Sands & Dunes

Days After College

2007-06-03T21:10:00.000-07:00

College got over by mid April 07 and I am back in Kochi after an year. In college we all wanted to get back home, but now back home we wish it had been a 2 years programme rather than an year's. Damn!! It got over too soon. Sitting at home waiting for the joining date is boring. Been waiting for a month and a half now. The prospect of going to Chennai is also depressing. As of now I just check my orkut, send mails to all friends with whom I had not kept in touch for the last one year, chatting etc. Sometimes makes a trip to Blore. Thats one place I like because my best friends are there. Had an interview with my old company for a marketing job in Germany but I think I screwed it up as they havent reverted back with the results yet.

One month from now my bachelors degree doesnt hold vaild as I am getting hooked finally. Have been engaged for the last 3.5 years. So I can say "Its finally happening" PHEW!!!. Well not afraid to get married but a little scared of the life after. Hope she is more tolerant than me. I will have to ask for some weeks leave for the marriage as soon as I join the new company. Its going to be little embarassing. Its a classic case of "oru joli kittiyittu venam leave edukkan" :)).

The climate is okie in Kochi with intermittent rains. Sort of cooled down and not as hot as when I landed here a month back. But I am not so fortunate to enjoy the rains in Kerala this time as I will pack my bags to Chennai next week, which currently is basking in the sun (42degrees). Hope I get tanned and not charred.

Got to take a house in Chennai however house hunting and getting a house of my liking will be a tough task. Besides the rent also has to match. I am gonna juggle my office job and family responsibilites ha ha..I cant imagine myself more sober than this, but responsibilities are surely going to get the better of me. If not Mariam (My wife) will.

But all said and done, hope married life is not as boring as most of my married friends say. I hope its fun and it lasts for sometime too. God help us!!!Alleluia.

The Placement Paradox

2007-03-25T23:47:00.000-07:00

Well life is chill after the placements. People go and write the exam as if its a story writing competition. Well for me it has been a bad experience as I am have started getting D grades. Well more than two D's and I am gone case. I hope and pray I dont get more than the required :)). Too much of anything is harmful. So we have a complete week off starting from today and I have no clue what to do. Planning to go to Al-Ain and Fujeriah, with my friends. The other option I have is to go to my sis and bil's place but both have offices and I will be left alone till they come back in the eve, which is kindda boring. Well I have some books to read which I will be completing this week itself. Companies coming to college have slowed down to a trickle with only a few to get placed. Hope they get placed in good companies as soon as possible.

We had one hellavu subject called International Business this week. The proff Mr Venkatesh R was damn good, learnt and improved a lot, both IB and english vocab. You can go in this class with complete assurance that u wont fall asleep. He knows how to keep the class alive and wish we had more professors like him coming over. Not that the professors coming to the college were incompetent. Offcourse they were good in their field but they hardly know how to keep the class active. We have reached the fag end of our course and in 20 days most of us will be flying to different parts of the world. I will be returning to India, fortunately or unfortunately. Yes true that I wanted to return to India for all the reasons in this world, but thinking of the loan repayment, it would have been better to get placed here, even though life here is not good. I could have offloaded the loan burden as quickly as possible and returned to India faster. My colleagues who got placed in Dubai really have excellent salary and as I say "My salary would be their savings, after living like a king in Dubai". Not that my salary in India is not good. I have got placed in my dream company and have a salary which I couldnt even dream before I got the offer. So no complaints. Completely happy and satisfied.

The trip to Buddha Bar-Dubai

2007-03-15T04:16:00.000-07:00

The trip (call it "walk) to Buddha Bar (BB) is one thing I will never forget in my life. But at the end of the day it was time well spent. The bar is worth visiting and not that expensive as one perceives. The crowd is very much high class and the bar attenders are the greatest I have seen.
Six of us- Nitin, Ravi, the Siddharths, Satyam and myself started walking from Mall of Emirates (MoE) to Buddha bar. Started walking from MoE at 8:30 pm and reached Buddha Bar at 11:30pm. My God!!What a walk it was.

Thought of hiring a taxi after walking for sometime and also nobody expected BB to be that far away from MoE. After 10 mins of walking we realized our mistake as we entered Sheik Zayed road in downtown Dubai. Big Mistake: We were walking against the one way traffic. There was no chance to getting a taxi unless we cross the road which had high medians in the middle and vehicles zooming at break neck speed. Never realized it would be a 3 hour walk that too in the middle of the night. Finally we reached Hard Rock Cafe and there was a small wedge in the median. We risked our life crossing the expressway because we couldnt find a subway nor a bridge to cross the Zeikh Zayed Road. Crossing the road was height of desperation, we could have ended up killing ourselves. Next to it was the Buddha Bar and we just barged in tired and sweaty but as I said before it was worth the walk and we made sure we had a great time.

Life after!!!

2007-03-01T00:31:00.000-08:00

All my roomies including myself are placed in good companies. Now I dont feel like studying or reading anything. Suddenly allergic to reading :)). I am surprised that I dont even feel like sleeping. Nowadays I sleep late night and get up early. So do all my roomies. I think its something to do with the placements. Seems the feeling that we have got a job has still not sunk in.

Growing old and senile :))

2007-02-26T01:48:00.000-08:00

Its my Birthday today. Birthdays are gentle reminder of one's aging process. I am supposed to be happy today, so am I. Everybody from my parents to relatives to friends from India phoned and wished me. Actually the first call came at 12 am today morning. Started the day shouting at the office administrator for not sending the bus to pick students from the hostel. Waited outside the hostel for an hour before we took a taxi and came to college.

