Its raining! LRC and Above

Its raining, all sorts!
mid terms have barely gotten over, marketing case study, class quizzes, elections, club meets, industry visits! Damn! Its rain of sorts!

Tired of the above rain, I was secretly wishing to get an escape route! and...Guess what! Half hour back it rained for the first time for Class of '09 here! The original inhabitants of the campus, read the wrigly, jumpy creatures must be having a rollicking time out there playing in water after surviving soaring temperatures here.

The oh-so-drenching 'rains' have taken us all by a storm! Most of us have lost track of time and space and living from assignment to quiz to exam. Time is literally flowing on campus here. It seems like the O-week ( orientation week) was ages ago! Imagine, mid terms have gotten over just now and I realize that end of term one is just 15 days away!

PS: If you are still under the impression that the topic hints something on LRC: the learning resource centre, Dude, chillax ! you been studying too much, it's left, right and centre!

PS2: Oops, gotta sleep, Eco class is exactly 5 hrs from now!

Exams Ache Hain

2 Mid term exams got over today. I am back to my room after experiencing a severe bout of happiness after the exams. You should have seen the crowd outside "The Cafe". Everybody was smiling, joking, laughing and enjoying. At the risk of being labeled as a spoilsport, I felt that people were behaving as if they have achieved something great. But I must say that the happiness was well earned and deserved. Tomorrow is Accounting mid term, but i don't feel like studying, neither do i feel like sleeping. So what's the next best thing to do? Blogging.

Have you seen that Surf Excel advertisement, "Daag Ache hain". I liked the tag line and it has nothing to do with the marketing course that i am doing currently. The Tag line goes something like this, "Agar Daag lagne se kuch acha hota hai to fir daag ache hain". Translated to the context here, it means that if something good can be derived from the exams then exams are good. Today the mid term exams of Statistics and Managerial Economics got over. Everybody was so tensed before the exams. The tension and the stress was palpable. You should have seen the students last night and in the morning today. Everybody was frantically going through the notes, discussing abstruse concepts with others, and swearing at the system that made them slog like anything. And the atmosphere in the evening was starkly different. You could feel the joy and happiness in the air. You could see people indulging in harmless banter and endless chat. Plumes of nicotine smoke and tonnes of caffeine. What made the difference? The pressure and stress was off. Everybody was relieved that in the end its over. Nobody was worried about the performance, since that hardly mattered. Everybody was collectively extremely happy. I could bet that the average happiness quotient had gone up by several notches today. People were never so happy, after joining ISB. I felt like asking Xenobia "I feel so happy, Am I normal?"

So if the aftermath of exams results in increased happiness and joy then I would reckon that exams are good. It was like our Economics professor, Amit Bubna, would say "Nirvana". Don't label me as a jingoist, but I felt today that exams are good and they help in increasing the net happiness quotient of the batch. Everybody was emoting, "Dude, its over". Did anybody say that the Marketing Case study submission is due for Tuesday and Statistics Quiz is there on Tuesday too. But for now, let me sleep for an hour before hitting the books again :(.

A BIG SPLASH is planned for tomorrow night. The mid terms end tomorrow. People will celebrate and party like anything, coz they have survived 1/16 of the MBA course ( half of the term and there are 8 terms, Math is easy guys). I just can't wait for tomorrow evening.

BRING IT ON BABY.

Network,Network and Network!

With modern business practices into play, I have come to realize how effective it is to have a large network and a social following. To build a large social or a business network one has to effectively communicate and converse. The Persian poet Hafiz in describing conversation once said,"Most speaking really say, I am hungry to know you”. That little exchange in the lunch room, those fine pleasantry exchanges on the alleys adds much value and gives me the much needed zest to kickstart my day.

Sometimes I feel really down on days when I have been bogged down by study and not had that chance conversation with someone. I believe it is the inert nature of humans to connect with each other as social beings that makes them tick. This is also empirically and statistically backed by results that show the happiest man is one who is socially supported by both his family and circle of friends.

My life in Sydney for the last few years has certainly nurtured in me the importance of strong business networks to thrive in corporate life. In a corporate life it takes tremendous guts to walk up to a stranger and strike a conversation.What if this conversation opens doors to a brighter future or to a pathway for a business proposition?

