1. Wednesday - CCS Report submision
2. Monday - DB project completion
3. Wednesday - Toastmasters Site
4. Saturday - ToastMasters PR for event
5. Monday - Services Project Proposal
6. Wednesday - ISD Quiz
7. Saturday - Global Healthcare Xchange - BMIBEC Case
8. Thursday - BMS Article/Case/Tata Preps
9. Saturday - Services Submission
10. Saturday - International Marketing for Novo Nordisk - Preps
11. Saturday - IIM-B Main Website Progress

Well.. the list is not even comprehensive. Lets see where it goes.  For today I have done a bit o the DB Project and the CCS submission.

Today's achievement?  The Toastmasters' website is up and running. Looks decent too... It took me all of 5 hours to finish this off...

The All New TM Site

Hmmm... I liked the design... the content part needs a bit of tweaking around...but i guess thats ok... Have started living in the computer centre...It is now 5:30 in the morning(!!!) and im still up an working...life has become so cruel all of a sudden.
 
Neways...being busy is better than being idle i guess...
 
My visa for the Denmark trip has finally come through, clearing of one major hurdle. Ok, Im losing consciousness now... Gota go and crash now... Bye for now ... Good night( or is it morning?)

 

The best part of exams are that they are not the worst. The worst is always the result. And how terrible can results be? U have no clue at all .... Neither did I, till I joined here... We had a discussion on the ill-fated insurance paper that I discussed last time around. The same paper which had negative marking.

Today we had a discussion of the answers. Not sure if that should be permitted. Discussing exam results can create severe trauma for sensitive individuals like urs truly. And irreparable morale  damage. So what happened was something like this... The paper had been a combination of short answers, objectives and multiple option types... And due to the lack of any other viable alternative I ended up exposing myself to a lot of risk ... Attempted roughly 47 out of the 50, with my confidence level hovering around the early fifties.....

And as statistics would have it, that was not an optimal strategy.  Far from it. Pretty far from it.
Way out of line.

As the answers were discussed, my internal estimate of the final possible score kept spiralling down. And being the optimist that Im I kept tellin myself, "Vishu, dont u worry... U will score later on in the paper... " And with the same undying spirit, I kept waiting on and on for an event that seemed very much unlikely to happen. And with no surprising twists to the tale, in a routine run-of-the-mill manner, the statistic laws got the better of me.  The only light at the end of the tunnel was from the rushing train, with my damage rate towards the end reaching torrential levels...

Well, the best thing about not preparing for an exam is the fact that u always have an excuse if u dont score marks... And I always manage to keep this option open :-))
The other two exams were pretty much non-descript ... Nothing much to comment on..

So much for my insurance exploits.  I guess I have started going into my crib mode. always happens during exam periods ... And my crib moods have taken on an aggressive mode especially in the past one year ... Rest later....

Exams are here... And as usual, this iteration of the exams finds me in an extremely demotivated state. I dunno how, but exams always manage to find the worst part of my deep self... And I guess, after a series of bad experiences, I too dont mind it much.

Its 3:00 in the night. Im sitting in the library. All alone. Nobody else seems to be occupying the floor. Books all around. And there lies the problem. With so many books around, it is difficult to read the goddamn textbook. Cant go to my room either. Will crash in the first five minutes I stay in my room. A nice dilemma. And the exam always loses out in this dilemma. My schedule for tomorrow:

9:45 AM - Business Models Case Presentation
11:30 AM- Insurance Endterm
5:45 PM-9:15 PM - Business Marketing Midterm
9:45 AM the next day - Business Models Mid term

Three mid terms and a case presentation in 24 hours. Not half as bad as it sounds. Beyond a threshold, all complexities in life seem to converge to a common level. Me no longer sensitive to the incremental complexity brought in by each of these hurdles.

Tomorrow too is likely to be a sleepless night. And all for a lost cause. Of trying to mug. And giving up. The best part about acads is the fact that u can alwasy keep trying. Even when u know the fact that the effort is not gonna take u anywhere. Well, Insurance is waiting for my precious attention now. And Im being repelled by the text book.

Funny subject, Insurance. Got some very bright ideas from the lectures. Most of them fruits of my own fertile imagination. The best of them being the "Point of Optimal Death", as I call it. The funda being that, there should be a financially optimal point for a human to die.

The pension fund guys want u to die early. The insurers want u to stay alive forever and pay their premiums. So, u can try to determine a point where the cumulative benefit to the players in the game is maximized. And that would be the "Point of Optimal Death"...

Insurance also is one of the brightest subjects around. Or as the Prof says, insurers tend to be "Croaking Cassandras"  ... The livelihood of an insurer is centered on accidents, deaths, fires, and all forms of misery in general... Definitely not my cup of tea..

And the awfully worst part of Insurance is the fact that the exam has negative marking.. Which reminds me, I havent yet done any material work for this exam... Me better push off.. Bye bye...

When I finished my Secondary education a.k.a Std. X I took this career profile test... It was supposedly a test that was to decide what line of career I should have taken. The result was pretty clear.  It stated with quite a high level of confidence as to what kind of career I should have taken up. It was quite emphatic in fact. And no, it wasn't engineering. And no, not management either. Well, biology was not even in the fray(all my interest in biology was pretty much restricted to the vast science of human multiplication...).  Actually, the career test revealed that I should take up commerce stream and accounting as a career. And with all my expert wisdom of 15 years, I made the ludicrous decision that engineering was much more lucrative... Well, I stand corrected. I should have taken commerce and become a CA ... And advised rich old ladies on their wills ...

