. I was thoroughly painted - green and pink colors being smeared all over my face, hands, legs etc etc. Such was his expertise in using colors that even I was unable to recogonize myself in the mirror after he was done.

I would not say that I really enjoyed the ocassion - scrubbing myself for almost an hour to get back to my normal self was irritating and painful, but then it was a memorable ocassion.

Bored

I am bored. Ever since I have received my admit (in Nov 06) I started losing interest in work. I was really looking forward to the US trip so that I would get to visit a new place, meet old friends and make new ones but that was not meant to be. So here I am, stuck with the same job at the same place where I know I am not gonna continue after July.
There is no driving force at work now - Gone are the days when I used to worry abt appraisals, abt feedbacks etc etc. It doesn't matter now.

I am eagerly waiting for September when I will start the second phase of my MBA journey - living the MBA life. I am sure things will be far more exciting there :)

Another week gone by

It's Monday morning again. Another week has gone by. The last weekend was probably the most boring weekend I have ever had. I was a complete couch potato this weekend. (I watched TV for almost 10 hrs on Sat, and 7-8 hrs on Sunday). Reason - None in particular. It's just that I could not do the usual stuff that I normally do on weekends - catch up with friends, watch a movie, play badminton/basketball/cricket (or anything else). The main problem was that most of my friends whom I usually hang around with are out of Pune. Then, I don't want to commit myself to a new hobby because of the uncertainity about my near future in Pune. I tried looking for some new book to read but couldn't pick one. I picked up "In Search of Excellence" but couldn't go beyond the first 2-3 pages. I even went to crossword looking for a specific book "Monkey Business - Swinging through the Wall Street Journal" but couldn't find that one too.

I hope to find some better things to do next weekend...