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