MBA vs. Engineering

I just recently concluded my final exams of my MBA life! Wow I can't believe that I survived these two years. As I lay back on my bed and enjoy these mindless moments my mind just can't help drifting to think about the contrast between the exams I had in MBA and in my engineering studies. There was a marked diffidences between the way the exams are administered in MBA and engineering.

For one, the exams in MBA are most of the time 'Open Book' or 'Open Laptop' (simplifies your task to a great extent doesn't it?). Whereas engineering was all about cramming as much theory as you can!

Secondly, in MBA as the professors say, "There is no right answer"! So there is no way you can fail, can you? On the other hand, in engineering according to the professors the answers cannot be ever right! I specifically remember that once for of Computer Programming exam I had copied one answer word-to-word from the text book, but the professor gave me only 5 marks out of 10! I approached the professor to ask what was wrong with my answer and this ishow the conversation went:

Me: Mam why have I got only 5 marks out of 10 for this answer.

Professor: Well you have missed out on certain key points.

Me: Mam can you tell me what aspects I have not covered?

Professor: Please go and check XYZ textbook and you will know what you have missed out.

And I am thinking to myself: darn you dumb-ass I have copied the answer word to word from that textbook so how could I have missed anything! But of course I could not tell her that and so had to be content half the mars even though I had done such a wonderful job of copying!

Lastly I think the major diffidence between MBA and engineering exams is about what the professors say and what they mean. MBA professor are generally very straight forward and say what they want to great amount of clarity. But as every engineer would know that the engineering professors are notorious for confusing the students either because they themselves don't have a clue about that they say or they get incredible sadistic pleasure out of screwing the students! Also they have this incredible knack of confusing the students because they never mean what they say! Here are a few examples:

What they say What they mean

You'll be using one of the leading textbooks in the field.	I used it in engineering!
If you follow these few simple rules, you'll do fine in the course.	If you don't sleep, you'll do fine in the course.
The gist of what the author is saying is what's most important.	I don't understand the details either.
Various authorities agree that...	My hunch is that...
The answer to your question is beyond the scope of this class.	I don't know.
You'll have to see me during my office hours for a thorough answer to your question.	I don't know.
In order to answer to your question, you must recognize that there are several disparate points of view.	I really don't know.
Today we are going to discuss a most important topic.	Today we are going to discuss my dissertation.
We can continue this discussion outside of class.	1. I'm tired of this - let's quit. 2. You're winning the argument - let's quit.
Today we'll let a member of the class lead the discussion. It will be a good educational experience.	I didn't have time to prepare a lecture.
Any questions?	I'm ready to let you go.
The implications of this study are clear.	I don't know what it means either, but there'll be a question about it on the test.
The test will be 50-questions multiple choice.	The test will be 60-questions multiple guess, plus three short-answer questions (1000 words or more) and no one will score above 55%.
The test scores were generally good.	Some of you managed to pass.
The test scores were a little below my expectations.	I am so happy that none of you did well!
Some of you could have done better.	Everyone flunked.
Before we begin the lecture for today, are there any questions about previous material?	Has anyone opened the book yet?
According to my sources...	According to the guy who taught this class last year...
It's been very rewarding to teach this class.	I hope they find someone else to teach it next year.

Well thats it for now...... until the next post....

CHEERS!!!!

How to write!

First of all I would like to thank everyone for the good reviews they have posted for my blog and the generously encouraging comments. Since I have got such good reviews I thought it would be an appropriate step for me to write a post on "How to write" (Talk about a novice bragging about himself!). I hope this will be as entertaining as my other posts. And yes of course like all my other advice, I would advice you not to follow anything that I recommend!


So here are the golden rules which will improve your writing skills:

1. Avoid alliteration. Always!

2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

3. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.)

4. Employ the vernacular.

5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

8. Contractions aren't necessary.

9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

10. One should never generalize.

11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

12. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.

13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

14. Be more or less specific.

15. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

16. Who needs rhetorical questions?

17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

18. A conjunction is a bad word to end a sentence with.

So there you go now you are all set to write on your own (albeit much worse than before!)

CHEERS!!!!

