Graduation Snaps

Here are some snaps from our convocation rehearsal, the class photo-session and the convocation ceremony.

More snaps here

the stage is set

shine on you...

crossing swords

with my parents

our class is too big for a single snap

walking in to the makeshift auditorium...

... and Mr Tee poses for the camera

Back to Term-2: A crash course in macroeconomics

Graduated!!

oops! I threw my hat too high!

hat throwing: take-2

waiting for the snaps to be burnt to CD... didn't anyone study Service Ops Management?

ISB's class of 2007: the final handshake

done with it

This time last year, I was dreading my last day at work. And today, I'm done with my last examination at ISB; nothing left but the convocation next weekend.

Yep, the roller-coaster is over.

And the emptiness will sink in pretty soon.

A Tip

For the incoming batch at ISB, here's a tip:

Beware of the funnel.

But if you are really adventurous, then maybe...

We were discussing cricket with Prof Montealegre at a small get together that we had last Thursday. The conversation went something like this:

Prof Montealegre : So, I hear it takes a whole day to play a game of cricket.. that's quite fantastic!
ISBian Cricket Buff #1:Sir, there is another format that lasts five days.
Prof Montealegre : What! Oh.. that's amazing! So, which are the good teams?
ISBian Cricket Buff #1: Australia is the best. South Africa's good . India is good too. Pakistan are alright, but they play their best against India.
Prof Montealegre : Really?
ISBian Cricket Buff #2: Yeah, Indo-Pak games are very sought after. The roads are empty when there's an India-Pakistan match. Everyone takes off, nobody works.. and there are firecrackers if we win.
Prof Montealegre : Hmm.. very interesting. So, when is India's first game?
ISBian Cricket Buff #1: Day after tomorrow. We're playing Bangladesh.
Prof Montealegre : Okay, are they a good team?
ISBian Cricket Buff #2: Well, they're new, they have a lot to learn. They'll learn from us.
Prof Montealegre : Hmm.. nice, nice.

I hope the Professor has followed up on the latest.

an afterthought

A few weeks back, we had our annual alumni reunion, Solstice (just realised I'd been misspelling it all along as Solistice). When the alumni introduced themselves, they always tagged their year of graduation to their name. They'd go "I'm R, '04" and "I'm S, '06" and so on.

Next year, I'll able to introduce myself as, "I'm Chiranth, double o' seven".

----------------

Among other things, I managed to write three exams last week, and a 4918 word essay on Outsourcing. Was about to overshoot the limit of 5 grand, but managed to bring it down. Weekend was a good break - watched loads of movies. Did some productive work too, like changing my desktop's wallpaper, contemplating to clear my desk, etc.

Classes start again tomorrow... er, in a few hours. I'd better get some sleep.

The network comes home

They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. And they come with different ideas of life. Each one of them is brimming with gyaan about the college, about resumes, about life, about careers, about everything. And boy, are they getting an audience. Here's what's happening. Our annual alumni reunion - Solistice - is on this weekend, and the alumni have descended from all over to our campus. I guess it's a good way to end a week that was jam-packed with assignments for almost everyone.

I ran into alienwan shortly after he landed up on campus. Almost expected him to be reviewing someone's resume, and he didn't disappoint. Also met ford prefect. There are loads of other alumni I met, some for the first time. Interesting to hear what they had to say about post-ISB-life.

They've started to test the speakers on the lawns outside our block.. looks like it'll be a very loud party tonight. I'd better finish that SOMG work in the next 120 minutes :-(

In my last company, our company's President always used to talk about how he admired Sergei Bubka, for his ability to break his own records. It was his way of inspiring us to perform better. ISB is a bit like that; it breaks its own records. Just when you get the feeling that you're done with the craziest term ever, you get a term that's even crazier to deal with.

