Bhogle, Mein Aa Raha Hoon!

With extremely gruelling schedules at B School, and no time for actvely pursuing hobbies, I decided to squeeze in some time for a hobby of mine. I generally capture myself on video, and take Interviews on my mobile, but that was largely amateur, and when I spotted an oppurtunity to do it a little more professionaly, I grabbed the offer.

I have my own Sports Show.(This is episode 1, and will happen every Wednesday)



More about it a little later, as have a presentation in Marketing and a test following that.

The Entrepreneurship forum at Great Lakes

Is Teaching Entrepreneurship, The Teaching Of Getting Rich?



That question was the point of discussion yesterday at Great Lakes, when the EDF(Entrepreneurship Devolopment Forum) of Great Lakes, hosted faculty and students of GSU(Georgia State University).
The Entrepreneur Development Forum (EDF) of Great Lakes Institute of Management (Chennai) played host to the Entrepreneurial Team from Georgia State University (GSU), which is on a two-week study trip to India to learn about the Business Environment here and to learn from successful Indian entrepreneurs.

The team consisted of 3 faculty members namely Prof.Jim Beach, Dr.Sivanathan, Prof.Zoe Salloom and 16 students. The Great Lakes - EDF under the guidance of Professor Veeravalli is a forum to hone the entrepreneurship skills of students and assist them in developing viable ideas into full fledged business plans and provide a platform for the business plans to be incubated, started and stabilized. The EDF forum has a tie up with NEN (National Entrepreneurship Network) and TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs). The agenda of the meet was to exchange ideas about entrepreneurship between the visiting delegation and Great Lakes EDF. It acted as a platform to interact and bring out the budding entrepreneurial ideas.The event kicked off with Professor Veeravalli of Great Lakes briefing media persons on the concept of EDF and by giving a brief overview of the India study trip organized by GSU.


The podium was then handed over to Prof.Jim Beach, who initially had the audience in splits with his humorous real life anecdotes. Jim Beach, an experienced entrepreneur himself and now into academics started his first venture with just $2,000, that too on credit and was successful in generating a revenue of $56,000 within the first year of operation. He has to his credit the successful establishment of about 6-7 such ventures in a span of 5-6 years, each started with a capital investment of less than $10,000.He was the pioneer in starting Summer Camps for children in the U.K. His mantra for success as an entrepreneur is “Low Risk combined with Low Start-up Capital”. To quote Jim,”Entrepreneurs LOVE what they do”. He downplayed the importance of creativity in starting a new venture and stated that even stealing ideas works effectively, if you can do it better.


This was followed by Prof. Veeravalli addressing the audience and giving an overview of the Course Outline and activities of EDF followed by a brief Q&A session with the GSU team. He quoted Friedrich Nietzsche,”This is my way, where is yours” thus emphasizing that every successful entrepreneur has a different way of doing business and has to find it on his own.Joi Faisan of GSU, who has majored in Economics, addressed the gathering on behalf of her team. She gave an overview of the various academic programs in Management being held at GSU and stressed on the advantage of Practical Business Experience over classroom teaching sessions. She gave a snapshot of their visit to India.This was followed by Presentations from the EDF members, Abhishek Rai and Akash Vaze of Great Lakes. A brief about the EDF activities was given alongwith the plans and ideas for the forthcoming year. Rahul Tandon then gave the next presentation regarding the successful Indian entrepreneur stories and the present scenario for entrepreneurship development in India. Ashok Bannerjee, who has had rich hands on experience in entrepreneurship before joining Great Lakes, shared his experiences of doing business in India.

The Interaction between GSU's students and Great Lakes PGPM batch of 08, brought out a few points that dealt with the risks of entrepreneurship, the inspiration about start up's, the scorning of VC funding, cross cultural experiences of students on attitutes of entrepreneurship and a few insights on highly succesful start ups. One of the key speakers from GSU was their faculty, Jim Beach, who in his own right has been an entrepreneur several times over. Mr Jim Beach, seemed an excellent orator whose story had humour interspersed all over to make a very engaging discussion. He spoke about the misconception that Starting a company is all about Creativity. Creativity does help, but as long as one's execution and ideas about an existing concept is better, you as an entrepreneur are here to stay.


