Building up a resolve to post regularly

It's been hard to keep updating this, but I am definitely resolving to post atleast once a week from now on.
There will be a lot of travel updates soon on this site. Keep reading !

Am I just a number?

Last week, the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) came out with their admissions results. I was rejected by the one IIM that had decided to invite me for the Group Discussion/Personal Interview (GD/PI). I was a bit shocked by this decision. But having two admits from Top 5 schools in the US, I don’t think I would have ever thought of going to an IIM. The reject made me think about the ultra- competitive spirit that prevails in the Indian education system. There are 6 IIMs in the country, and overall around 1300 students in all of them put together in an academic year. More than 100, 000 people write the IIM-CAT for getting into these 1300 seats. This gives an admit ratio of 1:77, or 0.013% admit rate. Compare that to the toughest school to get admission elsewhere in the world: The Stanford GSB with an admit rate around 9%. There is an order of magnitude difference between these two. So what kind of people gets admitted? Typically, one needs to score in the upper 99th percentile in the CAT to get any calls from the top 3 institutes: IIM A, B or C. One also needs an equally distributed scoring pattern in Quant, Data Interpretation and in the Verbal section. The CAT pattern itself is a surprise and keeps changing every year. It is a difficult exam, because of the complexity of the questions to be solved in a limited time of 2.5 hours. Accuracy + speed matters here. One without the other is useless and there is negative marking if you get answers wrong. At the end of the day, it is yet another exam, full of number crunching and performing under pressure. While I agree that a lot of management is about handling pressure, it is not the foundation of it. The crowd at an IIM inevitably is a huge mix of engineers with almost no work experience. People who can slog for hours together , crunch numbers with ease and crack exams to score those nice grades. Where are the soft skills that MBA students are so known for throughout the world? Sorry, you don’t expect to find them here. If you are good at numbers and can do calculus and statistics, the I-Bank would come calling for making you that senior analyst to do the drudge work. With the outrageous pay abroad coming out of a subsidized education, what more does one want?
This is where the quality of education shows up bad compared to the world. Only 2000 quality management students graduate every year in a country of a billion. There are no quality institutes apart from the IIMs and the ISB. And the emphasis is still on grades and cutting through your competition to win at all costs. Now, if this were a PhD in Math exam, I understand the exam pattern thoroughly. But how can you get admission to MBA without understanding a person’s communication abilities, his/her career goals and achievements in life. Are people expected to keep communicating with numbers and equations throughout their lives? Or they are expected to lead people and organizations to great successes? Very few institutes use essays to understand a person’s character and goals better. In the end, a person is merely reduced to a set of numbers and metrics: GPA, CAT Percentile, and Number of years of work experience. That’s all and that’s it.

All these metrics are a miniscule part of a B-school application process elsewhere in the world. The interview is about knowing you in depth, not the rat race of a Group Discussion where 7 speakers ramble at the top of their voice trying not to reach a conclusion. The interview is about your goals and how XYZ Univ can help you succeed, and not about knowing how fast you can calculate 3^ 89 or state the manufacturing growth of your country in the last 5 years. There are calculators to do the former and journals to give answers to the latter. Alas, the Indian education system at every stage is still deep-rooted in rote learning, cramming for grades and just passing out into a job which can pay well. An important component called thinking is just ignored altogether in the whole process. No wonder then that we produce a huge number of undergraduate engineers, but a ridiculously low number of PhD’s. No wonder that we produce very little patents or new products.
It is not just the IIMs, the country needs a radical change in imparting thinking in education rather than overloading with content. If not, the likes of me, educated in an IIT would tend to go abroad and think for some other country and improve their productivity instead of staying back and struggling in the rat race here. I have no regrets going to the US for my MBA now.

