the 'K'-factor

This is about our tinsel town .. but dont worry its not about the K-serials of eKtaa Kapoor !

saw OmShantiOm this Friday @ Dubai ... desi movies r nice to watch in a foriegn land .. though u can hardly call Dubai 'phoren' place .. given the fact that ppl from subcontinent seem to b the majority here ! a hall packed with ppl who speak ur language share same culture does seem to make even the most horrible movies digestible !

No, the movie in question OSO was'nt bad , it was pretty decent entertainer and was good in some parts esp the references and digs at the industry itself !

Another very interesting thing bout the movie was the K-factor , as in , you need a surname starting with K - Kapoor , Khan , Khanna etc to make it big in film industry ...
No , just changing your name wont do , u need to be born as son/daughter of a K

The movie had 2 SRKs ... a struggling actor without the 'K' name and a superstar-son who becomes what he is because of the 'K' surname ... there was also a funny filmfare award bit in which 4 real life star fathers come and pitch for their respective sons !

It makes a very valid statement , especially given the fact that it is coming from the man who many people believe is the last hope for people who dont have family connections and wish to make it big in bollywood ! When you think of it there is hardly anybody you can remember in last 15-20 years who made it really big without somebody in film industry other than the SRK ...

Another intriguing coincidence is the fact that this movie OSO , which highlights the 'star power' concept, actually released this Diwali against a movie which stars not one but two 'K'apoor kids in a ultra-lavish dream debut which ordinary mortals cannot even dream of !

Evolution & cellphones

No you read it right , the title is not evolution ‘of’ cellphones , its evolution and role played by cellphones in it.

From the time life originated on earth the process of evolution has been one straight forward yet rough and tough game. Only those who have something special and extra survive , there lot of terms for these like natural selection and survival of fittest which has ensured that all the species which are currently present on earth are there coz they have something which others don’t have. It could some characteristic like the neck of a giraffe or trunk of an elephant or hump of camel or the thick fur coats of animals in colder regions and various other unique qualities in all animals, which helps it in more ways than one and helps it prevail upon on competition. This kind of unique trait ensures that out of same animal family some species which are more developed survive and they hone these traits or features to the level of perfection.

Now you might be wondering how on earth is wildlife and evolution related to mobile phones ?

Well I give you two choices , either I have too much time to spare and love taking people for a ride ! Or that Im going to make an interesting point , I will let you decide which one of these two is correct.

So only the species which have evovled and adapted very well to the evironment has managed to survive , but who rules the earth ? Well , Homo Sapiens ( thats you and me) of course.

Next question would be how ?

I know the conventional answer would be that its because of that highly developed brain of ours and our ability to think or rather out think the competion that we have become masters of the earth.

Ofcourse that is correct , but I would say that this ability to innovate as in “make tools'' and harness energy and all , has actually made us the leader of the pack.

Over the years right from stones which were converted to some forms of crude weapons to the age of metals to much more recent tools like guns gave man a control over all other forces around him. Man got so much control that those forces around him stopped mattering that much. All these tools which made our life easier or helped us survive and overcome competition can be considered to be part of our evolution. The same way an animal which has to hunt faster prey develops and perfects attributes like stealth and precision , we developed things like automobiles and gadgets of precision to make ourselves safe and comfortable .Hence I consider these gadgets as part n parcel of our evolutionary growth.

Let’s get over with gadgets which helped us evolve further and develop as a race and come straight to the gadget which rules in 21st century , which is none other the ubiquitous mobile phone/cellphone ...

The word Cell some 10-15 years would have surely meant confines of a prison , but cell today is gadget for liberation !

Cellphone has truly helped us evolve in multiple senses ... This pocket size gadget has replaced lots of heavy weight gadgets and has captured the hearts ( nay shirt pockets) of millions ranging from Compnay CEOs to peons.It comes in various sizes ,shapes and forms from plain low-end phone to ultra cool i-phones to Blackberry phones , the cellphone market has something for everyone.

