To Blog or Not to Blog is the Question

Here is the story of my absence. I went to India to attend my cousins wedding, had lotsa fun and came back Thursday evening . On my way to India read ‘Da Vinci Code’ and on my way back read ‘Understanding J D Krishnamurti ‘ . Both great books . Got printed edition of ‘Madhushala’ , a Hindi literary masterpiece, read it whenever I was free . Will write about these three books and India trip soon. Was seriously disappointed with ‘Complete Works of Shakespeare’ . He is not philosophical and his English sucks . I guess I need patience to read him . Whatever I am not picking up Shakespeare for a year. Have lot more books to read.

Got up Friday morning at 5 ,rushed to Gleacher. Had LEAD session at 730 . There were some lectures and breakfast before we officially began at 830. In total there are 125 students,divided into 5 groups, participating in LEAD .Our(Davis/Stuart Cohort group) class was divided into 4 groups of 6 students.

Well my name sticker had my first name spelled as ‘Rock’ . I was the last one to mind it . I still gotta know how ‘Rock’ entered offices of GSB. I dont know a single person to whom I introduced myself as Rock at GSB. A big mystery as big as ‘Da Vinci Code’ itself. I gave a humorous introduction to myclass and my name has stuck. No need to re-introduce myself to anyone. I guess I should stick to Rock.

The class was divided into two sections EAS 1 and EAS 2 (Executive Action Skills). Learned some very new concepts . Met a lot of new ppl. Overall it was fun until my jet lag kicked in . After my LEAD ended at 5, I had my Marketing Strategy class at 1800 . Somehow survived it too with my jetlag . Drove back , got up at 10 after sleeping over 3 alarms and 4 missed calls . Went to FTSA class and attended Marketing conference call in the evening. It is my turn to write the case, so I better pay attention.

I am getting a hang of Marketing class despite driving for almost 2.5 hours just before the class. The Chicago traffic is not getting any better . Anyway looks like we did good on the case atleast we distinguished ourselves from the whole class. Had no good company after class. Went around but decided Lady luck had deserted me for the day. Slept well woke up and went to the Forwards,Futures and Swaps class and I was just swamped with a lot of jargon. Boy after that it was refreshing to see the FTSA class to be not too boring. Anyway after the class went to a Bio-pharma club meet, where I learnt some basics about Biology ahem ahem !!!! DNA , double helix,Amino Acids, Protein , ACTG and all other bio-sh*t.

Well drove back home watched Saturday night live with Tom Brady. Saturday Night Live and the first 15 mins of Jay Leno are which I hate to miss.

Sunday:

This is a mystery to me , every weekday, it is so tough for me to get up even at 8 and bang on Sunday I am up at 6. I completely hate it hate hate it . It just goes on to prove once again that life is not fair Went to gym messed around had lunch at Chinese and did study a bit .

Had some nice company Sunday evening. Had a bloody Mary after a loooong time , was very spicy and was the only good thing about the evening. Had a sizzling apple pie on recommendation from this ol lady, who was in the table next to me . The apple pie was yucky , not yuckier than the company though. The company was very arrogant and I wanted to get the hell out of there even before I got there.

While I was driving back home I saw this big azz accident on the other side. The other side of the highway was fully blocked for miles and the emergency helicopter just landed on the highway. There must have been atleast 15-20 vehicles involved in the accident and from the looks of it, it didnt look good.

I thought of these Kabir dohas when I tried to summarize the experience of Sunday evening , Arrogance and death.

Kabira garv na keejiye ucha dekh aavas
kal paro bhuin letna upar jamsi ghaas.

(Kabir says dont feel proud of your palatial residence , cos death will get you sooner or later and you will have to lay on land and grass will grow on you)

Kabira garv na keejiye kaal gahe kar kes
Na jaane kit mare hai kya des kya pardes

(Kabir says dont be arrogant , as life is very ephemeral, you can die anywhere ,either at home or in some other country)

Just signed up for the soccer league with a Mexican group . We are going to practice(play) every Thursday evening and we will have our league matches on Sunday. Lets see how this goes . Boy Do I know how to jam-pack my schedule. Will check if they play rough then I am out, cant take beatings anymore Havent played soccer since I moved from SFO . Used to play indoor soccer on Tuesdays and Thursdays under the guidance of Ernie Fibausch , a US soccer hall of fame inductee. After the game used to go to some place eat and hoist a few suds. Wow the first taste of beer after a tiring game is like manna from heaven. The drive back home used to be even more tiring wondering if am I am DUI?

On weekends I used to play outdoor soccer with the Indians, good group but never co-ordinated . Well atleast I used to work up some good sweat.