Some alumni had been telling me about how the PGP eases out once you move into the electives phase. Now, I am convinced that I had sampled the wrong set of alumni, for my fifth term is awful - it's packed with a thousand things and I don't have a clue about where I'm headed. I've had to rename my "to-do" list to a "not-yet-done" list, and even that is growing faster than Hanuman's tail. With placement preps, half-baked attempts at b-school competitions, co-ordinating between three different study groups for three different courses, one PaEV course, I'm surprised I still retain my level of sanity.

I hope for a more relaxed weekend - I'm finally off to Indore for two full days, and I'd be spending the better part of Sunday in Mumbai waiting for a connecting flight. So no studies, and no ISB-related work - just a competition, and a novel if I get the time. It's a pity I won't be able to travel around Indore, but never mind that - I'm glad to be heading out of Hyderabad for a change.

It's three in the morning. Time for an omelette au fromage :-)

The price of being disorganised

My desk is a mess - there is a telephone, movie DVDs, my laptop's adaptor, coffee mugs, books, papers and God-knows-what strewn all over it. And my bookshelf looks worse. There could be a monitor lizard sitting behind all those books and papers and I wouldn't know of it before April 2007. And the silly thing is, the institute encourages this kind of clutter. Honest. Last term, our MGTO professor told us in class that clutter on the desk is a sure sign of a top-notch CEO in the making. Since then, I've lost all incentive to clean my desk.

In any case, I could never keep my room a 100% tidy; it can be very tidy for a short span of time, or slightly tidy for a moderately long period of time, but never very tidy most of the time. Thank God, Mum hardly visits, else she'd tear my hair out asking me to clean my room. I still recall my time in Bangalore - cleaning my room was one task that was always on my to-do list. It had occupied some kind of a permanent position on the list. Whenever Mum asked me to clean my desk, I was always ready with a quick "Next weekend." And weekends are wonderful days.. they're meant to stay in bed till late, not give a care about the world, and worldly chores such as cleaning rooms. Actually, I have a ready-made excuse in that regard here. ISB doesn't have weekends. Weekends exist on calendar but are not real - they're loaded with as much work as weekdays. So there, Mum, I'll clean my desk on the next "real" weekend :-) Unless the monitor lizard decides to come out from behind the books before that.

Coming back to the CEO-in-the-making-theory, it has occurred to me that it also takes a CEO lot more than a mere untidy desk to stay in the race. One also needs a very powerful memory to remember where one shoved those tiny bits of paper that other people gave you telling you they're important. You know, those little things that seem so insignificant when you accept them from others - things like lecture notes, class handouts, case discussion slides, etc. And I seem to be lacking severely in the memory department.

Our Operations course in the third term had a case study about a restaurant called Benihana of Tokyo. Actually, the name of the case is a bit misleading. Since the restaurant is located in the US, the case should've been named "Benihana of Tokyo of the USA". Adds to the clarity for folks who haven't seen the restaurant themselves, or pre-read the case. The misleading name apart, the case was an interesting read. The restaurateur's idea is a fantastic concept. But profs shouldn't make us discus food or restaurants right after a meal at ISB's dining hall. Makes you feel really bad about not getting your money's worth. As I always do with every case, I picked up the discussion notes which I later lost in the clutter of my desk.

And in the fifth term, we have the same case all over again in another course called Marketing Services. The professor for this course (he's fabulous, btw) expects us to pre-read every case and submit a written analysis before the class begins. The question he wanted us to answer for this case was "What is the role of the chef in the Benihana restaurant?" I distinctly remember the Operations prof discussing the exact same question back in the third term. And in my eagerness to prepare the perfect write-up, I spent a good half an hour trying to find my old case notes... but couldn't find 'em. And then I spent another half an hour trying to answer the question by myself. That's a full hour. One hour of non-productivity, one hour lost in the race to become a CEO, but more importantly, one hour less of precious sleep. Anyway, I shouldn't be complaining; I made up for my lost sleep in the Marketing Research class :-)

Holidays != no work

The last two days have been more hectic than any two days in the last term. Having procrastinated a lot for the first two days of the term break, I finally started work on the four competitions and the PaEV submission sometime on Monday morning. Here's the timeline.