Now to substantiate my theory that mobiles have truly helped us evolve or make our lives better , I choose a few real life examples where people used this gadget in their day to day lives and succeded in their business . To drive home the point I choose the common man as focal point of all my examples.

Among the first stories of business growth driven by cellphones were that of fishermen in kerala .

Once cellphone era began these fishermen no longer had to sell fish in the local beaches; they were able to find out the exact price for fish in the various markets outside their home territory and were able to sell their catch at best possible prices.. Overall they ended up making more money and also resulted in the reduction of prices for the consumers as lesser fish were wasted ... more the fish less the price , simple economics...

Basically it eliminated geographical barriers for business and 'where' you were present no longer became a constraint provided you had a cellphone , let me elaborate with a few more common-man examples.

In my hometown , we have an electrician cum plumber who used to handle both house work and do repairs in his shop . As his work was good, he began getting more and more house calls. The only way to contact him was to go to his shop and tell his assistant the nature of the problem. Then we had to wait till he got back from his previous assignment and came to our house. Since he covered a wide area , more often than not if the person was not present in the shop , people would not prefer to wait they would rather go to some other person. Now with a mobile phone, he is just a call away and he immediately tells us where he is and how quickly he can come. This results in more business for him, less effort for us(his customers) also. Same with auto-drivers in, earlier they used to wait in the auto-stand and you had to go to the auto-stand to hail an auto or if you were lucky on the way you might get an auto. Today we just give a call to an auto-driver we know, he will come to our house to pick us up or call any of his friends who might be in the same area and ask them to pick us up !

I was travelling in the local bus in Bangalore 6 months back and a few construction workers were travelling with me and to my surprise I heard cell phone ringing in the pocket of a shabby looking guy next to me and it was a call from some contractor for some work in some other part of B’lore for him and his group. He told me after they got a cell phone they are never out of work. These are just a couple of examples I could remember off hand nowadays everyone from tailors to hairdressers are just a call away and mobile phone has simply changed the way business happens.

QED : Mobiles have become a necessity if you need to stay in the race these days or you get left behind and others march ahead of you.

( this is the first in a series of posts im planning on cellphones and their role in our life ... to be continued )

DCP - (D)mystified

... the word which is a rage in my class these days is 'DCP' ...

DCP for dummies expands to Desperate Class Participation and is quite a remarkable phenomenon/tendency/ in some circles even labeled as 'disease' which can b found in most 'b-schools'.

The basic defintion is "It is a (shameless) act of asking a question in the class to pickup marks for class participation or just to impress the professor"

This comes in various forms and though this article does not claim to exhaustively cover this phenomenon as newer variants keep cropping up every now and then ( just now got an update thru gtalk bout 2 new variants springing up in the neighbouring class), we do promise to keep you updated on the latest developements on this front.

coming back to the word in focus , DCP strikes in most lectures the most common and easily reconginable symptom is the raised hand which keeps pace with the movement of lecturer's eyes ...

the basic premise behind this is believed to be the good old proverb tht "in an mba course any publicity is good publicity" ... ooops was'nt the saying meant for politics! ... with so many questions being popped around in the class, brains of ordinary mortals like me are bound to get addled.

There are a few basic instances when DCP surfaces ... first and foremost is when the lecture gets a bit boring and some of the participants decide enough is enough and starts asking Questions .. no one really knows what these questions are and how they are related and so on ... Dont ask me any further details , i generally wake up during this time ... so pardon me for not noting the question or what exactly happened .. but more often than not the questions are met with an exasperated "so whats your point ? what are u exactly asking?" tone or with curt and abrupt to the point answers like the "that was the paper covered in last term ..." or "we are yet to discuss the relevence of that on krakotan economy ..." sorry some of us quietly doze off ...
Another is when partipant gets very enthusiastic and tries to really sink her/his teeth into it ..arrhhhhhhh ... more often than not these Q go much beyond scope of Phd in the subject !

