Things I like most about this year in WIMWI

Nothing can probably beat my first year of junior college (class 11) in terms of the fun I had and new experiences I enjoyed. But this year in WIMWI does rank quite high on the list too. After the rather pleasant interruption yesterday, I shall continue with some of the better things I experienced in WIMWI.

Talking with friends. Opening up from the obsessively secretive person that I was right until the middle of engineering college has made life more enriching. Little did I know the pleasures of being able to let friends know whatever was bothering or exciting me and sharing details about myself before coming here. Actually, the process began in 4th year of DJ Sanghvi itself, but it was here that I was finally able to talk about things candidly. Of course, the help and understanding I received from everyone whenever I got into trouble was simply amazing. My dormies and study groupies especially deserve a special thank you.

Hanging out. Life in a hostel means being in the company of friends 24/7. Being the non-socialising type, at home I would often spend 2-3 days (during study leave) without meeting anyone or even talking to anyone. Here, it is impossible to spend 12 hours at a stretch alone. Seclusion has its benefits and I still hanker for quality alone-time. And meeting people just for the sake of meeting them is something I was not accustomed to. But when I am sitting in my room at 2 am, and suddenly Kammo Dbabs asking to meet for coffee, or I decide to walk next door to Chhedi's or upstairs to Khajoor's room and talk nonsense for a while, it is really fun. During the third term especially, I have been doing a lot of this - whether it be meeting Titli at CT or going out with Thoku and Kammo to restaurants across town. And this is something that has carried over to my college friends too - everytime I go to Bombay, inevitably we meet at CCD or somewhere similar and chat for an hour or two.

Lack of sleep. I don't know whether I like this aspect, but it is certainly a nice bragging point to intimidate outsiders :) Two years ago, sleeping at 4 am was something that happened once in a month or two - generally when the next day was a holiday or if I'd really procrastinated on an assignment for way too long. Yesterday I did not sleep at night at all - was listening to music and watching Naruto (and staring at Melissa's photos!), interspersed with working on a strategy course assignment on how Nestle would compete in the Russian ice cream market. Yet, at 9 am, I was in class, pretty much as usual. Of course, a sleepless night is a rarity, and I couldn't avoid nodding off big time in the first two classes. Still, the idea that 2 or 3 in the night is something late seems a bit foreign now. Working on presentations in Kammo's or TOEFL's room as late as 5 am has been my lot this year - and yet I look back at those times with a smile on my face. To clarify though, in my case atleast, there has no major sleep deprivation either - have averaged about 6 hours of sleep a day in both the second and third terms.

Photography. My Sony DSC-W1 has done a lot of work this year. Accompanying me to pretty much every birthday celebration or outing I have been to, the camera has become my trademark, and even given me the tag of paparazzi. I must have clicked thousands of snaps in the nine months so far. They are mostly of the same people - dormies, groupies and section mates, and mostly not very interesting. But a few have turned out rather well, and I enjoy watching those. The photos are mostly of people, in sharp contrast to the snaps I took in Manali 10 years ago. Then, homo sapiens were almost completely absent from the snaps I clicked - the Himalayas were more stunning to look at. They probably still are. But I am beginning to value people more and more. My favourite photo is this one, taken during term 1 during a section outing.


Dorm names. I love my dorm name and I tend to call everyone here by their dorm names as well. The whole thing has become so pervasive that even when we are outside WIMWI in a public place, I still use names like Thoku and Prostee without the slightest sense of hesitation. When years later, Moti becomes a CEO of some prominent firm, I can still imagine meeting him and greeting him by his dorm name, if even there were a dozen others standing around :)

Witty people. Don't know why, but the people here are wittier than in other places I have known. Last week, we were discussing Benetton's exemplary supply chain in class and professor Saralda asked us if as an intern from WIMWI, one of us went to Benetton's managers and told them to implement a certain dyeing process on all their garments (basically a bad idea), what would the managers say. Moti replied, "Dye another day!" Such witticisms make me feel inadequate at times, but have also been a source of some very, very entertaining moments.

I am sure I have missed out on many aspects that I enjoy about living in WIMWI. If I remember, I will add them later. Tomorrow, the specific events I enjoyed participating in the most - T-Nite tops that list, of course :)

100th entry!

