SD to LA

Today was my first day at the new client in LA and it was quite eventful! Here's how -

I drove up to LA in a rented car (Kia Spectra) in about 2 hours and it took me another 15 minutes to figure out which building exactly I had to enter... the campus is huge! Once I got in (after the customary delays at the security for the badges) I was glad to see a normal office with spacious cubicles awaiting me... standard in today's IT world, you say? well not if you knew where I was coming from at my previous client location! :)

After I settled down, the rounds of introductions began and soon I was getting all muddled up with the names and faces... frankly even now, at the end of the day, I am not quite sure who I am sharing my cubicle with! I met the managers I had been interacting with the past couple of days and also the others on the various teams... All strategy & change guys so it should be fun to pick their brains... there also is a recent USC MBA grad student on the team... she seems nice enough, should remember to pick her brain too!

As the day wound down, I accompanied my team to the cafeteria and it was lovely too... there were stalls for different cuisines from round the world... I even spotted my ever fav - chicken quesdilla - on one of the menus but for today I opted for Chinese food - chowmein and orange chicken - instead... yummm! Lunch over, I headed back to the desk to do some more online hotel and apartment hunting but soon I felt my eyelids beginning to get heavier.... the effects of the daylight saving time shift, the early morning wakeup, the long drive was finally starting to kick in...

A colleague came over to rescue me from the state of certain stupor that I was beginning to enter into and she showed me around the campus... the corporate headquaters building was beautiful! I fell in love with the shiny black Lexus in the lobby... it was soo plush... ooooohh! After the long walk and chat, I headed back to my desk and soon it was time to start packing up... I was wondering about dinner when someone mentioned a team dinner! My ears perked up and after some debate, the venue was decided - Addi's Tandoor.

My sense of direction being what it is I was confident of getting lost and so I drove all the way to the restaurant almost stuck to the rear bumper of my colleague's car in front :) even almost jumped a light! Finally when everyone got in, there are were a few awkward moments when no one knew what to say but slowly everyone got into the groove and it turned out to be a fun dinner... One gentleman (colleague, i should say) had such a great sense of humor that I was glad the food had finally arrived coz my jaw had begun to hurt laughing! The food was not bad but I truly believe that Indian food should be had in India by Indians... nowhere else can they even come close! On the way back too I again used my 'stick to bumper' routine and reached the Doubletree hotel uneventfully... checked in... freshened up.... called home... switched on my laptop... and here I am!

Day 1 - finito... and here's to the coming days of work, shopping (just opp to the hotel is the second largest shopping mall in US), interviewing (Atlanta, LA and hopefully more), essay-writing (ISB still remains... the last bastion) and hopefully some more fun on the way!

First Interview call - Ross

Just read the mail from Ross admissions committee -
'After reviewing your application, we would like to formally invite you to interview for admission to the MBA program at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. We utilize the interview as a complement to your application materials, to learn more about you, and to provide you an opportunity to further assess the program’s fit with your personal and professional goals.'

I am undoubtedly thrilled - Ross is my top choice and I am really excited about the program. After the first 15 minutes of absolute joy, my mind did an absolute about-turn and images from my previous XLRI interview flitted across... despite a great score and a confident interview last year I am still in the MBA race... obviously my interview didn't exactly do the trick :( That is one experience I do NOT want repeated.... ever!!

I know I have a lot of work to do before I cross this final hurdle and this time I am going to give it my best shot... there are things that my previous unsuccessful attempt has taught me and there is more to learn... For now, I am treasuring the feeling of joy and achievement and gearing up for the next and more difficult (personally) stage... Wish me luck!

PS: Calling all you bloggers reading my post to pitch in with your experiences/tips/do's and dont's... will truly appreciate it! Cheers...

Rollercoaster ride

So much has happened over the last couple of months that thinking back on it makes my head reel.... sleepless nights over the essays, the extremely hectic trip to India in September, the wedding, the submissions (got 3 done in Round 1), the tension over the project, the transcript 'late pahochega lekin pahochega zaroor' saga.... and finally my last day at work!

