Something I didn’t expect an MBA would teach me..

Learning to not be punctual
Working in teams here and calling team meetings every now and then has actually taught me the lesson of what everyone refers to as ‘IST’ very well… Much better than whatever I had learnt about it all my life. It’s possibly because one doesn’t expect it to be like that here. For a one hour meeting, there is no way that every team member would be present within 10 minutes of the official meeting start. Why does this happen? The lack of time makes people want to optimize their time utilization. Since everyone has learnt, like me, the prevalence of IST, they try to be the smart one, by coming late, thereby saving their time. It’s like a game theory – everyone wants to be the last one to reach to minimize their time wastage. What happens because of this? First you come 2 minutes late, but someone else came 3 minutes late. Next time you come 4 minutes late and the cycle continues, and very soon, IST comes into play. Sadly enough, I too have started playing this game theory, though I am not so good at it - even after all my calculations, I am rarely the last one!
Or maybe it’s cause I dislike the last one’s so much that I don’t want to be one myself!

Redbull shoos away sleep??

A friend of mine thought that drinking some Red bull would help him stay awake and do some studying. Sadly enough the 3 times he did drink one, he slept off within 30 minutes. Here’s why I believe it happened. The reason why someone is awake (when sleepy) is cause of some strong determination to not sleep. When you drink a Red bull, you think that that determination is no longer needed as the Red bull will make you non-sleepy. However, a Red bull is only so much powerful. So it’s only able to work for those 30 minutes, after which nothing is working to keep you awake – neither the Red bull, nor your determination.. and hence the outcome! So next time you have one, I’d suggest don’t trust it, still try to stay awake using your willpower and then maybe the Red bull (??) will keep you awake!

Pets – is it fair?

We all love animals, at least that’s what most people claim. More so, people who love animals also like to keep them as pets. I too once kept a pet – a rabbit. I found it really cute and decided to give it a shot. However, after some time I realized that I was unable to keep the rabbit happy. Probably the rabbit just missed other rabbits. Or maybe it was just me. Overall, I realize that as much as I like animals, it’s just not fair to keep them as pets, that too alone. It’s about as bad as keeping them in a cage. Some animals, specially dogs seem to do fine with human attentions, they can probably related to them and interact them. But animals lower in the food chain, with lesser developed senses, like rabbits, fishes, turtles, birds, are not able to connect. You may be taking the best care possible, but you are a human at the end of the day!

Having Said That

When we talk, we like to talk such that new sentence is related to the previous sentence is some way. People use a variety of phrases for the same. When I started working, I realized the culture was to use ‘so’. Every sentence started with ‘so’ and hence (and I use another such word) could be linked to the previous one. It was a smart way to start a sentence. Now as I have joined college (specifically, a B-school), I’ve come across another more interesting phrase – ‘having said that’. What is ‘that’, whether ‘that’ is related, whether it was required to say ‘that’ to be able to say the next sentence, are all irrelevant questions. Interestingly, it’s my communications professor who first introduced me to this phrase. Maybe it’s the way to go in the managerial word. When unable to connect, use ‘having said that’.
Having said all of this, I am wondering whether to and how to incorporate this into my conversations!

2 year MBA over 1 year MBA

I recently joined a 2 year MBA program, and here I realized one important advantage of a 2 year MBA over a 1 year MBA. This is something which had not occurred to me when I was making the decision for a 2 year MBA vs. a 1 year MBA. But, now that I realize this, I am glad I did not take up a 1 year MBA.

The advantage is this - seniors and juniors. In a 2 year program you get to interact with the senior batch and learn from them. In your second year, you get to interact with your junior batch and pass on your learnings. This not only helps your build a much larger network ( 3 times ), learn from that many more people, but most importantly, helps to build a unique culture for that institute, which can be carried on batch after batch.

Why is there so much more illness in humans than animals?

Nature developed the process of natural selection which meant survival of the fittest. This process automatically eliminated any weakling among the animals. The weak male would loose to the strong ones and would not get the opportunity to spread his genes. And that would be the end of the bad gene. A weak female would be unable to reproduce any cubs, or feed her cubs (if any) who would not survive as result.
However, humans have totally surpassed this natural selection. Survival of the fittest in terms of health has been replaced by survival of the fittest in terms of affluence. The moment we have some illness we are able to cure it. The bad gene not only stays but very comfortably gets the opportunity to produce offspring’s and hence spread. Women who are unable to give birth to kids by natural means, resort to extensive medical treatment to be able to do so. Results are disproportionately high multiple births and offspring's with a greater propensity to have genetic and other diseases. Men don’t have to fight to be able to spread their genes - having enough affluence helps.

As a result, we see an increase in the diseases over time. Yes, life expectancy has increased considerably, but at the same time, there is great sickness at younger ages. e.g. diabetes now strikes younger people. So does cancer, and the number of younger people being affected is increasing. Overall, there are more diseases.

Travelogue - Rajasthan in Dec '07

This travelogue is about a 4 day road trip to Pushkar and Jodhpur from Gurgaon. We were a group of 4 (ex) consultants and data analysis experts from 3 different companies.

Day 1 :

We started early from Gurgaon and got to see the sunrise after a very long time. We reached Pushkar by 11, took up a small RTDC hotel and set out to the lake post a lunch. At the (holy) lake while one of us consultants took a short nap, another one spent his time photographing the pigeons there.

We returned for a 5 minute break to our hotel (which became a 1.5 hr nap). We then headed out to the Brahma temple – legend has it that this is the only Brahma temple ever.

Dinner was uneventful (we used Lonely Planet to choose the restaurant - hint), with some of us playing with our new cameras and some of us trying to fill our stomach with little food.