This should have been a grand celebration of all that has been great about this year in WIMWI, but there's been a slight change of plans. Today morning Tanay posted this link to a photo gallery of a French newscaster on my college Google group. Seems that she is one of the most popular news anchors in France today. I clicked on the link and was floored. C'est une belle fille! Wow, Melissa Theuriau is really pretty. And pretty is the highest level adjective I use to describe beauty.


I know this is really unusual for me, but since morning, I have browsed through that album on three separate occasions! Thought then that atleast one photo of this pretty girl should grace my blog. So the entry about the wholesome goodness of WIMWI stands postponed by a day or two :)


And perhaps, two photos of Theuriau are better than one!

Things I dislike about this year in WIMWI

The year in WIMWI has been one of the more interesting years in my life. The 100th post will be devoted to exploring some of the many nice experiences I have had here. Let the 99th be used to vent some frustration.

I came in here with a set of expectations - that I would find little stimulating in the studies here, that I would have very involved discussions of business, politics and current and historical affairs with my classmates and that I would continue to improve my social skills.

By and large my expectations have been met, so I am quite satisfied with the way the year's turned out. My expectations about MBA studies being mostly superficial or trivial were largely met, though courses like HR and even accounts were more useful than I'd imagined they would be.

On my second expectation, I was sorely disappointed. The engrossing and heated discussions I used to have in my engineering college, sitting with my classmates in that cramped balcony we called Titanic - I really miss them. Still remember the shouting match we had got into about Gandhi that night in Alibaug :) Everyone here is so incredibly smart, yet no one seems to want to argue over their political positions or pass judgement on historical personalities or fight over the effect of religion on society.

My social skills have continued improving, or so I believe. Maybe in a few years, I might just enter the category of the socially competent :) Or maybe I won't - don't overly care about that. But my friendships have improved - both with older friends and with newer ones I made here. Probably due to a conscious choice a few years ago to be more open about myself, atleast with my inner circle of friends.

So, to the main topic now. Things I dislike about this year in WIMWI.

The utter lack of political discussion. Maybe it's because of the group I find myself in, but the lack of discussions and arguments really is a very disappointing waste of time. In addition, I myself lost touch with newspapers and TV bulletins and couldn't read too many books, which resulted into complete stagnation of my knowledge about the world of news. Learnt more about the business world, thanks to the hundreds of cases we went through, but even here there were few discussions of the latest happenings in the corporate world. I myself have dropped the ball recently. I better pick it up again and remain mentally equiped to take up my interests again.

My inability to read. As I mentioned before, my reading habit was drastically affected by the lack of time and my own inefficiencies. I am a very slow reader, and require long stretches of free time (many hours together) to be able to do justice to the kind of material I like to read. These stretches were not available in the first two terms. In the third term, more time was freed up, but I chose to use it to enjoy the company of friends. Don't think that it was a wrong choice at all, but if only I had been a bit more efficient, I could have managed to read more. Instead I have ended up with a backlog of 5-6 books to read.

The constant presentations. I hated making presentations so very often, especially in the last term. The sheer volume meant that we could hardly prepare really well for most of them. If only we had fewer presentations to make, we would have worked harder on each, and yet enjoyed more spare time to pursue other enjoyable pursuits.

The lack of breaks. In engineering, except for the ten days before final submissions and the two weeks before end-terms, the rest of the term very relaxed and we could whatever we wanted. In such a free atmosphere, I could take up activities like learning German, trading on the markets, etc, while still having all the time in the world to watch TV all day or read long articles in newspapers and news websites. If we had a week long break, perhaps after each set of midterms, it would have been personally more of a "value-add" than sitting in class day after day after day, just waiting for the Saturday to come.

The cribs. I'm not sure, but students here seem to complain more than what I saw in my previous colleges. It's clearly ironic to post this in an entry where I myself am cribbing, but this is only a sign that the cribbing culture has gotten to me as well. People complain about everything - from the food in the mess to the courses and professors to nature of the grass in LKP (okay, not the last one - but things are not far away from that point).