Another funny variant is when person is despo type and feels bad tht she/he has not participated much and asks questions from the slide the lecturer is covering when point no:1 is discussed , the DCPer jumps to point 4 and asks some Q related to tht !

Somewhat harmless one is when a particpant suddenly wakes up after forty winks and more often than because Prof has seen her/him dozing ... When the mind is torn between annoyance in having to wake up and guilt in having missed what was discussed , she/he comes up a smart way to snap out this .. ask Q !

So the question that comes to our mind is tht why does this happen ? of course there are quite a few obvious explanations like someone out there who designed the course actually thought giving marks for participation was a good idea ( believe me lot of ppl r hunting for tht person , i assure u we will take proper care of her/him) , but during some really drab lectures I got some real interesting opinions/theories ... the best one was that DCP is perpetrated by a group aliens with a mission to destabilise planet earth and this is done thru contact with ppl who wil shape India of tomorrow .... This could easily explain why clever people yours truly avoid any class particpation to avoid any contact with these aliens .. we will outlast the aliens and Earth can count on us ...

now most of the profs are pretty smart folks and can easily see thru an attempted DCP .. now each one has their on style of dealing with it .. lenient/poor ones try to even answer it and get bogged down and have vacant looks on their faces as Q follow Q .. some just let it pass...
the best ones hav been a recent instance where the prof asks the participant to Repeat the Q ... this kinda puts many a DCPer to shame and the the subsequent Q would somewhat rephrased and more logical version of the first one .. some need repeated takes to get this right .. but ofcourse for all his noble intentions i feel there is a minor flaw in this approach keepin in mind the alien-infestation theory tht is doin rounds ... if such an approach is tried with an in-organic life form ,we could end up in endless loops of repeated Q till the alien or replicant or whatever it is runs out of gas/battery charge in its oxygen-methane convertor or some such thing ... ofcourse the fact tht such a thing has not happened in class has made many debunk the alien-invasion theory .. but the guys who proposed the theory assure me , they are working hard to find out more bout these alien life forms .

Another notable approach which is prety aggresive and is to take on dcp er and give some rubbish back and put her/him to shame . Sample this ... "this is like saying there is an ätomic power plant in Krygiztan "... "ok whats your point ?!!!" ...

On the whole however i wud admit tht whether the Q made sense or the ppl gained anything , for good or bad DCP has had an impact on our course and has certainly manged to infuse some life into even the most dullest of classes !

PS: As many of u have rightly guessed this was written in class !

First Impressions ...

Landed in Dubai on a hot summer day in the afternoon … right from the airport itself got accustomed to seeing things on a bigger or rather grander scale(compared to things back in India). We watched in awe as we moved across the huge airport . The moment we stepped out from airport and boarded the SPJCM pick up bus to hostel , we wherever we looked around the city it was just tall buildings n taller buildings emerging out of never ending miles of desert sand and amazing roads n flyovers full of dream cars zooming past us , the ‘wow’ factor continued. The city had set ‘lofty’ standards in our minds and upon arrival in the hostel was pleasantly surprised to see the lofty standards being maintained in the hostel too . The hostel is an entire apartment complex in International city on the outskirts of Dubai, it is just 20 min from college by Bus (arranged by college). We were all shown to our pre-allocated service apartments , which were much beyond what we had expected ! reminded me of the training days at a heaven called Mysore Infosys campus …

The college arranges transport from hostel to college in mornings and the buses leave on the dot , hence its quite a challenge for all of us to get ready in time to catch the bus …

The college is located in a place called academic city , which has lots of educational institutions in the middle of desert ! like most of the places in Dubai this place is also coming up fast and with huge sums of money being pumped in to develop world class infrastructure and things do happen here and happen fast . Its hard to imagine that the whole place was just a stretch of desert 3 yrs back !