He was undivided in his opinion on saying that its better for start up's to focus on a low risk model, which may mean to stay off Venture Capitalist's money, as gong forward its possible a Venture capitalist may throw the owner of the company out. That was a case of "Once bitten twice shy"..,as it has happened to him twice before where the venture capitalist had to ask Jim to leave the business.Jim quotes that the average ownership of start up's in the US of founders was around 4% with the Venture capitalists calling the shots. Jim advocates that its better to start slowly and build the business with the money on hand rather than risking a million dollar business first up and ending up in bankruptcy.



Jim had started his first venture on $2000 on a credit card and grew rapidly in the field of Children's education.Jim's story on how he faced the challeneges in his life were worth hearing as one was able to draw a lot of inspiration from it. He was of the opinion that when one's back is pushed to the wall, it is then that one is able to work at full steam and able to pass over obstacles.


The evening ended with a vote of thanks by Great Laker Rishikesh Sinha and GSU student Scott Turner. To summarize, it was a very enriching experience for all budding entrepreneurs of GSU as well as Great Lakes.



Here are some pictures of the event


Prof Veeravalli addressing the gathering along with an EDF Member(Sankara Narayanan)

The Audience is all ears to Jim Beach!

Gloria Looks on as Prof Sallom shares his thoughts

A Student from GSU relating her eperiences


Ashok Bannerji, the Entrepreneur from our batch.



Jim Beach taking on questions with elan

A Lot Can Happen Over a Cup of Coffee

Yesterday, after a session got over at college, I quickly sped to the Nandanam outlet of CCD to meet a friend of mine. As I was waiting for my order to be placed, I noticed the importance certain brands give to Cafe Coffee day.

The whole image that CCD gives is that it is a "cool" hangout for the youth and for those young at heart, and when you have drilled an image like that, can potential paying parasites be far behind.

The British Council would want you to believe that, the next coolest thing to hanging out at Cafe Coffee day would be do to a degree in the UK. "Ambitions" meet "coolness" and is there a better way to coax a confused youngster :-) ?

If you are a cool guy, who loves chocolate Frappe and Cappucino, then you must have a gizmo cell phone to be in the "cool" league. Sony Erriccson wants you to believe that it helps you at that with its walkman range of phones. (I dont dispute that, I love my w550i)

Radio Mirchi, largely a youth, college and office going, radio channel wants to get that "cool " image by assosiating itself with Cafe Coffee day.

Realising that people with a lot of spending power and folks mostly in the their twenties are frequent visitors at Cafe Coffee day, Cognizant, an IT company, has decided to use CCD, as their source of recruitment branding. Cognizant seems to have largely positioned itself as a company where the youth prefer to work and where growth is immense. The male population would tend to feel that chicks would be better at Cognizant ....so they apply there after seeing the ad, while the females would apply to get connected to an Onsite groom(A free ticket to the US )

Back to College Days?

One of the best things about the memories of college life was the freedom to try out many things and constantly stay connected with friends, going out together, having fun talking with each other day in and day out.That kind of networking is hardly possible while working, as your mind constantly keeps chaperoning you to get back to the work table to keep peering into the 15 inch monitor to code for a living. I do still manage a trip or 2 in a year with my college mates, and just to get that extra rustic and adventurous feel of college life, I make sure we travel in 2nd class sleeper and have one unreserved leg of the journey, that makes us rewind back to the good times back then, when each of us had limited cash. Now making these trips seems slightly difficult as every body becomes busy in spurts, and can never predict the possibility of taking prior leave. Most of my college friends, are in that part of the career graph that takes off, and off course in an average Indian in the IT Industry, the Onsite trips are the manna from heaven that most slog for. The last time, I contacted the guys for a trip was in September when we wee to hit Goa during New Year. Out of the initial 18, only 6 turned up.The others were hardly even thinking of making a trip, as a few more hours and a few more days of work, was what they were betting on to make the appraissal presentation better.

I dont blame them, but it's true that the bonhomie of college relationship becomes loose as one moves on in life. I happened to chance across this picture on my friends orkut profile. I miss those simple days of engineering, when meeting each other was a priority. This picture was taken 8 months after passing out, in our first major outing after college life at Munnar.

