What a day

So the day starte a little early. Woke up at about 7 just to look at the Markstrat results. Only to be slightly dissapointed, and at the same time slightly relieved that we werent hopeless either. Actually I have been a little bogged down this whole week, doing group assignments/markstrat/studying to keep up with the classes. So it was a relief to see that we havent completely bombed the markstrat world like we do in other assignments.

Today is also kinda sad day cause we will no longer be taught by Anjani Jain, who was just amazing..... he will be replaced by Ziv Katalan. Anjani was just amazing.... I truly believe that I am extremely priviledged to be taught by such amazing professors... It is just amazing to see the kind of humility that he has. And to think that he is the Asistant dean at Wharton, wish we had such assistant deans ;)

Then it was time for juggie, where Juggie decided to flash the results of all the teams on the board...... and yippie... we are second in our industry :) but then there is also a group, which I believe with "divine providence", has managed to actually rake in a shit load of moolah..... could it be with the help of some "older and wiser" individuals? well we can only guess.....

Hmm What else??????? well I guess thats about it not much to say

The first markstrat decision

Dude Markstrat rocks. Amazing strategy game for marketign strategy. Se were stuck with some pretty shitty products and had to come up with a strategy to comepete with other teams in the market through a product introduction/repositioning/advertising.... Itwas just the most cool thing I have done yet. And it was in juggie's class. Juggie even through a party in celebration for all the groups' first markstrat decision. FUN FUN FUN.....

Juggie!!!!!

Today was an amazing day..... first marketing class with Jagmohan Raju (Joseph J. Aresty Professor; Professor of Marketing at Wharton). It was totally amazing..... Truly inspiring. I dont think I have been this engrossed in any class till now at ISB, and ISB experience is just getting better by the day. I was already impressed with the professors we had till date, but truly I think Jagmohan raju takes the cake. we went through the Barco Case, and I think I will never forget anything that he said in class... talk about dialogue delivery, and the ability to keep students' attention. The classroom experience is just amazing with a lot of interactions with both the professor and the students.

This term is just amazing, we also have the assistant dean of Wharton school of Business Anjani Jain teaching us Decision making and organization. amazing professor as well, makes the whole concept of linear programming so intuitive... truly, I think I am lucky to be taught by such amazing professors.....

We are just prisoners of our own creation

Why do we just try to get stuck in our own little prisons? is it a consequence of our inability to accept that we actually are in control, or is it the fear that we are actually in control. It seems to me that I have consistently tired to tell my self that I am in control, but in reality I have made sure that this control is limited to the proverbial prison that I have built for myself. It is in this realm that I conduct all my activities. Taking long circular walks, trying to find the corners to this realm, trying to exit this reality, but making sure that I do not think beyond the realm of possibilities limited to this existance. In the quest to find the reaches of this existence I have been contemplating for the last few days. I have been pretty bored the last few days, not quite interested in many things but still......

Anyhow alls this is the rambling for today :)

Fucking bored

Finished all the reading for next week and I am fucking bored..... WHAT TO DO????

Vacation

Just came back from a gala of a time in bangalore. After the exams it was definitely a much needed break. some of my buddies from ISB came along and we rocked the town, ate some great food in Ebony and partied in Taika.

I even got a chance to visit my old watering hole (TGIF). I just realised that while I frequented TGIF throughout my stay in bangalore, I didnt quite understand why I liked the place so much. It wasnt a place where there were a lot of women, and I didnt really know anyone too well over there, but regardless I frequented it, and sat in the same spot all the time. What i realised during this vacation is that, I really liked the fact that I could talk to the people at TGIF without actually letting them know too much about me, it was one of those "hi, hello, what do you think about that new ad on TV" type conversations. It is also quite interesting that we meet so many different types of people in these bars; the quiet ones who stay to themselves-chugging down kingfisher by the bottle; the loud abnoxious types who pretend to be the preppy type-talking about how much they spent at The Leela (while making sure that they definitely attend the "Happy hours" at TGIF, infact never staying back past the happy hour time). The sober rich ones who refuse to come during happy hours as if it would be almost disgraceful to drink a shot of Chivas for half the price. Really interesting that whatever these people might be they were what made TGIF interesting. Now when I went back I realised that there is a charm to this mundane existance, where we can compartmentalize the essence of a person into some predetermined boxes.

Well so much for my blabber......... was just writing what I thought.

Well now I am back in school and classes have started again. ANother semester on the way...... hopefully better!!!!

End of Term 1 Gang Rape

I was just thinking, “What should I call this term?”..... By tomorrow we would have gone through 4 out of our 32 courses, so 1/8th of our term. From the looks of it it hasn’t gone well for many of us, and what tomorrow holds no one knows. So I think we can appropriately call term1 a GANG rape? And as we were all ISB "exam virgins" prior to these exams, I think this would also mean that we have lost our virginity. We have about 15 minutes for tomorrow and another disaster is quite evident. SO the last minute studying that I am doing right now is gonna probably be of no consequence. None the less a sense of what I call “last minute responsibility” overwhelms us, “I know I can beat the system, I have done it before about 8 years back”. What I fail to consider in this regression model is negative externality of age, (whoa did I just mix stats and Eco?) then I would have to do a conjoint fucking analysis of my preferences (ie, sleep vs a marginal benefit of getting an extra percentage, kicking Bubnas ass, me sitting here procrastinating with the eventual end quite evident, and the list goes on….) and then I would have to do a cash flow analysis for the amount of pepsi I buy because of this stupid FMBA(fucking MBA) and well I think I just lost my thought of train (whoa said that wrong too) . Well as you can see, as I enter tomorrow I don’t quite know what the hell I am gonna be examined on, my sanity or my ability to regurgitate the nonsense that awaits.

Overall I am pretty happy though, with the look on people's faces after the Economics Exam gave me assurance that I might infact get above the mean (which is appropriately called so). Accounts though was a completely different story, i could not balance the damn cash flow statement. It was a total bitch, and these days I have just come to terms with the fact that I might have to work a bit harder and keep pace with the class, there is no way taht last minute studying is gonna help in this course.

2 standard deviations away from my life

"I was locked up in my rubber room, stats crawled up my ears and ate my brains out"

And that's pretty much what Statistics does to someone. I feel this sudden urge to regurgitate the little stats I know and flush it down the toilet. I really don't want to know anymore..... Who the heck cares if males get paid higher on an average than females? Who gives a shit? God damn it. Standard deviations and multiple regressions are truly "constupationary" terms (yeah so sue me I invented a new word). In other words I really am fed up, I want it to all come out............ Cant wait for the finals.

So where is my life? Looking at the title of this particular post I am sure that's something that I would need to explain, in case I forget it at some point in my life.

So my life: the ideal one

On a beach in some Caribbean island, where I can soak up the sun and get "tanned", well I guess I was born tanned, but wouldn't mind getting baked a little more. Maybe scuba dive into the reef and swim with Spotted Eagle Rays and parrot fish. From the looks of it right now I feel I am about 2 standard deviations away from that dream.

My present outlook:

I will probably be stuck in some board room talking about the probability of the sun shining up some executive's ass. Or maybe I will be talking about how we need to come up with some creative accounting to fucking hide the shit under the carpet. Or maybe I will be marketing shoes to dogs and come up with a billion dollar marketing budget, where the incremental break even would definitely be so minute compared to the market at large........ Well could this be my life? Is this what I am gonna end up doing...... I hope not.... Well I really do hope no employer of mine ever reads this blog, or I am toast.

Two standard deviations eh? Well that still gives me a 5% chance.... Well good enough I hope.