The essays had been bothering me for ever... it seemed that I never got anything right, lots of thoughts going around in my head but such a jumble when put on paper... sometimes I did not what to write and when I did, I did not know what words to use, how to express and when the words too came to me, I did not know how to fit it all in 300/500/1-page/2-page entries... Rough drafts in my bag, head swarming I got on the plane to Mumbai....

The flight actually did me a lot of good... unable to sleep even though all the seats in my row were empty... I did do a lot of brain-storming over the tiny flight reading light!! A 21-hour flight and many torn pages later, I was just starting to get into the groove of essay writing when I was thrust into the cauldron of madness called 'the big, tiring Indian wedding'!!

First all the shopping for clothes (designer ones!), the jewelery, the shoes, the purses, the makeup... and that's just for me! We even had to shop for my parents, my brother, my to-be sister-in-law, her mother, her mother's sister-in-law and everyone in between... Shopping done we move onto the main event.... the wedding! I knew it was going to be big but never expected it to be sooooo much of... everything :) Relatives, good food, dressing up, gifts, laughter, ceremonies and the 'wonderful' Calcutta rains and (in)famous traffic jams!! After the Calcutta chapter was over, we moved onto Pune for the next session... One more event there, some more wining and dining and I was about ready to catch my flight back to the US of A....

Getting back, I was looking to settle back into some kind of rhythm but that was not to be.... One one hand, I was waaaaay behind on my application materials and with the deadlines approaching, I had no option but to get into overdrive.... and on the other hand, the world around us had collapsed, well, at least the financial world... When I had left, Wall St was still what it had been for the past 50 years, inconspicuously going about making more money, and when I came back the money was gone, the banks were gone, even Wall St, as we knew it, was gone!! The tightening of purse strings touched my life too and my projects at work were indefinitely delayed (euphemism for cancelled)...

With the applications top on my head, the last thing I wanted was uncertainty at my workplace and decided to take up their 2-week notice... today is the last day of that notice period! I have another project lined up but there has been a delay as a result of which, I get to enjoy two days of vacation... time enough to take stock of my current situation and plan ahead... It has been a challenging period but then again I ask myself, isn't this what I wanted? the answer is a resounding 'YES'!!

Hakuna Matata!!!

Lessons Monopoly taught us

Remember Monopoly? The game we used to have so much fun with, part of our family time with no TVs drowning out the sound, no kids glued to the internet behing locked doors... the time when I was a kid (which wasnt so long ago really!)? Well, I came across this really wonderful article on BusinessPundit on the business lessons that the game of Monopoly taught us. The lessons are listed below -
1. You have to ask for what you want
2. Niceness matters
3. Its not rocket science
4. Take risks
5. Business can be boring
6. Luck counts for a lot
7. Dont expect others to support your strategy
Want to read more? Just follow the link...

And once you have done that, take out that dusty old Monopoly board, get your family together (atleast, you can try) and enjoy a few rounds of putting your competitors 'out of business' :)

Who said Business (and life) can't be all fun and games?

Recommenders, Editors and Contacts.... Ahoy!

Essays are the most important factor...
You have got to concentrate on your essays...
Essays take up 80-90% of your app time...
Essays this and Essays that... so much has been said and written about it that one tends to marginalize the other factors of the application (I know I did!) and then when you actually get down to filling up all those other blanks the enormity of the 'small' tasks strike you!

I have been having an especially bad time with it all (that's not to say that my essay-writing is going great guns but facing trouble when you expected a cake-walk can be very stressful). Over the last couple of weeks, I have talking with my recommender #1, prepping him and feeling quite confident after the experience I was ready to approach recommender #2 when I get the mail that he would be on vacation the next week!! Woah! I did not see that coming.... now its nothing to be overly worried about, you say, but considering I would be going on a vacation soon after I had planned everything such that I have all my recos worked out long before then... and now I would have to re-plan, 1 week delay equals less time for me to prep him equals less time for him to put his words of praise equals less impressive reco :(

