Poker!
I played my first game of Poker last night and managed to win the full pot especially when playing against quite a few seasoned players!!! That doesnt go to mean that I am a very good player or anything but probably just Beginners Luck!! But I am very happy with my start .....
Coming to the game itself, I think it is a very good game .... almost feels like you are enacting Game Theory (which we are learning in Eco). But I think (a very humble opinion) why the seasoned guys lost is that they are used to playing with seasoned players, they are not used to a newbie taking stupid risks AND winning! So they based all their bets on how a seasoned player would behave, calculating probabilities and all that crap. But I guess there is also a factor of luck which I seemed to running high on last night (even though it didint figure when I got my mid term grades!!). All said and done, I won Rs. 1200/- on my first night of poker.
Wine & Cheese Party
The Morning after the party ........
Exams over and since Meenu was in town, we decided to host a Wine & Cheese Party at our place. It was a lot of fun organizing for the party, arranging for about 20 bottles of wine, different kinds of cheese, etc. But we did manage to arrange everything in a day and had a great party on sunday evening ........ thanx to Meenu!! We had 4 kinds of wine - Sula, Grover and Fontenoy - a French Wine both Sauvignon and Cabernet Sauvignon and almost 6 varieties of cheese. Almost 40 ~ 50 people turned up and it was on the whole good fun especially after the exams! I think the best part was that it was different from the usual parties where we keep playing the same old music, same old Whiskey, Beer, Vodka, Rum, etc ......... Like someone who had come for the party said "It felt like we still have some culture left in the campus"!!
Next time we plan to have a proper Wine Tasting event with a professional .......
Exam Fever!
Seems like the exam fever can strain the nerves of the ablest of able men be it a person with 780 GMAT or a person with 15 years of experience in the real world facing real life crisis!! I think about 95% of this can be attributed to peer pressure ........ after all who would want to seem lower than his / her peers in any capacity. The point of interest is that, considering we will be 3 weeks away from an exam at any time for the next 1 year, will everyone be this pressured every single time or will people get used to the fact and take it in their stride??
Market Dynamics
After understanding market dynamics in Economics class today, it feels so wonderful to think that you can explain (??) all the different scenarios in the world today armed with this theory - be it why a particular stock is soaring or why men hang around pretty women all the time. Everything scenario seems to fit the demand - supply model.
So, philosophically speaking, if all economic barriers (tariffs, taxes, ceilings, etc) of all sorts were removed in every field in the world, the whole world would work as one big efficient market place in equilibrium. But, I guess the flip side to this would be that this would ensure that only the fittest survive (and increase monopolies??) - meaning the producers or consumers who are inefficient would be eliminated. Is it really a bad thing?? After all, the homo sapien survived because he was fitter ........... may be a new race will develop which always strives to be more and more efficient. You must really have some patience to read all this especially when I have no idea if I am making sense or talking crap. So let me stop my ramblings here .......... Good night.
Election time begins
and this time its on campus! In ISB, there is an elected student body with several arms which basically interfaces between the student population, School management and other external organizations. Now all members of this body are elected by a simple majority and the candidates arent allowed to do any print campaigning just a Soap box event where the candidates express themselves regarding their suitability for the post.
Having said this, anyone would assume that it is a fairly simple and uncomplicated process but not at ISB! When you throw in 428-odd highly competitive students together there is so much of leg pulling, mud slinging, etc that the likes of "Amma" and Karunanidhi seem like novices at this game. People are drawing up their manifestos, creating core campaigning teams and working so hard that you might wonder what perks the post has. On the contrary, you will have to sacrifice academics to actually be able to contribute and justice to the job. Anyways, its all fun and I am loving it so much that now I am thinking of standing for one of the Club presidents post!!
Hilarious!
A must see for all the people of Indian origin (in India or out of it)! As usual Jon Stewart is hilarious (and one of the things I really miss!) ...........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kawjtO0KTOI&eurl=
Zinda Hoon Main .....
Thats the song I keep humming to myself nowadays as a reminder because it is so easy to drown in Economics, Stats and the like. It feels like every subject is like a maze where you keep going in circles ......... For Eg, Eco talks everything in terms of Economic Profit / Loss, Economic Rent, etc which is totally different from the Profit / Loss we know and Stats seems like its some code which has z-value, p-value, t-value and what not! I mean who named them such randomn alphabetical names ..... hadnt they heard of self evident names???