Hamlet by Evam in Hyderabad

April 16, 2007

Hamlet by Evam

On Saturday, I watched a play after a long time. This is also the first time I am paying for watching a professional drama. Evam, the theater group from Chennai was performing at the Shilpa Kala vedika. They were doing a spoof on the Shakespearean classic, “Hamlet”. The show started off with some warm up comedy scenes from an earlier “Monty Python” series from the British drama of the 1960s and 1970s. It was refreshingly funny. The actors had high energy, but somehow I felt that a presence on stage was missing. They were not really packing that punch in dialogue delivery. One of the short skits got me amused. It was a role that I had played in college once with the Black adder series (incidentally, Rowan Atkinson also comes from the Monty Python school of acting). They spoke about the school principal who spanked a kid to death and rambles about the whole act. I love that dialogue sequence and the relative nonsensical humor involved.
The Evam group also tried some innovative techniques of managing breaks in between scenes. This is very important as the 3 actors had to constantly keep changing costumes for every scene. They put some dancing girls in between the scenes to keep the audience amused. I am not sure whether the audience liked it so much, but some of the girls could not shake their bodies enough to make it look like a dance. One girl was plain lost in the stage. We had a bunch of noisy girls from Microsoft sitting in front of us, jeering and passing loud comments on each and every happening on the stage. One of these bozos observed that all dancing girls had pony tails, but one had short hair tried deliberately as a pony. Evam also innovated by using a large projector to explain some pre-scene work like the location where the act was happening. This was very new from the amateur plays put up at IIT. We could have innovated there also, but the parameters are limited there, and projector access is not given. Usually, managing the stage lights alone proves to be a daunting task in most hostels. All these challenging parameters make the art of directing a play such an exciting task to do. Acting really proves to be much simpler when one compares it to producing and directing a play coordinating these various interdependencies.
With lots of unnecessary comical stunts, finally, the group started Hamlet with some hilarious introductions. They took the major dialogues of the classic and enacted them with a contemporary twist, even adding some Indian humour in the midst. I specifically loved one gamble of theirs when they got two members of the audience to come up and act on stage, impromptu. One was ego and the other was the lover of Hamlet who was confused between her ego, super ego and the world. They used the audience to good effect and kept them engaged throughout. Another great effect was the slow motion scenes and some deliberate humour through Rajnikanth songs as introductory music. All in all, the drama was fun and worth watching. The actors were brilliant, with some more presence on stage; they could well be called awesome.

On the business side of this play, I think it was fairly overpriced. 200, 300 and 500 were the ticket ranges available. I don’t think it can be justified in a conservative city like Hyderabad where the market for theater is very limited. Considering that this is only their second performance in the city, they had to lower the prices and establish their credibility to build a loyal audience base first. Instead, they went for all out marketing, advertising in the Hindu, Times of India, etc. With a seating capacity of 800 +, I don’t think there were more than 150 people present that day. Who would pay 200 bucks for a play by an unheard of group when they are movies available in better urban areas for half that price? I think the blokes who bought the 300 and 500 buck tickets were in for a rude shock as all the people finally were moved to the front to make the audience look more balanced around the stage. In fact, the lead actor mentioned about the lack of crowd support in the end.
I am pretty sure that Evam put up some losses at least in staging this play in Hyderabad. But I also feel that these losses could have easily been avoided if they had smarter management in the first place. They could have advertised in most of the major company campuses and bulletin boards here. If they have a loyal audience base, this is easily achieved and word passes around quite fast. They should also use Orkut, Ryze for popularizing the event instead of expensive hoardings and newspaper advertisements. Again, the price is an important factor in deciding the overall planning. Should you price it at Rs. 50 and risk getting an unruly crowd at the drama or price it at Rs. 200 with a very small niche crowd. Should price drive the volumes or should the volumes dictate the price? I think the answer lies somewhere between these two extremes and Evam should use better data analysis to predict the right behavior and be adaptable to different strategies in different cities based on their taste. Maybe, some sponsorship does not hurt in these cases. Hope the Evam management is listening.

Update: Without a doubt, this play was an excellent effort by everyone involved in the acting, production, planning. My friends and I enjoyed the evening a lot. I want them to stage more plays and keep getting better and better. It was top notch, much better than most plays we have done at IIT Madras.

Dealing with uncertainty

I find myself in a unique situation now. I have been waitlisted by one Top B-school in the US and have an admit with aid in another B-school (which is also in the top 5). While the mind always wanted the top school, I never thought of applying that low till 4-5 in the world. Now suddenly, the enormity of the decision strikes me. Should I give up all my dreams and go to this average school and slog it out? Or should I do everything possible to get myself lifted off this waitlist? The uncertainty comes from too many factors here: The waitlist can theoretically move till August (that means a lot of patience). The school where I am admitted needs me to put in a non-refundable $ 2000 which for an Indian is a lot of money to throw down the drain. The Indian management school where I applied is now struggling with a Supreme Court order that has placed all admissions on hold. At least, I could have taken that school up as a safety net.