All buildings are identical and after a long travel along numerous winding roads we finally reach the college building and after seeing the entire place and hostel , I was kind of thinking that the everything being excellent would be hard. So I thought initially that the college could be a letdown because we already had set very standards based on what we saw so far; I couldn’t be more mistaken … the first few hours itself changed whatever doubts I had about the place. The facilities , the kind of people , the classroom with beautiful amphitheatre like seating arrangement , with video recording of each lecture and the entire atmosphere convinced and reassured me that I had got a very good deal. We had a few ice breaker sessions for us to know each other (given that we were a batch of 150) better . then all the intricacies of the course was explained and we had a guest who was a VP in a reputed UAE based company telling us about life and business climate in middle east in general and Dubai in particular. We also had a couple of visits or rather sightseeing kinda tours arranged by college authorities to give us a feel of the city , mainly to get us adjusted to and feel the ‘global factor’, one of the main reasons for pursuing a MBA here in Dubai. The city visit was followed by a Dhow cruise followed by dinner on the dhow ( big boat) arranged by college as a welcome.

Having thus settled in at the ‘global’city of Dubai , we embarked on the business of learning or earning our stripes and the first week gave us enough indicator of what lies in store , people started adapting quickly to the frentic pace of life in a 1 yr course which almost covers most of the stuff taught in 2 yrs at SPJIMR. The excellent professors (mainly from SPJIMR along with a few resident faculty and guest lecturers from IIMs/XLRI) , the daily quizzes and assignments meant we had our hands full. Class full of people with work-ex ranging from 1-7 yrs of experience spread across all sectors meant rich and insightful classroom discussion/ interactions .In the first month itself we started getting an idea of business in UAE through a series of guest lecturers where people from various sectors in Dubai addressed us. Market research projects meant that all of us had to interact with businesses in Dubai and get to understand what it takes and how they do it ... mine was with a wonderful place called Wolfi's Bike shop .. we went there posing as customers and observed how they add value and how they do business in general ...

That’s just a month down … with 5 more months of learning to follow before heading off to Singapore…

Ps: i guess most of u mite hav already guessed from the wooden style tht this was written for college ! ;)

cat is out of the bag

Finally it is out ... those of us who had tried hard to bell it now know how or why we missed it ... Thanks again to RTI and efforts of ... , the 'process' of IIMB admissions are made public.

The disclosure was something which interested a lot of us who were part of the Cat brigade at sometime or other in our life , though it doesnt really matter now for most ...
Despite fact that the secrecy had lent some sort of aura to the whole process and even though it may not b same again , i think everyone wud defnitely prefer to know it ...

I was totally impressed with the kind of effort and dedication spent in refining and following up the admission process which is supposed to filter and get the best that there is ...


Having written the exam 4 times and having managed to walk across those gates only once for an interview , i know how tough it is ...


Lot of misnomers are cleared btw , about the percieved biases and patterns followed.

Also the odds seem to be stacked against ppl with not so good acads .. apparently CAT score is not the only factor as some coachin centers used to claim ...

Im not so good at summing up whats written in those 5 pages ...

so check this wonderful post by Rashmi which explains what this is all about ...

Dubai slices - Mall of Emirates

Since im spending 6 months here in the desert kingdom , thought of jotting down some of the experiences ...

If you look at Dubai city during daytime the first thing you will notice is zillions and zillions of cranes and buildings under construction , wherever you go and wherever you look you see more and more buildings springing up over the entire desert landscape ...

Another thing which is starkingly different cities back home is that in dubai its dificult to spot human beings/animals or birds outside during the day. But when sun goes down it all changes ... the Dubai skyline by night looks amazing the whole place (incl highways ) is always lit.

Though its a muslim country , unlike its neighbours or for that matter other emirates in the country , Dubai is not a conservative place. It is very comsopolitan mainly due to the huge number of outsiders and huge number of Europeans. So nightlife is pretty rocking here.

The malls are also amazing and you do get good bargains during the shopping festivals and summer sales. currently Dubai Summer Surprises is on .. it runs till end of this month and a huge number of Malls and shops are part of this , we had heard that they offer really amzing discounts , so thot of chking it out.