Often I wonder why some of the most privileged and accomplished young adults in India should be or should seem to be so unhappy. I clearly understand where I would have been had I not been here - making not-very-good-money doing programming (something I don't like, though of course many others do). Recalling that fact makes most other issues seem completely worthless worrying about. Add to that the wonderful friends I have here, and life really couldn't be much rosier :)

Well, it could... and that brings me to the thing I most dislike about this year in WIMWI, but that's for a more private diary :)

Best subjects in PGP1

Today's Operations class was god-level. Students who start twitching and murmuring the second the scheduled 70 minutes of the class are past, today sat gladly even as the clock went about 30 minutes past the scheduled close. Prof Saral, Saralda as we call him, is awesome. He knows his stuff, provides entertainment (including singing to the class!), is responsive to doubts and loves his subject - the ideal professor, in short.

Operations in WIMWI is taught in a two-course series OM 1 and OM 2 in the first and third terms. We had brilliant professors in both and this made the two ops courses my favourites this year. Prof Devanath Tirupati (DT) taught OM 1 and while not as entertaining as Saral, and slightly less approachable, I always appreciated his classes. Operations as a subject too has been the one where I feel I have learnt the most new and rather fascinating ideas and concepts - JIT, supply chains, job shops, process control have all become new additions to my vocabulary, not to mention Saralda's chameleons, cheetahs and elephants! Too bad that ops jobs don't pay so well, otherwise I think that many more people would have opted for those jobs over financial sector jobs.

Human Resources in term 1 is an unexpected course to make to this list of my favourite courses. Didn't expect anything from HR before coming to WIMWI (if I thought about it at all). Prof Maheshwari changed all that. The Cypress Semiconductors case is etched into my memory now. The case went on and on for 4 sessions, if I recall correctly. But at the end of it all, it become clear how every company policy affecting the employees is shaped by and shapes the direction in which the firm heads and how it operates and competes in its environment. The cases in HR were a delight, perhaps because of the insightful and no-nonsense manner in which SM tackled them. He was too tough on students on occasion (including myself once - in the fertilizer case). But I would rather have a painful prof who had significant insights to impart and made arbit CP a risky venture, than students raising trivial/absurd points with the encouragement of the prof, as happened in many other subjects.

Economics - here many people in my section will disagree with me - in the first two terms was very fun too. I loved microeconomics and the precise manner in which the optimal outcomes can be predicted on the basis of simple assumptions of the behaviour and motivations of people. Prof Dholakia is nice to listen to as well, especially since in those days I would come to class prepared and could understand the nuances of what he was talking about. Prof D'Souza took macroeconomics in term 2 and he is the nicest prof we've had this year (along with Prof Oburai in marketing this term). His offhand mentions of all the important people he knew were simply delightfully phrased ("Goa's CM called me, and I asked him, 'How's it going?'"). Macroeconomics is very different from micro - as opposed to the clinical precision of micro, there is bewildering mass of theories and hypotheses floating around in the macro world. Whom to believe - the classicists, Keynesians, moneratists or the Neokeynesians? :) (I am personally inclined towards the neokeynesian school). But both were really good subjects. Economics 3 (about issues of Indian economic development) is probably not-too-bad either, but I haven't read any of the readings well enough to really be able to comment.

A little over a week before PGP1 classes end...there shall be some nice memories (the not-so-nice ones will be blanked out soon enough) of sitting in CR 10 and more recently CR 6 (in the old campus) :)

Struggling to 100, struggling generally

I had thought that reaching 100 posts before first year ended would be a breeze, having entered March with over 90 posts already. But lethargy has completely taken over. With the great time I've had in WIMWI since June, I hate to admit this, but all I've been able to think about this month has been when PGP 1 would be over and I would be able to run off to Tokyo.