The 12 who made it to the trip, are now in different phases of life

L.G.Ganesh- Comfortably settled at Honeywell Bangalore and waiting to get married to his classmate Bhavna. The Munnar trip was the last time, I spent hours chatting with him. Life has changed after that. Today its a rarity, if he picks up your call, and even rarer he calls back.I do speak to him, once or twice in a year, but the spontaneity of college days are gone.

B.K.Sudhir- In TCS Chicago. Worked here for 15 hours a day to go onsite and ends up working even more there. He has settled with a new Toyota Camry, and is getting used to the Chicago culture. He is the only guy, who accepts that work sucks and he is in to all this becuase of a certain economic family requirement.

Vinu Shankar- Started with a job in Goa (Indian Molasses Corporation) and found it too boring and ended up in CTS, and after a couple of projects and benchdom, is thinking of exploring the entrepreunerial route. Vinu... is one of those folks who has time for life. Vinu is more of a orthodox guy, who still has that childish way of speaking and playing the jester.

Dinesh Mallemala- After HCL and a start up, now in TCS. Just settled into a tough project. He underwent hell for the past few years and has managed to comeout unscathed.

Santosh- Initially unlucky to have not got a job within a few months but proved his mettle with EDS and is again busy most of the times. Though he says he is game for a tour, havent seen him for a tour after 2005 Munnar, though have met him during our sunday triplicane treats.

Achut- Life for him is all about playing Mottamadi cricket at Triplicane on sundays and slogging out the next 6 days at Infosys. A dedicated worker who suprisingly has changed, as he gets around organizing tours, that ultimately never happen. He is working all the more hard in Pune now, trying to go abroad for what he calls a "paid holiday".

Hari- After he made it to Verizon, a couple of months after this photo, he has hardly been seen. He complains that work sucks and life sucks, but which IT worker doesnt complain :-) ? Life is all about Java and Dot Net and I havent seen him in ages.

Prasad- Slogged hard at CTS, and got an Onsite trip for his rewards. He is slowly settling into his job at New Jersey,constantly believing that his project will stabilise and he will one day get the time to do sightseeing in the US.

Prasana Kumar- I guess, he is one of the more organised guys in the batch. He earns pretty well, and has gone on to buying a house. His hobby is to code on Sundays at office, but a pretty open guy, who has not changed much from college. I remember just calling him for a lunch, for a meet up at Egmore and the guy turned up immideately.Guy with great attitude...but just that work keeps him too busy.

Anand- The guy is one of the most lazist souls I have met. He will think twice to walk across his street, but is open to biking a 100 km's a day to code. One of the most brilliant technical guys in my batch and HCL too has invested a lot of faith in his abilities. Amidst work, Anand has managed to come for most of the outstation trips from college days and after college.

So thats about most of the guys....we hardly get time to meet. The memories of college days are like the scent of sweet aroma while travel.It doesnt last too long and my bet is that unless we guys meet up, this aroma is going to evaporate into thin air. Right now, most of us are in diferent work locations and once we are into marriage, the probable time, once can spend with friends significantly comes down.

I have probably lost one chunk of college life memories, because of certain friends who are lackadaisical, but not this time around. Now life in a college at an MBA, wil hopefully bring back sweeter memories a few years down the line and will not be evaporated, as an MBA is all about networking.

So ask yourself, when was the last time you spent TIME with close friends for a week, just as it was in college days, and not a couple of days over a close by weekend destination?

Rising Salary Levels

Fresher Salaries are slowly nearing the 3 lakh barrier and that means a lot of activity would happen in the Industry as I know a lot of folks with 2-3 years experience drawing between 2.5 and 3.5 lakhs. It is sometimes this pressure that makes employees in the experienced category, switch jobs as sometimes, it looks odd, when a fresher earns 95% of your salary, and your experience fetches only a 5 % premium, in case the place where you work does not see the need for increasing your salary.

Infy, CTS and TCS are more or less the same with fresher offers at 2.6-2.7 Lakhs. Infy was to give an across the board 30% hike in April, while Satyam did a rejig of the compensation sometime last year. Cognizant had also hiked its salary levels just a month back and folks drawing 2.7 lakhs were immideately upgraded to 3.5 lakhs pern annum. The hike does look steep, but going by reactions of some of my friends, they said it came a little too late, but were happy that it came.

