Oxford to Dubai : End of part 1

Having sat in Heathrow for 17 hours I was told to bugger off as all the flights were cancelled for the 19th . So I head back to oxford with a ticket for 21st in my pocket only to greeted by a nice sunny evening at Oxford . Let's hope I am able to leave the island on 21st .

"Aal is bell.."

Oxford to Dubai : Story so far

to give you the background , I had a flight to Dubai tomorrow morning .

So the ever efficient me went to the bus station to find out what would be a good time to take a bus out of oxford . What do i find ? No buses out of Oxford it seems . Nothing to worry I tell my self "Aal is bell" as Aamir khan taught us. So I headed off to the train station.( Btw it had been snowing all morning and I was trudging along in 6 inches of snow.) Nothing to worry the lady at the counter says. We have a train at the platform ready to leave for london and we donot know when the next would be heading out . Hmm "Aal is bell" I tell myself and hurry back home to finish packing .Time is 4:30pm on 18th and I am ready to head off to london for a flight supposed to take off at 8:50 am on the 19th morning . Paranoid , I hear some of the non-believers say , but then they donot know of my harrowing experience of getting out of Dehra Dun to catch a flight from Delhi while coming to Oxford. 

So I head of to the station lugging my luggage :) in a small blizzard .Well for somone who has spent last 4 years in the impotent climate of Bangalore it was a small blizzard. I enter the train station and behold my luck is changing !! a train heading for london . so I hop into and am pretty smug about myself , thinking who can I visit for the night in london. But my luck never changes is just takes a turn for the worse . At Didcot (never mind where it is , not really worth knowing ) we are asked to switch trains and get on to the express to london . People jump off the train and run towards the express , trying to outdo each other while maintaining a facade of civility . (well there are only so many seats in a train) . 

I have standing in the train for 30 minutes waiting for the express to leave . No pressure in the train they say (Don't ask me , I have no idea what that means) . So all our running and jostling comes to a naught as we get off after 40 minutes . Another 10 minutes and I am on another train to London . It ain't that bad I tell myself . It could have been worse (If I had only known my future).

I reach paddington (London) at around 7:30 and having lost the enthusiasm of meeting anybody decide to head for heathrow . But then Heathrow is closed :) . Obviously I didn't know that when I was at paddington . At Heathrow I am stuck for around 40 minutes in a sea of people who are trying to go everywhere. 

Anyways somehow now I am inside the airport having started 6 hours earlier from Oxford . There is no place to sit , the wifi does not work and my backside hurts having sat on the cold floor for 20 minutes .

"Aal is bell" I tell myself ...

Ohh btw my flight is rescheduled for 12:00 noon tomorrow ..

"Aal is not bloody bell"

Here we go …8 hrs .. 4 days .. 7 years

8 hrs to go for the first exam

4 days of exams

7 years since I wrote an exam 

And this is what I feel before I go to sleep.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1.

Half a league, half a league,
 Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
 Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
 Rode the six hundred.

2.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
 Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
 Rode the six hundred.

3.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
 Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
 Rode the six hundred.

4.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
 All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
 Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
 Not the six hundred.

5.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
 Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
 Left of six hundred.

6.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
 All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
 Noble six hundred.

 

** Copied from the internet

http://poetry.eserver.org/light-brigade.html

Decision Science

Spent 2 hours in the sports centre shooting arrows. I am getting betterJ, but I guess that is no excuse to have spent such valuable time in frivolous activities. But sitting in my room for last 2 days trying to makes sense of finance, accounting etc. was just too much for me. So went to the sport centre and tried to drill holes into mute targets. Would have scored myself, if only I had known that it's gonna be my lucky day.

Gotta get back to Decision Science, wouldn't look good if an engineer does badly on the only math related course in the term.

Week 8

The term has been a blur of classes, assignments and sleep deprived nights.

By the way it snowed this morning, looking outside the window the scene was beautiful but reaching the school was cold and treacherous, and the classes have been sleepy. Can't believe that am already in the 8^th week of the term. Another couple of weeks and I'll be done with my first term of MBA and not so long ago I was in a completely different world busy with my job and theatre. It does seem that as if that was very long ago L .

Miss theatre I guess , I'd love to know what kim would think about that J . But have taken up archery here, so all is not lost J.

 

Let get up back to some work

You can take the Rathore out of Ranjhore but you can never take out the Ranjhore out of Rathore

and similarly - "You can take the engineer out of engineering but you can not take the engineering out of an engineer" :)

Just spent 2 hours of my precious time deriving the formula for IRR (Internal Rate of Return) . Yes I could have found it on the net , but that wouldn't be fun would it now .

so here we go
P = Loan amount
I = Yearly installment
N = Number of years
R = Annual rate of interest
B = (1 + I/100) => for I = 10% , B= 1.1

I = P / ( B^-1 + B^-2 + B^-3 ... B^-N)  => Eq-1

Hence for a given loan , years and rate of interest you could find out the yearly installment :)

Unfortunately I don't remember how to solve polynomial equations but you can also re-arrange the above equation to find out rate of interest if monthly installment is known.