Alas, nobody knows when their admissions would come out. On top of it all, I am getting married next month and till I know my final decision, my fiancé cannot make her career moves appropriately. There is also a job where I have to put in the papers and serve the right notice period. So does one deal with such uncertainty?

If somebody had asked me this question in a B-school interview, I would have told them the way I deal with it at work. I would list down all options and the decisions that can be taken by going down each route. I would then try to understand what the probability of each of these options happening is? (Using subject matter expertise). In some cases, there is inherent uncertainty built into the process through various external dependencies. In such cases, I would try to stall and wait for as much time as possible before taking my decision at the final moment. There could be many changes that can happen meantime and in an organization, one needs to be extremely lean and agile to respond appropriately to such changes. But at all times, one needs to proactively push to gain more information and more depth to aid the decision making. Sometimes, it helps waiting for more information, but in a lot of situations, it helps when you seek out the information and actively push for it. Basically, make things happen rather than wait for things to happen.

Let me apply this analogy to my personal life now. I can push more information to my waitlisted school and that is exactly what I am going to do now. I will send them a personal update reaffirming my interest in the school. I have a recommender who will add additional feedback about me as a mentor. I have to try asking a current student there to write some good words about me. This is all that I can legally do to get off the waitlist, remaining is in the admission committee’s hands. On the other hand, I have to pay up the initial $ 1000 deposit at the other school to block my name in the admissions list. Even though this could be a monetary waste, this seems unavoidable now. Often times, leadership is about taking these tough decisions with less data. While getting off the waitlist would be a great thing to happen, this monetary loss could well be an act of charity getting the school of your dreams. The only certainty right now is my impending marriage and hopefully, with another month passing, more decisions become clear.
I am going to attack this uncertainty with all that I can: hard work, energy, communication, fishing for more information, actively staying on my nerves to ensure I am flexible to changes and respond quickly and easily. Let us see how things pan out, after all, they should happen only for the good.

But I know one thing about Uncertainty: Only the toughest survive it and enjoy the excitement it brings. I have survived many such decisions in the past, this would be another success story :)

KANK and the repercussions

Utter bullshit of a movie- 3.5 hours of pain- had to gather all my courage and wits (read that as cracking jokes on the movie with friends) to stay till the end. What will be more likely to happen in India- both of them will forgive their partners and move on in life....being a counsellor to someone at office who is having such thoughts (after 2 teenage kids) of moving out with her BF who is 6 years younger to her, I know how tough it is to be in this conflicting state of an affair and a failed marriage. A marriage which was foisted upon my parents and society to give legal consent to a contract between TWO families. Read that clear, Legal contract between two families, not a bond of love and affection . Isnt that true in most cases of forced acceptance of something you never really wanted. Probably the biggest lie is told when you promise in front of "Agni", that you will love your wife, keep her happy throughout your life no matter what cometh. This is perhaps the most expensive LIE told in a lifetime also, in front of all the propitiated GOD and in front of so many supporters and wellwishers who are more there for the good food and the opportunity to show off their latest clothes and jewels and gossip on every other relative who is living happily with his/her life.
To me, we as a society always love to RG another. There is no going forward in life, its about forcing oneself to accept what every other society member is doing for the common good. At the helm of affairs is the loose tongue wabbling housewife aunties group. Total losers that they are since getting married to a holy cow , they want to make it their life's prime motive to ensure that every other girl also gets to lead a life like them. NO LOVE, No happiness, but its all about compromise in life, compromise for their own good to keep their tongues happy. People who rebel against them are bound to face the gossip from all over the place, get boycotted from all family functions (oh I wanted to attend all these functions in the first place) and the social trauma to parents who , without their bad influence, would actually put their kid's happiness above all else. BUT they have to be restricted by society.....
What KANK showed was an affluent, NRI family where such a thing happens. NDTV followed it up with a We, the People episode, where you had Mumbai Page 3 millionaires saying "Ooh this movie was so nice, it influenced me to switch as well...I walked out of my husband,so,so".. Dudes, wake up to reality. This is the ultra posh section of Indian society, wont even be 0.1% and in that rich society, everything is accepted. One can sleep with every other person to get ahead in life and have and enjoy all the hedonistic pleasures in life. Look who is speaking of commitment , trust and LOVE...the P3Ps...like Shobha De.
I need to post more on this as a follow up, but later......hand hurts now :)