On the essay front, I have been working on 4 essays at the same time (working on one essay for more than a day gives me a severe case of mental block) for almost 2 weeks now but I am no where near submitting them... I dont feel confident enuf, hell, I dont feel like reading them myself (but that's probably because thats all the reading I have been doing lately... ) Nyways, I think I desperately neeed some editors - a couple atleast - but people who know me don't know the Bschool app process and because of my technical background, I don't know any Bschool grads! Another thing being, the essays bring out so much personal stuff about you that it is really difficult to just hand it over to someone for review... Its not just the essay they are judging, its ME! (probably a good thing from the adcom perspective but not so good when looking for editors)

That brings me to another issue that is causing me some headache... no Bschool contacts! Be it current students or past alumni... I just cant seem to be able to get in touch wid any... probably I haven't tried hard enuf, probably I havent tried all my sources, probably I am just not doing it right! Watever be the case, I know that making some contacts is imperative and that is what I will be concentrating on over the next coupla weeks, apart from the essays, the recos, the forms, the editor-hunt, the research...

All this before I go on my eagerly-awaited vacation! Adios...

First ding of the season!!

Exactly 15 days after my first submit came in the very first 'ding'... hopefully the last too!
The Reliance Stanford full-ride scholarship (almost too good to be true) results were declared last Friday and I was not one of the finalists...

Takeaways from this experience -
1. there are 50 other Indians who are more smarter, poorer, more in love with India than I am and that they are now all super-excited.. I wish them all the best
Corollary - that only 1 in 5 of these aforementioned Indians would finally make it in.
2. essay writing, even if it is just one, takes more time than you think. Even though you might be thinking about it every waking moment, the progress is slow until you just get down to it
Corollary - stop procastinating
3. writing a short essay requires more work, more vocabulary, more thought and more precision. It requires even more re-drafts since your first attempt would probably have been 3 times the word limit
Corollary - less is indeed more!
4. Stanford is super-achieving, super-diverse, super-brand, super-selective and super-expensive and I am super-sure now that it isnt the one for me... a case of sour grapes, you say? Be that as it may, I think I was just chasing a dream and it was great while it lasted...
Corollary - Stanford is out

What have my other fellow dinged applicants learnt? I would love to know... And all you finalists out there in the blogosphere, please stand up! You deserve the applause :)

first 'submit' of the season

Can someone be relieved and tensed at the exact same moment? Ask an MBA applicant and he/she would say 'Yes!!' and that moment would be when the cursor is hovering around the 'submit application' button and the mind is wondering whether everything has been taken care of!

And once you have submitted it, one part of you feels relieved that the task is now complete and the other part is already tensed about the outcome! And that is exactly how I felt when today morning I finally did submit the Stanford Reliance fellowship application... Now we wait and watch! Thankfully it is going to be a short wait... 15 days to Aug 1, 2008!

I know this is just the first of many more 'submits', many more sleepless nights spent in self-doubt, many more moments of immense satisfaction at getting an essay 'just right'... Let the party begin!

aspiration causing consternation!

Well, what can I say?! I have been thinking and dreaming and wondering and sighing a lot lately... not surprising considering its India's future that I am pondering over!

The Reliance Dhirubhai scholarship for Stanford GSB was very welcome news, nothing like getting a chance at a top school with full scholarship plus being able to test yourself amongst your peers even before the actual application (the scholarship will select only the top 50 applicants)! It was certainly exciting but that was before I saw the essay question - 'How do you aspire to shape India's future?' - who me? shape India's future?? Here I was thinking about how I would like to shape my own future all this while and suddenly this comes out of nowhere!

After long hours of staring blankly at the screen and going through some 10-12 drafts I believe I finally have it the way I want. Initially it was difficult for me to even comprehend what was required - was the essay looking for our vision for India as in how do I wish to see India 10-15 years down the line? or was it looking for how do I wish to contribute to India's growth in the future? I have come to the conclusion that it is a mixture of both - where do you want to go and how do you intend to get there? Come to think of it, arent all B-school essays looking for the same thing?!

Now with the context issue resloved, I was faced with the other challenge of putting it all in 250 words. Initially I didnt know what to write, like a sputtering vehicle it was stop-and-go all the way but then as I got a little more comfortable, I started chuggin along until I had written enough to compile into a novella!! How to Say Nothing in 500 Words was an eye-opener and I realised that a lot of it was reiteration and exclamation and rhetoric that can (and should) be done away with and though I am now down to 350+ words, 250 still seems like a huge task :(

Grand indeed!