Satyam Computers was looked at as a bad pay master a few months back, but after the raise given and another huge raise on the anvil( news from close sources), Satyam could wrest the initiative from most of the top companies in the 2-4 years Software engineer segment.

I have some sources at s Engineering college where some 07 batch engineering batch passouts were offered jobs a Satyam Computers at 3.8 Lakhs. In case that happens I foresee major attrition from Indian companies, as the HR folks would have to be on their toes in matching the 15-20% growth rate across the board.

The highest paid guy in my engineering batch was a guy from Oracle with a pay of 6 Lakhs, which seems to be the highest one can get with about 3 years of work ex. Not that higher salaries are not possible, but these salaries are for ordinary software engineers with no great coding skills. There is always the Microsoft/Juniper job that pays 7 and above ( for a work ex of around 2 years plus) for specialised knowledge in a product oriented environmnent.

But at the end of the day, it's the job satisfaction, role offered and office work environment that majorly decides the retention of the employee,than compensation alone.

News Source- The Hindu Business Line- Dated 21st May - Link here

Damn Creative!

I happened to chance on a link given by a friend on Orkut, and it has had me hooked on to their Youtube account, whole of last week, playing their videos again and again, amazed by the ingenuity of the work that has been done. Sarathy and Suresh, are the guys behind the creative pursuits of lip syncing for a popular audio. It pretty much looks as if its their own album. Suresh works in the Classifieds department at Sulekha and Sarathy was a former employee at Sulekha, who's now working at Adventnet.


This is a combined Lip sync for a popular number from Yesteryears in Tamil Cinema.




Of all the Lip Sync's this remains my favourite, given the fact that this song from Unnale Unnale has been playing in an infinite loop on my Walkman Mobile.Sarathy apparently uses a 40 watt bulb for the lighting and a Nokia 6300 for shooting the videos. I plan to catch up, later this week with him to hear more about his creative intentions.



Sarathy has also directed a short film called Elaigna




Click here to Check all of Sarathy's Videos

Salsa, Statistics and Stifler

Week 4 at B School

This is the last week we would be having with only 3 subjects on us, as from next week we have 5 subjects. We stll haven’t managed to keep up pace with these three subjects as pre reading and case study’s still take a lot of time. We are still in the incipent stages of being a B schooler. Well if one does a lot of hardwork, should’nt there be some way to let off steam.

At 11 pm, when most of us at Lake Veeranam(A seminar hall at GL) are studying, some decide to break the monotony by playing Cricket 2007. An hour later, I see almost the whole hall playing Cricket 2007. The deadly virus has made its way into our study and the guy who propagated the virus is supposedly staring at his Karma(that’s me) and basking in the 16 degree air of the airconditioner proud of his effort to propagate his love for cricket. Cricket seemed to be a religion that night, with every one converting to it in a matter of an hour. Vivekanda’s theory of religion propagation was practically preached and practised and Vivekananda’s speeches no more lulled me. I started re reading the previous chapters with a new found zeal, before an alarm rang to remind me of the pending statistics case study.

I opened up my statistics book, and was just learning the ropes of how to play around with statistics on excel, when a few intelligent guys, bored of playing cricket had every one in the room to the count of 3…..every one hands up…. No Robber Policeman here, but the hands were immediately up, at the suggestion of American Pie 5 ,when it was announced what movie to watch at night.

We immediately had a movies club formed where one guy would use the projector in the room to air a movie. Each guy’s claim to fame was when he lent his laptop for the screening of the movie on his laptop. Generally the projector would be used for studying some general case study at night, when some thing needs to be explained to many people, but considering all of us were tired, that night Stifler seemed more important than Statistics. (Preferring Stifler over statistics would decrease our karma assets and thus liabilities in pending case study would increase on the balance sheet as on 3 am on that day.)

Statistsics seems to be the most interesting subject so far in term 1, beating Eastern Philosophies and Principles of Management. Our Statistics Professor Mr P.K.Vishwanathan, is an amazingly enthusiastic professor for whom teaching is like conducting a music sympony. His knowledge of the subject is excellent and so far, and his vibrant interest for math and statistics seems to attract even the last bencher who would have otherwise invested his time to doze off.