Never Land Ranch AD

I was reading an article recently about the Never Land Ranch owned by Michael Jackson (the place where he was accused of molesting many boys) and started wondering what kind of AD would Mr. Jackson put up if he were to sell of this ranch. Since I know he has no plans to sell this ranch in the near future (for obvious reasons) I thought that I should myself write an AD to aid Mr. Michael Jackson (or rather aid the poor boys who might become his next victim) to sell of this ranch. This is what I thought would be an apt newspaper AD to sell of the priced asset that Mr. Jackson holds:


NAMBLA Times

For sale to NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association, fans of Southpark will know what this association is all about) member in good standing, one 37,000 SF Estate named “Neverland Ranch”. Known as the “Crown Jewel of Beverly Hills”, this exciting property sits high atop a steep cliff where you can spot police cars and irate parents coming from miles away. Unprecedented security features such as an alarm that rings in your bedroom whenever an unknown person enters the compound, leave plenty of time to explain to your guests why they can’t talk about their visit with their parents (i.e., they won’t be allowed to come back, their parents will be mad at them, etc.).

The kiddies (yours or someone else’s) are sure to love almost too kid-friendly features, such as swimming pools, a petting zoo, a ferris wheel, carnival rides, a video arcade, and others too numerous to mention. You’ll love the secrecy of the numerous hidden rooms, each complete with bed, video entertainment center with children’s video library, and warmed lubricant dispenser. Relax in your quiet ‘secret’ library while perusing the catalogue of ‘artistic’ nudes of young boys which we’ll throw in at no extra charge (for personal reasons he’d rather not discuss, there are many items such as this which the owner does not want to risk moving…his loss is your gain).

Asking price is $50 million, however the owner is willing to discuss the possibility of trade for services such as free plastic surgery, or goods such as young white male children. Call 1-800-PED-FILE and ask for Michael Jackson.

The Perils of a Summer Job - The Colleagues and the Work Culture

I have updated you guys a lot about my training and my work and the various lessons that I have learnt during the course of my summers. But an important thing to remember as an MBA student is that you can learn as much if not more from your colleagues and the rich work culture of the organization that you are working in as you can learn from the training.

So I started looking around my office for inspiration - inspiration from colleagues, inspiration from the way they work, inspiration from the general work culture that prevailed in the organization so that I could maximize my learning’s from my summer internship and believe me that there was no shortage of inspirations when it come to my organization.

The first thing I noticed was the gusto and the enthusiasm that the employees had in my organization. I had learnt in my MBA that it is very important for the employees of an organization to have a lot of enthusiasm for any organization to be successful. Looking at my colleagues in office I knew why my organization was so successful. All employees displayed great camaraderie and used to gather around each others table to gossip the whole day long without any guilt or remorse. I thought to myself that this must be helping them refresh from a hard night's sleep and help them to perform better at whatever minimal tasks that they used to do in office.

The fifth lesson is: No matter whether you have any work or no in office, but it is always necessary to relax and enjoy with your colleagues to build good team spirit!

Another important aspect that I learnt from the organizational culture was the need for great team spirit. My organization was the epitome of team spirit so much so that all it required was a single person to doze off or leave work and all the fellow employees would leave their work and join him in doing whatever unproductive work that the first guy started doing.

The sixth lesson is: All your colleagues will always join you in doing an unproductive task but the same rule never holds true for a productive task.

Also one very important thing to learn is the art of spending time in office when there is no work. Though this sounds very easy believe me it is one of the most difficult thing that a summer intern faces in the course of his internship. There a lot of ways in which you can overcome the boredom associated with being idle in office without work for long periods of time. Believe me the employees in my organization are like samurais when it comes to battling boredom. They have devised ingenious ways to overcome it. Like sitting in front of the computers for hours and staring at the screensaver. This technique requires you to change the screensaver from time to time else the technique itself can also become boring or to have a contest to see who can drink maximum number of coffees during the course of the day!

Another important way to battle boredom is through the age old technique of sleeping. To further illustrate how employees are tackling boredom I took a few photographs of my colleagues to graphically illustrate the techniques involved in sleeping for long hours.