Archery

Since I got my archer's pic, I decided to write about that. We went to Godollo, which is a small town near Budapest. First, we met up with Milan's grand parents and then, we went into the woods with his cousin and friends for archery. They had this small clearing which had rocks as walls on 3 sides, where we used to place the bulls eye board. The board itself was very small, probably a 40 inch cube, which had the bulls eye on a circular piece of paper with different colors.
Gabi, Milan, his friend and I had 3 arrows each. Mine were wooden, since I was the beginner and they all had the aluminium ones. So each round is started from a common point, which is marked with a rock and some depression in the moist grass. Then, we take shots at the bulls eye with 3 chances each. Later, we go and pick up the arrows, after some warmup sessions, we keep pushing the distance further behind.
The wooden arrows are very delicate and break easily........the metal ones are slightly tougher, but the feathers break easily.
The bow most of us used was a beginner's one. It had this taut string, which was 30 pounds force strong. Milan had a professional one, which was 45 pounds strong. I dont really know all the technical terms of the bow, but its good enough to try and play with.
One needs to place the arrow just below a mark and it should flow smoothly with the middle of the bow. Some bows have a support for it , but most dont. But the arrow always has to slide against that. The index, middle and ring finger wrap around the string and pull it as much as one can possibly do. It usually comes near the face, and in fact, people move their eyes closer to the string so that they can aim better. Then, you release the string in one shot by moving the hands off in one go perpendicular to the string. It should not move sideways. If the arrow is not balancing, the bow has to be tilted at an angle, it can even be tilted by 45 Degrees,but then, the aiming should be appropriate.
Finally, a note of caution: The bow string shoudl never be released without the arrow in it. It will damage the expensive bow. Arrows are expensive atleast in Hungary.
they also follow laws of physics. The wooden arrow should be aimed a little bit higher, as it has a parabolic motion as per the laws of gravity. The Aluminium arrow can be aimed a little bit closer to the target, as it has a metal tip , which balances the weight evenly.
Also remember that the shoulder has to be in straight line with the forearm to shoot perfectly.
Archery is a good exercise for the shoulder and chest muscles, not to mention the hand , eye, ear coordination (really, its all ears when it comes to instinctive shooting towards the evening).
its fun, and definitely worth trying out. I recommend it strongly.

Airline Reviews

Since the travelfreak told about hotels, now its the turn of airlines

1. Jet Airways-
Mostly the best airline in India, expensive for a personal flight, but good for a business flight. Sometimes, they are late, and sometines, they really goof up big time in seat allotment,etc. Rating: 8

2. Sahara Airlines
Again, expensive airline, tries to compete with jet. But services far lesser compared to Jet. Good for certain sectors, since they have this tieup with Indiatimes.com to offer tickets on auctions for cheap rates. Rating: 5

3. Indian Airlines
The Indian Govt. airlines, always late, has hostesses who are as old as ur grandma, who are rude in behaviour and simply dont care. Really my last choice to fly in India. Rating: 4

4. Air deccan
The cheap no frills airline of India. My best for personal travel with its rates on offer. Not much service, but then for its cost, I really dont expect anything else. Rating: 7

5. British Airways
Good service, good food, nice seats and pillows and cushions and accessories. Movie selection is also good, one of my favorite airlines so far. Rating: 8

6. American Airlines
If you are a veg and you dont mention it before hand, there is just no food for you. Once escalated, they try to do some good service, again a decent enough airline. Their IT team needs a facelift, the airline's website sucks and their frequent flier simply does not work at all.
Rating: 6

7. Swissair
Really hopeless guys for their checkin services, charge a hefty fee for the excess baggage. Not much variety on the flight, too noisy, seats are bad, not much ac
cessories as well. Luggage bins are too small, only good thing is the swiss chocolate on offer. Rating: 5

8. Malaysian Airlines
Again, not the great airline that they proclaim themselves to be. If you are a veggie, be prepared for a shock usually. Rating: 6

A comparison of 5 star hotels around the world

Since I have become such a travel freak , I decided I would atleast document all the hotels that i have stayed in and review them.

1. Grand Copthorne in Singapore- my rating: (on a 10 pt. scale) 8
Great services in the hotel, food is good and has a great variety. They also have all kinds of maps and tourist attractions of the hotel available with them. Airport pickup and drop is available, and more imp, they are close to a river in Singapore. You can take this great cruise on the river to the raffles plaza in Singapore. It was the location of our Jr. Bootcamp and also the first time when we went abroad, a total memorable experience. Its also located close to a metro station and everything is accessible from this place. Zouk, the largest disco of asia is situated in this hotel.......