Apart from Statistics , last week’s attraction was obviously the salsa classes, which a group of folks had evinced interest to learn. More than Salsa, we ended up learning jive and Tappankuthu- A Chennaite would know this inside out.

Salsa classes happened on three days, more so eating into the weekend. We had roughly 2x males and x females, so when the dance was on, we would invariably have x guys who would be on “bench” waiting for their turns. Now the guys on bench would have guys of both types, the one’s who know how to shake their legs, the others were the one’s who were not so good at shaking their legs to the beat. The smart and shrewd ones kept a keen eye on the competition and tapped the guys who had a chick dancing. There were times when there would be advance booking for a girl to dance with upto three people waiting. The ones tired of competition would go around wandering just to see who gets free.

The girls had no choice, they had to keep on dancing. They rarely had a break as they were lesser in number. The only thing that the girls could do, to beat the sweat was to purposely dance in such a way that their body along with their partners moved to a place right next to a wall fan or air conditioner, which had to be competed along with the free loaders who specialised in admiring the beauty and the grace of some couples dancing.

The Salsa is all about dancing to the beats, and the initial “1, 2,3 ….” Steps were basically meant to teach the beginner to move their legs, more than acquire perfection in dancing. The one’s who really rocked were the one’s who were innovative in their steps and danced with gay abandon. The one’s like me, were more focussed on watching the leg movements and getting the steps right invariably got it all wrong and had to think twice before wanting to embarrass any girl with those dance steps.

Salsa was an advanced exercise in social networking beyond Orkut, and it did help most of break the ice between us. The guys who were tired of waiting for getting a girl decided to amuse themselves and dance with each other, and the comical thing was both the guys did the guys steps so the harmony was lost as every one thought thought the movements from the Male’s perspective, and when both of them realised what went wrong with their dance, they unconsciously switched to the female perspective and againt went wrong. Geez!!! Two hands are indeed needed for a clap!

There were a couple of tamil guys who were silent spectators, but when the Tappankuthu dance number’s turn came, these guys were into their elements. Learning Tappankuthu can also be fun, as the steps are easy to master and having them on Kollywood a hajaar times, that’s some instant respite for folks like me.

Learning dance, though largely unsuccessful can be a great mentally stimulating experience as it is charting through unconquered virgin territory that throws up a few challenges that initially can be embarrassing. It’s totally a mind and body game that can easily be a personality enhancer as the grace that a salsa gives to the dancer, apart from the applause is worth having.

So that was week 4, with a mix of Statistics, stifler and Salsa

Keep Tuned in for more updates….on my life at a B School.

All the Salsa Video can be found here

Mid Week Observations

An Integral part of B school life is getting one’s feet wet across all areas to decide which part of the horizontal ocean is one’s area of interest. At Great Lakes we have 2 options of learning through the Horizontals and Verticals. One is the regular Summer Internship where PPO’s happen. The other is an empirical project which we need to undertake for a year choosing a horizontal and vertical to specialise in.

One hard fact to swallow at a B school for a guy coming from a predominantly IT background is that, the best salaries at an Entry level business analyst come from the IT sector. The FMCG, Manufacturing and the Finance sector may initially not seem too enticing in terms of salary, but the long term benefits in terms of nature of work, growth and money are excellent. I am still considering options to understand each sector well before making a leap based on interest and of course ROI.

Given the spurt in Internet companies, I hardly see any internet company coming to recruit at any of the B School campuses in India(correct me if I am wrong). The Internet industry is alive and kicking in terms of the quality of work at the senior level and in compensation. I have worked in this industry for the last 15 months and from my knowledge this industry especially the social media companies are great places to work. Lets see if trends reverse this year at B schools.

So far we have had only 3 subjects and it seems quite hectic with pre reading and attending the classes. Yesterday’s Statistics test was an eye opener for me in terms of preparing better for statistics. Some times, all that pre reading doesn’t help if you cant act fast in a test. Our test was a short 10 minute 10 questions with each question displayed on the projector for only 45 seconds with no going back to the questions. It’s under stress that one’s thinking abilities come under the scanner and mine was no different. I guess I would have hit about 4-5 right, but since it was a group assignment, thanks to my team mates, we could hit 7 out of 10. Lets see, Negative components could erode into the meagre score. But since relative grading rules at B schools, one never knows which end of the pie one would end up. I could see a clutch of guys who were enthusiastic about their performance while some modest souls were ruminating that they would only get 8 or 9 right. Ok that was enough to drive me out to take a break.