A few of us went to Mall of Emirates last week , the trip was pretty costly , we went by the offical cab and not the 'lift service' (which is unofficial cab , run by mallu drivers , more bout that later in nother blog) ... the cabbie was incidentally a Punjabi . Taxi drivers here are either Indians or Pakistanis or Bangladeshis ... interestingly when the cabbie heard that we were MBA students said he was an MBA student before , me n my friend Aswin were shell-shocked !
It seems he dropped out of some college bacck home and regrets it hugely and advised us to concentrate hard on our studies ! In midst of all this friendly chatter , the guy took us through roads with Salik toll' and when we finally reached the destination - Mall of emirates , our eye-balls popped out when we saw the meter ...
The attractions in the mall begins right at the parking lot , which is flocked by visitors with cameras :) ... u get to see the best n most flashy cars in the world there , people just wait for the owners/valet to park the car and then click their own pictures with the car !

The mall itself is huge , with many shops being part of Dubai Summer surprises , there were a lot of places where you could get good discounts. You really need a store map to get anywhere in the mall. For all Bangaloreans this mall is like 10-15 times the size of Forum .

The mall also houses a few movie screens and carrefour supermarket inside , this time as DSS was going on there were lot shows on makeshift stages in various parts of the mall , where Asian culture and diversity was on display.

Unfortunately like malls back home in India , on weekdays in this mall also most shops close by 10 , we went too late and by the time we had checked out most of the shops and had kind of identified the shops with best deals , they all started closing !
Finally lots n lots of options for food with starbucks , dunkin and donuts etc and lots coffee shops n fancy restaurants with cuisines across the world. Food court also has variety of options , but good veg food is not so easily available.

PS:
Plannin to drop another visit to the place when a good movie comes along and will add more details

Dubai Slices - meena bazaar

Like the name suggests its a place in Dubai dominated by Indian shops ...

Today we had a somewhat free day @ college , had a quiz in the morning and couple of lectures and a simple group assignment and by 2 in the noon we were free ! They say its difficult to get free time in this course and wanted to get most out of it , so hit the sack immediately to make up for lost sleep ... woke up @ 6 and then suddenly had an idea of going to city . friend of mine wanted to buy watches .. he has a small collection now .. anyways he also jumped at the proposal and got a third aimless, bored soul also and then booked an unofficial (and illegal ! ) 'Mallu' cab (which is an interesting concept and i will dedicate a separate post for that ) to go to Bur Dubai ...


Roads in Dubai are amazing , you can easily run up 100kmph + speeds ... i believe 120 is the limit , but ppl drive around /above that usually ... once u reach the city proper , many areas have nasty traffic snarls and u never miss good ol Bangalore or for that matter any big city in India :)

Went to this place called 'Al-Ain Centre' which is a mall full of electronic goods shops ... was hunting for a pen drive , found the prices dropping as we moved from store to store. After grabbing some food from a Mexican fast food joint there , stepped out into a hot n sweltering Dubai evening...

It was close to 8 pm still it was extremely humid, but by the time we walked a couple blocks all of us were drenched !

Checked out a few watch shops on the way and reached 'Meena Bazaar'. If you are blind folded and dropped suddenly into this place you would think you are in some city in India. for ppl from, B'lore the place resembles Commerical street ! all the streets in that area had Indian shops ... all the people we saw on the streets were Indians / South Asians ...

after futile attempts at watch shopping , we moved around aimlessly (apparently we had missed the street where u get the best deals !)...

This is the place where the average Indian , the ones who come to Dubai to earn a living and tranfers bulk of the money back home , shops - u find shops of all sizes n shapes selling virtually evrything ...
there were a few Indian restaurants / fast food places too ...
Then there was a supermarket where u get all ur 'desi' packaged food stuff , replenished our depleting stocks and jumped back into business of exploring the place , there is a 'temple' also somewhere there , didnt find it when we went around ... there was a lot more to explore , but since there was hungry guy n knowledge thirsty guy (wanted to prepare for nxt day's quiz at college) ... i was forced to return back and again got a 'mallu' cab and was back in the hostel by 10 ...