Day 2 :

Next morning, we set out for Savitri temple ( she’s Brahma’s wife and as myth(ology) has it, the temple is located where Brahma and Savitri were supposed to meet). It’s about a 45 minute climb on a mountain with well constructed stairs and the climb is totally worth the effort. On the way, you see a lot of langoors and I liked the site (everyone might not). The view of the entire city and somewhat what looked like a valley to me is great and only gets better as you climb. The temple is small and simple. Another session of photography was underway. Something uncommon was happening too - one of us consultants was on a conference call with her team. Some background – this consultant of ours was extremely overworked and she actually dosed off while visiting the ghats of Pushkar the previous afternoon.

Once back from the temple, we drove into a road which led to nowhere (or so we knew to the best of our knowledge). However because of dipping fuel levels and some of us (including me) being a little paranoid about the fuel indicators’ accuracy, we did not explore much about the ‘nowhere’ which the road led to and soon were on our way back. Not learning from our mistakes the previous day, we again took to Lonely Planet for lunch recommendations – the results were no better.

Learnings about pigeons’s

From past experiences, I have learnt that pigeons are one of the dumbest birds around.

From trip to Pushkar I learnt a few more things –

• They are very good at eating bajra seeds – they can clear the entire ground in less than 5 minutes and you wouldn’t even know that there was some food there 5 minutes ago
• They are not very friendly with each other and do not seem to believe in sharing food – that is, if 2 birds have found food, they would not bother calling the rest of the gang
• Every now and then they’d fly out to scan the ground for food
• They have nothing better to do in life and just keep sun bathing and sitting around
• They shit everywhere and dirty the place

Other things/learning from visit to Pushkar (not related to pigeons)

• Pushkar is not only a dry city, it’s a completely vegetarian one too.
• If you have a sweet tooth, ‘mal pua’ is what you must try in Pushkar.
• Lonely Planet India is exclusively designed for foreigners – hence you can trust the accommodation advice but not the food advice ( our taste buds differ greatly )
• Rajasthan is not a place for north Indian food lovers – we could not get dal makhani anywhere and I really missed it!

Day 2 - Continued

We then headed to Jodhpur. Great road. Smooth ride. Comfortable afternoon nap for few. Broken by a punctured tyre.

About 20-30 phone calls later, we got ourselves hotel bookings at a vintage hotel in the old city, overlooking the fort. The view from the rooftop was great. I thank Lonely Planet for this recommendation and also the 20 others we called before we called this one.

Day 3 :

Morning started with a good breakfast at the roof-top overlooking the fort. This was followed by a walk to the fort ( here again, we met langoors on the way).

The fort is majestic and one of the best maintained fort’s I’ve seen. Do visit the fort’s gift shop – I’m usually fairly miserly but this gift shop has a few nice and affordable items.

We had lunch at a restaurant in the fort which had a very subtle way of warning people of the wait ahead of them in case they order food – their logo was “good food takes time to prepare”.

An auto ride took us to jaswant thada (another memorial in someone’s memory). We did a good job of haggling with the auto-wala – our hotel had provided us with a list of various auto rates, and we extrapolated, acted all knowledgeable and also willing to walk the short distance, all of which helped in the haggling. I enjoy haggling.

We then headed out looking for some genuine desert land (sand dunes and all) towards Osiyan (which is the apparently the beginning of the desert ). However, to my dismay, we ended up at a posh camp site (fancy tents with fully tilled bathrooms, at 7k a day for 2 people). We entertained ourselves with a camel ride (2 people on a camel – looking back a bad decision - poor camel– the camel owner sounded as if 2 on a camel was fairly normal and would not tire the poor animal out). Add to that the fact that it was almost sunset when we got the camel, which meant that the camel had pretty much earned its bread for the day – all in all – the camel was pretty tired by the end of the journey. Now, my camel was a young fella, named “Pappu” which became the butt of all jokes for the rest of the day (“Pappu” being a highly infamous colleague). Top that with the fact that ‘Pappus’ backseat was a bit tilted and I was scared of falling over, cause of which I was tilted in the opposite direction. The ride was not very pleasant – it was getting cold – and we saw no sand dunes – and I (in particular) has seen much better sand dunes in Jaisalmer (which, I highly recommend in case someone wants to see “real” desert land). However, we did see deer and peacocks on the way and fairly nice sunset sky.

On the drive back from Osiyan we saw the moon rising and one could almost mistake it for the sun – a bright orange, full moon.

Post Osiyan , we headed for dinner to the great Umaid Bhavan – the current Raja’s palace residence, which also has a hotel / dining place being run by Taj, and a museum which is open during the day. Well, so we, ‘consultants’ thought that we can afford one such luxurious dinner and there we were all ready to dine at this highly royal place. Now, one must remember, money cannot buy everything, and we were not royalty, neither did we remotely appear like one in our jeans and sweaters and jackets (that too post a ride in the desert). The attendant very politely, first tried to shoo us away by telling us how expensive the dinner was. When that did not work, he took guidance from his big boss and told us that the dining hall was all booked not only for that night, but for the next 2 weeks – completely!

Feeling highly dejected, we headed out for a simple dinner in the old city where we were staying.

Day 4:

Next morning was early to rise, early to pack up, breakfast under the blue sky facing the fort, and heading out to Umaid Bhavan museum (open to all, upon purchase of a easily affordable ticket). Did some photography, realized how much free time and money royalty has to pursue the best of hobbies – polo, flying.

The drive back was fairly uneventful – everyone was tired, the Rajasthan roads were still good, but the trucks and trailers on them were not so good. One starts appreciating Laloo Prasad Yadav for encouraging transport through train. I don’t want to imagine what would have happened to the roads had there been no “maal gaadi”. I am all in to promote more “maal gaadi’s”.

We completed ~550 kms in a good 11 hrs (remember the trucks)