1100 - Wake up, smell the coffee
1130 - Start working on Entrepid. Can't believe I'm doing DMOP again.
1330 - Hide & Seek serve as breakfast. Yes, I know the time, thank you.
1500 - Sid calls. Time to break off from Entrepid, and start work on PaEV.
1530 - Meeting at the cafe. Pizza & cold cofee a good lunch make.
1600 - Sid & I set up shop in the library.
1900 - Data, data everywhere, but not a clue to think.
2045 - burst of inspiration! Google rocks! Powerpoint sucks!
2230 - one document down, one more to go, but it's time for a dinner break.
0000 - both documents done. now to work on the b-plan competition.
0030 - numbers not good. Company is the second biggest money guzzler in history.
0045 - numbers changed. Now it's the biggest money guzzler in history.
0050 - Drastic changes! Layoffs! Salary cuts!
0115 - Give up. This is of no use. Hope that sanity shall return with the sun.
0130 - chat with Dee. Discuss next steps for the next day.
0145 - party going on in SV1 lawns
0150 - SG on the violin. AG on the tabla. SD on the whiskey.
0200 - a quick swig of signature :-)
0230 - back in my room, checking emails, playing catch-up on orkut.
0245 - Entrepid deadline's postponed. Leaves me Ashwamedha & Papyrus to work on.
0250 - Start dawdling on Ashwamedha.
0330 - Still dawdling on Ashwamedha.
0400 - The meaning of the first case hits me! I see light!
0415 - Wah Taj! Cuppa black tea. Wish I had lemon.
0430 - Yahoo! chat with my cousin. He advises me to sleep. Ha, I reply.
0500 - back to the case. Time to test my writing skills.
0745 - my hard disk starts creaking. Shut down laptop. Need a break anyway.
0800 - Skimpy-clothed models on Channel V
0820 - Skimpy-clothed models on MTV
0840 - Skimpy-clothed models on Channel V
0845 - Another cuppa black tea. Again, no lemon.
0900 - back to the case. hard disk still creaking.
0945 - the first case is done, whew!
1000 - AM reviews my write-up. "As arbit as the case", he says.
1100 - searching for inspiration to analyse the second case.
1200 - still searching for inspiration
1300 - start writing..
1400 - eyes heavy.. need to finish this doc before I can sleep.
1800 - hmm.. it's dark. great, I must've fallen asleep. now back to the doc
2200 - dinner at Kan's place
2330 - half an hour to the deadline. kase komplete! send out analysis to the IIMI blokes.
2345 - ooh, that was a quick reply. Oh, they've postponed the deadline #$%@!&*^!@

Time to get on with the other competitions...

Saris & Suits

The fourth term was the last one that we had as a section. We all go our separate ways now, each in their own chosen stream of subjects and courses.

To mourn/celebrate/rejoice the last term as a section, we had a lot of theme days - from a cas-ormal (casual + formals) day which fizzled completely to a very successful cap-day to a heavily photographed Formals Day. We also managed to get the Deans to pose with us on the Formals Day. Some memories...

Sharks in suits?

Formal Flintoff ;)

Walking the walk

With the Deans

Colours galore!

The entire section (minus Mama, the photographer)

A bird's eye view

A wave of blue

My study group

These snaps have been shot by Mama, SK, and docrahul. I again feel the effects of not owning a digital camera :-( My snaps will take their time to come, but they'll probably show up on my flickr account.

I'm moving back!!

What's worse than suffering from an injury? Self-inflicting some more.

As if tearing a ligament wasn't bad enough, I deliberately asked for permission from the ASA to move to the first row. And they didn't have the heart to deny my request. I ended up sacrificing a perfectly-hidden last-row seat to swap places with SR in my last term. Then it got worse. Not knowing how long my injury would take to recover, I asked ASA to allow me to continue on my first row seat this term too.

