I am in !!!

Been there - Done that !!

2008-05-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

After a long break, here i am (took me an hour to figure out how to sign into this account) writing my next post. So i finally joined IIM K and had the 2 best years of my life. Had a decent start to my BSchool life by missing most of the classes in the first term itself (Spoken like a true Bitsian). Had great trouble understanding the accounts and the economics' of the world and wondered how i am going to survive in the BSchool world where Finance is the way to go. But just as i was about to give up i realized that there was an easy way out of this cruel and competitive BScool world. No points for guessing - yup it was "MARKETING". There are only 2 kinds of people according to me ( in the BSchool world ) - the ones that understood finance (Like my smartass girl friend who used to make me feel like dung in front of her) and the ones that didnt (Like me who could do nothing except convincing people and make them believe that i could be a great marketer). So thats how marketing was born and is a big field in the world now, and thats exactly how i got to do my summers in HUL (the biggest fmcg in the country - http://www.unilever.com/ - bulbers pls do goto the site and check out their brands - u will be flabbergasted ). Frankly speaking, when i got in i was happy but at the same time worried cos if i didnt do well there, thats the end of the world. It all started on 15th june 2007. I started doin my internship with the global BD team of RIN(which is Surf in south africa, Brilhante in Brazil and Omo in Thailand - took me 2 full months to get used to this multidomestic and purely non-global strategy). 2 months passed and i looked back and wondered what i had done. My final appraisal was nearing and i was shitting bricks cos i had just heard that HUL had increased their salary by close to 40% and a PPI/PPO would mean a lot to me. I somehow scraped in, got a ppi (Thanks to my generous boss who mustve had to fight his conscience to give me a ppi) and comfortably cleared the interview too. Paaaaaaaaaaaaa ....... what a relief. My second year was mostly spent eating and sleeping - and those various trips to the most exotic places in the country. And ofcourse as usual learning a lot from my girl friend who helped me get through those tests and quizzes. At the end of an MBA, when i look back now, i wonder if i learnt anything more than getting used to being one of the best in the country. Even though i wasnt a topper or anything, the IIM tag gives u the confidence that can take u places. What i did best in these 2 years was learning to play to my strengths. Currently i am reading this book called "now, discover your strengths" by Buckingham and Clifton that says just that. But to play to your strengths effectively, you also need to believe that your strengths are unique and no one can beat u in ur territory; Self confidence is what an IIM degree gave me. So here i am, doing my BLT stint with Hindustan Unilever in Chennai wondering where i am going to go next !!!!!

Yet to be there n yet to do that

2006-05-29T04:33:00.000-07:00

What high hopes i had while writing my previous post about the iim k experience. What a dream , a dream i would kill for. It was the 12th of april , my mom's b'day , the day iim final results were expected. I woke up quite late that day , checked the websites for final results. Almost all IIMs had the links activated except iim K. So i decided to get ready to go to office. I asked my mom whether she would like to go out for dinner. She said " U call me and tell me that u got thro iim k , u cant give me a better gift". That was the first time i was tensed about my results. As expected the results did come out in the afternoon but my name didnt figure even in the waitlist. I thought that my life ended there. What i went through was a depression which i never thought i would go thro in my life. A lot of things in my life were hitting the rock bottom at that point of time , and this was the last thing i had expected. My depression lasted for almost 15 days. But i realized that life has to move on, but still i couldnt believe that I was not going to do what i dreamt of. I so badly wanted a change in my life. Shifted my house to indiranagar ( the place closest to my heart ) , but it was not helping. The very thought of CAT 2006 was scary. I decided to take the easier but costlier route of writing GMAT and applying to ISB. Things were going smooth , I even started preparing for my GMAT. It was the 20th of may , i was checking my mails at home and my yahoo inbox read "1 bulk" . Normally i dont check my bulk mails more than once a week cos its mostly spam , and that too about things i least care about. The same thing happened on 21st of may too , and i didnt bother to check my bulk mail. On 22nd of may , reached office a little earlier than usual as i had to take a KT on defect prevention , a topic i hardly knew about. The topic was so boring that i decided to read that one mail in my bulk even if it is from those soosies and loosies about contraception. Not even in my wildest imaginations did i think that the one mail in my "bulk" is gonna change my life forever. Yes it was , it was indeed a mail from IIM K admissions office. I couldnt believe my eyes. My inertia was not letting me even get up from my seat. A feeling that cant be explained. I was not happy , I was not excited , I couldnt think about anything. It took me 3 minutes to find my mom's number from the address book , something i do in less than a second normally. My body temperature shot up , i felt pukish , felt dehydrated. After about 30 minutes i realized what had just happened. But amidst all this confusion was a sense of satisfaction. Until that moment i never thought that I was good enough to be a part of the IIM fraternity. Now its up to me to make the next 2 years count. Its an opportunity of a lifetime. So right now "I am yet to be there n yet to do that".

web 2.0 beckoning

2006-05-03T02:14:00.000-07:00

hi guys ... sorry for the long silence , kinda got fooled by web 2.0 ( no details ), so taking revenge these days. Nothing great happenin in my life. Something worth a mention wud be the fact that i got beaten up , or rather my helmet got beaten up a coupla days back cos of the TN registration on my bike. The tension between TN and Karnataka doesnt seem to have ended. But it was a good experience overall. heard a lot of stories from a building contractor from KGP about the problems tamil guys face in KGP. It hurts me hard when i hear such stories, But still , i really cant do anything about it.