2. Sheraton Danbury, Danbury, Connecticut
Food sucks big time there, you should never eat anything at this hotel. We stayed for Sr. Bootcamp here, facilities were decent, nothing great I would expect. Dont forget to enroll for the Sheraton points while at this hotel, it helps in future stays at any sheraton anywhere in the world. The Sheraton shuttle was good in transporting to local areas in and around Danbury, the bed is the best thing about the Sheraton here. It just drowns you into sleep. My rating: 5, if not for GE Bootcamp, I wud never stay at this hotel.

3. Park, Kolkata
For the prize that was paid to this place, it was worthless. Room looked good, but not much services being offered, food was bad. Basically, have heard that this place is just good for the pub that it has and for people who want to extend the night in the pub to screw around. Also, a good enough place for US Visa seekers, since the Ho Chi Minh Sarani is closeby (which is where the US Consulate is)........My rating: 5

4. Taj Bengal, Alipore , Kolkata
They had a room rate of 2.7k or so for me. For that rate , the room was a marvel. It has a great lobby, and some magnificently designed rooms. Usually, this hotel is overbooked,since most business travellers prefer to stay here. Amazing food, complementary fruit basket, great services. I would rate this as one of my best stays, even though it was very short (just a day's trip)- My rating: 8

5. The Hilton Westend, Budapest
For a rate of 81 Euros, they gave me a King's room . It was a big suite kinda room with 2 rooms. The internet was so fast and the VPN actually worked. The beds were soft, the chairs (including a couch) were just too good. The bathroom impressed me as well with its stylish and chic decor. The food for a veggie was really horrible. Apart from that, everything else was so good in this hotel, also they are overbooked, so they will kick you out whenever you want to extend your reservations. My rating: 6

6. The Marriott, Danube River end, Budapest
This is again a great stay for me so far. My room is on the 9th floor facing the Danube river and the Buda castle. So in the night, I just get a treat to watch with my eyes. It is simply stunning. I also love the access to the executive lounge offered and the wireless internet. Food is slightly better than the Hilton, but just for the view, and the accessibility to the chic places of Budapest, this rates significantly higher. My rating: 7 (food is still not that great)

7. The Tulip Manohar, (soon to be radisson), Hyderabad, India
Cuppax, country max hotel. Only reason I stayed here was due to its proximity to the GE office in Hyderabad. Food is expensive for its quality,and facilities are horrible. No internet in the room, bed which is hard, doors and TV which sometimes break up, the list goes on. Not recommended at all. Worse is their restaurant, copper pot. never order the Carrot Halwa there, they will bluff you endlessly and make you wait before telling that its not available at all there. Horrible buggers.
My rating: 5

A family lunch in Hungary

Today was another totally fun filled day. Woke up late in the morning to see all kinds of time confusion everywhere. There were clocks which were 1 hour apart. Then realised that it was daylight savings time adjustment. So, all the clocks were shifted one hour before, we all got to spend 1 extra hour in bed , it was nice ....
There is still a lot of confusion in the city, many clocks are still running the same old time.

I walked through Deak Ferenc Utca, looking for a chocolate store, boy is that place high cost? It has a Hugo Boss, armani, Marks and Spencers, and so many other fashion brands which I never can think of buying.

Anyways, I bought this chocolate box and went to Milan's home for lunch. Hungarians are good in that sense, they prefer to be with their family on a weekend, we all ate together with his family. Milan, his dad and mom and his two sisters, Monika and Magdi. Magdi was very nice to speak to , Monika was more of the shy girl, but later I got to see her paintings in his grandpa's house.............wow, what a talent for art. She can seriously draw and paint some amazing stuff. How I wish I had such artistic talent. After a lunch of traditional Hungarian stuff including papaya fry, gulash (veggie one), some desserts, salads,etc- we decided to go to Godolo, where his grandparents lived. We also saw graveyards on the way all having candles lit for the Halloween.

There, his grandparents were very courteous. I loved the Hungarian countryside, it was so beautiful and green . His grandparents gave us some Uttappam like stuff (they called it cabbage pancakes) with jam. It was yummy, and then, we told bye to them and left to the woods for Archery , a first time in my life. let me blog on that soon.......