Grand Canyon - the two words that invoke images of incomparable desolation and beauty at the same time... the barren rocky landscape wrought about by years of erosion and tectonic movements turns into God's own canvas painted with a melange of colors as the sun sets over the horizon!We also had a lot of fun setting up the tents and cooking and camping out...
All in all it was a memorable and thoroughly enjoyable trip!

Race against time...

Will it? or wont it? I reallllly hope it does...

What am I talking about, you wonder? Well, its the new camera that I ordered on Amazon after months of search and contemplation and now the situation stands thus that on Friday evening, we are driving out to Grand Canyon (the perfect photo-op) and Amazon estimates the delivery date to be Saturday!!!

Now my experience so far leads me to believe (and hope) that the parcel will make it to me by Friday but what if it does not?! I cannot imagine missing such a perfect opportunity to test my new camera - Panasonic Lumix TZ5 - but all I can do is wait and hope that USPS does its magic and delivers it on time...

The race is on!

[Edited on 06/19/2008 : We have a winner! The camera was delivered today... a good two days before scheduled date :) God Bless USPS!]

School Decision

Here is my (tentative) final list of schools -

1. Stanford School of Business -
This is my dream school and I love everything about it, right from its campus to its proximity to Silicon Valley, from its general management courses to its GMIX course, from its clubs to its Indian student fellowship program. Though it requires 3 recommenders and 4 essays, I will be applying in the first round which ends on 22nd October.

2. Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth -
The general management focus of this school and its close-knit community won me over. There are several interesting second year courses and also the Tuck Global Consultancy program has its advantages. This will be a first round application too, to be submitted by 10th October.

3. Goizueta School of Business - Emory University -
Though not very highly ranked, Goizueta appealed to me from the very beginning. The small class size, the GMSC program, the LEAD weeks and the core strength ideology set this school apart. The scholarships offered are very generous and it also attracts the top consultancies to its campus every year. This is a definite first round application - 1st November.

4. Johnson School of Business - Cornell University -
Johnson was a last minute entry into the list, primarily because it is a technically oriented business school and also the brand management and strategy focussed courses it offers. The financial aid scene is not encouraging and neither is the community focus predominant. Yet its immersion program and short essays help it get to into the top 5.

5. Indian School of Business -
This school is a default. It has the obvious advantages of being in India, being a one year course and being cheap comparatively. All in all, great ROI. But it also has the disadvantage of not being AICTE approved and not being that well-known outside Asia. But not applying to ISB would be a mistake I don't want to make but it will be only in the second round so as to see how events play out.

There are a couple of other schools that I am researching like Ross, Columbia, Marshall and I am not ready to laminate the list yet...

Recap

The last one month has been quite eventful with parents arriving in US on the 6th of April, trip to Chicago on the occasion of bro's convocation on the 11th followed by another trip to New York, New Jersey and finally my moving to a new apartment and visit to Dana Point...

Bro's convocation was wonderful and coming on the weekend of Mother's Day, it was also the perfect gift for all mothers! It was also the first time parents were meeting my bhabhi so there was a lot of excitement in the air. I also met up with my friend in Chicago when we went on a downtown exploration trip - the highlight of the trip had to be the beautiful Millennium Park and the walk down the Magnificent Mile.

Later parents went on to Canada as Dada and I returned to San Diego only for me to fly back to New York a week later :) It was a sudden plan but that was a wonderful way to spend the Memorial Day weekend! I visited a lot of my relatives for the first time and went on a complete NY tour though even two full days of sight-seeing in Manhattan didn't seem enough. We visited Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Empire State Building, Wall Street, Times Square and much more and by the I got back to San Diego I felt I have had enough of cities to last me a lifetime!!

Due to my apartment woes, had to move in with my bro for a week and I rented a car and traveled up and down (30-35 miles two-way) on a daily basis. This was the first time I was driving on the freeway alone and so regularly but it was a lot of fun. We drove down to Dana Point on Sunday after a hectic Saturday (morning spent at office and moving in in the evening).