CATXPrience

2006-03-20T02:07:00.001-08:00

This story dates back to a hot summer afternoon in 2003 . Me and my friends were getting back home after a usual guzzler .. . My bil was dropping us back home and suddenly he started asking abt our plans in life. well , i was about to say " guzzler's tomorrow" , and suddenly it hit me hard - > what the eff am i doing in life ? my bil started off sayin we should prep for CAT and its not that tough blah blah ! i have never heard anybody say that to me "cat is easy " ! I was like " i am not a cat material " will crack GRE and offfff to the USofA ! GRE happened , was decent enough , apping started - was going fine . suddenly "cat is easy" came to my ears again .
Thoroughly bored of the apping shit i decided not to apply to any univs and decided to take up CAT 2004 ! well ... decent enuf plan i thought ! Started off with the BRM shit , and things were pretty much simple . I was like " my bil was right - cat is simple" . Then came the first disaster in the form of IMS mock cats . Rank 5000 became a habit for me , aaahhhhh CAT isnt easy afterall ! managed to make a decent 95 percentile in cat 2004 ! depressing can i call it ? no not at all . I was too dumb to realize what i had missed.
"CAT is by far the toughest management entrace test in the world"--> my friend tells me this in one of the chai shops in chennai. I was like " why didnt u warn me earlier dude ?? " !!
Feeling thoroughly shitty abt myself , like any dumbass sitting in software parks in
bangalore , I decided to prepare for cat 2005 . I called it 'CAT with a vengeance' . But all
the vengeance dried off by the time CAT approached. so it was yet another "CAT" for me , but
a lil better than the previous one. managed to get a consolation call from IIM kozhikode.
More about the IIM K experience in the next post.

IIM K Experience

2006-03-20T02:07:00.000-08:00

The gd/pi was scheduled at 2:00 PM on the 7th of Feb 2006. landed there at 1:15 like an idiot and ended up chatting with a few people there. One of those guys , an IITian with 6 years of experience said " if u have read Bertrand russel - u will crack ur GD" . my first reaction was "what the hell - nobody can guess it" . At two i get the shock of my life. There were 10 ppl in my group - all of them around my age except for one uncle ji who seemed to have a lot of experience. the topic presented for the GD was an excerpt from Bertrand russel's book "the analysis of mind" !! some bloody four liner about words and higher intellectuals !! couldnt understand the context. So all of us started speaking about words - means of communication blah blah , the ususal gassing happened. At one point the moderators seemed too amused ; russel would have hanged himself if he had seen us discussing his book.
GD got over with the usual " You may stop now " from the moderators. Then we guys were asked to wait outside for our Interviews. I could hear a lot of rumours that one of the 2 guys in the panel is a mechite and loves fluid dynamics. I swore to myself that I would never mention "Fluid Dynamics" in my PI. My chance came and i was given a warm welcome.
There were 2 guys in the panel ; one frenchie guy and the other was a fair tall guy(fluid dynamics). I will call them frenchie and fluid for the sake of the dialogue. Here it goes ->

Frenchie : So sairam , u r a chemical engineer from BITS. why infosys ??
me : I was interested in both chemical and software and was open to opportunities from both areas ... blah blah ....
frenchie : what did u do in infosys ?
me : explained my project etc.
fluid : so whats so great about ur project ?
me : explained to him about the profitability for infy thro our project and the kind of clietele it had.
fluid : do u know which is the largest pension fund company in the US?
me : calpers sir.
fluid : debt/equity ratio ??
me : ( what the hell , i am sure u dont know ) i dont know sir.
fluid : what is the biggest problem with pension funds in the US?
me : no money to pay ppl back , liquidity problems ....
frenchie : what are the 3 f's about u?
me : fun lovin , frank and focussed sir.
frenchie : why fun loving ?
me : some gassing ...
here is the bomb .........
fluid : what did u learn in chemical engineering ?
me : mass transfer , heat transfer , thermodynamics ..???<> sir !!
fluid : then ?????
me : ( god damn ) fluid dynamics sir .....
fluid : explain bernoulli's theorum
me : luckily i had studied it the previous day so i explained
fluid : drew some pump etc and asked me to solve bernoulli's
me : managed to do it ...
few more bernoulli stuff .....
fluid : how is sugar prepared ?
me : crystallization of sugar syrup
fluid : more details :;
me : not sure sir.
frenchie : What happened during the GD?
me : I guess none of us got the context right , but a few points were real good.
frenchie : so sairam u made 99.4 , only 76 in quant , and managed jus 1 call from K . what happened with ur quant ??
me : it was a bad day , but i am good enuf in quant.
frenchie : so u say u r as good as any other guy who got 99 percentile in quant ?
me : yes sir.
frenchie : good. will give u a situation now. u r on a bike travelling alone in the middle of the forest. u see 3 ppl stranded there. one old lady who has to be taken to the hospital immediatly , one middle aged man who saved ur life 5 years back , and one pretty dame who can make ur ideal match. who's life will u save and why?
me : ( man , what cliched questions???) can i make assumptions sir ? frenchie : sure me : assuming that the middle aged guy knows to ride a bike , i will ask him to take the bike and drop the old lady at the hospital. Will stay with my dame in the forest.
frenchie : wild laughter muhahahahahahahahah - good -> you can go now.
well .. there it goes . dont know if this is good enuf. lets see .....

well .....

2006-02-26T23:35:00.000-08:00

well .... cant believe that my first blog has come in soo late ! damn - i wish i can say i never had the time. For a guy like me who jus cant impress people with his writing skills , blogs are definitely a good start.
I will start of by introducing myself ! i am "not a good writer" from "not a good writer " ..... " not a good writer at all " . so please dont waste ur time unless you are absolutely jobless. More about myself in future ; i guess its time to get back to eclipse , SWT , xml , vxml waaaahh !! somebody save me !!!!!!!!