Mariamma wished me yesterday night as is her habit. For the last 3 years I know her, she has been wishing me every 26th feb at 12am, and then she calls early morning too. This is the first time after meeting her that I am celebrating a birthday without her.

I am happy, not because its my birthday but because of the birthday present I got. It came across as a job, which I desperately wanted and that too back in India. Last night at 12 am , Abhishek Sood, my Singapore roomie came to wish me. It was rather surprising that he remembered. It was very nice of him. So did Kaushal Sheron as we both share the same birthday. But by today morning everybody knows and all have been wishing me. So for the last 3 days I have got many wishes and congratulations.

I feel like partying but then whats the fun without friends. I really miss my friends back in Blore and offcourse my dear Mariam. I was planning to go to India today but appa said not to come. Here in Dubai I have no idea where to party or what to do. I plan to celebrate at my sis place this weekend, with my cute little niece. Till then I will come to the college and help my colleagues get placed!!!

Rockin Placements

2007-02-25T02:57:00.000-08:00

Wow!!!Everybody here in Dubai is excited. Today we have i2, Spencers, Patni and 3i on campus. TCS, Maersk, CTS, Rivoli, Spencers, Pantaloons, ICICI bank, Zensar tech, Madura Garments all are vying hard for the students of SPJCM. Its a rocking day here. Students are being picked up like hot cakes. Heard that Singapore campus had about 52 offers just for yesterday with TCS, CTS, Bank Am, Citibank and Wipro battling for the best, and its not surprising that companies are ready to pay an excellent salary package.

Maersk is the pick of the day offering people across specializations excellent packages for both India and Dubai. I had my interview of CTS yesterday through Video Conference and it was pretty cool, athough they grilled me on my project and disseration. Went on for 30 mins after which I had an HR telecon round the next day. Was offered a position as a senior business analyst. Yet to confirm my location and joining date. Expecting to join the Healthcare and Lifescience vertical of CTS.

All I can see is smiling faces and hugs!!Everyone here is happy to see their year of hardwork and investments finally bearing fruit. Its been a hard year for us. Most of my colleagues, including myself have average work experience of 2-3 years and it needs guts and balls to take a decision to leave comfy jobs they had to come out of India to pursue a Global MBA. But this course in two cities has broadened our outlook and expanded our horizon. Students of SPJCM can dare to think of jobs in GCC, US, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia. They are being offered jobs all over the globe which would not have been possible if we had done an MBA back home. Some companies are taking their own time to come for placements. They might be thinking that with SPJCM they can afford to take chances. Poor thing!!! They should be knowing latecomers dont get to eat from the pie. I hope everybody gets placed in a couple of days and we can start partying hard.

!!!Wish you all the best, guys n gals!!!

LIbrary Etiquette

2007-01-27T06:47:00.000-08:00

For me library is like a sacred place and reading my passion. I still wonder why people come into the library to voice chat on their laptops, socialize, to do group works, group discussions and all other things except READ. Even the college staff just come barging into the library shouting at the top of their voice. And the funniest thing in this college is that, books, badges, T-shirts and all other things are distributed to student inside the library. The only place I have seen this happening.

My MBA colleagues think that I am preparing for placement just because I spend most of the time in the library. If only they knew that I have been using the library from the time I learn't to read. I feel incomplete at the end of the day if I dont read the newspaper because that has been my habit for a long time. Unlike Singapore campus ( maybe thats the reason, my classmates have not seen me much in the Spore library), here in Dubai I am forced to read the newspaper in the college itself as our hostel is separated from the college and we dont have WiFi access in the hostel. The other reason is that I prefer reading from the hard copy rather than from the laptop. So when you have a library which subscribes to all good newspapers, why strain my eyes on the laptop.

Here in my college somebody shamelessly smuggles newspaper out of the library at the end of the day to read in the comfort of his/her hostel room. Somedays I dont even get to see the ET's and the FT's. I was told that last time a student was caught doing the same, he got fined heavily ( Dh 300). Let others also benefit from the college and the library. BUY YOUR OWN NEWSPAPERS!!!

Desert Rose

2007-01-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

Well life can't be easier than this, atleast not as bad as a one year MBA should have been. I landed in Dubai a month back to pursue second half of my so called Global MBA after having finished the other half in Singapore. Life is Singapore was bliss. The place is sexy and the campus was excellent. Here in Dubai, the college and hostel are far apart and we have to depend on the college bus to get us to the college from the hostel and vice versa. Everything around here depends on the availabilty of the bus drivers.

One management concept which is very much practiced here in SPJCM is "Change Management". Everything from the timetable, to the classrooms keep changing every hour. Unfortunatley the professors dont!!!

Now let me tell you something about myself. I am a biomedical engineer. I joined Bosch as a fresher and worked for about 39 months there. I left Bosch in May 2006 as a senior software engineer. Went straight to SPJCM, Singapore to pursue MBA in Service Marketing and Management (1year). Came to Dubai for the second half, but I am certainly not liking the place. I am wondering why people get so excited when they talk about Dubai. Last month I was in Bur Dubai and it just felt like walking on the streets of Chennai. First of all you don't feel like you are in a foreign land as you see only Indians all around. Plus there is utter chaos just like India. So there is no charm in being here. Dubai needs a total restructruing in a much more logical manner. Hopefully it will be better with the Metro starting in 2009. Round-abouts are omnipresent (more than the sand :) ). If you are traveling, at the end of the journey you become giddy because of all the roundtanas. Having seen Dubai, India and Singapore, I think for business and management Dubai is too primitive, Singapore is highly mature. India is the boiling pot and this is the right time to be there. Seeing all the campus placements happening in India I am wondering what I am doing in a place like this. I feel stupid. I am waiting to get out of this God forsaken place and fly back to India as soon as possible.