( B^-1 + B^-2 + B^-3 ... B^-N) = P / I  => Eq-2

The above equation can be solved for "B" in excel using

"Data -> Data Tools -> What If Analysis -> Goal Seek "

oh yes btw excel gives you an easier formula for the above IRR() ;)

:D . You think I am crazy , believe me, I am ;)

Signing off , need to get some work done

I am hanging on

Well as I said , I am hanging on. I am behind on my reading list , not completely happy with the speed of my assignments and have no clue about the job search. Hmm .. that sounds more like drowning , but being the perennial optimist I'd say I am still hanging on. 4th week of the term has started and in another 4 days half the term's classes would be over , and as we go over the mid term hump I guess everyone will start focusing on the examinations and looking forward to the term break. A lot of interesting stuff has been happening besides the classes. There's gonna be a diwali night on 6th November, that should be fun. A lot of discussions have already started on the Entrepreneurship Project (EP) for next term and I see people have already started applying for jobs, in fact some have even received interview calls. Everything seems to be moving in all directions possible. Btw I am going to archery sessions for novices :) . That has been fun part of the week and something to look forward to on Friday mornings. Meanwhile a number of bops have come and gone which I couldn't attend coz of the English weather getting to me :( . but no worries there'll be enough bops in future . I'll try and come back more often on the blog and keep it update with my adventures ;)

To blog or not to blog

Well, If you have ever tried studying after a break of 7 years , then you understand as to why I haven't written anything for the last one week. Man, it's crazy !! Especially the days with 2 classes in a row. For the pedantic onces let me explain "2 classes in a row ": The lunch break is negligible when you deduct from it the time it takes to get out of the class, stand in a queue in the loo, stand in a queue for the food and then stand in a queue to sit down and eat in peace. But peace there is none because you have but a mere few minutes to ram down as much nourishment (my classmates might disagree with the word) as you can and hope that you are not the last person returning to the class. That reminds me of a day during the induction when everyone returned around 15 minutes late from the lunch . Well you can't really start a presentation (read lecture) if the audience is not in, can you now :D . Just a thought and am in no way implying that we should use such underhanded methods to increase the duration of our breaks.
But , I digress as always. So as I said, I had a miserly lunch and rushed back to the class, having already lost most of the knowledge from the previous class in a mad scamper to feed and relieve myself (not necessarily in that order). By 3:00pm I wanted to leave and by 4:00pm I had already left the class . Well you're physically allowed to leave only after 4:45pm :). The last week has been an amazing experience I'd say, not to say anything of the group assignment meetings (that's a story for another day). And despite all my raving and ranting for last 5 minutes I seemed to like the classes . It had been long since I learnt something completely new ( People who know me would tend to articulate that since I know so little its easy for me to be in this position, since everything is in fact new for me. But then I hate and disagree with almost everyone I know , besides the people I don't understand and hence ignore and hate all the more) So it has been great learning all this new stuff (I have forgotten most of it and hence cannot elaborate , "stuff" is specific enough I guess). I hope that the feeling of learning which I had lost touch with (besides my mind) remains through the year and if I can learn each week as much I have done in the last one , I think I will leave Oxford a wiser man (Yup I know it's hard to improve on perfection , but you gotta try , right ? )
I think I'll leave you with those thoughts and get back to something more constructive , may be read ahead for the coming week zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Challenging the audience

A year or so ago I was invited to participate to be part of a play reading . The play was a hindi translation of a  Kannada play by the renowned Kannada play wright, "Sri Ranga" . Well getting to the point. The play kind of put the audience in a spot by talking about extra-marital affairs (I kind of oversimplified for the sake of brevity) , especially back then when the Indian society was a bit more orthodox. It challenged and defied the audience by showing a married lady talking to three different men , including her husband , and telling them how each of them fulfilled her different needs, (intellectual , emotional , platonic and others) . Certainly a brave script to write in the  20th century India.

This brings me to the second part of the post, something which I learned / realized over the last week . I put in my name for the chair of Consulting OBN (it's a school group for students interested in consulting as a career) . I talked to a number of people and asked them to read my pitch and let me know how they found it (even if they didn't vote for me) . Most of the people who I talked to gave me a very good piece advice , "Get more face time" , "Get more exposure to class" . This makes a lot of sense , because very few people, if any, would vote for somebody they don't know. But that brings me to my key observation . It's imperative that the person up for election makes himself / herself visible. But , how many of us voters take the pain of knowing the people up for election . Isn't it imperative for us to put in the effort to know the right candidate instead of being passive and vote for the guy we have heard of ? Isn't this a partnership ? The way it is currently , it seems that the candidate has everything to gain from getting elected and hence puts in all the effort, and the voters have nothing to gain from it, which is not true by any stretch of imagination. Wouldn't it be better if in all elections, especially which decide fates of our countries, we put in some effort to get to know the candidates and not wait for them to come to us. Lets make it similar to a job interview where both the interviewer and the interviewee have a stake in the process and hence put in an effort to help each other find the right match. Unfortunately I myself have been one of the guilty ones. I am ashamed to say that I have never voted for any elections, and it took me to stand up for election to understand the gravity of my folly.