The specimen above illustrated the classical "I will catch a fly in my mouth" sleeping technique. It takes immense guts and concentration to lie in this same position without moving to attract and trap a fly as you have to be absolutely still for long periods of time!

The two specimens above show how you can rest your head while sleeping. It is of extreme significance that you rest your head while sleeping for long hours to avoid any sprain in the neck or your back. See how specimen 1 uses a side support and specimen 2 uses the back rest to give support to their vertebrae and avoid any injuries or aches.

The specimen above shows the importance of neck excercises during long hours of sleep. See how he moves his neck in a anti-clockwise direction to stimulate blood circulation. Otherwise long hours of inactivity can cause slow blood circulation and hence it may affect your productivity at work (though the very reason for sleeping for so long is that you dont have any work!)

The specimen seen above lastly shows the importance of doing a few streching excercises during long hours of inactivity. This again helps blood circulation and also helps you loosen up so that you become nimble and can sleep comfortably!

So you see that there are learnings all around you when you are at work you just need to look in the right places!

Observing the above behavior of the employees of my organisation I came up with a tag-line for my firm XYZ Online. It goes: "XYZ Online, Employees Offline!"

The Perils of a Summer Job - The First Week of Actual Project

As promised here is my narration about the first week of my project.

As a young man looking to make my mark in the corporate world I was all keen to start ASAP and show to the world how good I can be. We all were given a list of IFA's to be pursued for the sale of our software products for the Mutual Funds industry.

As a courtesy (I say courtesy as I knew the skill and knowledge level of my mentor after the training) I asked my mentor Mr. A how exactly to go about marketing of the software. I was pleasantly surprised by his response as I never thought after the foolish things that my mentor had done during the training period it would be possible for him to out do himslef. But leave it upto my mentor when it comes to making a fool of himslef. He said very confidently that we should cold call on our clients to fix up meetings! Well I think that my mnetor said that because he firmly beleives that there is no diffirence between selling software and vegetables. Accroding to him no matter what if you are able to land up outside someones office with a product you will be able to sell it whether it is vegetables or software :-)

The fourth lesson is: Always ask your superiors for advice and then do not follow it under any circumstance!

So I followed the fourth lesson and did not follow my mentors advice. I decided to pursue the clients in a more professional manner with my colleague. We systematically called the clients to brief them about our products and then setup a meeting with them. In the meeting we gave them a small presentation about the firm and the various software solutions that we can offer to them. Next step was to arrange for a technical person to actually give the client a demonstraion of the software. Following this systematic approach we were able to get 2 clients in the first week itself. It was a great acheivement given the fact that the company expected us to convert 2 cleints in the span of the entire internship :-) This basically proves that the fourth lesson holds and that you should never follow the advice of your senoirs!

The best part about the end of training is that I can now directly go to the clients office without having to go to Belapur. Though it has robbed me of the pleasure of the scenic beauty of Belapur I am more than willing to live in the concrete jungles of Nariman Point.

I also had the pleasure of going to the BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) during the week when the stock market was swinging up and down like a ride in some amusement park. The scene near and inside BSE was amazing. Never have I seen so many people so close to getting a heart attack! Everyone had only one question on their mind: In which direction will the next swing be?

It was as if the ECG of the peoples hearts was linked to the BSE Sensex! As when when the sensex fluctuated so did the heart beat of millions of people!

The office that I went to was also full of activity. It was as if I was in a game of musical chair! All people were running from one chair to another with the screams of the employees providing the music for the game. The irony of the whole situtation was that I am sure no one was doing anything as they were helpless with the market in a free fall but still everyone was shouting and pretending that they were doing something. With the kind of atmosphere I saw in the office I was pretty sure that the meeting was not going to go as planned, but I had no idea of what was instore for me. As soon as I met the concerned person he took me into the conference room and then started telling me about his emotional journey during the past few days due to the swings in the stock market. Instead of me giving a presentation to him about our software products he was the one who started giving me a presentation about his emotional imbalance. He went on and on until he saw the immense boredom on my face after which he finally asked me "Why have you come here?". And then it happened. The moment I mentioned that I was there to SELL him our software solutions for Mutual Funds, he made a face that I will never be able to forget in my life. It was the face of a man who had been constipated for atleast a 1000 years! For a moment he was in such great pain that words did not come out of his mouth. And then he gave me a lecture on how I should be more considerate of his situtation and told me that how I could even think of selling him something when he was in that state. Infact I think he had started to hate the word SELL and he went on to explain to me how the free fall in the market was due to people SELLING indiscriminately and that how no one should SELL anything, people should only BUY and BUY and BUY and then I knew it was time for me to say BYE BYE and leave ASAP before I went crazy!