At this place I have been regular only at racketball , and every once in a while some other sport. Getting back to soccer will surely lift my spirits and get me out of hibernation.

Reminds me I have registered to run in a few 5K and 10K races. If all goes well might be Chicago marathon , he he he in my dreams .

Called up GSB Financial Aid office and asked for some aid “Show me the money” . Being an international student, I have only one choice and hopefully they wont reject my application .

More Info about Loans at GSB

Need the moolah to finish this off fast. Spreading the loan over the years also makes it less tough.

Oh My God !! This is funny. No one knows in GSB that I have an alias “Rock” .Its only close friends and my gym friends that call me Rock. Not even my family knows about my alias ‘Rock’.

But guess what somehow “Rock” made its way into the hallow offices of GSB .

Last month I recieved a snail mail from “Director of Admissions” addressing me as

“Dear Rock:”

and today I got an email from “Associate director of Admissions”

Dear Rock:

Welcome to Spring LEAD 2005! We would like to provide you with a GSB LEAD shirt. In order to do so, we need you to provide us your shirt size. If you could reply to this email and indicate a size (small, medium, large, ex-large), we will try our best to get you the appropriate fit.

We look forward to seeing you on May 13th!

Regards,
XXXX

That reminds me that I have decided to be part of LEAD, the only required course for full-time(FT) students. The course will start at around 8 in the morning and will continue till 5 in the evening ,every Friday for 5 weeks.

What is LEAD?
Its a leadership and team building program.
For more info check out this URL about LEAD

Its not required for Part-timers(PT)’ers then why am I taking it ?

I believe that LEAD will teach me a lot more about leadership, team-building and most of all networking, one skill which is difficult for PT’ers to work on, given their work schedule. This will make my program as complete as a FT.

Managed to get to the Marketing Strategy by AL Friday evening 6-9. She is a great lecturer and tries to get lot of real life examples . Marketing itself is so boring(sorry Kotler) but she is trying to make it interesting . I am taking this class cos its a requirement for me to graduate. I need numbers to keep the class interesting , too much of lecture and abstract things just kill me . We talked about Customer Segmentation and did a wrap-up of Calyx and Corolla case.

Had some good company for dinner and a movie later. Tried to show off my macho instincts by moving around Chicago in my T-shirt , got sick and still have a sore throat.

On the other hand, my Sat morning class(9-12) that I am auditing , Futures,forwards and Swaps by CC is pretty damn interesting. The prof is nice and I must admire this person for talking non-stop and still keeping the attention of the whole class . He tells us so many real life examples of people and institutions . The material is also interesting but since I am only auditing it I am not taking it seriously but I do plan to audit it all the way to the end. We talked about Derivatives Trading, Clearance, and Settlement and the various institutions involved in it.

12-1 was student fair . I signed up for some clubs like the Student Activities council , GSB Bio-Pharma, Small business entrepreneurship . But the most important group that I signed up for was “Graduate Women in Business” . Ah I know where i want to be !!! . The other group that was being formed and I wish to contribute effectively to, is toastmasters. I have been an active participant in various toastmaster clubs . Nice place to hone your leadership and public-speaking skills. BTW I am a participant at Rockford Toastmasters , we meet every 1,3 and 5th Thursday from 12-1.

The next class (1-4) was Analysis of Financial Time series. Great class but the execution was not up to par. I had to be kept awake by my neighbors and lots of munchies . Nah, coffee wouldnt have helped, I am sure. Boy if one can make a Marketing class interesting then a class like this definitely should be bloody damn interesting. I dont remember what was taught.Well I have to finish my assignment , I will know what was taught.

After that I rushed home and slept from 8 to 9 the next morning. I should blog what was taught .

Someone once said “The only things that are imminent are death and taxes” . Well I dont know when death is coming up but taxfiling is coming up on April 15th. I have to pay up around 500$ . The bloody Government has to get our hard earned money. Why pay taxes ?

This is the case that we have to finish by Friday night. Marketing strategy by AL. We have to finish 4 of the 7 minor cases and 2 major cases.

Well after the group formation and the usual crossing over of people we are now 4 in the group. We have decided to do it through conference calls. Have conference call tonite.All the minor cases will have to be written to answer these questions in one page.

•What are the major issues/problems faced by the company in the case?
•What course of action do you recommend?
• How did you come up with your chosen strategy? What case facts/data did you consider? What were the relevant alternative actions/plans that you had to choose from?

On the other side is Analysis of Financial time Series by RT. I have yet to start on the HW which has to be done individually. I have to use ‘R’ to do the homework yet to learn it . Downloaded it and have been playing around with it . Having worked with Matlab this shouldnt be tough.