Driving a long distance proved to be therapeutic for me and we had a great time at Dana Point. We spent some time there and then visited the nearby Pines Park and went down a little further to San Clemente Pier. It was very beautiful and the weather, though a little chilly, was perfect.

All in all it was a weekend well-spent but one that went by too quickly, as usual! And I am putting in this post as I count down the final few minutes left....

Journey begins....

Today is a Red-Letter day in my admissions calendar as I embark on the journey to the school of my dreams by working on the very first draft of my 'Why MBA?' essay :)

I have been wondering about the right way to go about it for a long time now - should I read sample essays first, form an idea and then begin with my own? or should I first just list out the main points I want to cover for each essay? or should I pick a school, pick an essay of that school and target it and nothing else? - and then I realised that I had again fallen into the traps of my age-old vice of procrastination so I said to myself - NO MORE!

And here I am... its 12:50 am on a chilly Wednesday night in April and I am trying to get my thoughts down on paper... well, computer screen actually! First thing I realized that I have waaaay too many thought-streams and no logical flow in what I am putting down but since this is my first draft, I have decided to just let it flow and will then get down to structuring it later....

Thats all for now! gotta get back to the other window now where my essay waits....

Oh Camera! where art thou?

21st February?!! Wow, has it really been that long since my last post! I need to get back to this blog more frequently but truth be told, there hasn't been much to write about anyways this past month... I took an unscheduled break from the whole MBA-researching, career-planning and future-worrying thingie for the month of March but now I am back!!

As April came, it brought with it the 'keeda' of buying a new digital camera and what began as a simple task of ordering a heavily discounted SONY model (DSC-H9, to be precise) at a employee sale soon turned into something infinitely more time-consuming and confusing when I thought... DSLR, why not? Thus began the saga of long hours spent staring at the computer screen trying to make sense of ISO, sensitivity, 35 mm equivalent, noise, stabilization, EVF, telephoto lens etc etc, checking out one model after another from Nikon, Canon, Sony and Olympus - Nikon D40, Canon EOS 400D, Nikon D400, Olympus E-510, Canon 30D, Sony A100... the list was endless! There were so many options and so little to differentiate between...

But now after spending a lot of time and learning a lot about how a DSLR works and what its advantages/disadvantages are I think I would be better served by going back to my previous decision of getting a compact high-zoom (if I can find one, that is!).

The one reason why I had first thought of getting a DSLR was because I was looking for a super-zoom camera (zoom in the range of 10+) . The cameras got very SLR-like as the zoom range increased so much so that they almost felt like one (size and weight wise) and I thought if I am going to be carrying such a big camera with me, why not go the whole distance and get a DSLR instead? But now I know that for a amateur photographer like me, a DSLR would be an overkill especially because all that I am truly looking for is a super-zoom stable camera that produces great pics and is easy to carry around.

So now that I have sorted that out, there still is a long way to go till I finally decide on the model I will buy but the following criteria are an absolute must (in order of priority) -
1. super zoom
2. sleek design, no SLR look-alike for me
3. not too pricey
4. not older than early 2007
5. does not have outright negative reviews
6. video feature

So the hunt for the perfect camera continues....

I am now a proud holder of California License!!

My behind-the-wheel test appointment was on Tuesday, the 19th, and I passed it with flying colors (just 4 mistakes out of the allowed 15) in my very first attempt :)

Feels great as everything worked out to plan - no rain (50% chance was predicted), not-too-strict lady inspector, good idea of the test routes around the DMV (thanks to my driving instructor) and fairly quick service at Escondido office! I must admit I was quite scared before the test (measured by the cold hands that I developed waiting for the inspector) but an almost-perfect driving coming after a perfect 100% on the writing test means that I am all ready to hit the roads of California with a vengeance! :D

The search continues...

I have been researching schools over the last couple of weeks, primarily going through the information on the websites to check out the 'FIT'! I believe I finally understand what fit means... atleast I get a feeling of when something in a program/school excites me and makes me want to know more about it!

My primary aim is to narrow down to a group of 10-12 schools from which I can pick and choose the final 5-6, could be lesser but surely not more! And the deadline is March after which I concentrate only on those schools and dig deeper, setup contacts and talk to my would-be recommenders, read up on essay-writing, resume-building and the like...