So that was the end of the first week on job. Very intresting, very eventful and very educational.

There is a lot more to come so stay tuned........

OM MBAYAH NAMAH

The Perils of a Summer Job - The Training

The training was to go on for a week. And man what a week it was going to be!

On the very first day we got a glimpse of what was to come. The training was taken by people who were supposedly Businees Analysts. But they did not know a thing about what they were speaking. The Powerpoint presentation were also dull and boring. I have made Powerpoint presentations a thousand times better than those in a few hours (that does not mean I am great at making Powerpoint presentations it is just that I never spend more than a few hours on any presentation). In the whole of the presentation there was only one guy (Mr. X) who knew what he was talking. All the others had a great strategy, they just kept on saying that "Mr. X would be the right person to answer your questions". They say that summer jobs help you learn a lot. And in that very moment I learnt my first lesson: That whenever during any presentation (in the class or later on in the corporate world) when you dont have an answer to any question just point to one of your collegaues and say that he/she would be the right person to answer that question (this is a hint to all people who are going to be in my project group next year, please beware as I might just pass the buck on you whenever a difficult question is asked).

The whole NMIMS or rather now NMHIMS group conviniently took up the last row of seats as we were pretty smart as comapred to others and realzied pretty early on about the futility of training. The others were slow to realize that and by the time they realized it we had already stamped our authority on the last row of seats and no one dared to sit there.

Best part of the training was on a day when 3 members of the firm gave a presentatiion at the same time. One (Mr. X) started the presentation and briskly moved through his part. Then Ms. Y came and gave or rather tried to give a presentation, but could not say a single word as she did not know much. So Mr. X had to take over her part and again briskly moved through that part of the presentation. And then came the Amitabh Bacchan of the firm. The man who just knew absolutely how to give a presentation without any one realizing that he was actually giving a presentation. He also did not know anything at all. But he used the classic strategy of what I now call 'Speak to the Laptop screen in a monotonous murmur so that no one understands what you are saying and hence cant ask any questions' strategy! I have never seen a person who has been so obssessed with the laptop screen. It was as if he was enamoured by its presence and was so dumb founded that he could not speak. We asked him to be a little louder but he understood our intentions and still stuck with his strategy of looking at the laptop screen and babling something in Scandanavian! That was my second lesson learnt: No matter how much others try to understand what you are trying to speak if you are not sure of what you are saying that keep speaking in a monotonous, hypnotic tone so that everyone falls asleep!

After such an enlightning and a stimulating one week of training all we could think about was to go out there and start the project! That was the thrid lesson: When you want your sales and marketing people to be on the field instead of motivating them to go out and acheive targets (like Dessler says in his HRM book) the easier way is to just make them hate your organization so much that they would just look forward to be on the field and not come back to office. That way you dont need to motivate them again and again to go out there, they themsleves will be internally motivated to stay out there and work!

So now was the time that we needed to go out and prove ourselves. And thats what we exactly did. The actual project and our first week of cleint meetings in the next section: The Perils of a Summer Job - The First Week of Actual Project

OM MBAYAH NAMAH!

The Perils of a Summer Job - An Introduction

Well I am updating my blog after a long longggggggggg time. So sorry to all the avid readers, but let me assure you that this post is going to be worth the read.

This post is about my summer job and the perils associated with it.

I have got my summer job at a firm in Belapur (for the uninitiated it is supposedly on the outskirts of Mumbai). The moment I had got this job I knew I was in for a life changing drama. Unfortunately I came to realize that the drama would be a traumatic one rather than a pleasing one.