And the best part is that I study the whole thing diligently, feel like I have mastered it all and I keep 1 step back and poof! Everything seems to have disappeared and I am again getting so confused with the basics that it would seem like I havent done anything productive at all. So I have decided to take a break, get out of the campus and go out for dinner ..... may be this will clear up my head!
100 and still going strong!
And I am referring to my Site Meter (a picture of which has been captured above!). I cant believe that there are 100 people (other than my wife) out there who are interested in my life and rantings from ISB! Anyways here are some of my coolest visitors (as per Sitemeter):
- Hobart, Tasmania - Australia
- Northolt, Slough - UK
- Riyadh, Ar Riyad - Saudi Arabia
- Montreal, Quebec - Canada
- And of course lots from the US mainly being from TX (I guess its Veera & gang from TAMU)
No wonder blogs are so much in vogue! After all who wouldnt feel nice to know that there are lots of people who are interested in your life (They probably are jobless but we will ignore that for now considering the excitement of the moment!).
B-School or J-School??
And by J-School here, I mean Jargon School! Thats because sometimes I wonder if we are learning something new or actually learning the same old common sensical things with a fancy name and getting trained to use it in our everyday lives. And just to prove my point, here are the top 7 interesting jargons (listed by order of priority as per my limited understanding) I have learnt over the past 3 weeks ...
- Perspective on this ...... Perspective on that! (Apparently you need to have a perspective on every single thing thats happening in the world be it Emerging markets or Fish Markets!)
- Value Proposition of .... (starting with you to everything else)
- 2 by 2 matrix (to represent every goddamn thing you can think of)
- Intrinsic Brand Building (and there's an Extrinsic Brand Building too)
- Marginal whatever you like to say (Costs, Profits, Revenue, etc)
- Buzz Marketing (its got nothing to do with bees)
- And of course Core Competency!!
Anyways, after a meeting with the Placement department today, we were advised that we need to "Talk the talk and Walk the walk" of whatever we aspire to become and not retain any of our old traits (talk like a Techie, etc) since they apparently hold us back in our 'dreams' to reach those dizzying heights in our career! Usually I would have said that this is all crap and go on living my life the way I have been but with the pressure of a 10 lakh loan on my head, I will listen to anything anyone (with some credibility of course!) has to say if that ensures a job and so, I have decided to consciously use at least one jargon in my daily conversation just to make sure I "Talk the talk".
An Old friend
It is always a very pleasant experience to meet an old friend, share old memories and reminisce about those carefree days. I had one of my very old friends (known him for almost 13 years now) come in to meet me today. We spent the whole day chatting and talking about a lot of stuff from Ramayana, Mahabharata to what causes an AC to drip! It just felt like the old times .........
At the end of it all, I think that there are some people whom no matter after how long you meet, it feels like you have known them all the time whereas there are those whom even if you meet them everyday, it feels like you dont know them at all. I am happier with just a couple of the former than a 100 of the latter. Hope I can make at least a couple of such friends at ISB ......
First Set of Ass!
To the ones who were expecting something more interesting after reading the title, I am sorry by "Ass" I just meant Assignments.
With the ending of Week 1, we were given 3 assignments - one each in Fin Acc, Eco and Marketing. The interesting part is that all 420 odd students seem to have finished the Fin Acc and Eco assignments both individually and collated it as a group by Saturday even though the deadlines were Monday morning!! The Marketing ass is being tackled by one and all such that it is completed by sunday or max monday ......... considering that it is due on Wednesday!!
I guess this is determined by the variable called "Enthu" which is currently very high (local or global maxima?) and in its transient state. Just for curiosity sake I am planning to track the variable "Enthu" to see where its steady state is and whether it drops at all and if it drops will it be exponential or linear. My prediction is that this will exponentially drop with its Limit tending to zero but never (hopefully!) reaching zero!
Week 1 of Core Term
And the core term finally begins !!! We have had a sample of all the different core courses and the profs are pretty good in their subjects especially since we have one each from Kellogg, Wharton, Columbia & ISB ! Anyways the parties seemed to have died down now and people around are more immersed in their books.
BTW Meenu was here this weekend before the Core Term started and we had a good time shopping / dining / partying together in Hyd. Sad to part but good thing is that I am back to my Bachelor on Campus status ;) Above is a pic of me & Meenu at Liquids. I guessed that since I never seem to have much to write, I might as well fill up the blog with pics ....... hopefully it is interesting for someone.