I believe we should use our vote , wherever we have a say, else we end up choosing the person with the best PR rather than the best abilities. I hope I did make sense, if not drop me a message and we can discuss this further online or a cup coffee :)

The Sainsbury Library

Well I don't think that this is the use school was thinking about when making such a nice library , but it is a fantastic place to blog :). The big glass windows (more like a wall I'd say) give you a good outside view . Just realized that I somehow like looking out of windows whether it's nice and sunny or it is bleak and rainy :) . A sight seeing bus just passed by on the road across the school and I was thinking if I waved would they have noticed me, hmm should have just waived.
Well enough of the "deep contemplation" I'll get back to what i came here for , but if you're in Oxford then do have a look at the Saïd Business School and you can see into the library from the road. Don't you "love" those big glass windows :)

View from inside the
The Sainsbury Library

The Oxford Experience

For last couple of days me and my classmates have been hearing a lot about the "Oxford Experience" . Well for some, it would be the city around us , the numerous pubs and/or the night life but I have a more classic "Oxford Experience" to tell tonight . Three of us were sitting at the Indian joint across the school (the food is pretty decent) and discussing the various languages spoken across India , the attributes of people across India and everything which makes India such a vibrant and "unlikely democracy". I believe the gentleman sitting on the table behind us had been overhearing our "unripe" psycho-babble and unformed theories for quite some time, when he decided to introduce himself . So we had the pleasure of getting acquainted  with Mr. Prashanth an Indian mechanical engineer who got fed up with his mundane life and went ahead and did a PhD in linguistics !! and that too from Japan on a Japanese government scholarship . I was like "whoa" . And that's not all, the softspoken gentleman hailing from Pune actually teaches in Japan and that too in Japanese. We had a interesting discussion with him on a number of  languages and their history (In retrospect I think we should have shut our trap and let him speak a bit more). I learnt a number of new things in the hour long discussion that ensued and though Navoniell and Hari don't look the part but take my word for it , they can engage you in a decent academic discussion :) . The gentleman is in Oxford just for couple of days and it was lucky for us to have met him .
As we said our goodbyes, the question I asked the guys was - "How many business schools will give you the opportunity to engage in a discussion with a Linguist over a cup of coffee (a decent cup it was, I must admit)" . Not many is the answer , I guess . So it seems the "Oxford Experience" is infact a reality and I am looking forward to more of it in the coming year.

Am I daft ? (Please don't bother to answer)

Went through the first day of the finance bootcamp and it was great . With the number of new things I heard and learnt about, it seems I haven't been on this planet for a long time. Yup I know being in a tech firm was not exactly the place to learn about finance careers, but seriously, how can there be so much stuff I do not know about .
I did feel a bit daft at times , and before any of you jump in to help me re-affirm that I am so, just let me say, that it was a mere fleeting thought and I am confident of my intelligence. So, thanks but no thanks :)
Have another day of finance ahead of me, let's see how that goes.

The First One !

I have planning to start this blog for a couple of days now but there has been so much going on ! (and the classes have not even started yet). Well anyways here I go :)


Dropped into London on the morning of 21st Sept '10 . The bus from Heathrow was amazing ( "The airline" is what it is called I guess ). They had wifi on-board and it was good to be able to ping a few people on my way down to Oxford.  At Oxford I had taken up a room at a hotel called WestGate as I waited to get hold of my private accommodation (Didn't get the accommodation I wanted from GTC :( ). The hotel was ok , and anyways I spent most of the next 2 days walking around in Oxford and meeting a lot of amazing people who will be my classmates for the coming year.
22nd and 23rd was the Management Consulting Bootcamp. An amazing effort by the "Career Services" team and hats off to them . It was great listening to people from the profession tell us about what recruiters are looking for , the kind of job it is and a number of personal experiences . To be frank I was a bit apprehensive going into the bootcamp. What if I mis-understood consulting and actually don't like it ? I was hoping the bootcamp wouldn't end in me running out of the place flaying my arms above my head shouting "I can't do this" and probably jump into the nearest stream connecting to Thames. (Funny that reminds of Barney Stinson). Well thankfully at the end of the 2 days that didn't happen and I walked out of the place as normally as I physically could :) . 
The evenings have mostly been spent setting up our place or meeting people at the pubs (There are a lot of pubs around) . It has been an great experience all together , and listening to all the people tell what they have been doing before Oxford I think it' gonna be a amazing year forward.  That's all for now (I'd love to write more but I have another bootcamp to attend ) .
I'll be back later , unless something else makes me jump into the Thames .