The other thing that I am really interested in is the Corporate Service Corps initiative... It not only would be a great experience if I am selected, it would also make for a very good story for my applications! Since I fulfill all the criteria there is only a form to be filled and submitted but the catch is that I have to first talk to my people manager and get his approval which might be difficult considering its a 3-month in-house work followed by 1-month in-country work! If the project were to wind up by May, it would be perfect timing but till Feb 15, nothing can be said for sure.... But Feb 15 also happens to be the last date for submission so I have to talk to him and convince him to approve my registration... I have a chat scheduled with Claudia sometime this weekend, soon after that I plan to talk to Ajit and get it out in the open.

With so many things, big and small, happening all around me, time seems to fly by.... its hard to believe that 2008 is already a month old!!

Who moved MY cheese?

Today, I had a learning experience today thanks to the world-famous 'Who moved my cheese?'
Now I had already read the book and so when I heard that Anant Bull-winkle(thats not his surname really but I like calling it that!) wanted to hold an audio session with the team on it, I wasn't exactly thrilled.... I mean, I had already read the book and in this day and age of videos and 3D and 4D, plain simple audio would be soooo boring!

And as the session got underway, my opinion was only reaffirmed but then as I tried to make a genuine effort to pay attention, I realized that the book (or rather the audio) did indeed have many lessons to share. Anybody who has read the book would know that it talks about change and how different people are impacted by it and how they react to it. It also tells us that change is inevitable , not good or bad... what makes it so is how we face it. Change, most of the times, is actually a harbinger of opportunities and more change, like right now! There is a major change in progress at work and though nothing is clear as yet, I feel it in the air. I just have this feeling that it is all going to end well for me :)

Speaking of change, there is one another thing that came out repeatedly in the story and that is - the power of dreams, of wishes! Everytime Haw felt scared, depressed he imagined himself reaching his goal - the next cheese station - and it made him feel good, gave him the courage and energy to carry on. Don't we all feel great when we imagine ourselves achieving the goal we have set, living the dream we have dreamt? I sure do.... these days I often dream of my graduation day, actually :D I am actually feeling quite good about myself these days.... I know the road is long and the destination distant but I am on my way and I will get there!

Like a wise man once said - 'God did not give you a wish without giving you the power to fulfill it. You would have to work for it, though.'

Common phrases on Bschool websites

1. Its not what experiences you had, but what you made of the experiences you had
2. Rather than focus on specific categories of work experiences, applicants should focus on their roles, responsibilities, and what they have learned from the types of work experiences that they have been involved in.
3. Experential learning
4. We are one of the few schools that are constantly innovating to confront the changing business scenario and prepare world-class leaders who are ready for all challenges
5. diversity of thought, experiences and true appreciation of others' opinions
6. Achieving personal mastery through self-awareness and self-development

Setting SMART goals

I have recently been reading about goal-setting, time management and decision making and there was something interesting that I came across on Mindtools about setting smart goals. Now haven't we all heard of that before but they had an interesting twist to it -

S-Specific
M-Measurable
A-Attainable
R-Relevant
T-Time-bound

Quite 'smart', isn't it?
Also realized that Pareto's principle (80:20 rule) does influence my daily productivity significantly! What exactly is the 80:20 rule as applied here? - 80% of unfocused effort produces only 20% of the results desired.

Resolutions to keep!

This new year I will begin and keep an exercise routine was one of the resolutions I had made for myself alongwith learning to dance :) Dont know about dancing but I have started implementing the exercise routine thingie!
Started last week with surya namaskar, easy to do and quite beneficial! Last week was more of a start-stop week with me oversleeping on a number of days but next week on I am going to be more rigid with the routine. Aerobics is also one form that I always wanted to try out and so am reading up on it... is it safe enough to try out alone? what are the requirements, if any, for practicing it? where do I get videos and aerobic music? etc etc. I found this one video routine that I really liked - Latino Macarena
I have also begun (or should I say, re-begun) my school hunt and I am making slow but methodical progress and hope to be done with it by March. Self-analysis and introspection is also in progress and with the loss of contract, I have to do it on more than one level so taking it nice and slow for now.