There are all kinds of reasons contributing to this general feeling of being a bit down, but one factor has been the lack of free time. In college last year, I always seemed to have all the time in the world to waste - watching Buffy or the dozens of other shows I followed religiously, reading articles in newpapers and online, studying annual reports of Tata Steel and Tata Motors, writing and reading history and Shakespeare and what not. Came here and suddenly all I could manage was to follow basic current affairs and do little else. I have read only five full books in the past 9 months - Half-Blood Prince; Emperors of the Peacock Throne; My Name is Red; Guns, Germs and Steel; and Hitchhiker's Guide. I probably read 15-20 in the nine months preceeding these. Have written nothing in my book of essays. Haven't followed either Indian business or international events as closely as I would have liked to. Of course, I have seen only one full episode of any TV show in WIMWI - a not-too-great episode of Buffy.

All this was probably worse in the first two terms. In the third term, a lot more free time has opened up as I have withdrawn from mugging. I have been reading more (finished three of the five books in this term) and very lately have really been into watching Naruto, a Japanese anime show, on my computer. But my involvement in extracurricular activities has increased too, and that consumes time. Plus, the constant stream of assignments and presentations that we have had to prepare in this term has induced a seige mentality of living from day to day.

My grades have suffered to an extent that I did not anticipate. I can't bring myself to care much still. This is nothing new for me - have been through the same thing in engineering, when not even the very real threat of failing in the 7th and 8th semesters could motivate me to study a bit harder. I guess I have been sailing through life so far, and only a proper shock can shake me out of my stupor.

I am really looking forward to my internship now. Working in Tokyo should be a good experience. Hopefully I'll be able to travel through Japan during summer as well. Would be nice to watch some cherry blossoms - my current nick on DBabble :)

College friends

Had a fairly nice trip to Bombay, including a visit to the Consulate of Japan to apply for my visa. I went with Jolly who seemed to have a swell time playing with Vrisha in my home. After getting the visa, Jolly and I walked on Marine Drive from Chowpatty to Churchgate station. For me, this is a dream walk, capable of raising my spirits howsoever low they are, that I think I can enjoy day in day out (though I have never acually walked on the road for even two successive days). The sight of the University Tower and the BSE building coupled with a short trip to Oxford bookstoremade me quite happy. Still, would have liked to spend more time in Town that day, had I no other unescapable work to attend to.

Have developed this strange and largely disagreeable habit of drinking tea/coffee at night. I even took my sister to CCD on Friday night along with Jolly just out of habit, I think (Plus, I wanted to drive the car!).

The next day, I went to Dara's Dhaba for Neha's treat. The long drive to Dahisar meant that I covered both ends of Bombay in my short trip. There were 12 of us there including me, and it was naturally very enjoyable to spend time with them. Luckily most of my friends who are in India have been posted in either Bombay or Pune, and they make it a point to arrange a meet every weekend so that everyone stays in close touch. Hence, whenever I've been to Bombay (and I been there 8 times), I have always been to meet someone or the other, and always atleast one or two are 'irregular' visitors like me. This time I met Devesh after over two months, what with his training in Hyderabad going on till last week. He was posted to Madras, but luckily swapped his location with someone in Pune. Of course WIMWIans know how useful swaps can be! I hope the others including Ankit can manage the Pune swap too.

Haven't been keeping touch with US friends lately. This is what happens, I guess, when one stays up till 4 am typing out a blog that no one even reads. But did chat with Tanay and Rushil today. I hope that everyone there enjoys their spring break. Can't wait until December, when most of the US gang is back in Bombay!

30 days to go

On April 7, term 3 and PGP year 1 end. Normally I would get quite reminiscent on this blog and start posting lists of memorable incidents, profiles of my friends, favourite courses and professors, etc. But alas, true to its reputation, third term does not leave one with time to enjoy even the pretty flowers blooming in the gardens near the canteen, let alone become senti on the web.

No, right now at 4 am, after sitting in Kammo's room for 5 straight hours (with a short coffee break in between) working on an Operations case on INDAL's Belur aluminium casting plant, I am back at my place. Have to make a Powerpoint presentation based on the document we just prepared. For the second time this week and the fourth time in two weeks, I'll sleep after 6 am.

All this despite me having stopped studying completely (apart from required assignments) this term. There's certainly a lot of vellaness contrbuting to this lack of sleep time. Yet, I'm not wasting much more time than I did during second term. Most of the time now flies by in extracurricular work that I'm involved in this term and which was completely lacking in the first two.