Yesterday all the committees were announced and though I had given my names for a few committees, I didn’t find my name in any of those as my first preference was for placecom, which has a different selection procedure. I would still be happy getting into just placecom, as I can still contribute to other committees. There is also a selection process for the Internet branding in terms of the Official Great Lakes Blog, which has about 5 contenders battling out. So I start with a 20% probability of getting selected. We have the placecom selection today, by our faculty and a few seniors.

Expect a small write up on my next post- On Week 4- Stifler, Statistics and Salsa by Friday.

Confrontational Advertising!

Confrontational Advertising seems to be the order of the day, in the tug of war between Rival Brands
Jet Airways had advertised in a hoarding in Mumbai that “We’ve Changed”. Now Kingfisher puts a banner above that and says, “We’ve Made them Change”.Now that takes some guts and execution to have it splashed on an outdoor medium. Equs Red Cell was the advertising agency that created the ad for Kingfisher.

The Apparel sector has had its fair share of dog-eat-dog competition. Big Baazar launched advertising campaigns which went like this
“ Keep West-aside, Make a smart Choice”
“Shoppers! Stop and Change your Life Style”

In the online space there is the all famous spat between Times Jobs and Naukri.com, which surprisingly has resulted in 20% increase in resume registrations for Naukri, on whom the Timesjobs Advertisement was targeted. Call it the case of the hunter being hunted partially!

PMS for Men !!!!

Now did that send your head into a Tail spin?

It sure did send mine. I was browsing through Redif when an annoying ad opened up and showed up. PMS means - Poor Mobility Syndrome and not Pre/Post Menstrual Stress in this case and I thought the advertisement and the target page did capture my attention for a moment. Try Seeing the concept of the ad here

Good Old Summer Holidays!

These are times, when you thoroughly start missing school days. School days in April and May were synonymous with eat-sleep-play indoors-eat-sleep-play outdoors-tv-sleep. This schedule was practised day in and day out till we were exhausted. When parents used to come back tired, we laughed at them for not being able to enjoy life and being too worried about their workplace and managing naughty kids. I as a kid often wondered why are my parents not interested in coming home quickly to watch the Sharjah cricket matches that would end by 7 pm( 93-97).Why would they not be as enthusiastic in playing with us kids? so many questions then, but now, the answers seem to fall in place as tables have turned. I know how tiring and sapping work can be, especially if you have a troublesome boss(who’s boss is a God anyway?).On top of that is the hour long commuting jostling for space to ply on the roads and when you reach home, there are a 100 things that need your attention like a leaking ceiling, bad tubelight and a plethora of house hold troubles.

10-15 years back, I never cringed playing cricket in the sun. My Mantra then was to put a cap on and field near a friend’s home, from where I could have regular doses of water during my playing stints and these days, I moan, groan and throw up hands if I need to do an errand in the hot Chennai sun.

I never was so worried about sweating then. Today when I go for my morning walks, I have all my attention on my walkman, not getting any sweat seepage from my body or worse....head for the AC straight after a journey in the sun. Those days, in my Adayar apartment(Chennai), taking a breather meant sitting on the corridor, talking endlessly with friends, playing carrom and trump cards and never complaining about “how hot it was”.

Even I have to play cricket on my computer, I look at my worried face refelecting on my laptop, which seems to say"Do you really want to play, when you have a statistics case study, A 180 pages of pre reading and an emperical project to get started?" In short, I have started to question indulgence and measure indulgence in terms of opportunity cost.

I want to break free, play cricket everyday, plan strategies to beat the opponent, watch cricket matches in the morning and night, while doting on cricketing statistics provided by The Sportstar. At evenings, I would love to sit and feel the breeze from the besant nagar beach, even as neighbours sit down and advise me on the benefits of attending some math classes during the holidays,while my mind wanders on going on a nice summer vacation. That’s exactly what I did every year from 1990 to 1997 after which life was never the same, as I shifted places, friends shifted places and life became lifeless.

All these thoughts flood my mind as I see my kid cousin sisters who’ve gone to my grandma’s place to spend some time.