It is really hard to break off that comfort zone, but out of the circle is where opportunities exist. If one is not an extrovert by nature, networking and conversations can be certainly graced by sheer practice. There is nothing in this world that cannot be learnt by application and effort.

Often plain conversation over coffee on a lazy weekend is an amazing experience where you simply swap pleasantries with the other person over much laughter and intense listening. I am reminded of the ad which is centered on the theme “Much can happen over coffee”. People have this potent to simply reciprocate the way you treat and give it to them. When you expose yourself with fine details over conversation that is when you simply connect with the other person, in turn inducing her to reciprocate. One of my friends in depicting conversation wrote in the Columbia University student rag “Conversation is not about the prefunctory hello, but that sparkle with teeth shown and eyes lit up”.
ISB is certainly the place to build this massive network and I firmly believe thats the reason we are here at a B-school. A picture insert here of my team at the Dumb-C last weekend-man it was so much fun and laughter we shared-Thanks Guys!

Its been a month!!!

April 12th 2008, we set foot at ISB and then commenced our PGP in Management. Its May 12th 2008 today and at the risk of quoting a cliche "time just flew" , It was hectic, It was demanding, It was fun, It was puzzling, it was interesting but whatever it was we have conquered this last one month and its now behind us. I hope the remaining 11 months fly this way too.

Cheers,
--Badri--

Operation Rescue Dolphin

Contributed by Nalin:

I was working in oilfield 20 Miles offshore of Abidjan, Ivory Coast. A triad of one FPSO (Ship with production and storage of oil) and two Oil platforms made up for production of 35,000 BBls of Oil every day. I was stationed at the ship as Head of Marine and Safety department. On the afternoon of 16th November’07, we had a SOS call from our Oil Platform, 1 Mile East of us, that one Dolphin has got tied herself up in a fishing line and even after struggling for more than 2 hours has the line all around her nose.

Taking two guys, I lowered the rescue boat and we went on the mission 'Save Dolphin'. Since rescue boat is very low in height our view and horizon was very limited, however as we approached East Tower we were helped by the people on the platform, who were at a vantage position due to height. Every one was showing us the Dolphin's location and hurling us strategies to rescue her. Despite loosing our boat hook, bringing in a new gripper (with weight and a long line) and all the sincere advice from East tower operators, Dolphin eluded us. We still could not catch her because every time we used to go close to her she used to dive deep into the water clear of the rope and hook we were trying to pull her with.

So it was time to take the tough decision; to call the experts i.e. Fisher man. Now this was a catch 22 situation. We always shooo away the fisherman whenever they approach within the 500m zone of our territory however now we were inviting them only 20 metres from the East Platform.

We could spot a fishing boat 1Mile away from East tower. Swallowing my pride and ethics, I decided to call them for this (Dolphinitariun) gesture and we caught up with them. Thanks to expertise in French language, of Sr. Cargo operator Ouattara and GPO Silla we convinced them to help us 'release the dolphin' and brought them to the site of rescue.

It took fisherman about half an hour before they were able to fish out the 6 feet long dolphin from the water. Poor creature's nose was badly cut with the fishing line; several other fine cuts could be seen on her body. I am not a mind reader but for sure Dolphin must have thought "Here I go, let me say my last prayer to lord Neptune". Between claps and cheers all around on east Tower and our rescue boat we released the Dolphin who slipped away from the fisherman, dived and swam away.

Pity we didn't see her flip.

Lessons learned:
1. Our line was made of polypropylene, which floats in the water, hence didn't allowed the sinker to go down deep enough to catch the fishing line around dolphins nose.
2. There are no permanent allies or adversaries; there are only permanent interests! So embrace the adversary if the situation warrants and it is to our advantage.

Lesson to learn:

1. We went there to help the Dolphin, but she was suspicious of our intentions hence we could not help her as much as we wanted to. Similarly in our daily life how many times someone tries to reach out to us however due to either preconceived notions or cultural differences we are not sure of others intention and we can not make that connection. Is there any approach we can take to avoid this dilemma?