Hither Thither

~ So I have this 14 day Diwali vacation. And a lot of my friends from college keep asking me as to how I am spending my time. For a person who can sleep 15 hours a day, you really don't need to have a plan on how to spend your 14 day vacation!

~ When I came back home after my third semester, I weighed 78 kilos. That is the leanest I have been in a decade. My mom took it as a personal challenge to get me back to my normal self. 10 days and 8 kilos later, I think she has comfortably won.

~ Diwali has just got over and as has been the trend since the last few years, there was less of noise and more of light this year too. I read somewhere that Diwali is called the festival of light, because that is precisely how your wallet feels after you purchase firecrackers!

~ I went to the opthalmologist to get my eyes tested. Keeping in trend with our inflationary environment, my eye number has also jumped up by 50%. It is at a scary negative 4.50 now! Scary because it reminds me of an incident where a friend of mine turned down a guy she really liked just because he had a negative 6. Can you believe that? Her argument was that since she was a negative 7, their kids would be born blind! Dear reader, such a crazy woman exists and she blogs here

~ I have this free messaging scheme, but on festivals I am charged a buck per message. So in order to circumvent this and still wish people, I send them messages a day early, which reads something like

"I though I'd wish the very special people first, so here goes - Happy Diwali :)"

Capstone Business Simulation Tips

Since it has become fashionable for most B schools to have the Capstone simulation, here are some tips and tricks that might help you to crack the game.

1. Introduce all your new products in year 1 itself.

2. Compete in 3-4 segments only. Don't compete in all 5!

3. Exit the performance segment. The margins are low.

4. Have 3 products in the low segment and time their introduction in such a way that you have a new version in the market, every 4 months.

5. Automate as soon as possible. The ideal automation levels are (10-low, 8-traditional, 7-rest)

6. Use conservative forecasts in the marketing tab and optimistic ones in the production tab. This will help you to not be at the mercy of Big Al.

7. $1400 is all you need to maintain your promotion levels at 100%

8. Spend $5000 per employee on recruitment costs and 80 hours of training, right from the first week itself.

9. In TQM, spend $1500 on each activity for the first three weeks.

10. In labor negotiation, be at the upper end on all aspects. This way you will hurt your competitors the most.

Post Script - If you found these helpful (or otherwise), please click on the ads. It will go a long way in helping me recover my tuition fees! ;)

Post Post Script - My site content is found to be inappropriate by the Google Ads guys. Ya whatever!

The Queen Bee v/s Me

I think it was exactly eleven days back. As per routine, I got up at five thirty in the morning. Around twenty minutes after both my roomies had just gone to sleep. I walked out of my room and to my surprise, or horror rather, there was this huge bee hive that sprung out of nowhere. I'm pretty sure it wasn't there the night before.

This is what I saw



A closer look



It disgusted me. I was once stung by a bee when I was four and the sting lasted for around a week. I immediately ran down to the warden and complained about the bee hive. He gave me the most obscure but irrefutable reason. He told me in chaste Hindi that if he calls the pest control guys, all the bees will die. And that since I don't have the right to give life, I shouldn't have the right to take life as well. He also gave me a lecture on karma and how paap lagega if I kill the bees.

Little did he know that he was speaking to a guy who has had 21 non vegetarian meals a week for most of his life. And so I finally decided to take matters in my own hands. These were my weapons



So for the next few days, with the help of my rolled up newspaper and Chinese fly electricutor, I was smashing and frying bees all day. I used to average around 20 bees a day. My life had got a new purpose. I felt good. It was the queen bee against me and this was one battle I was determined to win.

Until one day when I read that the queen bee lays 3,000 eggs a day.

Alaskan Trivia - Things you may not have known about the Land of the Midnight Sun

~ In Barrow, Alaska, the longest day starts May 10th and lasts 3 months. The longest night starts on November 18th and continues for 2 months.

~ Alaska offers 0.93 square mile for each resident. In comparison with 0.003 sqaure mile offered by New York!

~ Alaska has more than 33,000 miles of coastline. It is more than all of the combined coastline of the entire continental United States of America.

~ Totaling over 3 million lakes, Alaska houses over 40% of USA's fresh water.

~ Very surprisingly, Alaska's state sport isn't snow skiing, ice skating or even fishing. It is dog mushing!

~ Juneau is the capital of Alaska. Not Anchorage or Fairbanks!

~ Alaska's flag was designed in 1926 by a 13-year-old Native American boy, Bennie Benson, from the village of Chignik. Bennie received a 1,000-dollar scholarship and a watch for his winning entry in the flag design contest.

~ The name Alaska is derived from the Aleut word "Alyeska", meaning great land.

~ On March 30, 1867, the United States agreed to purchase Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million dollars, about two cents an acre; "Seward's Folly" many called it, after Secretary of State William H. Seward. A check for $7,200,000.00 was issued on August 1, 1868 and made payable to Edouard de Stoeckl, the Russian Minister to the United States.

~ At their closest Alaska and Russia are 2.5 miles apart – the distance between Little Diomede Island, Alaska, and Big Diomede Island, Russia.

And that's me!

My Reading List

Mumbai - Delhi
Delhi - Toronto
Toronto - Vancouver

My companions

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
Aunts aren't Gentlemen - P G Wodehouse
Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis
Only Time Will Tell - Jeffrey Archer
The Thing Around Your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Till we meet again. Adios

Goodbyes are Difficult

Lavale, Pune.
March 30, 2012.


Today marks the end of two great years of my student life. I don't think I have the ambition or the talent to pursue a doctorate and so my student life has all but ended. Today. I said my final goodbyes to 12 of my closest friends, who were more like family.

Each one of them said the same thing.

"Bye Shawn. Please keep in touch."

And my response was the same.

"Even if I tried, I'd find it difficult, not to"

Today marks the end of two great years of my student life. Today, I crossed my fingers 11 times.

Finally!

I've been playing Housie for years now. But it was on the 20th of May that for the first time I managed to win something. We played it as part of a team building exercise. The fact that three others also won the 'Jaldi 5' is of little significance. So also the fact that only 11 people played.