I long for going there, but to be frank, I have a lot of other things to do at B-school that need my immediate attention, and if I didn’t end up doing that, the guilt within of indulging would eat me. Its confusing to decide what to choose, but right now I hope I am making the right choice, as I cant complain too much. The B school is basically a conduit where your inputs decide your output, so I am making sure that I use the resources well enough for a year. But….even as I see family life and socialising slipping away, I guess I need to figure out a way to revive that too, as I hardly meet any old acquaintance or cousins.

I some how get the feeling that ambitions in life are more so like the proverbial wave that tries to outdo each wave that hits the shores. After a wave disperses on the shore, it comes back with renewed attempts at bettering the distance to which it can wet the sands slowly but steadily. Every attempt of ours makes us speculate deeply and we try harder at every attempt to grow better. As a wave, apart from hitting the shores, the other waves hitting the other end of the shores also needs to be looked so as to see if any improvement can happen. In the process of hitting the shore, the waves must make some time out to see the wonderful life that exists below it in the depths of the sea. That’s exactly synonymous to our life, where we sometimes fail to see beneath whats visible. In fact sitting and typing this is a good break from longer reading hours. Its not that I am complaining about life in a B school, but just the notion that I get into a nice rhythm that has time for everything, so that one doesn’t get to miss out on this lovely thing called life.

Even as I type this, I am thinking of a 5 pm quick dash to my grandma’s place sparing 3 hours in the evening, which would have to be compensated in other ways.

Images from Great Lakes- Week -3

Pondicherry- Giving Time a Break :-). A few of us decided to check out Pondicherry on the weekend. Suprisingly this was my first holiday at Pondicherry.

At one of the roads displaying a french touch

At one of the churches en route to the Puducherry Railway Station




A Backwater cruise to Paradise Beach Island



At one of the beach shacks at Paradise beach




Glorious sunset view from Paradise beach island

The shack we stayed close to Auro Beach(Baywatch Cottages@ 350 per shack)

View of our shacks during the stay at Baywatch cottages

The initial 6 who made it, the rest of us joined at night

Morning 50 buck bus journey to Pondy

One of the places we stayed during a program called outbound

which was a set of management games that we played as part

of our curriculum at Great Lakes.

This hotel is located at Mutukkadu and is called Coconut Green resorts and is a decent resort for mass programmes, but sucks when it comes to a private lunch.

A discussion of strategies on why teams succeded and failed during our management games

at the beach resort.

This was the best strategy game, I've seen in ages. A team of 16 on each sides, is required to cross over to the next bank,without faling into an imaginary pool. It required immense physical and mental energies and a whole lot of chaos while playing this game.

Thats a seat near a wall at our class.This room was used for the initial lectures and meet ups. I usually hid behind the wall. It has a power plug point, useful for charging the laptop and the mobile and also an excellent place to camouflage my dozing abilities, in case I do doze off.But now classes have changed and I need to be doubly alert.

Our subject called "Eastern Philosophies" has made me delve quite deeply into Indian culture and am seeing nirvana when I sleep. Spirituality, Hinduism, liberalism and all the damn words that end with an "ism" have started giving me sleepless nights. I tried understanding Indian Philosophy at 2 am this morning and after a hard fought battle with the book, sleep finally won.This subject already seems my nemesis in term 1. I also have to learn Chinese a little later, so sleeping can wait for a whole 6 weeks.

Indian Philosphy some times makes me think, whether I should run away and hide myself in a tree house. But MBA's are made for handling toughness, and I cant run away.BTW that tree house was clicked at Pondy.

A room with a view. This was one of the hotels we stayed during another outbound program. One good thing was the AC's were working just fine for us to sleep like logs. On days at the insti, I jocularly remember folks in my batch, sleeping next to the AC's in the various seminar halls, after a good night's case study. Being in Chennai, the Air Conditioner is easily one of the biggest tools we need to succesfully do an MBA, as the heat is just too sapping.

There are times I complain and groan when things dont get inside my head, but a few hours of power siesta restores sanity and balance :-)

My New companion - A welcome graduation from a second hand 2 stroke Bike to a 4 stroke Passion Plus. I just feel like flying while riding on the roads

A sepia shot from the side showcasing my bike along side the rural Madipakkam.