On the first day itself I realized the importance of being on time. There is a single train from Andheri to Belapur at 7:40 a.m. This is the only train by which you can reach office on time. As Indians we are always used to reaching late and beleive me I am a true Indian when it come to reaching late. But the very fact that if I miss the train I will have to change a million trains to reach Belapur was motivation enough for me to reach the station on time.

The train I think is the most hated thing amongst the people standing on the platform. Just the sight of it makes them break into a war cry. The first day when people broke into the war cry I thought there was a huge fight somewhere only to later realize that it was a mere daily ritual that occured at the sight of the train. As soon as the train stopped everyone tried to pounce on it as if it were more beautiful than Aishwarya Rai!

Once inside the train I got to know another dark side of humans. The art of chemical warfare! Beleive me instead of Iraq, UN should be looking inside the Indian railways for chemical weapons as you can smell the most obnoxious odours in the trains. Especially the summer season brings out the true fragrance of human body. The sight of Belapur was truly amazing. I have never seen such greenery and mountains near Mumbai in my life (which confirmed my feelings that Belapur is some distant village in which my office was located). The walk to the office was pleasing with great scenery, looking at so many mountains I started wondering if I would have to climb one in order to reach offcie. Luckily I did not have to.

The office building was pristine. It was the most amazing site I have ever seen. I used to think only the Indian government offices used to be dillapidated, but this building can easily give any government office a run for its money. It was a tribute to the constructor of the building that inspite of such severe damage the building was still standing. As luck would have it the lift also was so well maintained that the 5th floor button (the floor on which the office was located) was not working. But we were a committed and optimistic bunch and so we marched onto the 5th floor. The site on the floor was amazing. All we could see were 4 doors. First one was unnamed, second one was for some water pumps company, third one was some unheard of firm and the last one was an empty room with a few chairs. Luckily for us a lost soul told us that the unnamed door was the office of our firm. God bless him else we would have never found it.

The empty room with chairs turned out to be our training room. And what a training week it was going to be.

Stay tuned more on the training week........

Why everyone should remain single

Well I was thinking to myself the other day why the hell do people get married. After I gave this topic profound thought I decided that staying single was the best thing a person could do. Why? Well here are some reasons why I feel that a person should remain single.

Advantages of being Single:
1. Single means you have the time to grow and be the person you want to be.
2. Single gives you space to grow. It is harder to grow when you are too close to someone.
3. Single means learning to live by yourself.
4. Single means freedom.
5. Single means learning not to need a man/woman to make your life meaningful.
6. Single is realizing that being married is not necessarily better.
7. Single means that there could be something wonderful around the corner and you can take advantage of it.
8. Single means you are free to love again.
9. Single means you have more time to care for other people.

Disadvantages of MARRIAGE:
1. Marriage is not a word, but a sentence. (Life sentence)
2. Marriage is very much like a violin, after the sweet music is over, the strings are attached.
3. Marriage is love, love is blind.Therefore marriage is an institution for the blind.
4. Marriage is an institution in which a man loses his Bachelor's and the woman gets he Masters.
5. Marriage is a thing which puts a ring on a woman's finger and two under the man's eyes.
6. Marriage is not just having a wife but also inherited worries forever.
7. Marriage requires a man to purchase 4 types of "Ring" engagement ring, wedding ring, suffe-ring and enduring.
8. Marriage life is full of excitement and frustration.In the first year, the man speaks and the woman listens.In the second year, the woman speaks and the man listens.And in the third year, they both speak and the neighbors listen.
9. It is true that love is blind but marriage is an eye-opener.
10. Getting married is very much like going to the restaurant with friends.You ordered what you want, and when you see what the other fellow has, you wished you had ordered that.
11. A happy marriage is a matter of giving and taking, the husband gives and the wife takes.
12. Love is one long sweet dream, and marriage is the alarm clock.
13. When a newly married man looks happy, we know why. But when a ten year married man looks happy, we wonder why.

And now I hope people who read this realize that getting married might be the worst mistkae of your lives. I just hope my girl friend is not reading this else I will never be able to marry :-)