Oops! I should have been a CA!!!

But alas!! Fate had other options for me... And a cash bumper of Rs.5580 Crores wasnt to be in my serendipity list. And I had to end up a penny less nerd at the end of 22 years. Life's just not fair...

Feels nice to be blogging after a long time ... Mid terms are on. Have a series of tight days coming up.  Have some things to post on. Especially the perils of obtaining a visa...and the problems associated with being in a B-school....

Hehehe

Actually, my blog has reached its 1000th hit sometime back...

And I wont let this major milestone go unnoticed. This blog has stood the test of time ... a long period of almost more than a month is over since this forum's inception. So all ye loyal readers who have stuck on patiently, please standup for a round of applause for Vishu's Blog. May Vishu and his blog live peacefully forever...

Usually, I have a pretty much stable, unexcitable nature.... But well, Im losing it all now. Its 4:00 AM in the morning and Im still awake. And there isnt even a submission tomorrow. Im too too excited.

Esade, the B-School at Barcelona, Spain conducts its annual MBA Review contest for students at B-schools all over the world. In this year's contest, the paper I and Gowri Shankar did has been adjudged as one of The Top 3 International entries. This implies our paper gets selected for publishing in the ESADe MBA Journal. The theme of the year was Corporate Entrepreneurship. Our paper was entitled "The 4E Model: Designing an incentive system for internal ventures". That makes it my first international paper publication. And right now, Im jumping between earth and the sky.

And its IIM-B ruling all over the place too. Another team has also made it to the Top 10 entries in the contest.

This has been a pretty good month. First came the Novo Nordisk Global Leadership Forum selection and the associated Denmark trip. Incidentally, today I also found out about the profile of the other participants in the Denmark Leadership Forum. There are 20 other participants. And the others are from places like Stanford, Wharton, ESADE, and a few other top universities, including a couple of other IIMs. And then followed my selection for the Deutsche Bank project at IIM-B. And then comes this paper. And then there was my election as the Vice President(Public Relations), for IIM-B chapter of Toastmasters International, which happens to be the public speaking forum at IIM-B.

God is indeed great....

Will post something more sensible when Im more firmly glued to my seat.. Right now, I cant even think on my own feet.

U wud have to wait for some more time. Me want to spend some more time analyzing the implications of this "unsurprising" budget before I can publish my "expert" opinion on the topic...

For now some mundane stuff. Even as Im writing my today's babble, these headphones are sounding away into my head. No not at all the kind of music u wud expect. No hard rock, no sweet pop, no teeny-boppy music. That means no Beyonce, no Britney, no B* Boys and no videos with skimpily clad 20-somethings dancing to the viewer's hearts' content. None of these at all. For some reason that Im yet to fathom, Im a fan of the golden oldies. That includes all kinds of music ranging from Boney M to the Beetles. And extends well into the realms of TMS+Susheela . And Im a big big big fan of those mid-80's Tam classics from the Maestro. All those Mohan films with Surender/SPB singing away to glory. I even throw in the odd Hindi classic from Rafi/Kishore to complete the mix. Well, so much for my grossly outdated, yesteryear, music tastes..

Work is properly getting overhead. Getting drowned in the drones of assignments that I have taken upon myself. Next few weeks are scheduled to be hectic to say the least. Wonder whether I overestimated my capacity and have taken more than I could handle at a time. The workload ensures that such moments are far and infrequent.

Will get back to u ppl as soon as possible...Let me finish this submission I have to finish of this night...Till then..happy reading...

We have just launched the new website for Sigma..which happens to be IIM-B's systems club... Click here to access the all new site..

Sigma does a lot of things at IIM-B. And as we say, we fundamentally affect the way life goees on at IIM-B. We manage Spidi, which is our own homegrown intranet. Spidi is an internet phenomenon. Started an year ago, and well within its very first year, Spidi has recorded an amazing 6 Lakh user visits. Considering that the total user base for Spidi is not more that 500, it averages out to a stupendous 4-5 visits per day per user. We have made a huge number of things go online at IIM-B. Should do a case study on how life has changed in IIM-B after the arrival of Spidi.

Another equally interesting phenomenon that we manage is BRacket. Life at IIM-B depends on BRacket for a lot of reasons. BRacket is our own Internal E-Notice board+Instant Messaging System+File Transfer Utility+Group Messaging system+User Group Forum+a lot of other things.

Apart from these Sigma also has the non-enviable, arduous task of maintaining almost all the websites at IIM-B.One recent example would be the relaunch of our all new improved Alumni Website And after this, whatever little time we have left, we play the good samaritans and develop applications for every other club at IIM-B.

Keep watching this space for more on life at IIM-B...Thats all for now...Bye folks...

Novo Nordisk, a leading Danish Pharma major, specialising in Diabetes cure, conducts its annual Global Leadership Forum at Copenhagen, durng the first week of August. This Annual Forum usually invites some 20-odd Management students from some of the best universities across the world. The selction is based o a rigorous case study and essay submission.

This year, I got through. Novo Nordisk has invited me for a week long leadership program at their facility near Copenhagen. And depending on my attendance at IIM-B, visa issues and other allied stuff, urs truly may get a chance to participate in this annual forum. Its gotta be a great experience, when else can I get to meet so many bright people from across the world??

Thats all for now... Got hazaar stuff piling up..