But I'm getting better now. And I now have a chance to redeem myself. AB's now been casted and is on a wheelchair. And thanks to the limitation of the wheelchair, he has to swap his last-row seat with me. So, AA & KanKan, I'm going to be your new neighbour for the last few days of the term :-)

BTW, here's a pic of me handing over the baton, er.. crutch.

Dunked, er... drenched

If you can't take the horse to the water, take the water to the horse...




While celebrating birthdays, section-C maintains a tradition of dunking the birthday boy's study group, close friends, not-so-close friends, innocent by-standers, and people who show up just to have the cake. We proudly kept up our tradition on the last birthday of the core terms.




Happy birthday, Watson!!

CFIN topics

M&M
APV
CAPV
WACC
DCF
WTF?

House of cards

When classes get boring, houses get built...


..and here's the architect.



The structure was too fragile for me to add another level. Perhaps, I'll manage it the next time. Wish me luck!

Chi-boy ko gussa kyun aata hai?

Kyunki exam khatam hone par bhi term-2 khatam nahi hua hai..


Tasks to be completed before I feel the term break has really started:

1. Comp Strat project submission - hopefully, we'll do it tonight
2. LDP - course on Advanced Business Presentation Skills

Exams

Again?!? Already?!?

Damn!

Midterms done

Whew!!

After-effect of Argentina vs Netherlands

Time : 0850 hrs
C's location: Academic Center 2, Lecture Theater
T's location: SV3, Quad CX, bed

T's phone rings for about 10 seconds. T picks up.

T (in his usual peppy voice): Bol, Chi!!
C (hushed whisper) : class! class!
T (looks at watch) : oh f***!! oh bloody f***!

Time to unwind...

... in a few hours.

Our first term at ISB comes to an end tomorrow. We've got our final two papers - Statistics & Marketing. We had two of them today - Accounting & Economics.

Both the exams we had today were open book. But they were two very different species of open book exams. Accounting was a good one - given a question, one could figure out which part of the prof's handouts one needed to look in to. Economics, on the other hand, was a disaster.. half way into the exam, I closed down all my notes (there weren't many) - their presence added a zero value to my performance.

I hope tomorrow's papers are a little easier on our poor mortal souls.

There's going to be some serious partying by my classmates tomorrow evening. Unluckily for me, I'd be missing all of that as I've a train to catch in the evening. I'd be travelling to Kakinada and from there to Vishakapatnam to attend a wedding. I'd be cut off from the Internet for the next few days. So, if any of you are expecting an e-mail from me, you'd have to wait for a while.

Logging off!

loooong day

I can hear the peacocks screaming somewhere. Having taken over the traditional job of the rooster, they're announcing the arrival of a brand new day. For some people in section C, group 8, it's the end of a day, a long one at that. And for one person within that group, it's two days merging into one.

Yeah, my guess was right. I do sound a bit incoherent after an all-nighter on an assignment. Anyway, the good news is that the Economics assignment is done. After a lot of haggling, I finally set the price of SOMA at $0.77. God knows how I did it, but Ashraf tells me that my procedure was something known as the Monte Carlo method. Really? All I did was run some data through some formulae on a spreadsheet. Never mind, I'll take Ashraf's word for it.

Now the not-so-good news. Today's the last day of term 1 - excluding the exams, that is. We've already bid farewell to Prof Finn yesterday. And today we bid farewell to Prof Vohra & Prof Waterman. Seems like yesterday these profs came in for their first class. Don't know anyone who's come to grips with how soon this term's flown by. If I multiply this by eight, I'd complete my course here in eight flashes. Or eight winks.

I sometimes go through great trouble trying to stay awake in class. Having been awake through the night, I think my troubles just rose exponentially. Let's see how it turns out. Oh and to think of the impending deadline for the Accounting assignment...

50 more minutes, and it'll be time for breakfast :-)