Placements have started for the tucchas. Will end in a week's time. Should be a great year, going by any observable measure.

Going to Bombay tomorrow (Thursday night) to get my visa for Japan. Will stay there on Saturday, but will be back on Sunday morning. The travails of this term - forcing me to miss a day in Bombay :(

Opportunities go abegging

OK, first a short vent on the budget before getting back to WAC.

The budget was all that I expected it to be, and all that I feared it would be. Reforms have been more or less stalled. The economy has grown at an average of 8% over three years, yet the fiscal deficit has barely budged from 4.5% in FY04 to 4.1% in FY06. What will happen if the monsoon fails this year and growth falls back to the 5-6% bracket? Or if the world economy takes a beating and our external trade suffers correspondingly? This was a chance to press ahead with fiscal austerity and we should have done much better than targeting a fiscal deficit of 3.8% and a revenue deficit of 2.1%.

No major policy reforms either. That's probably in line with the attempted dehyping of budget day so that policy making becomes independent of annual budgeting. But with elections in Assam, Kerala, WB and Tamilnadu in April and May, don't expect anything on that front pre-monsoon. Labour reforms, pension reforms, FDI in mining and retail, restructring of the power policy and infrastructure development all require urgent action. The UPA is in no hurry though.

One happy omission was an announcement of the creation of the 6th Pay Commission. Since the PM has announced its inevitability, it's a question of when, not if. But hopefully the government will adopt a leisurely pace on this issue too and defer the Commission to next year.

Status quo on taxes, save for the small cut in peak customs duties and the slight rise in service tax. Umbrellas have been brought under the ambit of excise duties, and understandably my Dad is not too happy. But as with the introduction of the VAT, my stance is that personal inconvenience is not too big a price to pay for more equitable and consistent policies. Various exemptions on different taxes will cost the exchequer about 1,50,000 crore in lost taxes next year, if I recall correctly. The elimination of these exemptions and a simplification of the tax code will be instrumental in boosting revenues without hurting growth.

Of course, there are the usual cribs about ballooning subsidies and wasteful expenditure in poverty-alleviation and social equilisation schemes. Par for the course though...I just hope that 2-3 years of 8%+ growth will enable fiscal consolidation to occur relatively painlessly. But to make policy with only the most optimistic scenario in mind is not something a WIMWIan would do, though about Harvard grads I have no comments!

Troubling week

Didn't imagine that the week immediately following the mid-terms would be quite so painful. Partly on account of my return to colossal time wasting (actually, I never really deviated from that!), partly because of some news gathering work that I volunteered for (see explanation below) and mostly because of work relating to WAC and an Independent Project (IP) that I am going to do next year, time suddenly became a precious commodity.

Right now, I just finished eating an orange - my second for the day. Have recently taken up eating fruits regularly. Used as I was to being pampered at home and being served all kinds of fruits by Mom (on a platter, literally), after coming to WIMWI, my consumption of fruits nosedived. I am trying to improve my eating habits again. This week though, with sleep being reduced to 5 hours a day, my tea and coffee intake has shot through the roof.

About the news gathering - Flippy, Geela and I form an 'elite' team of volunteers who job it is to collate the important news of the day from various sources into a single document. The daily documents should be helpful to the tucchas during their upcoming placements. I really enjoy browsing through news sites and going through global share, bond and currency market data while preparing these news summaries. Both my experiences with volunteering for PlaceCom (the previous one being during our summer placements, of course) have been the best ones of all the extracurricular activities I have taken part in WIMWI, save T-Nite.

Have finally come close to deciding a topic for an IP in the 4th term. With the deadline of 6th March looming, Titli and I, in line with time-honoured WIMWIan tradition, should be able to prepare the proposal for the project just in time! I want to do another IP in the 5th term too, though I am not sure if I'll stick to economics or explore operations or finance.

I have to first deal with a closer deadline though. The last WAC assignment is due in about 36 hours. Lizzy, Sheru, Dash and I are working on a report on the luxury hotel segment in India. 4000 words - and this time I am determined to do better work than I usually do for WAC. That will mean two nightouts in a row, I guess.

As it is 3 am now, I better get back to WAC...