The Other Side of Life

I am no genius, trust me on that. But it takes little more than an Office-College-Office stint to make you realize how much of HR talk you can do. I am, of course, referring to my recent move from work to college for an MBA and then back to office for a summer internship. I cannot tell you, how glad I am that this was just a two month digression from college! Frankly, I don't think the HR does enough to make young new joinees comfortable in office. I mean, here we are, fresh out of the whole Life-Is-Awesome-Friends-Are-Awesome-Who-Cares philosophy. The least companies can do is accommodate us for who we are, initially and then gradually mould us into corporate slaves. Like I said, I am no genius. But I did think about this on a long Metro journey and came up with a policy manual for HR to handle new joinees or Emptees or MTs or Management Trainees as they are popularly called. Warning: I have not taken up a single HR Elective. What I write about is my natural flair at being ...

Almost an year since I said goodbye to office and joined the B-School. Where am I today? Back in office. :-| Life, I tell you, is weird. Always a full circle. And you, like those three blind mice from the nursery rhyme, would be running around it. No hard feelings, though! In case you are wondering about the origins of these sudden philosophical musings, my summer internship started last week and when I sat in the new office, with my laptop and opened Google Reader again, a strong tsunami wave of nostalgia hit me. I suddenly remembered all the blogging I did when I worked, the number of articles I read, the new blogs I had discovered. Office is fun in some ways, I guess! :D But, college? Its fun in many more ways than I can jot down here! Goes without saying, it makes you lazy. Its taking me hours to write this post and it is pretty much non-sense. That's what an MBA does to you. Anyway, I really don't have much to share. Just didn't want the blog to look desert...

Are there any awards for consistently infrequent bloggers? I should totally get that! :) But, I have been "good" busy! The type of "busy" that keeps me happy. How have you all been? In good spirits, may I assume? Lots happened, nai? Kingfisher crashed. Europe got messed up. Whitney Houston died. Indian economy is on a seesaw. The cricket team's definitely a goner. SRK too for that matter. Politicians still suck. The master designer rests in peace somewhere, feasting on Apple. On the happy front, George Clooney's hot again. Djokovic is on a roll! Grey's Anatomy is worth watching again. The weather's awesome! And the blog celebrates its 3rd birthday! :) In other words, life is normal. Touchwood. But most importantly, an year of MBA almost comes to an end. Can you believe this? Time flies, and how! Its been fun. A roller coaster ride - Crazy induction days with less than 3 hours of sleep, summer placements, sleeping in classes, non-stop an...

Dear Santa, Let me get to the point straight away. I get it. Its that time of the year again. People will try some serious ass-kissing. There will be blackmailing. Then there's the bribery? Of course, who can forget the promises? I know. We call it the appraisal cycle in offices here on Earth. I don't need to tell you, but don't be overwhelmed by all this. When you have well-wishers like me, you need not worry. So, I was sitting in the Organization Behavior class last week, listening to an intellectually stimulating, extremely well spoken and an infinitesimally boring monologue on Change Management, when it occured to me that you, Santa, need an MBA professional to look after your services! I did some serious thinking on your behalf, and here's what I have come up with. Please allow me to explain: MARKETING MANAGEMENT - Where do I even begin on this one? With the kind of work you do, you need some real hotshot MBA grads who can make a brand out of your life, pas...

Oh dear God! *Imagine me kissing the floor, right now* It feels SO good to be back. To lead an underrated normal life again! The past 4 months full of torture, placements, exams, guest lectures, pre-placement talks, sleepless nights, 15 hours sitting in one place, financial accounting nightmares, unbalanced balance sheets - its all over! (Okay, to be fair, its all not over. I do have to battle with finance over the next sem too, and the next, and the next. Damn it. We'll deal with that later.) More important things first. If there is one thing I have learnt well in my time here in a B-School, that has to be the art of making a good resume. For the rest of the world, your resume is just a statement of who you are and what you do. For MBAs, the resume is like the colloquial "Tijori ki Chaabi". For employers, its the key to the employee's mysterious past. For the prospective employees, its the key to a glorious future, which has no traces of the past. ...

And Yours Truly is back! Quick recap of what's happening in my life: I got my summer placement in a good company and I am happy. Not just because I got placed, but also because, this means I am FREEEEEEEEEEE! After 4 months of torture, I am free! Of course, I do have exams next week, but right now, lets term that "irrelevant". :) So, hopefully, this means, I am back on the blog world for good. Fingers crossed. Sigh. I have so much to say. Let me try to write this down, for the sake of posterior generations. You know the crazy kids who may want to join a B-School? Yeah? For them: Normalcy. It is highly underrated. I am so glad my life is back to normal after 4 months of grueling hard work. It feels good to have a boring, relaxed Sunday, when I don't have to rush to college for a mock interview or a Preplacement talk. It feels nice to get up with a sore back, after sleeping for 20 hours straight. It feels nice to read Delhi Times and not Economi...

Don't even ask. Where have I been, what have I been doing, why wasn't I blogging, why am I invisible? One word reply - B-School. If I wanted to talk about that, I wouldn't be blogging which also explains my absence all this while. But here's what I want to talk about! So, I came across  Matt Haig's website and his lists  excited me enough to actually open the Blogger dashboard and write. Here's my collection of lists: Things I Love: City Lights at night that twinkle when I wrinkle my eyes John Mayer's songs on a loop Sitting on a beach with feet sinking in the sand and crystals in the hair Hot Pakodis and jalebi on a rainy day Green fields rushing by in a blur on a highway drive Hanging your head down from the Upper berth on the train to scare someone Looking at class photographs from 20 years back and recognizing people Lazy Sunday brunch at home Gossiping with my sister at 1 in the night The extremely rare momen...

The original title of the post was "Life at B-School", but then I realized that my imagination is not powerful enough to invent non-existent things. Hence, the resort to the cliched title. I will not get into what the past 1 month at B-School has been like. That'll augur a whole book, which I am not in a mood to write and to be frank, I don't have the time to write. But here's what I can tell you positively. I learnt, much to my amusement, that every time in the past 23 years when I said I was "Busy", I was only kidding myself and everyone around me. Learnt a whole new dimension to the word "busy"! Right now, for instance, on a Saturday night, when ideally I would have been out shopping or watching TV or hanging out with friends, I am "taking time out" to write this post, following which I will study Financial Ratios. Sad. I know. Without wasting any more time (another thing I learnt here), let's quickly look into th...